Zelyre

Probably need to virus scan and remove whatever malware you picked up from your URL.

A very long time ago, in another life time, I worked for (insert giant Mall anchor store that no longer exists) and worked hard. Teenage me spent many a night after clocking out to work on signage, posters, and typing out forms/receipts. I needed to take an evening off for a school project and was given so much hassle - after that day off (for school), I was given every crap job you could think of. After 3 months, I loathed clocking in.

I had a friend who was leaving a job at a newspaper doing layout/design (on a light table that's how old it was). I had plenty of experience in it, had a few classes under my belt, and had a portfolio. My friend put in a good word with his boss - I should have been golden. I knew my way around a dark room. Knew how to create plates and run the print machines. Done a ton of work on a light table. I counted the chickens before they hatched and put in my two weeks at (Major Dead Mall Anchor).

Despite loving everything during the interview, they ultimately gave the position to someone who expressed they wanted to major in desktop publishing so they could get some real world experience.

Hoisted by my own petard and unemployed, I grabbed a job binder and started applying for anything and everything that seemed remotely interesting.

I ended up landing a job a few weeks later that was not just incredibly flexible with my school hours and paid almost twice as much... they also paid for my classes.

Here's the rub - at $300 for a 3050, you can get a Radeon 6700 with 10GB of VRam that is much faster than a 3050. If all you're looking to do is game, then unfortunately nVidia's low/medium end isn't priced well in comparison to what AMD offers at the same price point.

Both the 3050 and 3060 are too slow to add ray tracing without compromising elsewhere.

A vanilla 1660 or 1660S would be a decent performance boost, raw raster performance close to the 3050, but at the $200 price point is that Radeon 6600, which does unkind things to the 3050 and 1660S. Then at the 3050 price point of ~$300, the 6650xt is there, and the 6650xt is another step up from the 6600.

When it comes to the Sony titles on PC, it looks like the Radeon 6600 takes a commanding lead over the 3050.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrlJ-jsDRY

Some youtuber's comparison of a 3050 vs the 6600.

Really, my only caveat on the Radeon cards is that the NVidia encoder is miles ahead, but that'll only matter if you want to stream to say Twitch.

At the $250 price point, you're really looking at an AMD Radeon 6600. I'm seeing these available at Amazon and Microcenter. I can't think of any nVidia cards under $250 that aren't either side grades or downgrades from your 970. At $200, you're looking at marginal side grades at best - performance differences you can make up by moving a slider in MSI Afterburner up a few ticks.

The 6600 is a sizable boost in performance over your 970 at the same wattage. It has 8GB of VRAM. It's more than an incremental upgrade over your 970.

But, it's not fast enough to be cranking all the bells and whistles on the newest titles. Ray tracing? The only ray tracing this card will realistically do is playback some MP4 of someone playing a raytraced game on a 3080 or faster. (As an owner of a 3060, 3070, and 3080, I'd only even try turning raytracing on on the 3070/3080 and on the 3070, you're trading off a bunch to make it happen.)

If you're looking at playing last console generation era titles, the 6600 will do well. If you're looking about titles going forward, you're probably going to have to give up graphical fidelity to keep 1080/60 on more demanding titles.

The biggest thing against using AI upscaling is it uses the source image to generate a final frame. A 3080 generating 4k from a 1440p source is going to look much better than a 3050 generating a 1080 image from a sub 720p source since it'll have a much better reference point. At 1080p resolution, I think you'd be hard pressed to spot a difference in DLSS and FSR as both will be "meh".

My only caveat on the 6600 is if you plan on gaming and streaming it. The encoding on it is garbage.

Since you won't find a 3050 for under $250, I'd recommend a 3050 if you could get one under $250. It trails the 6600 in gaming performance, but you gain an NVENC encoder for streaming, get maybe some better Adobe CC performance, and get some funky DLSS. But at the $300+ I often see it for, it makes absolutely no sense when a -much faster- 3060 TI can be had for $399 from Best Buy.

PC gamers with hardware in the non-high end spec play the same way console players do? At adjusted video settings? You get a playable and good looking game at low configs, and you get silk smooth and mind blowing on high end configs. Forza on integrated graphics looks ok, plays ok and scales up from there.

Just like the new performance/fidelity options you get on consoles now, PCs have long had toggles and switches that let you toggle features on or off. 1080p is significantly less taxing to render than 2160p.

Maybe raytraced global illumination by itself that taxing, but adding on extra raytracing options such as reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion is. But you only need to check one of those on to say, "It's ray traced!" Then throw in upscaling such at FidelityFX or DLSS to open up more ways of squeezing out extra frames or a higher resolution.

So far, Sony's offerings on PC have been fairly PC friendly, scalable enough to make high end hardware work, while allowing them to run at 40fps on a Steam Deck.

Steam has metrics that show what the most commonly used hardware is. A glance at this should give you a rough target of your potential market. If you only gun for a playable game on a 3060/6600 and up class GPU, you're not going to get a lot of sales.

I would spend the extra $50 and jump up to the 5800X if they're priced like they are here in the US.

I see plastic peg things for the mounting mechanism of that heatsink. It's also rated for 65w. If you jump to the 5800, then it's a no go. Even for a 5600, it'll get toasty and loud.

Those things are the worst. If you really have more in the budget, I would replace that heatsink fan. Not just for better thermals, but for ease of installation. Those plastic pegs really are the worst. Also, if you're sensitive to noise, that heatsink/fan combo might be annoyingly loud. If you don't want to spend a -lot- on cooling, you can get a decent tower type cooler from Scythe or Noctua for around $50.

A SATA SSD is ok. But they're much slower than an NVME drive - 512GB is also... pretty small. I would slap in a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME at the very least. Since you mentioned unlimited budget. They're easy to install before your computer is done, but after the fact and they may require disassembly.

You will also need additional case fan(s). Better to install them now than later. If you're sensitive to noise, you may want to replace them all.

Don't know anything about your ram config there, but Ryzen likes faster memory. Something like Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 shouldn't be too much more.

I'd also maybe consider jumping up to a 6700xt. Future proofing and all.

Ryzen 7 series is -expensive- currently. Your prices will jump considerably if you look at that route.

So here's something funny - looks like someone dropped a video on the 1650 vs 3050 a day ago using the GF63. Everything on these two laptops is the same, except for the GPU. I had written something about not bothering with a 1650, as 3050/3060 laptops can be found in the 700-999 USD range.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDWEKYA2zU0

But yeah, a higher wattage 1650 is... still a 1650. It's like having to chose between a car with 90 HP or 100 HP. One is objectively faster. They're both faster than riding a bike. But get it on the highway and it'll still take a while to get up to speed.

This is so American it's un-American.

The finished product looks good, though. I'm afraid I'd try it and... like it.

Serve with a side of marinara for dipping!

Also that dessert pizza? Back in the day, when we had pay phones at the mall and your anime came from a vhs from Suncoast, there used to be cookie places that made giant novelty cookies with icing that looked just like that.