Need Opinions and/or Suggestions For Which AMD card To Buy

Coffee break
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@grafi

I use an expensive UPS to clean the power. I get bad power spikes and surges around here. You are right about USA power, not ideal. It varies a lot in different parts of the country as well.

The power supply in my PC is a 1200w beast, I can run anything I want without fear of not having the juice to run it.

Since I am not doing 4k, 12GB seems to run my 3 1440p monitors well, the most demanding game I have played on it is the first Death Stranding and it did fine. I am not really impressed by graphics, I’m kinda old school in my gaming tastes.

I have about 3 more years before I will likely just do a full rebuild so I can’t really justify a serious upgrade at this time.

I am keeping an eye on Intel cards in the long term. If Intel establishes a pattern of putting out good cards, I might build my next system all Intel.

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I do gas for my on demand water heater, furnace and stove for just this reason. It’s cheaper anyway. My electric bill is already pretty crazy. In Texas, the air conditioner is a major energy expense for half the year.

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Intel situation is about to unfold i probably next months maybe year. As far as i know they are power hungry at boot / or start. They take 40W just to turn on. Also they need significantly more power in idle mode then nvidia or radeon of similar spec. From least amount iddle of power to the biggest value, it goes like NVIDIA → Radeon → Intel

I have some notes on it i will share it if I found them

Yup you right about those Hz
Oh and about how much watts you can have from electrical socked in countries.

If we take Poland for example
You max out on 16 amps which will give you 230V x 16A = 3680W from a socked.
To be honest, not so much. That would explain why it is literarily impossible to find electrical cattle with more power than 2900W .

Yup i know in US electrical cattles are strange artifacts nobody uses

Since you have 120V and ampere varies from 15 amps or 20 amps then it is logic not to use such devices 120x16=1920W which is crazy bad for electrical cattle.
Then if we take 120x20=2400W it is kinda mediocre. Not terrible but still slow at boiling.
Shoot why I’m even writing this while being sober?!

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I think you mean “kettle” :wink:

:teapot:

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Have you seen this one: (amzn.to/3Hb1tSK) $145 USD
RX 5500 Graphics Card, TDP 150W 8GB GDDR6 128bit PCIe 4.0

  • GPU Clock: 1670 MHz, Boost: 1845 MHz, DP x 3 + HDMIx 1, 8 Pin Power Supply.
  • Next Level 1080p Gaming Card: The 51Risc RX5500 powered by the 7nm RDNA architecture with Radeon Image Sharpening and Radeon Anti-Lag technology, Radeon RX 5500 GPU delivers extremely efficient, ultra-responsive, high-fidelity gaming.
  • The New Gaming DNA: RDNA architecture is engineered for the next generation of high-performance gaming. It’s the DNA that powers your games, the DNA that brings your games to life, the DNA that keeps evolving.
  • More Performance Less Power: Efficiently energetic, 51Risc Radeon RX5500 delivers more performance while consuming less power than its predecessor. Its TDP is low to 130W.

Looks very good & relatively inexpensive. I’m looking at that one to replace my older NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660/PCIe/SSE2
I’m running it on a Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ICE mainboard.

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If you are running 1080p monitors, that one will do very nicely I believe.

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Upsss yup exactly :teapot: not :cow2: it is kinda hard to boil water in cows :rofl: :joy:
English is kinda hard sometimes any way im laughing my ass of at or mayby of my own mistakes

Love the video I searched for this channel for a long time

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Bids
Bids2087×1126 250 KB

I got bids all lined up, hopefully one of these will stay low enough for me to score a deal.

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When I grew up on a dairy farm, we ran most of the farm on 120 volts, 60 cycles, split phase. Only the Patz silo unloaders, feed bunk, conveyor, and barn cleaner, and the Surge dairy equipment ran on 240 volts, 60 cycles, single phase.

In the house, the kitchen oven and water heater ran on the same 240 volt single phase. Everything else was 120 volts, split phase. No need for air conditioning. We had Lake Michigan and a house built over a cold spring. Heat was firewood, backed up by LP gas.

Is the transformer out on the utility pole, or on your lawn if you have buried power lines? Is it up to the task? Most homes have transformers that are not exactly quite large enough for today’s loads, resulting in the homes having voltage drops and very localized temporary brownouts. Especially if an electric motor starts, such as a refrigerator’s compressor motor. Single phase motors always draw more power when starting. On the farm, we had that problem until WPSC came out and replaced the transformer with a larger unit.

How did we figure it out? The Massey Ferguson 255 running the PTO generator when there was one of those rare ice storms. When using the PTO generator, it was a juggling act. You could milk cows. Or you could feed them. Or you could run the barn cleaner. But if you tried two of those, there would be a brownout when the next motor tried to start. The Massey Ferguson didn’t care, as it was a diesel and would just try harder. So we did one task at a time.

50 years ago, 100 amp service was considered more than adequate for a house. 80 years ago, 60 amp service was the standard. Today’s new construction homes get 200 amp service. Odds are, if you are having power quality issues, check the home’s service panel capacity. Do you have 15 amp or 20 amp circuit breakers? 15 amp uses 14 gauge wire, while 20 amp uses 12 gauge wire. Never put a 20 amp breaker on a 14 gauge wire circuit. If your circuit breaker is constantly tripping, odds are the circuit is overloaded or the circuit breaker is weak and starting to fail. They do wear out over time. Once a year, I go into my service panel and reset all of them, just to make sure everything is working as intended.

If you live in rural Canada and have a single wire single phase ground return at the pole, not sure, but I suspect that system may complicate everything. The first time when I had seen that system, my first thought was “what are they thinking?” I suspect the voltage drop must be something horrible.

A country that uses 100 volts single phase power in homes and offices is Japan. They have no problems with that system other than the fact that the other half of the country is 50 cycles while the other half runs at 60 cycles. B-29 bombers made sure that Japan received all-new electrical service after 1945. The Japanese were once on the bleeding edge of electronics. If they can make 100 volts successfully work, why is 120 volts a problem?

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Are you using it for gaming or just to switch to amd?

I assume that is actually the Pro 5500xt, because the regular 5500 only has 4gb vram. Either way, this card is not as good as the 1660. In the radeon 5000 series you would want to look at the rx 5700 as an actual performance upgrade, and even then it is negligible in most games. If you are not a gamer and mostly just check emails and watch youtube, like I do, then the 5500xt will do just fine and have fewer driver related problems than any nvidia card.

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I had powercolor Rx 6600 it had a hidden flaw since day one DP port was broken . When I discover it, i return my piece got full refund.
Powercolor=quality decade ago but not now. Wanna quality card? Go sapphire if you do not mind a little higher demand for current go Gigabyte. I heard that msi pcb sucks, but i have no proof for support the statement.

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Good to know. Thanks for the extra info. I am a developer but don’t do much gaming. For the small price diff I will probably go with the 8GB version.

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:open_mouth: :laughing:

Next time I have to do anything on ebay I’m call you…

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https://www.bidnapper.com/

It’s the only way my dude. It places the bid in the last 6 seconds of the auction, then stops when one of them is won.

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I’ll remove the Powercolor probably, looks like the “fighter” is a low end variant.

I have had great experiences with MSI cards in the past Nvidia cards so that’s probably product specific.

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120V is a problem because I may want to use a heater, a small stove, or a welder, or anything else that uses more than 1800 watts.

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That is why your house is wired for both 120 volts and 240 volts at the circuit breaker panel. Install a circuit breaker for 120 volts and that circuit has 120 volts. Install a circuit breaker for 240 volts and it is now 240 volts. Of course, on that circuit, the wall outlets will need to be changed out accordingly for the proper voltage on that circuit.

Technology Connections posted a video on YouTube a few years ago, explaining how we get both 120 and 240 from the same transformer:

To check, you need a voltage meter. Not even a fancy one like he has. Any old voltage meter will do. Just make sure to set it for the correct voltage. Setting the meter too high won’t hurt it. Setting for too low a voltage might, depending on how it is built.

And yes, he does get snarky. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Technology Connections.

He demonstrates a Square D panel. Other brands are not exactly the same, but similar in principle.

If you live outside of North America, none of this applies.

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Great info there, thanks for sharing.

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The bottom line is that most outlets in a North American home are not rated for over 1800 watts. Just replacing a circuit breaker in the panel and a receptacle on the wall to get 240V and 20A out of it is an extreme fire hazard.
Once again, most homes in North America are wired for only 1800 watts of power per circuit, and there is now way to safely get much more without re-wiring the circuit, so you cannot just replace a breaker and an outlet and start running a big heater or a small welder, or a good electric kettle, at least not safely.

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20 amps 120 volts single phase, 2400 watts maximum.

10 amps 240 volts single phase, 2400 watts maximum.

20 amps 240 volts single phase, 4800 watts maximum.

See how that works? Double the volts, and the amperage is cut in half for a given number of watts. This is not magic. Ohm’s Law.

1800 watts is the maximum for a 15 amp circuit. Kitchens are wired at 20 amps, therefore, 2400 watts. The rest of the house is 15 amps. Unless you have a house that was wired back in the 1940s or earlier and never upgraded. Most homes have 240 volt service at the panel. I have never seen a 120 volt panel, unless it still uses screw-in fuses instead of circuit breakers and the last time I had seen one of those was four years ago in a house that was wired back in 1920 when they ran electrical wires using the knob and tube system (unbelievable, I know).

Here is an Ohm’s Law calculator, complete with math formulas and explanations:

Like I posted earlier, if you change the circuit breaker from 120 volts to 240 volts, using the same size wires, you will need to change the wall outlets for that circuit. Your amps for that given size wire stay the same, but your wattage load is doubled because the voltage has doubled. You will still need the third wire, which is the neutral, unless using metal conduit where the conduit becomes the neutral. It is insanity to not have the third wire or metal conduit, even at 120 volts.

I don’t know why you would want to run a big electric heater inside a home. Gas or oil furnaces go in the basement or utility room, as my natural gas furnace does, along with the air conditioner A-frame that sits on top of the furnace and is wired directly to the panel at 240 volts on its own circuit. Electric heaters don’t go over 1500 watts unless it is an industrial heater. Those don’t even belong in a house, as they are designed for industrial applications.

A welder belongs outside or in a large machine shed with a concrete, dirt, or gravel floor, never wood. Homes have wood floors. Even if the top of the floor is not wood, the subfloor is still wood, unless on concrete slab construction. Even then, there are still too many things in a home to catch fire from sparks, hot flux, and hot metal flying around. Welding inside an attached garage is a very bad idea. Even if the walls are finished sheetrock, the outside of the sheetrock is a type of paper that does burn, as does the paint coating it. In the village where I live, welding in a residential area is against village ordinance and fire code for good reason. Over in the industrial park, it is perfectly fine as there are several automotive shops with welders.

A kettle gets heated on the stove top, which is already wired for 240 volts using one of those special 240 volt outlets on its own circuit. Unless the stove top is natural gas or propane, as is mine. Nobody sells a 240 volt kettle in North America. You would probably have to import it from Europe, as Japan is only 100 volts. Then try to find a way to make the EU 240 volt plug fit a NEMA 240 volt outlet, as they are not the same. Never mind what is used in the UK or Australia, which are something completely different.

My clothes dryer is 240 volts, along with the clothes washing machine. Both share the same wall outlet cluster on their own circuit. Is the washing machine really 240 volts? According to the tag on the back, yes. According to the electrical schematic, only the washing machine motor is at 240 volts in the washer. The dryer uses a 240 volt motor and heating element.

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