EPTwould you rather have gtx960/r9 380 + 250 GB ssd OR gtx970, no ssd?
For CPU I am getting i5 4460, I dont think I can cut down the cost here.
Thanks
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Eladen
Slovakia54 Posts
would you rather have gtx960/r9 380 + 250 GB ssd OR gtx970, no ssd? For CPU I am getting i5 4460, I dont think I can cut down the cost here. Thanks | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
Loading times of the SSD are super quality of life stuff but if you're buying stuff for gaming then the GPU should be the one using up your budget. A 970 is more cost-efficient than a GTX 960 and miles ahead in terms of performance. | ||
Tephus
Cascadia1754 Posts
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Craton
United States17303 Posts
On September 14 2015 18:04 Harris1st wrote: 1: Is switching the motherboard as easy as, for example, switching the GPU or is there a lot of other stuff involved? From an hardware (do i need special tools and stuff) and software (bios?) perspective i mean? When you switch any piece of hardware other than the motherboard or PSU, it's usually as simple as removing the old one and putting the new one in its place. When you replace the motherboard, you have to unplug everything from the motherboard (all HDD/SSD connections, all fan connections, all direct PSU connections, unplug the graphics card(s), etc. If you plan to reuse the CPU or heatsink then you'll also have to remove and clean each of those. I'd rate changing the motherboard as the single hardest replacement and changing the PSU as the most annoying (particularly if you've run power cables on the underside of the motherboard tray or other out-of-the-way places in the case). The difficulty simply comes from having to unplug almost everything, put it all on the new board, then plug it all back in. In smaller cases you often have trouble removing the existing motherboard with everything attached or even the PSU cables get in the way. As for "special hardware:" The only tool you'll need is a phillips head screwdriver to unscrew the motherboard from the standoffs and possibly the PCI/PCI-e cards from your motherboard (though these are more commonly held with thumb screws nowadays). If you are reusing the CPU/Heatsink, you'll need some isopropyl alcohol. I think it's recommended at least 90%+, but you're best off with 99%. You can get some from your local drug store, hardware store, and some grocery or department stores. You'll also need some thermal grease/paste (NOT glue/adhesive) to replace the old stuff. Additionally, you're best off with some lint-free cloth, such as the kind used for eyeglasses. I tend to clean off the heatsink/cpu by starting with a paper towel, press it over the top of the bottle of alcohol, then turn it over to get it damp. From there, you wipe off the thermal paste, replace with a new cloth as needed, rinse repeat until it's almost all gone. I usually switch over to the lint free cloth at that part and keep going till I stop getting residue picked up. You won't usually run into problems not using lint free cloth if you can't get some. The value of the thermal grease is to help transfer heat from the CPU to the heatsink by getting in all the (potentially microscopic) gaps between the two surfaces, hence the need to clean out the old stuff so you can get a nice even surface for heat transfer when you apply new grease. Another thing to keep in mind is whether your new motherboard has the same fan headers (3-pin vs 4-pin) for fans/heatsink and if they're in the same configuration as your old motherboard. If they aren't, you might need adapters/extenders/fan controller to get all your fans plugged back in. | ||
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Eladen
Slovakia54 Posts
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micronesia
United States24799 Posts
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scott31337
United States2979 Posts
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micronesia
United States24799 Posts
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Darkness2k11
Chile313 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20343 Posts
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Ropid
Germany3557 Posts
With regards to the GTX 550 Ti, the 1 GB memory it has can be a bit crappy for Alt-Tabbing between a game and the desktop, but should be good enough for just the game itself. About those strange, very low-end cards that NVIDIA sells like that GT 730, those are older generations of their chips being reused. It's probably not related to their modern chips despite having a "700" number in its name. EDIT: I found out there are two different GT 730 with DDR3 memory, one which uses a newer "Kepler" chip, and one which uses the same "Fermi" chip as used in the GTX 550 Ti. The comparison between that GT 730 and the GTX 550 Ti, it seems the chip in the GT 730 is cut down. The GTX 550 Ti seems to use one that's a lot stronger and gets to use much better memory and stuff. That's from looking at numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_500_series | ||
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Simberto
Germany11964 Posts
Price is relevant for me, but i am willing to pay a bit more if it means a significant increase in power and increased time until i need a new one. Now, especially for the 970 there appear to be quite massive price differences between manufacturers. What are the differences here, and what is important when looking at which one to get? | ||
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dismiss
United Kingdom3341 Posts
As for whether or not you should get a 960 or a 970 is another question. First off, there probably won't be any new cards for about a year. THe 970 is significantly faster than the 960 and should hold up better a bit down the line. However AMD cards are supposedly a lot better with VR and DX12, both of which you shouldn't care too much about with current gen cards anyway, imo. | ||
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Chrisboy
Australia118 Posts
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Craton
United States17303 Posts
Well, you could probably change your Windows 8 product key to a legit one. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20343 Posts
However AMD cards are supposedly a lot better with VR and DX12 The VR latency thing is kinda fuzzy (lots of claims that are impossible or don't make sense such as 10ms head movement to screen latency on a 90hz screen) but does look like red side is more likely to have lower latency There "dx12" gap that people are talking about is GPU bound performance when it's beneficial to use Async compute, it's not at all related to CPU overhead which is IMO the main point of dx12. It's too early to say what that advantage will mean for several reasons but it's known that GCN has full hardware support for async compute while nvidia opted for partial software support to save die space/power/etc which is not yet in place for testing Since we are already on the topic of graphics cards, i am considering getting a new one myself, probably either a 970 or a 960 (If i understand correctly, AMD cards are simply not as good as Nvidia currently?) a 390 is better option than 970 some of the time (depends on prices, performance is a bit better but power usage/heat output is roughly around ~1.6x higher). 8GB VRAM instead of 3.5GB plays a part there as 3.5 - 4GB is a little limiting even on 1080p with games released in the last year and will be more of a problem 1-4 years down the line. | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
There's a reason Nvidia didn't release a Maxwell-based Tesla card. Pascal is probably going to be better suited at compute and DX12. It needs to be if they don't want to lose HPC market share to eventual Intel Knights Landing and future stick-a-bunch-of-Atoms-on-a-card endeavors. Of course, the gap in that one benchmark is probably a lot larger than we will see in general. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20343 Posts
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Ty2
United States1434 Posts
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Soluhwin
United States1287 Posts
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