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I have no idea what they're called, but they make standoff removers. I have one that's basically a thumb screw that sits on top of a standoff and can be turned to get it out. It also can be used with a screwdriver for extra leverage.
As for dealing with ones that are spinning, really you just need something to keep the standoff from spinning in it's slot while you get the screw out. A spanner or something similar but small enough could be used to keep it from moving while you deal with the screw.
Also, you dont have to use an IO plate. It doesn't look as nice and is more dust prone, but it's perfectly usable without it.
So I ended up getting THIS Board for $245 AUD which is about $25 more than the MSI board from PCCasegear that Cyro recommended.
It has a Plex chip which is really nice and a lot of nice/ massive overkill features ( 2 CPU power sockets? LOL?)
Does anyone have any idea about multigpu scaling with three or four cards? Thinking of adding a third r9 270x cause I remember reading an article about 3 gpus easing microstutter.
On February 10 2015 02:55 Cyro wrote: If by occasional gaming you mean starcraft 2 on low settings or league of legends, they might be usable. They're using ultra-low power CPU's (low performance low power) and extremely weak graphics though. You can probably make a gtx750 on desktop twice as fast as an 840m without much effort.
build quality i can't say much
Would you suggest another cpu then? Or do you reckon i can use both of these for Software development purposes for up to 3 to 4 years? Gaming is not really that important, just a small benefit. My current laptop is now 4 years of age, and has had rubbish performance for over a year now.
Depending on what software development you're doing, you may either benefit from an ssd or a quad core cpu for compile purposes. Chances are, it probably doesn't matter that much though, and if you're in doubt, profile your current machine to see what's holding you back. The cpus you linked should perform close to almost as well as a regular mobile i5 all round, as they do have discrete graphics onboard, but you'd be paying a premium for the "i7 hurr so fast" branding (those skus aren't cheap). As for games, you should be able to play most newer games on low-medium settings.
Does anyone have any idea about multigpu scaling with three or four cards? Thinking of adding a third r9 270x cause I remember reading an article about 3 gpus easing microstutter.
Instead of getting a third 270x you should just get a single GPU that's faster than a pair of 270x's. They already exist, even in the same hardware generation.
As for games, you should be able to play most newer games on low-medium settings.
Does anyone have any idea about multigpu scaling with three or four cards? Thinking of adding a third r9 270x cause I remember reading an article about 3 gpus easing microstutter.
Instead of getting a third 270x you should just get a single GPU that's faster than a pair of 270x's. They already exist, even in the same hardware generation.
Yea but 270x's have resale value and for gaming, a single 290 is more desirable than two or even three 270x's
While three 270x's might give you a 20 or even like 30% bigger FPS number on paper, you won't have the same smoothness at that FPS as a single GPU would. You'll also have over three times the GPU-related input lag because you have to queue 3-4 frames deep instead of 1.
Looking at the price of selling both of your 270x's, plus the cost of a new 270x - there's probably enough money there for a 290 which would be better experience than 2 or 3 way 270x. Alternatively just wait for r9 380 or whatever from AMD. If they don't release a new higher end GPU -or- manage to create a wave of price drops / stuff available at lower price, they've kinda failed
Each has their heat sink taken off and replaced with a bracket and a Corsair h55
Pretty sure the warranty was voided during this process and it also adds about $90 to the investment of each card.
Honestly I am very happy the current performance of the cards as I am cpu bound mostly anyway.
Having said that coming from only using a single GPU for several years I agree that it is the better solution in terms of consistency and ease of use, I haven't really noticed smoothness issues (aside from some microstutter in some games) or input lag that you mentioned coming from my 6970.
Biggest issue has been lack of CFX support in some games or slow support and infrequent microstutter.
I don't think it's worth the hassle for me to sell modified cards and then get a single card with little raw performance increase (according to the benchmarks I recall off the top of my head)
It would be worth it if a third card helped with microstutter or scaled well, and I could get one on sale or something but other than that I will probably ride it out till the architecture after next like usual.
If you haven't used better, it can be hard for some people to see input lag, but it's there and significant, especially as you increase GPU count. Playing with 2 GPU's to achieve ~60fps, there's about a 30-35ms delay while the game has recieved your mouse movement, but it's still rendering the frame before you can see it. If you're using single GPU at 140fps, that delay is now reduced to 7ms.. so it's a solid 25ms improvement to input lag.
Put in real terms, the smallest amounts of input lag we can detect in a blind test is about 10ms unless you're exceptionally good, and 5ms, even 10ms won't significantly affect gameplay experience - however, going back to before - if you have 25ms extra delay with two GPU's working together to create 60fps, and ~40ms extra delay with three.. That's a lot.
Assuming you're using a 144hz screen so no extra delays:
single GPU 144fps = ~20ms total
dual gpu 60fps = ~40-45ms
triple GPU 60fps = ~55-65ms
it's quite notable when you move the mouse or press a button on your keyboard and it takes two or three times as long as it's supposed to in order for your game to react. Side by side it's obvious with two GPU's but some people don't mind it that much; three however, if you're still targeting the same final FPS range because you're playing more demanding games or turning up your settings.. by the time you get there, the experience is nowhere near the same. It's enough that i wouldn't reccomend it to anyone for gaming, unless they're using 144hz, two of the best GPU's are not strong enough for them and they don't care about input lag that much. Three GPU's rendering @48fps each is nowhere near as good as one rendering @144 - but it's way better than three GPU's rendering @20fps each.
That's all assuming you're using alternate frame rendering, because very few games right now and in the near future support anything else. Overall if your game in particular is not microstuttering, the smoothness of multi-GPU is quite good these days - but it's still multi GPU - 60fps with two GPU's might not necessarily be smoother than 50fps with one. The more you pace frames to improve smoothness, the higher the lag time gets for input.
I see what you mean with it being hard to just go upgrade, but i still can't recommend third GPU~ you're kinda in a tough spot if you want more performance, with sunk costs and lack of upgrade options. There will be better GPU's in the future though, maybe a 380x? (:
Honestly I am very happy the current performance of the cards as I am cpu bound mostly anyway.
Final check in before I decide on purchase. I have made two builds, one for a computer able to run at 4k, and one to run at standard 1080. To restate, I 99% of the time just play LoL, but I do have the desire to possibly try future titles if they look fun... it is just not a primary concern. I do want to play shadow of mordor once I finally have a windows computer! Otherwise, I only use for writing and research for studies.
So, do I understand correctly that these would be the necessary specifications for each respective build (and the i5 on the 4k build would need to be over clocked)? In other words, it will cost approximately $700 more to buy a desktop that would work in 4k over standard 1080? I really like the retina display on my MBP so I wanted to duplicate that on the desktop. However, I will have to decide if it is worth the extra money for the amount of time I actually get to play games.
Thanks again for the help! As always, please feel free to make any and all recommendations!
For 1080p60, you wouldn't need a GPU as powerful as 970. A 960 or r9 280 would be fine for gaming at high settings on demanding games.
4k is 4x as demanding, a 970/290 or two is good there for graphically demanding games. 980 is too bad price/performance to seriously consider if you care about budget, though.
You don't need to CPU OC on either system (4k doesn't change cpu demand), it's just a bonus if you're trying to make a high performing gaming rig for lots of FPS on CPU demanding games. The CPU cooler price on both systems isn't neccesary, with CPU cooler on stock CPU you're mostly paying for a reduction in noise when your system isn't doing anything with the GPU, but is under a CPU demanding load. That noise is probably not so big anyway, unless you've been careful with your selection of case and case fans (i guess with an r5, it might be important because other stuff would be quiet)
the 1080p system with stock CPU and a single graphics card wouldn't need z97, it could use one of the other cheaper chipsets like h97. The 4k system could also do that if using a single 970 and no CPU overclock, but i think z97 is required to use SLI.
Running 4k is easy, it's just the rendering graphically demanding games at that resolution at a good framerate which is tricky. In Lichdom Battlemage for example on the same settings looking at the menu (which has a scene rendering across most of it, to demo graphical settings etc), i get 43fps on 4k and like 170fps on 1080p. Windows desktop, web browsing etc, it doesn't really matter what GPU/s you have, as long as they support the resolution fine (and almost all of them do)
On February 11 2015 02:29 Cyro wrote: For 1080p60, you wouldn't need a GPU as powerful as 970. A 960 or r9 280 would be fine for gaming at high settings on demanding games.
4k is 4x as demanding, a 970/290 or two is good there for graphically demanding games. 980 is too bad price/performance to seriously consider if you care about budget, though.
You don't need to CPU OC on either system (4k doesn't change cpu demand), it's just a bonus if you're trying to make a high performing gaming rig for lots of FPS on CPU demanding games. The CPU cooler price on both systems isn't neccesary, with CPU cooler on stock CPU you're mostly paying for a reduction in noise when your system isn't doing anything with the GPU, but is under a CPU demanding load. That noise is probably not so big anyway, unless you've been careful with your selection of case and case fans (i guess with an r5, it might be important because other stuff would be quiet)
the 1080p system with stock CPU and a single graphics card wouldn't need z97, it could use one of the other cheaper chipsets like h97. The 4k system could also do that if using a single 970 and no CPU overclock, but i think z97 is required to use SLI.
Running 4k is easy, it's just the rendering graphically demanding games at that resolution at a good framerate which is tricky. In Lichdom Battlemage for example on the same settings looking at the menu (which has a scene rendering across most of it, to demo graphical settings etc), i get 43fps on 4k and like 170fps on 1080p. Windows desktop, web browsing etc, it doesn't really matter what GPU/s you have, as long as they support the resolution fine (and almost all of them do)
So for 4k a single 970 would be sufficient, however for other games I may need two 970's? For 1080p, I would only need a 960. Also, I don't need to buy a cooler, because the CPU comes with one? I had a z97 mother board because I thought that is what I was told to get because it was the newest setting or something. As I understand now, I can get the cheaper h97, but if I wanted to add a second graphics card in the future then I would have to replace the MB with a z97 model as well. Also, I notice that H97 is only comparable with up to 1600 mhz ram. Will this be a noticeable difference from 2400 mhz in my use?
I have updated the builds to reflect this. Do I seem to understand everything correctly?
So for 4k a single 970 would be sufficient, however for other games I may need two 970's? For 1080p, I would only need a 960. Also, I don't need to buy a cooler, because the CPU comes with one? I had a z97 mother board because I thought that is what I was told to get because it was the newest setting or something. As I understand now, I can get the cheaper h97, but if I wanted to add a second graphics card in the future then I would have to replace the MB with a z97 model as well. Also, I notice that H97 is only comparable with up to 1600 mhz ram. Will this be a noticeable difference from 2400 mhz in my use?
I have updated the builds to reflect this. Do I seem to understand everything correctly?
Yea, that's all pretty much right. For 1080p60, you can generally rotate through high-ish end cards like the 970. Multiple cards are not required as much. Somebody running at 1440p would have ~78% more demand than you. 1080p144hz would have 2.4x the demand. 4k resolution? 4x graphical demand etc. If you have a good card on 1080p60, everything will run without much worry at that resolution and framerate, a 960 is roughly between 760 and 770 (more competitive than 770 than 760) if you wanted to look at some benchmarks for it.
@4k, depending on the game, single 970 would have no trouble, or it would slow down a lot and require you to lower lots of settings and/or drop resolution, probably to 1080p because other resolutions don't display very well on a 4k display (4k is exactly twice as wide and tall as 1080p, so they scale properly into each other without looking weird)/ I posted a video of SOM @ 4k on 980 here ~ keeping in mind it's still ~1.2x faster that 970 (after some overclock tweaking, which i think you should always do and it's not difficult) and on pretty much minimum settings across the board aside from textures, which don't really affect performance (max VRAM used was 1.48GB, so you might even be able to raise them a step further on 970's at 4k)
FPS monitor at bottom right:
2400mhz RAM vs 1600 doesn't make any real difference for most stuff. I recommend it with CPU OC setups just because it does make a little bit of difference sometimes, somebody trying to get 25% more performance in starcraft 2 by overclocking their CPU will probably care enough to spend $10 extra for 5% more. It's often argued as being completely irrelevant, which isn't entirely true, but it's not a big thing.
For 970's i'd recommend either this: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-strixgtx970dc2oc4gd5 or this: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx970gaming4g card. Some revisions of EVGA's 970 coolers are not great, and i'm not sure exactly which have the improved one or not, also the strix and msi gaming 970 are quiet and have good idle fan control, keeping the fan off when not under heavy load etc. That's just true for the 970's - the 960 coolers, and the features on the coolers like idle fans are not necessarily the same, for example some of the gigabyte 960's have idle fan off features, while their 970's do not.
Thanks for the TL+!
edit: Also for SOM i actually use a program called flawless widescreen that has a memory hack which allows you to change the FOV. I'm not exactly sure of if you're supposed to use it on steam but it's a singleplayer game and other people were doing it so i went ahead. The default FOV in that game is 60 degrees, which is extremely extremely low - it's third person so it's not as bad as first person, but i went ahead and adjusted it to about 100 degrees or somewhere around there, which lets you see over 1.5x as much of the game area at the same time and fixes motion sickness, claustrophobia etc. I could barely play the game without it. It was probably that low because it was based on what might be appropriate for somebody sitting 5-10 feet away, playing the game on a TV, and it's not appropriate for sitting at a desk with a monitor ~1.5 - 3ft away.
So for 4k a single 970 would be sufficient, however for other games I may need two 970's? For 1080p, I would only need a 960. Also, I don't need to buy a cooler, because the CPU comes with one? I had a z97 mother board because I thought that is what I was told to get because it was the newest setting or something. As I understand now, I can get the cheaper h97, but if I wanted to add a second graphics card in the future then I would have to replace the MB with a z97 model as well. Also, I notice that H97 is only comparable with up to 1600 mhz ram. Will this be a noticeable difference from 2400 mhz in my use?
I have updated the builds to reflect this. Do I seem to understand everything correctly?
Yea, that's all pretty much right. For 1080p60, you can generally rotate through high-ish end cards like the 970. Multiple cards are not required as much. Somebody running at 1440p would have ~78% more demand than you. 1080p144hz would have 2.4x the demand. 4k resolution? 4x graphical demand etc. If you have a good card on 1080p60, everything will run without much worry at that resolution and framerate, a 960 is roughly between 760 and 770 (more competitive than 770 than 760) if you wanted to look at some benchmarks for it.
@4k, depending on the game, single 970 would have no trouble, or it would slow down a lot and require you to lower lots of settings and/or drop resolution, probably to 1080p because other resolutions don't display very well on a 4k display (4k is exactly twice as wide and tall as 1080p, so they scale properly into each other without looking weird)/ I posted a video of SOM @ 4k on 980 here ~ keeping in mind it's still ~1.2x faster that 970 (after some overclock tweaking, which i think you should always do and it's not difficult) and on pretty much minimum settings across the board aside from textures, which don't really affect performance (max VRAM used was 1.48GB, so you might even be able to raise them a step further on 970's at 4k)
2400mhz RAM vs 1600 doesn't make any real difference for most stuff. I recommend it with CPU OC setups just because it does make a little bit of difference sometimes, somebody trying to get 25% more performance in starcraft 2 by overclocking their CPU will probably care enough to spend $10 extra for 5% more. It's often argued as being completely irrelevant, which isn't entirely true, but it's not a big thing.
For 970's i'd recommend either this: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-strixgtx970dc2oc4gd5 or this: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx970gaming4g card. Some revisions of EVGA's 970 coolers are not great, and i'm not sure exactly which have the improved one or not, also the strix and msi gaming 970 are quiet and have good idle fan control, keeping the fan off when not under heavy load etc. That's just true for the 970's - the 960 coolers, and the features on the coolers like idle fans are not necessarily the same, for example some of the gigabyte 960's have idle fan off features, while their 970's do not.
Thanks for the TL+!
edit: Also for SOM i actually use a program called flawless widescreen that has a memory hack which allows you to change the FOV. I'm not exactly sure of if you're supposed to use it on steam but it's a singleplayer game and other people were doing it so i went ahead. The default FOV in that game is 60 degrees, which is extremely extremely low - it's third person so it's not as bad as first person, but i went ahead and adjusted it to about 100 degrees or somewhere around there, which lets you see over 1.5x as much of the game area at the same time and fixes motion sickness, claustrophobia etc. I could barely play the game without it. It was probably that low because it was based on what might be appropriate for somebody sitting 5-10 feet away, playing the game on a TV, and it's not appropriate for sitting at a desk with a monitor ~1.5 - 3ft away.
Okay! So, for the 4k build, I changed the CPU to the "k" model in case I decide in the future to try and over clock since you say it is simple. I changed the mother board back to z97, since I think I remember that it was said to be required for over clock as well. Also, if I ever do want to get another graphics card, I would have the option to. I changed the 970 to the card you recommended. I think that is everything! I will try to order some of the parts over the weekend. Oh, and if I do over clock or decide to add a second graphic card, will the 450W psu be insufficient?
Yea, good 650w PSU would be good then. You need CPU cooler to overclock but that can be added later.. Though it might require taking the motherboard out of the case. With multiple GPU's, heat is a big concern so maybe consider adding some fans to case, maybe with some method of fan control and fans that can idle at low RPM if you care about that. I hate looking at fan specs and performance and i don't know so much about them though.
Nvidia does have excellent support for setting GPU's to a certain level of power usage and heat output, and efficiency increases quite dramatically as you do so, so it could be worth reducing GPU performance by like 20% in some situations. There's a simple slider to do that. It's good, because when you push GPU's hard, that last 1.2x performance might make them output ~30-50% more heat due to the scaling of voltages vs clock speeds.
On February 11 2015 00:59 Cyro wrote: If you haven't used better, it can be hard for some people to see input lag, but it's there and significant, especially as you increase GPU count. Playing with 2 GPU's to achieve ~60fps, there's about a 30-35ms delay while the game has recieved your mouse movement, but it's still rendering the frame before you can see it. If you're using single GPU at 140fps, that delay is now reduced to 7ms.. so it's a solid 25ms improvement to input lag.
Put in real terms, the smallest amounts of input lag we can detect in a blind test is about 10ms unless you're exceptionally good, and 5ms, even 10ms won't significantly affect gameplay experience - however, going back to before - if you have 25ms extra delay with two GPU's working together to create 60fps, and ~40ms extra delay with three.. That's a lot.
Assuming you're using a 144hz screen so no extra delays:
single GPU 144fps = ~20ms total
dual gpu 60fps = ~40-45ms
triple GPU 60fps = ~55-65ms
it's quite notable when you move the mouse or press a button on your keyboard and it takes two or three times as long as it's supposed to in order for your game to react. Side by side it's obvious with two GPU's but some people don't mind it that much; three however, if you're still targeting the same final FPS range because you're playing more demanding games or turning up your settings.. by the time you get there, the experience is nowhere near the same. It's enough that i wouldn't reccomend it to anyone for gaming, unless they're using 144hz, two of the best GPU's are not strong enough for them and they don't care about input lag that much. Three GPU's rendering @48fps each is nowhere near as good as one rendering @144 - but it's way better than three GPU's rendering @20fps each.
That's all assuming you're using alternate frame rendering, because very few games right now and in the near future support anything else. Overall if your game in particular is not microstuttering, the smoothness of multi-GPU is quite good these days - but it's still multi GPU - 60fps with two GPU's might not necessarily be smoother than 50fps with one. The more you pace frames to improve smoothness, the higher the lag time gets for input.
I see what you mean with it being hard to just go upgrade, but i still can't recommend third GPU~ you're kinda in a tough spot if you want more performance, with sunk costs and lack of upgrade options. There will be better GPU's in the future though, maybe a 380x? (:
Honestly I am very happy the current performance of the cards as I am cpu bound mostly anyway.
Which games?
I play SWTOR in which I am CPU bound on all the time as the in game monitor tells you. League in which I get infinite FPS basically. Sometimes World of tanks which is not crossfire compatible.
And then I try out various AAA titles as they come out.
More often RPG and MMO's and less often shooters. Like I have never played COD and am not likely to.
All my online gaming comes with lag as I am Australian, for example in SWTOR I get 196 ms ping. In LOL which has an AUS server I get 49 ping.
World of tanks I get 130 Ping from the singapore server.
So maybe that is why I don't notice input lag?
As for CrossfireX Lots of games work fine default. Some games don't, Skyrim being an example. But do work fine with V-sync enabled. If that doesn't work Dynamic V-sync often does (Witcher 2) some games have to have the Mode set to AFR (FFXIII) which can cause flickering textures.
Honestly I read all the horror stories about CFX before I went with it but I wanted to try it out at least once, For me it is no way near as bad as some people make it out to be. It is annoying at times, you do have to do a lot of tinkering to get games working properly, some games just never support it and seemingly will never support it.
Regardless the raw $$ - FPS ratio has been phenomenal. For instance I could play Mass effect 3 with 4X Supersampling AA and never dip below 60 FPS ever.
Input lag is seperate, and added on top of network lag. If you can choose between 50ms of input lag and 100ms of network lag, i'd take the network lag every time because input lag interferes with you issuing commands - for example if you want to shoot somebody behind you, but you move the mouse sharply and your character takes a little while longer than expected before recieving the command
Input lag is seperate, and added on top of network lag. If you can choose between 50ms of input lag and 100ms of network lag, i'd take the network lag every time because input lag interferes with you issuing commands - for example if you want to shoot somebody behind you, but you move the mouse sharply and your character takes a little while longer than expected before recieving the command
Hmm dunno why I don't notice it. Anyway I will wait for generation after next and then get a single card most likely. Fun talk though :D
Input lag is seperate, and added on top of network lag. If you can choose between 50ms of input lag and 100ms of network lag, i'd take the network lag every time because input lag interferes with you issuing commands - for example if you want to shoot somebody behind you, but you move the mouse sharply and your character takes a little while longer than expected before recieving the command
Hmm dunno why I don't notice it. Anyway I will wait for generation after next and then get a single card most likely. Fun talk though :D
Eventually you'll play 200fps @144hz on single GPU with pre-rendered frames 1 and be like OH MY GOD WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF D:
It's not so bad with 2 gpu's but it's enough for me to recommend not using three for 60hz.