Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread - Page 453

On February 10 2015 03:04 Garfailed wrote:


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.

On February 10 2015 22:51 Cyro wrote:


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.



@1080p with half a gtx750 i don't think so

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)

On February 11 2015 03:22 Cyro wrote:


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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgcSIZ669Y


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.

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? (:



Which games?

On February 11 2015 07:23 Cyro wrote:


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