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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Still debating between the msi geforce 970 and the msi radeon 290x. I want to explore other makes too. both are a step up from the XFS 290 I was considering before. The 970 is cheaper, faster*, and way less voltage and heat if i understand correctly? *but its not as fast as advertised which rubs me the wrong way a lot. I wonder if this is something they might be able to fix with drivers later?
You can get the Sapphire tri-x 290 in canada for ~$370, that's a good choice.. not so great if you're going for red theme, but it's hard to match up colors on everything with good parts that are appropriately priced
For 970 it's less power (which means less heat and smaller psu) but "less voltage" is the wrong term to use~
It's not something that they can change with drivers, it'll just always be effectively a 224 bit, 3.5GB VRAM card that's missing some cache and ROP's
You could use 450w psu for 970, 550w for 290 (assuming you're overclocking) but 650 is excessive. You could get it with a 290, but power consumption among high end GPU's (480, 780ti, 290) has been pretty much the same for many years. While the 970 has lower power consumption, it's not the Maxwell flagship (which Nvidia is probably waiting to brand as a gtx1080ti or whatever marketing came up with) that would have similar power consumption to 780ti/290.. So.. if you wanna be super safe, ~550w for 970, 650w for 290. Not really any reason for more, you would have to drastically change system configuration for it to be an issue (like if you went dual GPU instead of rotating through mainstream desktop CPU's and high end graphics cards)
On February 13 2015 09:39 Chexx wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 09:19 Cyro wrote:logicalincrements is not so great especially if you're outside of US, the PCMR build is alright but: it's better to get a 2x4GB RAM kit to insure you get the same IC's for compatibility and performance (that RAM is out of stock anyway) The XFX DD 290 has extremely bad VRM cooling to the level of causing throttling on stock settings i've heard. It's one to avoid. The PSU choice is bad That mobo is freakishly low priced and i have no idea why (but again that's a US build and the prices/justifications for parts don't really apply here) About
The holy future-proof build. It's got a stronger GPU, power supply built for the future, an i5 Intel CPU that will easily handle any GPU for the next 3 years, and excellent long-life components all around. I don't think that really applies to that build with not-great PSU (though it's 200-300w over needed capacity) and one of, if not THE worst 290's for VRM cooling. They're pretty average tier parts. Also the "easily handle any GPU for the next 3 years" quote implies a bad understanding of CPU vs GPU limits, where and why they happen etc. The i5 4440 does 3.1ghz on four cores, while the 4690 does 3.7ghz on four cores and the 4670 does 3.6ghz on four cores and is compatible with everything. That's a ~19.3% increase in CPU performance which might matter to you. Q: Why no i7?
A: Nope. Gaming doesn't benefit from i7s. LOL and his source is Destiny  stick to here + overclock.net for hardware stuff, not really pcmr. Quite funny stuff there sometimes but it's self moderated by a huge community that's generally not that specialized into actual hardware knowledge How would you change the builds I linked?
Sorry for not replying earlier~
It depends a LOT on where you're buying from. Most pricing decisions need an exact market like a few websites to cite from because it can be significantly different for pricing and availability in UK vs france vs germany etc and if you're going cross continent a lot of stuff is even more crazy
for the PCMR build, a good PSU like the rosewill capstone 550 assuming US, tri-x 290 for $22 more, a 2x4GB RAM kit, one of the upper i5 sku's because they have better turbo boost (and sit at 3.7-3.8ghz on all cores instead of 3.2ghz), maybe a case change because while it's a good budget case, the GPU is like 9x more expensive than the case.
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Hey guys so I just recently downloaded Rome II and I'm running it with my GTX 760. I get these horizontal ripples/wavy lines towards the bottom third of my screen if I'm moving around semi fast. I ran a benchmark test on the gpu with the graphics on ultra and I averaged a 58 FPS. It doesn't seem to be V-Sync type of issue as it's not tearing really just horizontal ripples unless that is considered tearing? I would screen shot it but it happens briefly then goes away but it's one of those things once you notice it you always see it when it happen. I could swap out my DVI to DVI hook up on my monitor to a HDMI - HDMI set up if you think that would help/fix it? My current monitor is a ASUS VS239. I'll keep messing around with settings in the mean time.
Oh and it doesn't happen with any other games I've played so far
EDIT: Fixed it by going into the nvidia's control panel and enabling vsync + triple buffering on there. Then bumped the graphics higher in Rome 2 and disabled vsync in the game.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
if you enable Vsync in the control panel, it'll be enabled in rome 2 even if you disable it there. That's screen tearing. Tearing is most notable when your framerate is near the refresh rate of the screen, because you get ripples which progressively fly up or down the screen
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On February 14 2015 07:43 Cyro wrote:
if you enable Vsync in the control panel, it'll be enabled in rome 2 even if you disable it there. That's screen tearing. Tearing is most notable when your framerate is near the refresh rate of the screen, because you get ripples which progressively fly up or down the screen
So say hypothetically I'm running a game with the graphics not maxed and it's above 60FPS (my refresh rate is 60) causing screen tearing. If I then max out my graphics in the game and its hitting around 45 FPS average will I then not encounter screen tearing?
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On February 14 2015 09:04 LimeNade wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2015 07:43 Cyro wrote:
if you enable Vsync in the control panel, it'll be enabled in rome 2 even if you disable it there. That's screen tearing. Tearing is most notable when your framerate is near the refresh rate of the screen, because you get ripples which progressively fly up or down the screen So say hypothetically I'm running a game with the graphics not maxed and it's above 60FPS (my refresh rate is 60) causing screen tearing. If I then max out my graphics in the game and its hitting around 45 FPS average will I then not encounter screen tearing?
You'll get screen tearing unless every frame is perfectly synced with the screen. On a 60hz screen that means that every frame takes 16.667ms exactly.
That's not really possible to do with variable frametimes when rendering (even if your FPS is exactly 60, then frames might take 14-18ms within that second, the "60" is just an average of the last 60 frames) so fixing tearing is only really done in 2 ways:
1; vsync. Hold finished frames in a buffer, delaying the display until the screen starts a new fresh. Added input lag on 60hz varies from 0-16.67ms, assuming that no frames ever take longer than 1/60'th of a second to make (FPS meter would say 70-80+ at all times without vsync, basically)
2; not refreshing the screen freely, just having the screen refresh and then wait until the next frame is done before the next refresh is fired off. That's what Gsync does.
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Korea (South)11232 Posts
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So I am about to upgrade my GPU. Earlier I asked and was recommended to get the GTX 970 since its cost efficient/almost twice as good as the 570. However, I've read about it being less powerful than advertised. Is this something I should care about? it doesn't seem there are any other cards that are as good as the 970 for the price. (also how do you decide on the manufacturer (Gigabyte, evga, asus, etc.) The seem almost identical except in shape and cooling... Look at the core speeds and cooling then? Since the Gigabyte G1 970 seems to have slighter higher core speeds and a lower overall running temp (it has an excessive amount of fans, but my case is large enough that that is fine).
Also should I bother upgrading my ram to 16gb ? I only game with my comp but I've heard conflicting opinions on upgrading ram to 16 gb.
Specs: (copied from an earlier post of mine)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1.2GB (EVGA)
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K 3.40GHz (this is overclocked to 4.6 ghz)
motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V LE (can't SLI with this motherboard, I don't want to anyway, play mostly sc2 and dota so not worth it.)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance Series
Power Supply:600W Corsair CX600 V2
Hard Drive:500GB
Optical Drive: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW
OS: Windows 7 (doesn't matter but thought i'd list it)
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
The 290 is usually better price/performance than 970. There's not really anything else near them, because they're far better than the 280x/285 and the 770/960.
For 970 choice i looked at the power and voltage limits on all of the cards, as well as core, VRM and memory cooling and the noise profile of the coolers, plus a few features like idle fan off.
The gigabyte g1 is the best to realistically buy (the HOF can be better, but it's way more expensive and you have to mess with bios etc) (1.25v, 280w power limit) followed closely by the gigabyte windforce (i'm not actually sure on the stats on this, but i think it's 1.25v.. double check). The g1 and i guess windforce cooler is among the more powerful coolers. I heard that it was limited to ~3000rpm on the 970 version, but it's a monster cooler if you wanna ramp up the noise and get great cooling - no fan off during idle and low loads, though.
and the msi gaming 970 (1.25v, 220w which is limiting in some programs but more than plenty of power for some others) - this card is quite good for low noise, and has idle fan off feature.
Another card to consider would be the Strix, but it's locked to about 1.2v (so it loses about 30mhz on average OC) - though it is quiet and also turns fans off at idle and low load. It uses one single PCI-E 6+2 power connector, which can be useful in some scenarios and limiting in others but realistically it probably doesn't make a difference to you.
For overall card cooling ability i looked at guru3d's reviews for their thermal imaging camera, though they don't use a standardized level of noise, they only use the default fan curves which give slightly different results card to card - some trying to stay quiet, others cooling better, but you can always adjust it yourself - it gives a good picture of core and VRM cooling.
Stock settings:
G1:We reach ~60 degrees C on the GPU (M1), on par with what is expected. At M2/M3 (Measure Points) the VRM area can be spotted. It runs at roughly 60~65 Degrees C
MSI gaming:We reach ~65 degrees C on the GPU (M1), on par with what is expected. At M2/M3 (Measure Points) the GDDR5 can be spotted. It runs at roughly 75~82 Degrees C, a little high. At M4 we read out the VRM area which is at 87 Degrees C
Strix:We reach ~70 degrees C on the GPU (M2), on par with what is expected. Luckily the back-plate has some gaps in it so we can measure this at all. At M4 (Measure Points) the VRM Area can be spotted. It runs at roughly 80 Degrees C
A lot of these 970 cards have bad memory cooling and very hot memory. It's not good, but it doesn't really seem to affect performance and there's not much that you can do about it, they're cheaper built coolers than the 980's which can have much better power delivery as well as VRM and memory cooling and usually beefier heatsinks as well to keep the core cooler at the same power and noise level.
Realistically i'd say get the g1 (maybe the windforce, i'm not exactly sure what it lacks aside from a few heatpipes, is the voltage and power limits the same? VRM cooling?) if you want the best card, but the MSI Gaming 970 if it's significantly cheaper or you want a cooler that's quieter overall and has fan-off at idle and low load feature, as well as ability to set fan RPM lower (my msi 970 could set fan to 600rpm manually, my g1 980 will idle at 880rpm but i can't manually set it below 1050rpm) but overall have worse cooling (100% fan on the MSI isn't really loud, and didn't always give as effective cooling as i wanted; while my 980 g1 will ramp up as far as i want it to go, keeping GPU at very low temps at the cost of noise)
For RAM, that one's easy. Look at your RAM usage. If you're regularly maxing out your RAM while not having stuff open that you want to close, then buy more. If you're not, then it would be literally useless to have more. In the rare cases in the last nearly-2-years that i've actually hit 8GB of RAM, it's only been in weird situations like playing Planetside 2 (which can use up to over 5GB of RAM by itself, legitimately, as it's an MMOFPS on a 64 square kilometer open world continent that keeps gameplay smooth and seamless when flying across it at high speeds, etc) - WHILE also having other stuff open. It's never been not enough for me, yet i have a friend who counts browser tabs with 3 or 4 digits and says 32GB of RAM is inadequate
Also, if it's mainly for dota/sc2, you may find your performance not changing much with GPU upgrade. sc2 is highly CPU bound and has the same FPS in battles or any situation that's not early game if you have a 570 or a 970 and i imagine dota 2 might be the same, but not really sure there.
The 970 is alright (good, even) but it's not a 256 bit - 4GB VRAM - 64 ROP - 2MB L2 card.
It's effectively 224 bit - 3.5GB VRAM - 56 ROP - 1.75MB L2 and you should treat it that way, it should have been advertised that way. The FPS numbers in reviews are unaffected though. Generally, you shouldn't even rely on those numbers that much, because they're only stock clocks and even by tweaking core+VRAM clocks without changing voltage, i could gain like 18% performance on my msi gaming 970 and ~14% on this card (g1 with higher stock clocks)
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On February 14 2015 09:57 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2015 09:04 LimeNade wrote:On February 14 2015 07:43 Cyro wrote:
if you enable Vsync in the control panel, it'll be enabled in rome 2 even if you disable it there. That's screen tearing. Tearing is most notable when your framerate is near the refresh rate of the screen, because you get ripples which progressively fly up or down the screen So say hypothetically I'm running a game with the graphics not maxed and it's above 60FPS (my refresh rate is 60) causing screen tearing. If I then max out my graphics in the game and its hitting around 45 FPS average will I then not encounter screen tearing? You'll get screen tearing unless every frame is perfectly synced with the screen. On a 60hz screen that means that every frame takes 16.667ms exactly. That's not really possible to do with variable frametimes when rendering (even if your FPS is exactly 60, then frames might take 14-18ms within that second, the "60" is just an average of the last 60 frames) so fixing tearing is only really done in 2 ways: 1; vsync. Hold finished frames in a buffer, delaying the display until the screen starts a new fresh. Added input lag on 60hz varies from 0-16.67ms, assuming that no frames ever take longer than 1/60'th of a second to make (FPS meter would say 70-80+ at all times without vsync, basically) 2; not refreshing the screen freely, just having the screen refresh and then wait until the next frame is done before the next refresh is fired off. That's what Gsync does.
Cyro any idea why some games from a few years ago that I run maxed out with vsync on can make my gpu run up to 80 degrees celsius but then some newer games I run will only hit about 70 degrees celsius with the graphics set on ultra.
For instance I play Total War Shogun 2 on maxed out graphics and my gpu will hit 80 degrees celsius rather easily but then I'll play Total War Rome 2 which has higher graphics reqs and I run it on ultra + vsync but rarely goes above 70 degrees celsius if ever. Does that have something to do with poor optimization on the games part or something I need to adjust manually?
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On February 17 2015 07:20 LimeNade wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2015 09:57 Cyro wrote:On February 14 2015 09:04 LimeNade wrote:On February 14 2015 07:43 Cyro wrote:
if you enable Vsync in the control panel, it'll be enabled in rome 2 even if you disable it there. That's screen tearing. Tearing is most notable when your framerate is near the refresh rate of the screen, because you get ripples which progressively fly up or down the screen So say hypothetically I'm running a game with the graphics not maxed and it's above 60FPS (my refresh rate is 60) causing screen tearing. If I then max out my graphics in the game and its hitting around 45 FPS average will I then not encounter screen tearing? You'll get screen tearing unless every frame is perfectly synced with the screen. On a 60hz screen that means that every frame takes 16.667ms exactly. That's not really possible to do with variable frametimes when rendering (even if your FPS is exactly 60, then frames might take 14-18ms within that second, the "60" is just an average of the last 60 frames) so fixing tearing is only really done in 2 ways: 1; vsync. Hold finished frames in a buffer, delaying the display until the screen starts a new fresh. Added input lag on 60hz varies from 0-16.67ms, assuming that no frames ever take longer than 1/60'th of a second to make (FPS meter would say 70-80+ at all times without vsync, basically) 2; not refreshing the screen freely, just having the screen refresh and then wait until the next frame is done before the next refresh is fired off. That's what Gsync does. Cyro any idea why some games from a few years ago that I run maxed out with vsync on can make my gpu run up to 80 degrees celsius but then some newer games I run will only hit about 70 degrees celsius with the graphics set on ultra. For instance I play Total War Shogun 2 on maxed out graphics and my gpu will hit 80 degrees celsius rather easily but then I'll play Total War Rome 2 which has higher graphics reqs and I run it on ultra + vsync but rarely goes above 70 degrees celsius if ever. Does that have something to do with poor optimization on the games part or something I need to adjust manually?
Temperatures on GPU are proportional to power going through it, if you run the same load twice with the same fan speeds and room temperature etc it will always be the same
at 100% GPU load, some rendering workloads are more power/heat expensive than others, so you might have one game drawing 200w and another drawing 215w for example. The effect there is usually pretty small but it can account for being at say 70c in one game and 75-76 in another when they're both at 100% load.
In this case you're comparing two CPU bound RTS games, so none of that is probably relevant. As far as i know, Rome 2 is more CPU bound that Shogun 2 - if you just check the GPU load and clock speed, you'll probably see the GPU doing less work in rome 2 when it's at the lower temperature.
It's like with sc2.. with the same fan speed you can see 65c on GPU in early game and 45c on GPU in late game, while the game is way more demanding lategame, it's more demanding on CPU, not GPU. The FPS drops a lot - like from 500 to 60 - and the GPU is idle most of the time because it doesn't have to render those other 440 frames per second and has nothing else to do
Also, 80c easily is quite hot. You should check temps with unigine heaven looping. Within about 2-3 minutes GPU temps will level off, and if temperatures keep increasing after that then it's probably your case temperature increasing because of lack of airflow. Unless you have an r9 290 or an older radeon card like a 6950 i guess then easily reaching 80c when vsynced (which removes load) is a bit of a concern
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Hello, this thread served me very well in the past, thought I'd give it another go after my girlfriend asked me to build her a school PC/HTPC for our living room.
Thanks!
What is your budget?
$350 USD
What is your monitor's native resolution?
I tried looking on Samsung’s website but I will be using an existing TV. Model LN40B550K1F. It’s 1080p and 16 : 9, that is all I know. A smaller monitor will be added later as a second monitor for internet use.
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
No games will be played on this PC
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
This PC’s intended use is as a HTPC. Its secondary use will be for school work including writing papers, viewing school websites, etc.
Do you intend to overclock?
I am comfortable with overclocking Intel CPU’s, I currently use an i2500k @ 4.3Ghz with 0 issues. If this is beneficial for cost performance for a HTPC and keeps me in budget it is very easy to do. My concern would be the cooler unit, I would like to keep the case size down as much as possible.
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
No
Do you need an operating system?
Yes.
I will look into getting a school discount on windows. I do have a copy of Windows7 that I am using for my main PC, is it possible to use that copy or will registration fail/report me to bill gates hit squad?
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
Not immediately, using a current TV at first but will likely add a 19” monitor in the future.
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
I would like the HTPC to be as quiet and small as possible because it is going to be in a common area that is used for entertainment and media viewing.
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
I have shoprunner and amazon prime, so if those could be used that would be cool to save on shipping costs. Other than that, no.
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How much storage does it need, does it need to transcode video, does it need Wi-Fi in its location, and how much could you get Windows for?
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You'll probably have to call the robot, but you can usually get away with a few activations of Windows.
It violates your license agreement, of course.
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
My HTCP runs Ubuntu and has no trouble with DVDs, running its wi-fi card, and playing Netflix, Youtube, and CrunchyRoll. Ubuntu is free and relatively straightforward to install, but set aside some time to set it up (it took me a while to install everything) and have a 2nd computer with an internet connection in case you run into a problem. I found that the price was right.
That being said, I suspect with Windows you'd be much less likely to run into weird driver problems or upgrade problems. I didn't go with Linux because it was better, only because it was cheaper.
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Crappy power supply and case. For slightly more, you can do a lot better purchasing individually.
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legit windows keys can be found on reddit for like $10.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
There was a subreddit banned involved with those though IIRC
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in the subreddit i used to get a key, the guy said that he bought the keys directly from microsoft in bulk. the key i got was legit, too.
well, time will tell if it's a valid source or not. it's not much different from selling a key you're not using on ebay though, is it?
E: to be fair though, it does have that "too good to be true" feel to it
E: ah so this must be it: http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1qxfjn/
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EPT
