If you are upgrading, how about getting a nice new case? I have one of these and it is a joy to open up and install things. Note from the specifications:
It is indeed a very good idea to have a nice case. I’ll certainly make sure to get a very roomy case when I get a whole new computer. Right now though, I’m going to have to work with the limited budget I have and getting such a case would add about 50% to the cost of the upgrade.
Not optional at all. The card might send output to the monitor if you only plug one of them in, but you’d be getting half the GPU for your money. There may be converters that go from the 4-pin trapezoid PSU thingy to the ones your graphics card will have, but you’ll wanna make sure they come with the GPU or order some in advance.
The reference GPU is meaningless, since its not for sale and manufacturers will have slightly different versions of it. It looks like the one I have would fit if you moved the hdd up or down, but you might wanna look at the card dimensions in the newegg store listings and bust out a ruler.
This is anecdotal, but since I got the new card I’ve been paranoid about it overheating and dying too early, for the price I want at least 3 good years out of it, so I’ve been occasionally buying 4-packs of dust buster on amazon and dusting every month. I’ve also been keeping track of the tempreratures inside the comp with this thing. So far so good, guess we’ll see if my efforts pay off in a couple of years.
Found specs for my PSU: CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-750TX 750 W Compatible with New 4th Gen CPU Certified Haswell Ready - Newegg.ca
It says the type is ATX12V v2.3. What does that mean? Can there be more than one type of Corsair CMPSU-750TX PSU or does that mean that all Corsair CMPSU-750TX are of type ATX12V v2.3?
What does it mean if a PSU has 4 X 6+2-Pin PCI-Express connectors? It can work with 6 or 8-Pin cards?
It says 1 20+4Pin mainconnector, a single +12V rails, the aforementioned 4 X 6+2-Pin PCI-E connectors and 8 SATA Power connectors. I’m not sure what to make of it.
Your PSU has the connectors needed to run the card I mentioned upthread. 6+2 is this
::: shaped thingy with an extra : dangling off of it. It can go into a slot that needs a 6 or a slot that needs an 8. You have 4 of them and most R290s and GTX970s only need two, so that won’t be an issue.
It looks like it spits out 750 watts, which should also be sufficient. My current rig with the GTX970 and an 8-core AMD processor only uses 370 watts, so you should have enough juice.
For the sake of due diligence I’d measure out internal space, and if both the R290 and the gtx970 versions you’re considering will fit, just toss a coin. Either one will likely do great and remain useful through the next upgrade or three.
You’re probably already aware, but getting a new card does not guarantee that Fallout 4 will run at maxed out settings. Its not out yet and its impossible to tell if it’ll need a great card, or a great card and a beefy processor, or a great card and DDR4 ram. Chances are the card will go a long way, but it might not get you all the way there. No way to tell till its out.
My monitor has neither Freesync nor Gsync. This leaves Nvidia’s adaptive Vsync as an option. AMD is supposed to have a third party solution in the form of Radeon Pro but this was made supposedly by one guy and I’ve heard that it’s no longer being updated. Is this true? Is it a problem?
SSD vs SSHD: This makes a good case for SSHDs as being pretty good: as close to as fast as an SSD and close to as large as an HDD Seagate 600 Desktop Solid State Hybrid Drives vs SSD vs HDD - Showdown - YouTube
Why would one get an SSD instead of an SSHD?
How fast do you think DirextX12 will become the standard?
How do you see AMD and Nvidia doing when it comes to VR?
Neither does mine, no idea if Radeon Pro is still maintained. The folks at pcmr might know though. Generally though I am not a spring chicken and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, I can spot the frame rate dropping to 20-25, but while its above that I can’t really tell the difference between 48, 60, and 144. I didn’t know I needed a sync enabled monitor till I read the wiki article about it. I wanna keep with the times so next time I upgrade I’ll snag a gsync monitor(hopefully it’ll be cheaper by then!), but I can’t honestly claim that I see the tearing that this is supposed to prevent.
Didn’t know about SSHDs before you mentioned them. Looks like a decent compromise to me. Off the top of my head the reasons for pure SSD would be:
[ul]
[li]Less likely to have some sort of issue with only one technology in there[/li][li]Always operating at SSD speeds[/li][/ul]
Chances are an SSHD will serve you well as long as you read some reviews and user ratings before buying.
My guess is not too fast. Definitely not before AMD and Nvidia have robust drivers, otherwise any game maker using it will be depriving themselves of market share. Borderlands: The Prequel still uses DX10, and it came out less then a year ago.
They will probably both do just fine, they pretty much have to with all the hype around it. I personally don’t see VR becoming mainstream for PC gaming for a few more years. Not until an affordable VR deck of incredible quality comes out, like a VR iphone so to speak. This is just wild conjecture of course.
Adaptive V-sync really isn’t the same thing as G-sync/Freesync.
Adaptive vsync turns on v-sync when your frame rate is above the monitors refresh rate (Vsync will add a bit of latency and a small performance hit to your game here) and turns it off when the frame rate drops below the refresh (you’ll see screen tearing).
G-sync and freesync work on the monitor side (as god intended). Instead of refreshing the screen x times per second (and therefore requiring your PC to sync it;s GPU output to it), it only refreshes the screen when your GPU has a fresh frame for it. This eliminate latency, screen tearing, and frame/animation judder. It makes a game feel and look smooth and responsive even with some frame rate variance in play.
SSD is still better for an OS drive, IMHO. Your OS is much more likely to routinely require random files that might not exist in the drive’s flash memory cache. SSD is all flash memory all the time, so your programs are responsive at all times.
For games though, SSHD is the way to go. They take up too much space to dedicate an SSD to, it’s just too expensive, and apps like games tend to run really well off them.
Standard spindle drives should just be used for bulk data storage.
Perfect timing for this thread. I just upgraded to Windows 10, so I decided it was time to upgrade my home computer. I don’t need anything insane. I’m not a gamer or anything. I just don’t like long load times or lag while multi-tasking. Probably the most intensive thing I do on this machine besides basic Photoshop is while doing a research paper and opening up 50 web pages, a dozen large pdfs and a couple word docs at the same time.
Did I get the right stuff? Am I going to have any compatibility issues? Here is what I have:
Here is what I started with:
The existing motherboard:
MS-7613 (Iona-GL8E)
Here are the upgrade components:
Memory:
16GB 4x4GB PC3-10600 DDR3-1333 240pin Desktop Memory Low Density For Intel, AMD
Processor
Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield Quad-Core 2.8GHz Socket LGA 1156 CPU
GPU
Inno3D Geforce 7 2GB DDR3 PCI Express Video Graphics Card
I also grabbed a 400W power supply. I probably should have asked before purchasing all these things, but is everything compatible? See any issues?
It should all fit together. The motherboard can accommodate the CPU, the RAM and the GPU. The 400W power supply should be enough to power the stuff you list. The only thing that may be an issue for you are your peripherals, like hard drives and DVD drives. Your motherboard only has SATA connectors, so if your drives are older and use IDE connectors you won’t be able to plug them into the mobo. There are SATA->IDE thingies you can buy, but you won’t be able to use any drive like that to boot from/store your OS on.
I personally am way too paranoid to buy hardware from ebay, my brain can’t convince itself it wasn’t used to mine bitcoins in a humid basement for 3 years and then shrink-wrapped and put on sale, but that’s more of a personal issue.
Microsoft is planning on pushing Win10 hard by releasing titles for Win10 and DX12 – Gears of War, Fable, Killer Instinct, etc. Making them for DX12 will require people to upgrade their OS. Other titles coming along for DX12 include the new Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex, Star Wars: Battlefront, Ashes of the Singularity and Ark: survival Evolved is getting (or got) a DX12 patch.
Now some of these may also allow you to play them on older DirectX versions but I can see a pretty rapid adoption for the big titles. XBox One is also going to be using DX12 so there’s easy reason to believe that PC ports would have it as well.
The motherboard is what I started with in my current system. So, that part whould be fine. I bought the memory, gpu and processor based on what I believed was compatible with the present motherboard.
I’m using the same processor these days and playing new-release games with it (obviously with a better GPU) so I’m guessing you’ll be okay for non-gaming purposes. Mine is overclocked which doesn’t appear to be an option for you with that board but, again, I’m gaming and you’re (per your description) web browsing and looking at PDFs. Between the processor and the extra memory I think you’ll be good.
Yes, they all reduce screen tearing but both Freesync and Gsync are superior to adaptive Vsync. If I were considering getting a recent gaming monitor, it would definitely be a factor. With VR coming soon though, I may never buy a gaming monitor again and it would be a very foolish VR-developer who wouldn’t have Freesync, Gsync or something similar that would be compatible with Nvidia and AMD.
Good point about the SSD & OS. Are there other programs that would benefit from being SSD only? How big an SSD should one get if it’s only intended to run Windows 7 or 10?
Do you happen to know if taking advantage of DX12’s requires a lot of programming know-how? I ask because most of the games that interest me are the small & mid-sized games (with the exception of games like Fallout 4). It would be quite nice if semi-professional programmers making games on Unity or UE4 could use DX12’s potential.
What CPU are you using and what is it overclocked to?
Bear Nenno,
If you multitask a lot, it sounds like having 2-3 monitors might be the best bang/buck you can get in terms of upgrading.
The same processor Bear_Nenno is getting, the i7-860. I overclocked mine to 3.6GHz though. I’ve heard of others going over 4.0 but I’m happy with the performance I’m getting.
Do you need water cooling at 3.6GHz? Do you simply have stock cooling in a normal case?
I have a closed loop water cooler on it now (Corsair H75) but I ran it for probably close to two years on air with an aftermarket cooler (the ever popular Cooler Master 212 Evo). That was with a couple extra case fans as well to keep air moving. When I got my R9 290X Tri-X card, the total number of fans in the thing made it sound like it was trying to take flight so, for my own sanity more than for cooling, I switched to the H75, replaced a couple cheaper fans with Cougar Vortex models (including the stock H75 fans) and got it down to quiet levels. I probably have the temperature overhead to overclock a bit more but, like I said, I’m happy with the performance and haven’t felt inclined to start messing with BIOS settings again so long as it’s stable.
I haven’t been keep up I guess, but is this new where SDMB hijacks my NewEgg links and makes them Best Buy and Walmart links? :dubious:
And now they’re back to NewEgg links… ???
No. Vsync removes all screen tearing by syncing your GPU’s output to the refresh of your monitor. Gsync/Freesync, do the same by eliminating the problem of syncing altogether. Instead of your GPU syncing to the monitor, your monitor syncs to your GPU, as the gods intended.
Adaptive vsync simply turns your v-sync on/off dynamically in order to… to tell you the truth I’m not sure what it’s supposed to help with. I guess, reducing variable frame rate hits? But the trade isn’t worth it, IMHO - turning off vsync will always = screen tearing. You’re better off running your game in borderless window mode to take advantage of triple buffered Vscyn on the desktop, and turn vsync off in the game.
Depends on what you’re going to install in there. I’m a developer so I’ve got vm’s, programming IDE’s, graphics software, etc, etc. So my OS SSD is a 500 gig one.
Assuming you’re not running a ton of other programs off of it, a 120 GB or even less should suffice. Windows 10 takes up around 20 gigs, IIRC.
It’s definitely more involved than past API’s. You have to manage memory on your own, for example - great for optimization - but yes, more complex than developing for say DX11.
Luckily, as you pointed out, devs with fewer resources/time/money can leverage third party game engines, many of which have or plan to have DX 12 support soonish.
[QUOTE=MichaelEmouse]
Bear Nenno,
If you multitask a lot, it sounds like having 2-3 monitors might be the best bang/buck you can get in terms of upgrading.
[/QUOTE]
I have two 42" monitors right now and I would add a third if I had the desk space. I can’t imagine having to work with a single monitor.
Yea. If I was going to get into a game, though, I do have a computer for that. I’ll share the specs on my laptop so I feel a little more like I can hang in this thread:
Alienware 17"
Windows 7 Ultimate (Going to upgrade to 10 soon, I think)
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4710MQ processor (Quad Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphics with 8GB total GDDR5
16GB DDR3L at 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s + 80GB mSATA SSD Caching