PC Owners Thread

[yourbeliefs]

From what I've read, the main benefits of the 1080 can only be seen with 1440p/4K gaming, so if you're already getting great performance with your SLI setup then you may be okay for a while. I mean are you going to see a world of difference with 140fps versus 120 (asks the guy who has no experience with either)? I mean yes at the end of the day the 10x0 cards are very powerful and great bang for the buck but you're pretty set for a while. A single 970 is pretty damn powerful and SLI support is common on most major releases. I just think given the hassle of getting rid of the 2 cards then trying to sell them (Which are going to have lower return rates once the 10x0 cards are actually released) and then having to probably spend more money on the card isn't worth it at the end of the day. But again, it's your money, at least it is until I get that algorithm working that can tap into bank account numbers via Xbox Live Gamertags...

 

[king3pj]

From what I've read, the main benefits of the 1080 can only be seen with 1440p/4K gaming, so if you're already getting great performance with your SLI setup then you may be okay for a while. I mean are you going to see a world of difference with 140fps versus 120 (asks the guy who has no experience with either)? I mean yes at the end of the day the 10x0 cards are very powerful and great bang for the buck but you're pretty set for a while. A single 970 is pretty damn powerful and SLI support is common on most major releases. I just think given the hassle of getting rid of the 2 cards then trying to sell them (Which are going to have lower return rates once the 10x0 cards are actually released) and then having to probably spend more money on the card isn't worth it at the end of the day. But again, it's your money, at least it is until I get that algorithm working that can tap into bank account numbers via Xbox Live Gamertags...

Yeah, I'm not planning on doing anything right away. I don't want one of the reference models straight from Nvidia and that is all that is guaranteed to be available at launch. If I bought a new card I would definitely be waiting until the partner manufacturing companies like EVGA start putting out their own models with factory overclocks and custom cooling systems. These cards sold buy EVGA, ASUS, MSI, etc always end up being faster, quieter, and cooler than the reference models Nvidia and AMD design, typically without costing any more.

If these third party options aren't available from day one it will probably only take a couple weeks before we start seeing them. It's possible that the resale value of my 970s will dip quite a bit after the new cards release. I've already talked to a guy that owns a local computer store after seeing that he was looking for used 970s and 980s on Craigslist. When I talked to him on the phone he offered to buy one of my 970s for $225 or the pair of them for $400 cash.

If I can get $400 cash for my 970s when I paid $330 for one of them new about year and a half ago and got the other one free I would probably do it. You are right that SLI support is pretty good these days but there are still some games that don't support it, like everything in the Windows 10 Store. If the reviews end up confirming that a single 1070 is slightly faster than 2 970s and has twice as much VRAM I will make the swap as long as his offer still stands. The reason I didn't do it on the spot when he made the offer is that there were no real reviews yet and I didn't want to make my gaming PC completely useless for a month while I waited for 1070 availability.

 

[yourbeliefs]

*SIGH*...

 

[yourbeliefs]

Intel's newest Super CPU has 10 cores that can run up to 3.5GHZ each, and costs a mere $1,700

http://gizmodo.com/intels-insane-new-desktop-cpu-has-ten-cores-and-costs-1779569354

 

[king3pj]

Intel's newest Super CPU has 10 cores that can run up to 3.5GHZ each, and costs a mere $1,700

http://gizmodo.com/intels-insane-new-desktop-cpu-has-ten-cores-and-costs-1779569354

The thing is that some of the PC Master Race will end up putting those in their gaming PCs even though a much cheaper i5 or i7 is capable of maxing out every game.

The GTX 1070 reviews have started to roll out. Their marketing claims ended up being true and this $379 GPU really does beat an $1,100 Titan X from Nvidia's previous generation of GPUs. That's pretty damn impressive.

It's about the same as my SLI 970s so there probably isn't much reason to upgrade unless I can get enough resale value for them to make it a wash or small profit. I would only see real benefit in the few games that don't support SLI or have trouble with my 3.5GB of fast VRAM at 1440p.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_1070_review,1.html

 

[yourbeliefs]

The thing is that some of the PC Master Race will end up putting those in their gaming PCs even though a much cheaper i5 or i7 is capable of maxing out every game.

The GTX 1070 reviews have started to roll out. Their marketing claims ended up being true and this $379 GPU really does beat an $1,100 Titan X from Nvidia's previous generation of GPUs. That's pretty damn impressive. It's about the same as much SLI 970s so there probably isn't much reason to upgrade unless I can get enough resale value for them to make it a wash.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_1070_review,1.html

Little annoying seeing my graphics card ranked so low, but more annoying is, why are they not testing the 4 GB version as well? There's a 2GB and a 4GB version of the GTX 960. Shouldn't they BOTH be tested to give a better idea of where performance stands?

 

[king3pj]

Little annoying seeing my graphics card ranked so low, but more annoying is, why are they not testing the 4 GB version as well? There's a 2GB and a 4GB version of the GTX 960. Shouldn't they BOTH be tested to give a better idea of where performance stands?

To look at the bright side, at least you know that upgrading to a GTX 1070 or 1080 would be a significant upgrade for you. A 1070 would give you almost 4 times as much performance in Doom and 2 to 3 times the performance in most other games. For me the upgrade would mostly be just to have the newest thing and I would only see a real difference in a few specific games.

Just like with last generation the x70 is the sweet spot in terms of price to performance. The 1070 gives you 81% of the performance of a 1080 for 64% of the cost. Looking at those same Doom 1080p charts a 970 gives you 80% of the performance of a 980 for 60% of the cost.

If I continue to use Doom at 1080p for these numbers with a 960 you get 39% of the performance of a 970 for 61% of the cost. To be fair to the 960 a couple of the other benchmarks compare to the 970 a little more favorably than Doom does though. Far Cry Primal has the 960 getting 68% of the 970s performance and Fallout 4 has it getting 61% of the 970s performance.Considering that the 960 also costs 60% of the price of the 970 you are pretty much getting what you paid for in most games.

The GTX 1080 is obviously the fastest card but when you can get 80% of the performance for 60% of the cost I think the 1070 is clearly the better value. Plus, if you go with a 1070 now you can always buy a second one on sale in a year or two for SLI to give you significantly more power than a 1080 without paying that much more than a 1080 would have cost you today.

 

[king3pj]

Looks like I will be ending up with a 1070 after all. A friend has offered to buy one of my 970s for $250 and she is willing to wait until I have a new card in my possession before I hand it over as long as I install it for her. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Now I can either deal with Craig's List and try to sell my second card or keep it as a dedicated Physx GPU. Selling it makes more sense since it would actually give me a profit on my upgrade but then I have to deal with the hassle of Craig's List.

It's tempting to go all the way and get a 1080 instead but I think a 1070 will be plenty for 1440p resolution. It's a more reasonable budget decision and if I really wanted more power an 1170 will surely end up being more powerful than a 1080 in a couple years. I could buy both a 1070 and 1170 without spending that much more than it would cost to buy a 1080. Also, like I said in the previous post, the 1070 is quite a bit better in terms of price to performance.

 

[king3pj]

I ended up selling my second 970 through Amazon for $250. Amazon charged me about $22 in fees but they did cover the shipping cost. So from the sale of my 2 970s i brought in a total of $478. Now the question is whether I'm going to be responsible and keep that $100 profit by going with a 1070 or put an extra $120-$150 in and go all out with a 1080.

It really might come down to which one is readily available without price gouging first since I'm going to have to give up both of my 970s in the near future. Luckily the friend I sold the first one too isn't demanding it right away so I can keep using my PC but it looks like I'm going to have to suffer with a single 970 for at least a couple weeks...

I'm pretty sure I'll live but this probably means I'll have to run a few of my games at 1080p because a single 970 doesn't cut it in demanding games at 1440p. Rocket League and Overwatch should be fine but I doubt I'll be running Doom at 1440p.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well at the end of the day it's $228 pure profit since you never paid for that card in the first place..

 

[king3pj]

That's true. I paid about $330 a year and a half ago for one 970, got a second one for free a couple months later, and then sold the pair for $500 minus $22 in selling fees. Not a bad deal at all.

 

[king3pj]

I just got my Humble Monthly games for June. Here is what I got for my $12.

Rocket League
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
The Forrest
Planetary Annihilation Titans
Dungeon of the Endless
Steredenn
Wasted (This one is actually a pre-order. The game launches next week.)
Cat Girl

This is another pretty nice value. Rocket League alone would have been worth the $12. I'm looking forward to playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes next time I have friends over. Planetary Annihilation and Steredenn are games I probably wouldn't have purchased on my own but they both looks interesting as well.

The early unlock game for next month is Hurtworld. This is yet another one of those Early Access multiplayer survival games on Steam. This game has an overall "Very Positive" rating on Steam but a quick look will show you that just about every recent review is negative. Apparently many fans feel this game was abandoned before completion.

I have no interest in these types of games even when they are finished so I might cancel before I'm charged for next month. On the other hand both months I have been a subscriber for so far have been worth the $12.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I hope Keep Talking goes on sale soon. That looks like so much fun and I think it would be a great game to play with my friends.

 

[king3pj]

Turns out that the EVGA ACX SC GPUs can overclock really well while still remaining quiet and cool. Now that I am down to a single 970 while I wait for availability on an EVGA ACX 1070 or 1080 I decided to see what kind of overclocking headroom I could get out of my current card. 1440p is tough for a single 970 so I'm all for squeezing a little more juice out of it while I wait for a new card.

I was able to get the core clock's boost speed up to 1500MHz while remaining stable. A reference 970 has a core clock base speed of 1050MHz and the EVGA SC is factory overclocked to achieve a 1317MHz boost clock so a 1500MHz boost clock is a pretty large performance increase.

I was also able to bump the VRAM memory clock up from the stock 7010MHz to 8000MHz. These results were great but I was worried I wouldn't actually be able to use them because higher overclocks create more heat. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the EVGA ACX cooler was good enough that my temperatures only increased by 2-3 degrees Celsius and they are still well within the safe range.

These increases were enough to make Arkham Knight playable at 60 FPS 1440p with all settings maxed except Nvidia Physx enhanced interactive smoke and debris. I still get some occasional dips in the Batmobile but most of the time it is smooth and the rest of the game is rock solid. Before the overclock I was playing with pretty much everything on medium because the performance dips during combat or flying around were too jarring on high.

I'm interested in seeing if I will be able to run Doom without cranking all the settings down. I think I will probably either have to wait for a new card or bump the resolution down to 1080p if I want to do that.

I didn't rely on overclocking before because SLI already puts out more heat and I never really had a need to. It's nice to know that EVGA cards are capable overclockers if I ever need some more performance out of the 1070 or 1080.

 

[king3pj]

Just finished about an hour and a half of Doom and I am really impressed with this overclock. On my single 970 I am getting between 75 and 80 FPS at 1440p. That's obviously not as good as my SLI 970s were at about 120 FPS but it's quite a bit better than this benchmark that says I should be averaging 62 FPS. The results I am seeing actually line up closer with the 980 according to this benchmark.

For yourbeliefs since I remember you saying you wanted a benchmark that showed the 4GB version of the 960 so you could see results closer to your card instead of just the 2GB version I thought I would post the 1080p benchmark too. It looks like your 4GB 960 should be able to average at least 71 FPS. Probably a little more because of the factory overclock.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Boy, I feel like a big dummy for not realizing that there are no 4k 144hz monitors yet... that puts a bit of a damper on my PC gaming plans. Either get better graphics but worse framerate, or better framerate but worse graphics..

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/06/asus-will-apparently-have-the-worlds-first-144hz-4k-monitor/

 

[king3pj]

Boy, I feel like a big dummy for not realizing that there are no 4k 144hz monitors yet... that puts a bit of a damper on my PC gaming plans. Either get better graphics but worse framerate, or better framerate but worse graphics..

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/06/asus-will-apparently-have-the-worlds-first-144hz-4k-monitor/

If it makes you feel any better there isn't a GPU available for purchase that is capable of 144 FPS at 4K. Even the 1080 falls short of 60FPS in many games. 4K is possible at 60FPS if you are willing turn some settings down with a 1080. If you want higher framerate a than that you would need a SLI build.

I personally would rather play at 1440p with max settings than 4K with medium. 1440p is still 1.6 million more pixels than 1080p so it's a pretty significant upgrade.

If you look at the benchmarks that were posted in the 1070 and 1080 reviews there aren't many games that reach 144 FPS at 1440p or even 1080p.

PC Gamer has this nice chart that shows the average framerate of games in their benchmark suite for each resolution. The only resolution where the average framerate could justify a 144Hz monitor is 1080p in my opinion. Even then their benchmark suite only averages 132 FPS on a GTX 1080. If you pump the resolution up to 1440p that average framerate drops down to 94 and 4K drops the framerate all the way down to 54.

 

[yourbeliefs]

*Takes a look at 1440p/144hz monitor prices*

......

*Starts adding together costs of other components...*

 

[king3pj]

*Takes a look at 1440p/144hz monitor prices*

......

*Starts adding together costs of other components...*

Honestly, I would give up the 144Hz dream for now unless you are able to squeeze a 1440p/144Hz GSYNC monitor into your budget but those are ridiculously expensive. I did a lot of research about this myself before I bought my 1440p monitor because I was also considering 144Hz instead.

A solid 60 FPS feels perfectly smooth to me and you could get there at 1440p with max settings on a GTX 1070 or 4K with the right mix of settings with a GTX 1080. For all I know 144Hz might feel even better but if a $600+ GPU can't get there even at 1080p on average I don't see the point.

I can definitely see the difference between 1440p and 1080p on my monitor in every single game and I imagine that 2160p (4k) is an even bigger difference. The problem with going with a 144Hz monitor is that you will never see 144 FPS in most games. Also we are using current games for all these numbers and games are only going to continue demanding more power every year. If a 1080 isn't hitting 144 FPS now it's going to be no where close to 144 FPS by the time you are ready for another upgrade.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Wait.. you've mentioned having 60+ fps on various games. Are you just using FRAPS to see what you COULD be achieving?