Building a gaming system

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

(4) The Haswell Overclocking Guide from overclock.net is the best resource I know for overclocking your cpu:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics

Though they're talking about Z87 and Z97 Haswell, not X99 Haswell-E like you have. I'd imagine it's not too different. Just have lots of patience.

Also, you should under no circumstance delid your processor. This works very well for lowering temperatures in some standard i5 and i7 from Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, and Skylake sometimes because Intel uses thermal paste between the actual cpu and the heatspreader (the heatspreader is what you're putting your heatsink on), and occasionally there can be a gap between this paste and the heatspreader. I have no idea why they did this instead of using solder between the heatsink and cpu like they did Sandy Bridge and before. Maybe they wanted to nerf overclocking because Sandy Bridge chips overclocked like madmen. And it probably saves them a few cents per cpu.

In an i7-5820k you have solder between the cpu and heatspreader instead of the thermal paste that would be there in something like an i5-3570k, i7-3770k, i5-4670k, i7-4770k, i5-4690k, i7-4790k, i5-5765c, i7-5775c, i5-6600k, or i7-6700k. If you try to delid you'll break the fucking core most likely since they use the solder.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

(5) One other thing I might mention. Being that we might be pretty close to to new gpus being released, you might consider going with an EVGA Nvidia graphics card. EVGA offers a program called Step Up that allows you to trade in any gpu you bought for a new one within 90 days, only paying the difference in price, as long as you register your card with them within 14 days of purchase. The EVGA card that would be the equivalent of the R9 390 is the GTX 970:

I have a slightly older version of this card (same gpu chip, but mine has a different cooler and weaker power delivery), and it's great for 1080p. This one will almost certainly overclock a lot better than the one I have now due to the better power delivery, and mine I can get to 1420 MHz stable. This card will likely be stable at 1500 MHz.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088

Or you could go all out with an EVGA 980 Ti, which is quite a bit stronger than the R9 390. (about 35-40% better at 1080p).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BX4LKOQ/?tag=pcpapi-20

I would still get the 390 over the 970 if you don't care about the new gpus coming out, it's slightly better than the 970 right now and will probably age better because it's stronger hardware (the 970 has better drivers, which is why it keeps up with the 390 right now). But if you want one of the new 16 nm gpus EVGA is the way to go, as long as they release before the end of July (EDIT: oops, I mean June), that is. The 980 Ti is a complete overkill monster right now for 1080p, it really makes more sense for 1440p.

One other advantage with EVGA is their warranty support is supposed to be first rate unlike most other companies that build the add in boards for gpus. I have never had to deal with it myself, but DJR210 has.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

I'll share some stuff about gpu overclocking later on when you have your system built. That shit is done all in software, no screwing around in the BIOS.

[DJR210]

EVGA RMA process was easy as hell. They had my RMA processed in 30 minutes on a Sunday.

[RandomGuy]

Got it. Thanks. Yet again.

Something to watch/read on my lunch hour. Been sort of watching some basic videos with my 13 YO, like "what is USB", because he has been asking some questions. This should be an interesting family project.

My dad used to teach me car maintenance and repairs... Now I get to try and teach my kids not to be scairt of getting into the guts of a computer. Fun times.

[DJR210]

Got it. Thanks. Yet again.

Something to watch/read on my lunch hour. Been sort of watching some basic videos with my 13 YO, like "what is USB", because he has been asking some questions. This should be an interesting family project.

My dad used to teach me car maintenance and repairs... Now I get to try and teach my kids not to be scairt of getting into the guts of a computer. Fun times.

Watch Neweggs "how to" series on YouTube.. That's how I learned.. Its 3 parts but is very clear and informative.

[baseline bum]

The Broadwell-E Xeon E5-2600v4 series was released today.

https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2016/03/intel-xeon-processor-e5-2600-v4-fact-sheet.pdf

These would be lousy for gaming cpus due to the low clockspeeds, but their release means the Broadwell-E i7s that will be awesome for gaming should be out soon. Though I doubt they'll be as good as the i7-6700k, and the major news with them will be the ability to get an unlocked 8-core X99 processor (i7-6900k) for less than the $1000 the 8-core i7-5960x sells for. The Broadwell-E equivalent to the i7-5820k is the i7-6800k and it should be very similar to the 5820k, but seems to have an extra 100 MHz clock bump at stock vs the 5820k (pretty meaningless). The regular Broadwell i7-5775c was actually a bit of a downgrade over the Haswell i7-4790k, so I doubt the i7-6800k will be worth waiting for, RandomGuy, though it would work on your motherboard.

[baseline bum]

Anyone have Firewatch? That shit looks pretty funny.

[ElNono]

Anyone have Firewatch? That shit looks pretty funny.

Installed it, gave it 15 mins of my attention, promptly deleted it...

[Wild Cobra]

I must be a mental case, but then so many of you would agree with that...

I have been contemplating building a super-fast computer. I don't need it, it's just... why not? I have the money to do so. I simply allocate my spare resources to things that are more important to me. Lately, the thought of a very fast system has intrigued me.

Anyone know what the best build would be for ~ $3k?

Maybe the difference of going higher or lower than $3k?

$3k would be no sweat.

[baseline bum]

I must be a mental case, but then so many of you would agree with that...

I have been contemplating building a super-fast computer. I don't need it, it's just... why not? I have the money to do so. I simply allocate my spare resources to things that are more important to me. Lately, the thought of a very fast system has intrigued me.

Anyone know what the best build would be for ~ $3k?

Maybe the difference of going higher or lower than $3k?

$3k would be no sweat.

What do you want to do with it though? If it's just to play Kerbal Space Program you could just buy a monster of a monitor and a cheap gpu like a GTX 950 / 960 or R9 380.

[Wild Cobra]

What do you want to do with it though? If it's just to play Kerbal Space Program you could just buy a monster of a monitor and a cheap gpu like a GTX 950 / 960 or R9 380.

I have been contemplating buying two 4k monitors. I don't play many games, but you never know when that may change. If there are good car racing games, I would go for that. I loved Gran Turismo 5, but thought GT6 sucked. I love the fact I can flawlessly play blurays on my laptop with the 950m graphics.

last family get-together, my father said I'm one of those people that don't stop with what I need, but go "all the way." It's true. I don't need my XPS 8700, but I like it real well. I didn't need my '00 Camaro Z28, but I loved driving it. Same with my '02 WS6 that I sold to a friend last year. I was thinking of buying a Hellcat, but damn... I do have limited resources and higher priorities for my money than a $60k+ car. Even the Camaros are more than I want to spend, and back seat legroom doesn't accommodate adults well like the 4th generation Camaros and Trans Ams do.

I will, multitask like crazy. Sometimes I will have over 20 browser windows open, several excel sheets, and anything else that suits me at the moment. Often, I will be streaming something on my other monitor or playing a bluray at the same time. My GTX 720 gets a little glitchy with this much action.

When my daughter needed a laptop for college, with architectural design as a major, I got her a HP 8000 series laptop, which at the time... 2004?... was $1,200. It was still a great computer until last year when it wouldn't do some newer things. A few years ago, I bought her a Toshiba Satellite, for $1k, which at the time, has the 2nd fastest GPU available for a laptop. Her studies in Architectural Design needed faster 3d rendering. She was so happy with it. I didn't spend the extra $200 for a laptop with the fasted GPU, because it consumed about twice the power, and I was concerned about heat buildup. Anyway, I got her old XP laptop and just recently replaced it with my MSI Leopard GP70 Pro 486. This old laptop still is nice. I have used it for video capture with my USB video borescope investigating inside engines and transmissions. Not bad considering the speed required for video, even though it is only a 480P camera. It was cool, looking at the damage of a broken rod inside the LS1 engine.

I'm good with going overboard on a computer. They are viable for a longer period of time if they are top of the line.

[Wild Cobra]

I will, at a minimum, put a 960 GPU in my XPS 8700. I'm speaking of another computer.

[Wild Cobra]

So Baseline... ElNono... Cry Hovoc...

How would you spend $3k for a computer. Monitors not to be included. That's a separate line cost. Just the computer build.

[RandomGuy]

Here is a video showing installation of the NZXT Kraken x61, which is the water cooler I'd recommend for that case and cpu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBU-KhVoO2g

Wierd. "install the thing, then plug everything in EXCEPT the USB header... then install the software... THEN plug in the USB header 'or you'll have problems down the line' "

A two-stage installation for the cooling unit? As if this whole thing isn't going to have enough shit to plug in and keep track of.... sheesh. This stuff was a lot simpler in 1998. (says crotchety old man) You whipper snappers and your fancy water cooled computers. In my day we used sticks and twigs, and thought we were lucky not to catch fire.... heh

(reads MB manual, and watches a few more youtubes..)

More impressed with the case, now that I have the whole thing apart. Very modular and flexible.

(edit)

Wierd that the cooling unit sucks air into the unit from the top... to the bottom, which means it exhausts heat INTO the unit.... and is sucking air/dust in through the top, into the fins. Seems like you would want to do that opposite. There is already a big-ass intake fan that is filtering the air.

You would get a lot less dust in the unit, if it was drawing already filtered (if a bit warmer) air in.

[ElNono]

Trick question, tbh... I mean, you can blow $4.5k on one of the newest v4 Xeons alone, with 22 cores, but the baseline CPU speed is fairly low (2.2GHz IIRC), but you do get the PCIE3 bandwidth...

Getting the computer to "feel" the fastest you can buy is probably not that complicated based on a few items: Fast CPU, high speed RAM (and for that you need a high speed memory bus), PCIE 3.0 with enough independent lanes, a PCIE SSD that runs exclusively on 4 those lanes, and then it's all about the GPU and internet connection...

But that's the "general" stuff, after that it really depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to drive 2 4K monitors at a solid refresh rate, that's all largely GPU bound. Your GPU will matter, and you definitely want to have enough video ram. You might want to consider a dual card setup too. In turn, that option will determine what kind of motherboard you'll be getting and maybe even the CPU type (if you're going to use dual 16x PCIE lanes, you might have to look into chips/chipsets that have 40 PCIE lanes. An M.2 PCIE SSD can suck up 4x lanes, for example).

And then if you're going to be doing web-browsing, the bottleneck is going to be your ISP... You can have the fastest refresh rate and GPU money can buy, but if the pages don't load quick enough, it won't matter, tbh...

Those are basic pointers, and we can go into more detail and hone in based on some of those rules, but you gotta know what you want to do with it. Frankly, the the industry has moving from "fastest" to "performance per watt" for a while, since Moore's law has been difficult to overcome lately. You still get incredibly fast and efficient stuff, but long gone are the days of just saying "let me just buy the most expensive stuff" and that translating to the fastest system.

[RandomGuy]

RandomGuy

(4) The Haswell Overclocking Guide from overclock.net is the best resource I know for overclocking your cpu:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics

Though they're talking about Z87 and Z97 Haswell, not X99 Haswell-E like you have. I'd imagine it's not too different. Just have lots of patience.

Also, you should under no circumstance delid your processor. This works very well for lowering temperatures in some standard i5 and i7 from Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, and Skylake sometimes because Intel uses thermal paste between the actual cpu and the heatspreader (the heatspreader is what you're putting your heatsink on), and occasionally there can be a gap between this paste and the heatspreader. I have no idea why they did this instead of using solder between the heatsink and cpu like they did Sandy Bridge and before. Maybe they wanted to nerf overclocking because Sandy Bridge chips overclocked like madmen. And it probably saves them a few cents per cpu.

In an i7-5820k you have solder between the cpu and heatspreader instead of the thermal paste that would be there in something like an i5-3570k, i7-3770k, i5-4670k, i7-4770k, i5-4690k, i7-4790k, i5-5765c, i7-5775c, i5-6600k, or i7-6700k. If you try to delid you'll break the fucking core most likely since they use the solder.

Delidding sounds a lot like the kind of stuff I will be very leary of doing as a novice. No worries.

(reads guide)

Holy shit that is complicated. I will read it all, but this is making me not want to mess with the system after I get it built/working. The number of variables and settings increases the risk that I will get something wrong out of ignorance. (sigh) Ah well. Part of this is to teach my kids a bit, so the complexity isn't a deal killer, it just means I have to use more of my precious free time than I would like.

[Wild Cobra]

Wierd. "install the thing, then plug everything in EXCEPT the USB header... then install the software... THEN plug in the USB header 'or you'll have problems down the line' "

A two-stage installation for the cooling unit? As if this whole thing isn't going to have enough shit to plug in and keep track of.... sheesh. This stuff was a lot simpler in 1998. (says crotchety old man) You whipper snappers and your fancy water cooled computers. In my day we used sticks and twigs, and thought we were lucky not to catch fire.... heh

(reads MB manual, and watches a few more youtubes..)

More impressed with the case, now that I have the whole thing apart. Very modular and flexible.

(edit)

Wierd that the cooling unit sucks air into the unit from the top... to the bottom, which means it exhausts heat INTO the unit.... and is sucking air/dust in through the top, into the fins. Seems like you would want to do that opposite. There is already a big-ass intake fan that is filtering the air.

You would get a lot less dust in the unit, if it was drawing already filtered (if a bit warmer) air in.

I was dismayed by a few things when watching the video. I have to wonder how good it really is.

1) proper assembly means you start all screws/bolts before tightening any of them. Small issue, but it goes to technical competence of the engineering staff making the video.

2) Looks like neoprene tubing, though it could be something else. I would expect silicone or tygon tubing for better longevity, but then, maybe it is good tubing.

3) Did I miss it? Is it strait water cooling? For longevity, I would expect something anti-corrosive like a 70/30 mix of car antifreeze to water.

[DJR210]

i7 6700k, SLI 980 Ti, 32 GB RAM, the rest doesn't make much difference

[Wild Cobra]

Trick question, tbh... I mean, you can blow $4.5k on one of the newest v4 Xeons alone, with 22 cores, but the baseline CPU speed is fairly low (2.2GHz IIRC), but you do get the PCIE3 bandwidth...

Getting the computer to "feel" the fastest you can buy is probably not that complicated based on a few items: Fast CPU, high speed RAM (and for that you need a high speed memory bus), PCIE 3.0 with enough independent lanes, a PCIE SSD that runs exclusively on 4 those lanes, and then it's all about the GPU and internet connection...

I'm understanding of the increasing cost vs. minimal improvement. I'm looking for opinions of what the best parts to consolidate are, for the best price/performance, trying to limit my total cost at around $3k.



But that's the "general" stuff, after that it really depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to drive 2 4K monitors at a solid refresh rate, that's all largely GPU bound. Your GPU will matter, and you definitely want to have enough video ram. You might want to consider a dual card setup too. In turn, that option will determine what kind of motherboard you'll be getting and maybe even the CPU type (if you're going to use dual 16x PCIE lanes, you might have to look into chips/chipsets that have 40 PCIE lanes. An M.2 PCIE SSD can suck up 4x lanes, for example).

Yes, two high end GPU's will likely be the end result. I also agree with the higest number of memory lanes. If I recall, some time back when I mentioned the memory channels using the 2011, you were one that scoffed at the idea. Do you still feel the same way? Didn't you also say 1920 x 1200 was a pushed 1920 x 1080 when I bought my WUXGA monitors?

Things change, people learn and change their opinions over time. You seem to have more intelligent thoughts when in this category than most, so i would like your opinion. Though you are wrong at times...



And then if you're going to be doing web-browsing, the bottleneck is going to be your ISP... You can have the fastest refresh rate and GPU money can buy, but if the pages don't load quick enough, it won't matter, tbh...

Yes, I know. I have pretty good speeds normally in the internet, and when my page loads are slow, it appears to normally be source limitations. Not my speed or response. not as fast as some providers, but I'm next to the bottom end rates at $69.95/mo. I normally get just over 60 mbs, and normally under 12 ms ping. It's more than I have needed so far.



Those are basic pointers, and we can go into more detail and hone in based on some of those rules, but you gotta know what you want to do with it. Frankly, the the industry has moving from "fastest" to "performance per watt" for a while, since Moore's law has been difficult to overcome lately. You still get incredibly fast and efficient stuff, but long gone are the days of just saying "let me just buy the most expensive stuff" and that translating to the fastest system.
Yes, Moore's law has been challenged time and again, then some paradigm shift occurs again. When I was involved with the engineering aspects of CMP in the early 90's, it was CMP that allowed sub micron line widths for chip designs. The next barrier was when transistors only got to be so many atoms in size, they stopped acting like semiconductors. Time and again, the industry overcome so many obstacles. I was on occasion maintaining the process prototype equipment for an Intel Skunkworks guy, working with copper memory design back in the mid 90's. When did copper interlinks become common? a bit after that... Here is a paper on Copper Damascene process, that I was exposed to years earlier:

http://ireap.umd.edu/ppm/Papers/JES00706.pdf

I have forgotten more about semiconductor designs than most people ever have known, and haven't been involved or updated much since 2002.

[baseline bum]

Wierd. "install the thing, then plug everything in EXCEPT the USB header... then install the software... THEN plug in the USB header 'or you'll have problems down the line' "

A two-stage installation for the cooling unit? As if this whole thing isn't going to have enough shit to plug in and keep track of.... sheesh. This stuff was a lot simpler in 1998. (says crotchety old man) You whipper snappers and your fancy water cooled computers. In my day we used sticks and twigs, and thought we were lucky not to catch fire.... heh


Shit I didn't see that part. I have never heard of doing that. That video is for an older version, the Kraken x60. You could always go with a Corsair H110i GTX instead, they're really similar coolers and I have never heard of doing a two stage install with it.



(reads MB manual, and watches a few more youtubes..)

More impressed with the case, now that I have the whole thing apart. Very modular and flexible.


Yeah, I fucking love the case. I can't stand small cases that are hard to work in, I love having a full tower.




Wierd that the cooling unit sucks air into the unit from the top... to the bottom, which means it exhausts heat INTO the unit.... and is sucking air/dust in through the top, into the fins. Seems like you would want to do that opposite. There is already a big-ass intake fan that is filtering the air.

You would get a lot less dust in the unit, if it was drawing already filtered (if a bit warmer) air in.

Nah, the way he installed it is with the fans pushing air from the inside of the case through the radiator and exhausting out the top of the case.

[baseline bum]

Delidding sounds a lot like the kind of stuff I will be very leary of doing as a novice. No worries.

(reads guide)

Holy shit that is complicated. I will read it all, but this is making me not want to mess with the system after I get it built/working. The number of variables and settings increases the risk that I will get something wrong out of ignorance. (sigh) Ah well. Part of this is to teach my kids a bit, so the complexity isn't a deal killer, it just means I have to use more of my precious free time than I would like.

It's easy, you just have to set an afternoon and evening aside for doing the really boring stuff, watching stress tests and all to figure out what is stable and what isn't. I have used this exact guide to overclock friends' systems before. I know DJR210 runs an overclocked CPU and I would bet Cry Havoc does also, I'd be surprised if they told you it was very hard to get a decent overclock in. This isn't 15 years ago when you had to change bus speeds and multipliers with jumpers and painting traces to make them conductive and when you could fry your processors easily. Nowadays everything is in BIOS and Intel CPUs will throttle to prevent damage when they sense overheating.

Your board also comes with software that will automatically overclock your system. I hate using the software stuff like that because it dials in too high of voltages and it's not hard to manually overclock in the BIOS if you're willing to spend a day locking in reasonable settings.

If you're really not going to overclock you should seriously return that board for a refund and get a Z170 board and an i7-6700k, since that chip runs 4.0 GHz at stock. Because an i7-5820k would be an enormous waste of money for gaming if you're just running it at 3.3 GHz, and an X99A motherboard is double the price of something you'd want to use for stock settings. You said you wanted to overclock and didn't care about power consumption so I recommended really high performance parts, but without the overclock that $380 i7 cpu and $200 X99 board won't even give as good of results as my $250 Xeon E3 and $100 Z97 board do for gaming. Of course with an overclock your system would blow my Xeon and Z97 board out of the water in cpu heavy games.

[baseline bum]

But that's the "general" stuff, after that it really depends on what you want to do. If you're looking to drive 2 4K monitors at a solid refresh rate, that's all largely GPU bound. Your GPU will matter, and you definitely want to have enough video ram. You might want to consider a dual card setup too. In turn, that option will determine what kind of motherboard you'll be getting and maybe even the CPU type (if you're going to use dual 16x PCIE lanes, you might have to look into chips/chipsets that have 40 PCIE lanes. An M.2 PCIE SSD can suck up 4x lanes, for example).


PCIE lanes are almost never a bottleneck from all benchmarks I have seen. I can only think of one game that shows any difference running at PCIE-3.0x16 vs PCIE-3.0x8 or PCIE-2.0x16, and that's Ryse Son of Rome which shows about a 10% difference in average framerate with a single GTX 980. Otherwise we're talking minuscule differences, like 0.2% or so. In Eurogamer's SLI benchmarks they have dual 980 Ti systems doing better with the 20 lane i7-6700k than with the 40 lane i7-5960x. Maybe we'll see a difference once the next big die cards come in 2017, but for now PCIE lanes don't seem to be a bottleneck unless you're trying to run 3 or 4 gpus in parallel (and the performance scaling on 3 or 4 gpus is horrendously bad even on 40 lane cpus).

[baseline bum]

So Baseline... ElNono... Cry Hovoc...

How would you spend $3k for a computer. Monitors not to be included. That's a separate line cost. Just the computer build.

If you're into racing games you might consider VR. Project Cars looks really enticing in this review.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RA0Ri1UW1A

I haven't played the game myself yet, but I think I have heard Cry Havoc strongly recommend it before, so maybe ask him. He also says in his experience using VR that he hasn't had the same kind of problems the reviewer in the video above did with getting sick after playing intense games for 15 minutes. To really run VR well you could just keep your current computer, put in a better power supply, and install a GTX 980 Ti, and you'd be golden for VR. If you want to play graphically intense games at 4k I'd wait for the new Pascal chips rumored to release at the end of May. Perhaps two GTX 1080 would be strong enough to deliver a really consistent locked 60 fps ultra gaming experience at 4k. Two GTX 980 Ti in parallel are already pretty close. You could save your cpu and buy a Z97 SLI board, or you could buy a Z170 SLI board and an i7-6700k plus new DDR4 RAM for a little more performance or if you want to pass your XPS system to a friend or family member.

[baseline bum]

I know I'm tempted to get an Occulus after that review, but I'm going to have to play with it for a while first before buying to see if it makes me sick.

[baseline bum]

So Baseline... ElNono... Cry Hovoc...

How would you spend $3k for a computer. Monitors not to be included. That's a separate line cost. Just the computer build.

But to specifically answer your question, this would be what I would build for $3000 today not counting monitor(s), data drive(s), mouse, keyboard, OS, controller(s), etc:

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hcdHVn) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hcdHVn/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i76700k) ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15) ($88.64 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z170a) ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-memory-cmk16gx4m2b3000c15b) ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($149.45 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB HYBRID Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp41996kr) (2-Way SLI) ($709.99 @ Micro Center)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB HYBRID Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp41996kr) (2-Way SLI) ($709.99 @ Micro Center)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/phanteks-case-phes614pbk) ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-120g21000xr) ($169.99 @ NCIX US)
Other: Occulus Rift ($599.99)
Total: $3101.01
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-03 15:27 EDT-0400

It's $100 over budget, but if you're determined to spend $3000, might as well spend $3100.

[baseline bum]

Wierd. "install the thing, then plug everything in EXCEPT the USB header... then install the software... THEN plug in the USB header 'or you'll have problems down the line' "

A two-stage installation for the cooling unit? As if this whole thing isn't going to have enough shit to plug in and keep track of.... sheesh. This stuff was a lot simpler in 1998. (says crotchety old man) You whipper snappers and your fancy water cooled computers. In my day we used sticks and twigs, and thought we were lucky not to catch fire.... heh

(reads MB manual, and watches a few more youtubes..)

More impressed with the case, now that I have the whole thing apart. Very modular and flexible.

(edit)

Wierd that the cooling unit sucks air into the unit from the top... to the bottom, which means it exhausts heat INTO the unit.... and is sucking air/dust in through the top, into the fins. Seems like you would want to do that opposite. There is already a big-ass intake fan that is filtering the air.

You would get a lot less dust in the unit, if it was drawing already filtered (if a bit warmer) air in.

Also, if you don't want to do water cooling, this is an extremely good air cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608045

It's also fucking enormous, and you'd want to buy low profile RAM with it. It will easily fit into an Enthoo Pro, and is the quietest high end cooler out there (quieter than watercoolers even). Noctua fans are extremely high quality (and extremely expensive) and their heatsinks are really easy to mount.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emFN5KeGGnc

[Wild Cobra]

I know I'm tempted to get an Occulus after that review, but I'm going to have to play with it for a while first before buying to see if it makes me sick.

Looks good, but having only a 1080 x 1200 screen per eye is a disappointment to me. Such small physical size screens as use could easily be made a better resolution.

[Wild Cobra]

But to specifically answer your question, this would be what I would build for $3000 today not counting monitor(s), data drive(s), mouse, keyboard, OS, controller(s), etc:

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hcdHVn) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hcdHVn/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i76700k) ($348.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15) ($88.64 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z170a) ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-memory-cmk16gx4m2b3000c15b) ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($149.45 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB HYBRID Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp41996kr) (2-Way SLI) ($709.99 @ Micro Center)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB HYBRID Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp41996kr) (2-Way SLI) ($709.99 @ Micro Center)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/phanteks-case-phes614pbk) ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-120g21000xr) ($169.99 @ NCIX US)
Other: Occulus Rift ($599.99)
Total: $3101.01
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-03 15:27 EDT-0400

It's $100 over budget, but if you're determined to spend $3000, might as well spend $3100.
$3k isn't an absolute limit. Just a general ballpark of what I expect to pay before increasing price bears little gain in performance. Looks good, but why would I want the 6700K and 1151? Why not something like the i7-5930K with the 2011-3? Better memory channeling with the 2011, six vs. four physical cores... Sure, it ~ $250 more for the processor, but isn't that extra cost justifiable? I may as well stick with my motherboard and go to the K version CPU and one video card. I don't think I would see much improvement except for using the DDR4 memory.

[baseline bum]

$3k isn't an absolute limit. Just a general ballpark of what I expect to pay before increasing price bears little gain in performance. Looks good, but why would I want the 6700K and 1151? Why not something like the i7-5930K with the 2011-3? Better memory channeling with the 2011, six vs. four physical cores... Sure, it ~ $250 more for the processor, but isn't that extra cost justifiable? I may as well stick with my motherboard and go to the K version CPU and one video card. I don't think I would see much improvement except for using the DDR4 memory.

I was looking at it from a strictly gaming perspective. Because the hyperthreaded quadcore i7s have been showing real improvements over the non-hyperthreaded i5s in the last couple of years in gaming, I figured the six cores would end up beating the quadcores in gaming when I was recommending the i7-5820k to RandomGuy for highend gaming. There are a couple of sites I have seen these i7s winning in benchmarks (GameGPU.ru showed a lot of benefit to the 2011-3 cpus, but they only do tests at stock speeds). But Digital Foundry is the site I trust most since they publish the FCAT data for individual frames and select good areas to benchmark, and they showed the IPC improvements in the Skylake i7-6700k have slightly overcome the core count deficiency vs the Haswell-E i7-5820k and i7-5960x.


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

I have been a fan of i7 class CPUs for the hyperthreading and extra cores because most big release PC games are really designed with consoles in mind, and since the consoles use very low clocked low power octacores (well technically, dual quadcores). So I envisioned parallelization as the only way newer games would run well on those consoles. Sony and Microsoft have kind of thrown a wrench into that idea though in the last week, as it appears like the PS4k might have a stronger cpu(s) and Microsoft is saying they'll upgrade the hardware too in their XBox One. So if we're looking at cpus with stronger IPC in these systems, there is probably going to be a lot less pressure on developers to parallelize their games as well.

Still, you'll notice Crysis 3 performs a little better with the extra cores. That game was written with really high performance processors like the i7-3930k and so on in mind, and it scales well to the extra cores. Star Citizen is another game written straight for the highest performing PCs and it might really benefit from that kind of high end cpu too. But it's a guess and right now the 6700k is the best performing gaming cpu on the market.

[baseline bum]

But I agree, keeping your 4790 and adding a GTX 980 Ti would be a great option. Not for 4k though, if you want to play graphically intense games you're going to have to turn settings down pretty significantly to get a smooth 60 fps at that resolution. A single GTX 980 Ti is more for 1440p at 60 fps with the details turned way up.

[Wild Cobra]

Maybe I'm thinking beyond you guys. I was looking at things like the AVAGO MR9361-8i drive controller, and using a couple SAS drives, and an SSD. What ever I build, I will likely use the 2011-3 socket. I'm also willing to pay over $200/8GB memory to get to 20ns latency or less.

Maybe I shouldn't ask for opinions, if that's all you have?

[baseline bum]

Maybe I'm thinking beyond you guys. I was looking at things like the AVAGO MR9361-8i drive controller, and using a couple SAS drives, and an SSD. What ever I build, I will likely use the 2011-3 socket. I'm also willing to pay over $200/8GB memory to get to 20ns latency or less.

Maybe I shouldn't ask for opinions, if that's all you have?

You never said what you were looking for other than expensive. I only offered gaming recommendations.

[Wild Cobra]

You never said what you were looking for other than expensive. I only offered gaming recommendations.

True, but as you have seen, I really don't do much gaming.

I like a spiffy HD and memory!

[Wild Cobra]

You never said what you were looking for other than expensive. I only offered gaming recommendations.
there isn't much of a performance gain for gaming past about $1,600, is there? Isn't that where it becomes exceptionally more expensive for a little more performance.

I want a true General Purpose computer. Not just specifics applications.

[Wild Cobra]

Just dinking around a bit, I'm looking at things around these specs:

$461.42 MSI X99S Gaming 7 ATX
$214.00 Seagate 6TB ST6000DM001
$322.57 Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB NVMe
$699.99 EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR EDITION
$602.00 Intel Core i7-5930K
$630.99 Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB DDR4 3333

This was a quick Amazon pricing, and is $2,930.97 without the case and PS. The same motherboard with the non-gaming tag is about $100 less. If I chose to, I could add another graphics card and another 64 GB easily.

[ElNono]

PCIE lanes are almost never a bottleneck from all benchmarks I have seen. I can only think of one game that shows any difference running at PCIE-3.0x16 vs PCIE-3.0x8 or PCIE-2.0x16, and that's Ryse Son of Rome which shows about a 10% difference in average framerate with a single GTX 980. Otherwise we're talking minuscule differences, like 0.2% or so. In Eurogamer's SLI benchmarks they have dual 980 Ti systems doing better with the 20 lane i7-6700k than with the 40 lane i7-5960x. Maybe we'll see a difference once the next big die cards come in 2017, but for now PCIE lanes don't seem to be a bottleneck unless you're trying to run 3 or 4 gpus in parallel (and the performance scaling on 3 or 4 gpus is horrendously bad even on 40 lane cpus).

I'm not talking SLI... from what I read a GTX 980 is right about the saturation point of a 8x lane, and a 980Ti will likely be over. The idea I had was to just run one card per 4k monitor, not on a SLI setup. 4k is a ton of data to move around. The trick part with lanes though is that it's hard sometimes to even pull off 16x/16x, since some lanes are prewired on the mobo to the SATA and USB3. Sometimes you can only max out at 16x/8x

[ElNono]

Yes, two high end GPU's will likely be the end result. I also agree with the higest number of memory lanes. If I recall, some time back when I mentioned the memory channels using the 2011, you were one that scoffed at the idea. Do you still feel the same way? Didn't you also say 1920 x 1200 was a pushed 1920 x 1080 when I bought my WUXGA monitors?

Things change, people learn and change their opinions over time. You seem to have more intelligent thoughts when in this category than most, so i would like your opinion. Though you are wrong at times...

Not sure what you want me to tell you here. I apologize if I gave bad advice before. Memory speeds that are actually noticeable with framerate basically apply to the latest gen Intel stuff (skylake). Prior to that, getting a 1666Mhz or 1800Mhz stick didn't really change much of anything performance wise. But if you're getting a Skylake-gen CPU and Mobo, yes, do get the fastest DDR4 memory you can get (as bum did in his build).

[ElNono]

Maybe I'm thinking beyond you guys. I was looking at things like the AVAGO MR9361-8i drive controller, and using a couple SAS drives, and an SSD. What ever I build, I will likely use the 2011-3 socket. I'm also willing to pay over $200/8GB memory to get to 20ns latency or less.

Maybe I shouldn't ask for opinions, if that's all you have?

As a guy that has run hardware raids for plenty servers, be careful with those. You don't want to get locked in with a manufacturer and when the RAID card dies, you can't access the drives because they're on a vendor-specific format. Also, with the newer CPUs having the SATA controllers built in, it's debatable you really want a hardware raid solution. The hit on the CPU is fairly negligible unless you're crunching major numbers.

Look, if you're looking to max out drive speeds, setup a RAID-0 with SSDs... The question really is how many times are you going to need to move 1GB/sec... if the answer is many times, then it's probably worth it. If not, then might aswell blow that money on hoes, tbh

[baseline bum]

Not sure what you want me to tell you here. I apologize if I gave bad advice before. Memory speeds that are actually noticeable with framerate basically apply to the latest gen Intel stuff (skylake). Prior to that, getting a 1666Mhz or 1800Mhz stick didn't really change much of anything performance wise. But if you're getting a Skylake-gen CPU and Mobo, yes, do get the fastest DDR4 memory you can get (as bum did in his build).

Higher speed DDR3 memory can make a difference in Haswell too. I get a pretty nice bump to minimum framerates by replacing a DDR3-1600 kit with a DDR3-2400 kit. It's almost 10% in GTA V and more than 15% in Fallout 4 for me in the problem areas that dragged my framerate to its lowest, I mean these framerate differences were easily reproducible for me in both games as they happened in very specific spots. I was pretty shocked to see the difference in Digital Foundry's tests (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ejBlynOV8) and it motivated me to buy a Z97 board and the fastest RAM with good price to performance to try to make up a bit for running a locked 3.6 GHz Haswell quadcore (Xeon E3-1231v3). (I chose DDR3-2400 since it cost almost the same as DDR3-1600 but DDR3-2666 was way more expensive than DDR3-2400)

And as I said before, it made a pretty big difference. It doesn't do anything for games like Shadow of Mordor or Far Cry 4 that are straight gpu bound by my GTX 970, but GTA V can hit the cpu hard in areas and Fallout 4 hits the cpu hard everywhere. I'm kind of disappointed none of the tech sites uncovered this until after I had already bought an H81 board and a locked processor though, otherwise I would have probably bought Z97 from the start and a i5-4690k or i7-4790k (I built my system a little after Devils Canyon came out).

But it does nothing for my average framerates, since I'm mostly gpu bound in GTA V and since Fallout 4 runs with automatic vsync to 60 fps. But having much smaller dips in framerate at the worst cpu bound areas of those two games is pretty noticeable to me.

[Wild Cobra]

As a guy that has run hardware raids for plenty servers, be careful with those. You don't want to get locked in with a manufacturer and when the RAID card dies, you can't access the drives because they're on a vendor-specific format. Also, with the newer CPUs having the SATA controllers built in, it's debatable you really want a hardware raid solution. The hit on the CPU is fairly negligible unless you're crunching major numbers.

Look, if you're looking to max out drive speeds, setup a RAID-0 with SSDs... The question really is how many times are you going to need to move 1GB/sec... if the answer is many times, then it's probably worth it. If not, then might aswell blow that money on hoes, tbh

I was looking at those for speed. I don't think that card requires any specific drive, but maybe it does. I'll probably just go with the standard SATA 3.2.

[baseline bum]

I'm not talking SLI... from what I read a GTX 980 is right about the saturation point of a 8x lane, and a 980Ti will likely be over. The idea I had was to just run one card per 4k monitor, not on a SLI setup. 4k is a ton of data to move around. The trick part with lanes though is that it's hard sometimes to even pull off 16x/16x, since some lanes are prewired on the mobo to the SATA and USB3. Sometimes you can only max out at 16x/8x

Interesting, I haven't seen any PCIE scaling tests of a single 980 Ti. Here is the source for the 980 testing I was referring to (I think it was done before the Titan X and 980 Ti were released):

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/

[Wild Cobra]

Ooops...

That motherboard only allows one SATA Express HD, or the SSD. Not both... A quick search shows no available SATA express drives yet. 16 GB/sec... rather than 6...

[Wild Cobra]

Look, if you're looking to max out drive speeds, setup a RAID-0 with SSDs... The question really is how many times are you going to need to move 1GB/sec... if the answer is many times, then it's probably worth it. If not, then might aswell blow that money on hoes, tbh

I get annoyed from any perception of lag. I hate the hesitation from implementing something to when it starts, and finishes. Any amount i can reduce this affect, is a good thing for me.

[TDMVPDPOY]

Just dinking around a bit, I'm looking at things around these specs:

$461.42 MSI X99S Gaming 7 ATX
$214.00 Seagate 6TB ST6000DM001
$322.57 Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB NVMe
$699.99 EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR EDITION
$602.00 Intel Core i7-5930K
$630.99 Corsair Dominator Platinum 64GB DDR4 3333

This was a quick Amazon pricing, and is $2,930.97 without the case and PS. The same motherboard with the non-gaming tag is about $100 less. If I chose to, I could add another graphics card and another 64 GB easily.

u can get a 1tb ssd samsung for 320 or less if you look around more...trust me, they are dropping like flies

[ElNono]

Higher speed DDR3 memory can make a difference in Haswell too. I get a pretty nice bump to minimum framerates by replacing a DDR3-1600 kit with a DDR3-2400 kit. It's almost 10% in GTA V and more than 15% in Fallout 4 for me in the problem areas that dragged my framerate to its lowest, I mean these framerate differences were easily reproducible for me in both games as they happened in very specific spots. I was pretty shocked to see the difference in Digital Foundry's tests (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ejBlynOV8) and it motivated me to buy a Z97 board and the fastest RAM with good price to performance to try to make up a bit for running a locked 3.6 GHz Haswell quadcore (Xeon E3-1231v3). (I chose DDR3-2400 since it cost almost the same as DDR3-1600 but DDR3-2666 was way more expensive than DDR3-2400)

And as I said before, it made a pretty big difference. It doesn't do anything for games like Shadow of Mordor or Far Cry 4 that are straight gpu bound by my GTX 970, but GTA V can hit the cpu hard in areas and Fallout 4 hits the cpu hard everywhere. I'm kind of disappointed none of the tech sites uncovered this until after I had already bought an H81 board and a locked processor though, otherwise I would have probably bought Z97 from the start and a i5-4690k or i7-4790k (I built my system a little after Devils Canyon came out).

But it does nothing for my average framerates, since I'm mostly gpu bound in GTA V and since Fallout 4 runs with automatic vsync to 60 fps. But having much smaller dips in framerate at the worst cpu bound areas of those two games is pretty noticeable to me.

Those are pretty recent games though, but good tip. I actually ran my first DX12 game (Ashes of the Singularity) last night and I do get a 10fps bump on DX12 vs DX11 on my 960. It's not a lot, but interesting nonetheless.

[baseline bum]

Those are pretty recent games though, but good tip. I actually ran my first DX12 game (Ashes of the Singularity) last night and I do get a 10fps bump on DX12 vs DX11 on my 960. It's not a lot, but interesting nonetheless.

10 fps is a lot imo. I might actually have to buy Windows this time since it's offering something useful.

[ElNono]

I was looking at those for speed. I don't think that card requires any specific drive, but maybe it does. I'll probably just go with the standard SATA 3.2.

It's not the drive types. The big drama with hardware raids is that every controller stores the configuration of the raid in different places. It's all proprietary stuff. Some on the disks, some on the controller itself. Some controllers have built in batteries because they cache and a power loss can be big trouble. Also, if the card itself dies, rebuilding the array on a new controller can be tough depending on the controller. We used to use Adaptec for SCSI stuff, but that's obsolete at this point. Loved 3Ware for SATA, but they got bought out and as usual suck now. Like I said, now Intel embeds the SATA controllers on the CPU, what's called a soft-raid is not bad at all.

[Wild Cobra]

u can get a 1tb ssd samsung for 320 or less if you look around more...trust me, they are dropping like flies

Yes, but is it as fast as that one?

That one has a passmark rating of 13,400

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=Samsung+SSD+950+Pro+512GB+NVMe&id=10841

[ElNono]

Interesting, I haven't seen any PCIE scaling tests of a single 980 Ti. Here is the source for the 980 testing I was referring to (I think it was done before the Titan X and 980 Ti were released):

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/

I'm not super familiar with the Windows rendering engine at this point. I thought with Aero they moved quite a bit to be GPU bound, but they have this XPS format that AFAIK, it's like their proprietary PDF, and not sure if that's what they use for scalable graphics internally. With 4k, you're bound to have a ton of streaming going on. Lots of drawing commands for non-texture stuff, and then streams for videos and textures of web pages, etc. The framebuffer itself for the 4k res is massive, about 256MB IIRC (3840x2160x4). At 60fps, raw, that's 16GB/sec... Obviously, you don't do raw, that's why you have a GPU, but we're still talking massive data movement. IIRC, x16 PCIE 3.0 is 'theoretical' 32GB/sec... but they never reach that. You can see how x8 is borderline too.

[ElNono]

I get annoyed from any perception of lag. I hate the hesitation from implementing something to when it starts, and finishes. Any amount i can reduce this affect, is a good thing for me.

A RAID-0 SSD, does almost exactly twice the single drive performance. You can easily go from 450GB/sec to nearly 900... at that point, the disk speed is no longer the bottleneck...

[baseline bum]

Those are pretty recent games though, but good tip. I actually ran my first DX12 game (Ashes of the Singularity) last night and I do get a 10fps bump on DX12 vs DX11 on my 960. It's not a lot, but interesting nonetheless.

Is Ashes any good? Or does it just feel like a DX12 benchmark? Kind of like how Crysis 3 just feels like a gpu benchmark (the game is shit, unlike Crysis 1 which was awesome).

[ElNono]

Is Ashes any good? Or does it just feel like a DX12 benchmark? Kind of like how Crysis 3 just feels like a gpu benchmark (the game is shit, unlike Crysis 1 which was awesome).

I just installed it. Ran the benchmarks just to check the DX11 vs DX12 stats. I wanna finish Batman before I start that one, I'm about 88% in Batman...

I let you know after I played a few missions

[baseline bum]

I just installed it. Ran the benchmarks just to check the DX11 vs DX12 stats. I wanna finish Batman before I start that one, I'm about 88% in Batman...

I let you know after I played a few missions

88% in Arkham Knight? You're a brave motherfucker. Then again you played Unity too, right? Just don't tell me you liked Watch Dogs.

[ElNono]

88% in Arkham Knight? You're a brave motherfucker. Then again you played Unity too, right? Just don't tell me you liked Watch Dogs.

I'm telling you this game is underrated. It runs pretty dope and it's a lot like Arkham Origins. I don't even have the latest patch...

I did play Unity single player, and I did like Watchdogs (didn't love it like GTAV, but I did play it through).

[baseline bum]

I'm telling you this game is underrated. It runs pretty dope and it's a lot like Arkham Origins. I don't even have the latest patch...

I did play Unity single player, and I did like Watchdogs (didn't love it like GTAV, but I did play it through).

Holy fuck, Firewatch must be awesome then :lol

[baseline bum]

I don't even have the latest patch...


I see you bought it from ^^nosteam^^? :lol

[ElNono]

Holy fuck, Firewatch must be awesome then :lol

:lol Look, I just give my opinion, I know player's taste for games varies... but really, if you don't want to cut your wrists after playing Firewatch for 45+ mins, I'll personally add another Spur under your name there...

And seriously, you didn't like Arkhan Origins? I thought it was pretty darned good.


I see you bought it from ^^nosteam^^? :lol

been doing fitgirl repacks for games im not too sure about, tbh...

[TDMVPDPOY]

oi Wild Cobra

you going all out on new system, but what fkn monitor you gaming on? 4k, +34inch? u dont need all that bullshit, save urself 1k, and invest in a 4k monitor...at leasts the monitor will still be useful compared to parts becoming yesterdays technology once it leaves the shops shelves


u play racing sims, i still have a g27 in a box unopened in the garage for 2-3 yrs now...i dont console game, but only some racings sime support steering wheel...whats a good racing sim for the pc clown?

[Wild Cobra]

oi Wild Cobra

you going all out on new system, but what fkn monitor you gaming on? 4k, +34inch? u dont need all that bullshit, save urself 1k, and invest in a 4k monitor...at leasts the monitor will still be useful compared to parts becoming yesterdays technology once it leaves the shops shelves


u play racing sims, i still have a g27 in a box unopened in the garage for 2-3 yrs now...i dont console game, but only some racings sime support steering wheel...whats a good racing sim for the pc clown?
I plan on a two better monitors than my current WUXGA setup. As for racing wheels, I wore out three already and am on my fourth, though i wore them out on the PS2 and PS3.

I don't need you opinion of what I do or don't need.

I didn't need the WS6 I bought. I don't need my 9mm. I don't need a Hellcat, but I may buy one sometime.

[baseline bum]

:lol Look, I just give my opinion, I know player's taste for games varies... but really, if you don't want to cut your wrists after playing Firewatch for 45+ mins, I'll personally add another Spur under your name there...

And seriously, you didn't like Arkhan Origins? I thought it was pretty darned good.



been doing fitgirl repacks for games im not too sure about, tbh...

I wanted to cut my wrists after 20 minutes of Watch Dogs. :lol

[ElNono]

I wanted to cut my wrists after 20 minutes of Watch Dogs. :lol

To be fair, that was a game that came out in like May, when there was jackshit else to play, tbh... I mean COD:BO3 is way, way worse if you ask me...

[ElNono]

Talking about 4k screens, I was at Sam's Club this weekend, and I was floored on how much those TVs have come down in price now. You had 55" Vizio or LG UHD for around $700 bucks...

I currently have dual 27" Samsung 1080p monitors at work, but I'm tempted to pick up maybe two of these:
http://www.amazon.com/PB287Q-Monitor-3840X2160-Resolution-28-Inch/dp/B00KJGY3TO/

Or maybe one of this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JR6GCZA/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk

[Wild Cobra]

Talking about 4k screens, I was at Sam's Club this weekend, and I was floored on how much those TVs have come down in price now. You had 55" Vizio or LG UHD for around $700 bucks...

I currently have dual 27" Samsung 1080p monitors at work, but I'm tempted to pick up maybe two of these:
http://www.amazon.com/PB287Q-Monitor-3840X2160-Resolution-28-Inch/dp/B00KJGY3TO/

Or maybe one of this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JR6GCZA/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk

I would go with the 28 2160P" before the 34" 1440P, but then I would prefer a 32" to 36" 2160P. I'm not sure I would go for the extra fine DPI (dots per inch) of 4K on 28". I'm looking at a minimum $1k each for two monitors when I upgrade with current pricing.

Why not pay $1k each? My WUXGA monitors were $380 and $360 when I bought them. They are about 94 DPI. The 28" 4K will have about 157 DPI. One thing for certain, images will be real crisp! Worse yet, I don't like widescreen TV aspect ratios. I would prefer the wide screen computer ratio, which means a WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) monitor, and wow... the few I found before are spendy, and I think they stopped production on them because of the extra cost over 4K monitors.

[Wild Cobra]

I think I would be OK with two WQXGA (2560x1600) monitors. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-30-Inch-PremierColor-Monitor/dp/B00C2RPW8O/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1459751872&sr=8-8&keywords=WQXGA

[ElNono]

I would go with the 28 2160P" before the 34" 1440P, but then I would prefer a 32" to 36" 2160P. I'm not sure I would go for the extra fine DPI (dots per inch) of 4K on 28". I'm looking at a minimum $1k each for two monitors when I upgrade with current pricing.

Why not pay $1k each? My WUXGA monitors were $380 and $360 when I bought them. They are about 94 DPI. The 28" 4K will have about 157 DPI. One thing for certain, images will be real crisp! Worse yet, I don't like widescreen TV aspect ratios. I would prefer the wide screen computer ratio, which means a WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) monitor, and wow... the few I found before are spendy, and I think they stopped production on them because of the extra cost over 4K monitors.

Don't wanna blow that much on monitors... I'll probably use some of that dough to upgrade the vidcard when the new NVidia cards come out...

[baseline bum]

Don't wanna blow that much on monitors... I'll probably use some of that dough to upgrade the vidcard when the new NVidia cards come out...

Are you going to get one of the GP104 cards (1070, 1080) or hold out for the big die GP100?

[RandomGuy]

Shit I didn't see that part. I have never heard of doing that. That video is for an older version, the Kraken x60. You could always go with a Corsair H110i GTX instead, they're really similar coolers and I have never heard of doing a two stage install with it.



Yeah, I fucking love the case. I can't stand small cases that are hard to work in, I love having a full tower.




Nah, the way he installed it is with the fans pushing air from the inside of the case through the radiator and exhausting out the top of the case.

Yeah, I was thinking of putting the fans so they exhaust out rather than in anyway. The neoprene hoses were also something I noticed, as Wild Cobra noted. Hope they don't break down, given how poorly electronics react to being covered in fluid. :lol

I will still go with the X-61. Air cooling is probably mechanically simpler, but not as efficient I would guess.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, I was thinking of putting the fans so they exhaust out rather than in anyway. The neoprene hoses were also something I noticed, as Wild Cobra noted. Hope they don't break down, given how poorly electronics react to being covered in fluid. :lol

I will still go with the X-61. Air cooling is probably mechanically simpler, but not as efficient I would guess.

You mean putting the fans on top of the radiator to draw air through the rad and out the top? Because what they did was put the fans below the rad to push air through the rad and out the top of the case. Either way air is being exhausted out the top of the case. From testing I have seen it doesn't really make any difference if you put the fans on top or bottom.

I recommended water cooling because those are pretty high power cpus. Even Intel recommends water cooling for those, but the Intel water cooler isn't as good as the NZXT and Corsair ones (they're both actually made by a company called Asetek that patented the closed loop design with the water pump on the cpu block). That air cooler I posted above is really good and is on sale for about $10-$15 less than it usually goes for, but the Kraken x61 will be a little better. The Kraken x61 the cooler I would absolutely want in my system if I was building something like what you have.

[baseline bum]

I really wouldn't sweat the overclocking, RandomGuy, it's so much easier than it was 15 years ago. It's mostly just

(1) Let me turn up my clock speed by say 100MHz or 200 MHz in my BIOS (100 MHz bumps later on, 200 MHz early on)
(2) Stress test with Prime95 for 20-30 minutes
(3) Did it crash? If so, bump up the vcore a little bit, maybe 0.05 volt and go back to Step 2
(4) If not, go back to Step 1

When you overclock you'll usually get a lot of extra performance without much voltage for a while and then you'll hit a power wall where it will take way more vcore voltage to get even a measly 100 MHz more. I usually like to keep my speed a couple hundred MHz below where I start really running into that power wall, since I can leave vcore voltage lower. I probably wouldn't go above 1.35V vcore. Also check your temperatures when stress testing. I use Real Temp.

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

Anything 90C and above is too high and you should back down your OC a bit. But if you're at 90C on a Kraken x61 even stress testing with the Small FFT test in Prime95 you're probably already at that power wall.

Setting in an overclock is mostly just sitting there doing nothing and seeing if stress tests pass or not.

[baseline bum]

And yeah, don't worry about overclocking your RAM until you find a stable overclock for your CPU, like the guide says. You can screw with the RAM later on, the CPU overclock usually gives more performance.

[clambake]

i got a game for ya, motherfucker

its called life, bitch

its got winning and losing in it everyday, you vomitous mass

so get out there and prevail or die, sugar britches

[RandomGuy]

i got a game for ya, motherfucker

its called life, bitch

its got winning and losing in it everyday, you vomitous mass

so get out there and prevail or die, sugar britches

Will do.

[ElNono]

Are you going to get one of the GP104 cards (1070, 1080) or hold out for the big die GP100?

Gonna wait for reviews and price points... leaning 104 actually, but if there's a good deal on 100 why not?

[Death In June]

I was thinking of upgrading my graphics cards. Right now, I'm running 780 GTX SLIs. I was thinking of purchasing a 'ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB AMP Extreme.' Does anyone here think that I'd get more performance off a single card this way, or should I just get two of them...or would that be overkill?

[baseline bum]

I was thinking of upgrading my graphics cards. Right now, I'm running 780 GTX SLIs. I was thinking of purchasing a 'ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB AMP Extreme.' Does anyone here think that I'd get more performance off a single card this way, or should I just get two of them...or would that be overkill?

You should wait for Pascal man, it's looking like the GTX 1080 is only a couple of months away and Nvidia is claiming 2x perf/watt on it vs Maxwell. If true even with a 150W GTX 1080 that would be like a 20% improvement over the 980 Ti.

[baseline bum]

Gonna wait for reviews and price points... leaning 104 actually, but if there's a good deal on 100 why not?

I doubt they'll launch GP100 for a while in the GeForce series, you'll probably only see it in Tesla and Quadro for 2016. They probably want to be able to charge people $550-$650 for a while for the 1080 like they did with the 980 before launching their flagship chip. I'd be surprised if it isn't really cut down too like GTX 780 was vs the full GK110 GTX 780 Ti. That's been their release model ever since GTX 680.

[ElNono]

I doubt they'll launch GP100 for a while in the GeForce series, you'll probably only see it in Tesla and Quadro for 2016. They probably want to be able to charge people $550-$650 for a while for the 1080 like they did with the 980 before launching their flagship chip. I'd be surprised if it isn't really cut down too like GTX 780 was vs the full GK110 GTX 780 Ti. That's been their release model ever since GTX 680.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with my 960 at home though, I can wait a bit... I'm looking at the $400 price point though, so I think it's gonna be a 104 anyways

[baseline bum]

i got a game for ya, motherfucker

its called life, bitch

its got winning and losing in it everyday, you vomitous mass

so get out there and prevail or die, sugar britches

clam man, you got it twisted, Random is building the Riva Turbo X of PCs.

[Wild Cobra]

Yawn...

Waiting for Windows 10 to download on my Tower. I first cloned my drive, and am now downloading.

Silly me, I was going to clone it on a SSD, but bought a m.2 by accident when the tower need a regular mSATA.

Oh well... Shit happens. I can always reclone to the right SSD.

I have at least 5 weeks before I'll have the funds to spend $3k+ on a new system. Anyone know the expected price for it when it comes out?

Unless someone has some worthy opinions, I will likely do the build I mentioned in my earlier post. I would especially like opinions of different components that will make it even faster. In a rush, I found components for an under $4k budget, as I may go two G-cards or 128 GB. probable get a case that will hold 6 or more HD's and put my video collection on it.

[Wild Cobra]

I want a modular power supply, so I have no unused cabling in the case. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperNOVA-Crossfire-Warranty-120-G1-1000-VR/dp/B00JN1TT2M/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459829000&sr=1-3&keywords=atx+modular+power+supply&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A6906988011

Anyone have pros or cons on this one or others like it?

[baseline bum]

I want a modular power supply, so I have no unused cabling in the case. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperNOVA-Crossfire-Warranty-120-G1-1000-VR/dp/B00JN1TT2M/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459829000&sr=1-3&keywords=atx+modular+power+supply&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A6906988011

Anyone have pros or cons on this one or others like it?

Check JohnnyGURU.com for power supply reviews. The EVGA G2 models tend to usually be better than the G1 (G2 are made by a better OEM, Super Flower, the G1 are made by FSP), which is probably why they have double the warranty.

[Wild Cobra]

dp...

[clambake]

clam man, you got it twisted, Random is building the Riva Turbo X of PCs.

oh.


carry on

[baseline bum]

Wow, the Pascal GP100 chip has 15 billion transistors according to the CEO of Nvidia. GM200 (used in the GTX Titan X and GTX 980 Ti) was 7 billion by comparison.

[baseline bum]

GP100 will be a bigger die than GM200. GP100 is 600mm^2, while GM200 was 561mm^2.

[baseline bum]

Shit, the Tesla GP100 card won't be available until Q1 2017. So much for a GTX 980 Ti successor in early 2017.

[baseline bum]

God, the boost clock for Tesla P100 is 1480 MHz. No wonder it's a 300W card. :lol

[baseline bum]

No news on the GP104 chips though, so the speculation that we could see them in late May is probably bullshit.

[baseline bum]

I was thinking of upgrading my graphics cards. Right now, I'm running 780 GTX SLIs. I was thinking of purchasing a 'ZOTAC GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB AMP Extreme.' Does anyone here think that I'd get more performance off a single card this way, or should I just get two of them...or would that be overkill?

According to this bench from techpowerup in their testsuite of games the reference 980 Ti is about 69% faster than a single 780.

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_Ti/images/perfrel_2560.gif

Since SLI scaling seems to usually be 50%-90% for a second card it looks like a single 980 Ti vs SLI 780 is going to be a real mixed bag. I guess forget my advice to wait for Pascal, their CEO said nothing about GP104 today so these reports of Pascal GeForces in May sound a whole lot less reliable now.

[baseline bum]

Wow Quantum Break is such a piece of shit. Can't even get a locked 50 fps at 720p with a fucking Titan X. Microsoft is such a shit company.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK2BUeYqLVI

[ElNono]

^ read a lot of complains about DirectX Windows Store-based apps. For example, the API doesn't do "real" exclusive mode fullscreen, there's no overlay support, and it currently doesn't allow turning off VSync. I heard they're working on fixes on some of that, but basically what you're getting is a XBox One version of the games.

[baseline bum]

^ read a lot of complains about DirectX Windows Store-based apps. For example, the API doesn't do "real" exclusive mode fullscreen, there's no overlay support, and it currently doesn't allow turning off VSync. I heard they're working on fixes on some of that, but basically what you're getting is a XBox One version of the games.

The recent Gears of Wars release was another Universal Windows Platform disaster. Fucking game from 2006 couldn't run at 60 fps on an R9 390, what a joke.

[Wild Cobra]

A RAID-0 SSD, does almost exactly twice the single drive performance. You can easily go from 450GB/sec to nearly 900... at that point, the disk speed is no longer the bottleneck...
Well, that SSD I bought with the M.2 connector... They are far faster than SATA III speeds. Faster than the standard mSATA also. I just ordered a board adapter, and it will attach to the motherboard data bus. Not only do they lack the physical seek speed. If I looked at the data correctly, the one I bought is about 8 times faster than SATA III. The one I listed in my probable build is another 3 times faster yet.

[ElNono]

Well, that SSD I bought with the M.2 connector... They are far faster than SATA III speeds. Faster than the standard mSATA also. I just ordered a board adapter, and it will attach to the motherboard data bus. Not only do they lack the physical seek speed. If I looked at the data correctly, the one I bought is about 8 times faster than SATA III. The one I listed in my probable build is another 3 times faster yet.

Only if it's a PCIE SSD... you can get SATA III in M.2 form factor (uses the SATA bus, not the PCIE 4x lane). Not sure what you got, but you could check. But yes, PCIE SSDs do outperform SATA III ones.

Let me know what kind of disk speeds you get. You can probably use CrystalDiskMark for that.

[Wild Cobra]

Only if it's a PCIE SSD... you can get SATA III in M.2 form factor (uses the SATA bus, not the PCIE 4x lane). Not sure what you got, but you could check. But yes, PCIE SSDs do outperform SATA III ones.

Let me know what kind of disk speeds you get. You can probably use CrystalDiskMark for that.

It might be just SATA speed. I know the 950 I listed is a 4 lane. I guess I'll find out later. I'm thinking of getting that 950 Pro in the 512 GB just because it would save me from messing with the files, or removing programs.

According to Passmark, the one I bought has a rating of 4790. The 950 Pro 512 is at 13402. They say the Crucial you bought is 3475, and the 2-1/2 850 EVO Baseline recommended is 4241.

Probably is just SATA.

I had to order the adapter card, gave up trying to find one local. It should be here Tuesday.

Passmark has the original 1 TB (ST1000DM003-1ER162) from my XPS 8700 at 1176, and the 1/2 TB Barracuda (ST3500418AS) I cloned to, that came out of my Lenovo at 737. I notice the slowdown, but this is just a temporary home for my OS.

[ElNono]

Is Ashes any good? Or does it just feel like a DX12 benchmark? Kind of like how Crysis 3 just feels like a gpu benchmark (the game is shit, unlike Crysis 1 which was awesome).

Just uninstalled it after playing like 5 missions... It's not a bad game, but it's like a poor man's starcraft, IMO... Or, like startcraft but you build tons of ships, and basically you attack (or are attacked) in waves after waves after waves... it gets kinda repetitive and annoying after a while...

[Wild Cobra]

Only if it's a PCIE SSD... you can get SATA III in M.2 form factor (uses the SATA bus, not the PCIE 4x lane). Not sure what you got, but you could check. But yes, PCIE SSDs do outperform SATA III ones.

Let me know what kind of disk speeds you get. You can probably use CrystalDiskMark for that.
OK, I haven't cloned anything yet, but I have the SSD in the system. Didn't have any options in the OS to make the OS see it. The BIOS saw it on SATA 5. It is just a regular SATA SSD, so the speeds are going to be regular SSD speeds. I was finally able to initialize it through Disk Director 12, which I bought for my cloning.

I then ran tests. I already had a baseline Passmark test baseline from October when I installed my 32 GB memory.

1TB baseline/today/2nd drive/SSD. The original drive in the computer and the baseline today reflects the change from Windows 7 to Windows 10 as well.

Mark: 1285/1073/539/4698
Sequential read: 170.3/174.4/81/505
Sequential Write: 177.8/114.9/61.9/472.0
Random Seek: 7.0/7.3/6.2/321.8

I never tested the 2nd HD under windows 7, and I'll seat it again later. Right now, I'm moving my large documents folder, and doing some housecleaning before cloning. It's funny, my new laptop is in my locker at work, and I broke out my old Win XP laptop o make this post while waiting for the computer to do its thing.

I'll want to retest the 1TB drive again. See if the drop from 177.8 to 114.9 was a fluke or from the Win 7 to Win 10 change.

Time to clone in a few short...

[ElNono]

yeah ~500 is what you'll see on a regular SSD... they're the fucking bomb... never going back to an HDD, at least for the OS...

[Wild Cobra]

yeah ~500 is what you'll see on a regular SSD... they're the fucking bomb... never going back to an HDD, at least for the OS...
It's the random seek that really makes a difference when you have multiple files to load.

Now that I'm comfortable with the software, I'm going to buy two more SSDs. It will be maybe three weeks or so before I splurge the approximate $620 for the two, but I will likely get the 1 TB mSATA version of the Samsung 850 EVO for my laptop, and the 512 GB m.2 Samsung 950 Pro 4 lane PCIe to add to my Tower. The adapter card I bought holds two M.2 SSD cards. One SATA, and one PCIe. Learning as I go. Anyway, I want that extra speed, and capacity. So... Why not have two SSDs in my tower?

I retested the 1 TB HD, and never got better than 153 on the sequential write.

I wonder what Windows 10 does to slow that down by so much?

[baseline bum]

yeah ~500 is what you'll see on a regular SSD... they're the fucking bomb... never going back to an HDD, at least for the OS...

Man I just don't see what's so amazing about SSDs. Yeah I boot faster and my games I have on there load quicker, but if I was on a budget I would never pick one over just putting that money into a better gpu or cpu.

[Wild Cobra]

Man I just don't see what's so amazing about SSDs. Yeah I boot faster and my games I have on there load quicker, but if I was on a budget I would never pick one over just putting that money into a better gpu or cpu.

Glad I'm never on a tight budget!

[baseline bum]

Glad I'm never on a tight budget!

Everyone is on some kind of budget. If you're not then Nvidia has a nice dual Xeon box with 8 Pascal GP100 gpus in it shipping in a couple of months for $129,000.

[ElNono]

Man I just don't see what's so amazing about SSDs. Yeah I boot faster and my games I have on there load quicker, but if I was on a budget I would never pick one over just putting that money into a better gpu or cpu.

If you only do gaming, that's fine. I do work pretty much in all my machines, and things like launching Visual Studio is night and day with an SSD... even things like web browsers are a noticeable improvement (launches faster, reads off the cache faster, etc). Everything on the OS is just way snappier too, like finds, opening control panels, etc.

[baseline bum]

If you only do gaming, that's fine. I do work pretty much in all my machines, and things like launching Visual Studio is night and day with an SSD... even things like web browsers are a noticeable improvement (launches faster, reads off the cache faster, etc). Everything on the OS is just way snappier too, like finds, opening control panels, etc.

Well this is a thread about gaming, not about building workstations.

[ElNono]

Well this is a thread about gaming, not about building workstations.

:lol somehow we were talking SSDs... not sure if Cobra is building a gaming machine...

[baseline bum]

:lol somehow we were talking SSDs... not sure if Cobra is building a gaming machine...

Cobra's not building shit, not when he's talking 950 Pros in RAID tbh :lol

[Wild Cobra]

Everyone is on some kind of budget. If you're not then Nvidia has a nice dual Xeon box with 8 Pascal GP100 gpus in it shipping in a couple of months for $129,000.

LOL...

"not on a tight budget."

Now since that is a little over my annual pay before taxes, It would bust my budget. If I were to buy a Tesla, the payments would make my budget tight. As it stands, my budget allows me to spurge $1k every now and then, without too much thought.

[Wild Cobra]

If you only do gaming, that's fine. I do work pretty much in all my machines, and things like launching Visual Studio is night and day with an SSD... even things like web browsers are a noticeable improvement (launches faster, reads off the cache faster, etc). Everything on the OS is just way snappier too, like finds, opening control panels, etc.

Yep.

Even online gaming where milliseconds count, an SSD may make a difference.

[Wild Cobra]

Cobra's not building shit, not when he's talking 950 Pros in RAID tbh :lol

I'm not speaking to a RAID setup. I want a gaming machine that will also be a great general purpose computer.

[leemajors]

Well this is a thread about gaming, not about building workstations.

Q2 loads instantly off my ssd tbh. I think CH and I have the same processor, it has served me damn well. Never oc'd

[baseline bum]

:lol Look, I just give my opinion, I know player's taste for games varies... but really, if you don't want to cut your wrists after playing Firewatch for 45+ mins, I'll personally add another Spur under your name there...


You didn't like Firewatch? I hated the intro about the alzheimers wife, but once the game gets started it's pretty funny.

[ElNono]

You didn't like Firewatch? I hated the intro about the alzheimers wife, but once the game gets started it's pretty funny.

There's like no action... I played up until somebody wrecked my station, after catching the kids with the fireworks... it was very early, but enough for me...

[baseline bum]

There's like no action... I played up until somebody wrecked my station, after catching the kids with the fireworks... it was very early, but enough for me...

I really like the artwork in the game, and the dialog is hilarious. It's fun exploring the trails too. It's a pretty creative game so far.

[DJR210]

You guys are sleeping on Divinity: Original Sin.. One of the better illegal downloads I've done in some time

[ElNono]

You guys are sleeping on Divinity: Original Sin.. One of the better illegal downloads I've done in some time

I have it stashed... I started playing it for a bit, but wasn't in the mood to get into a long RPG at the time, so I put it to hibernate for a while...

[baseline bum]

I really liked Firewatch but the ending sucked.

[baseline bum]

Not like Dying Light The Following which had an incredible ending.

[DJR210]

I have it stashed... I started playing it for a bit, but wasn't in the mood to get into a long RPG at the time, so I put it to hibernate for a while...

Yeah it's fucking long as hell.. Without the Internet, I couldn't see myself ever finishing this game because the puzzles are unforgiving.. I can't see where you find clues to completing some of them.

The combat is addicting as hell in this game, much better than Wasteland 2's

[Cry Havoc]

You guys are sleeping on Divinity: Original Sin.. One of the better illegal downloads I've done in some time

Tried it and hated it.

[baseline bum]

Looks like Nvidia has halted production of the GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980, and GTX 970, so the Pascal GP104 chips can't be far off now. Kind of jives with newegg selling a fucking top of the line 980 Ti with an all copper heatsink for $560 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GeForce-GTX-980TI-GAMING-6G-GOLDEN-EDITION-/301762065847?hash=item46426bb5b7:g:Hf0AAOSwT5tWGRO 0).

http://www.techpowerup.com/221783/nvidia-reportedly-stops-production-of-certain-maxwell-gpus

Get in here DJR210. You gonna get a $330-$430 GTX 1070 that should outperform the GTX 980 Ti pretty soundly?

[Dirk Oneanddoneski]

Hey guys im building a 4K HTPC for someone that is NOT a gamer. Are there any cpus with on board video that can display 4K for streaming 4K video or will I need a dedicated GPU? Also any sweet htpc cases shaped like a cable box? Going to use an itx mobo

[baseline bum]

Hey guys im building a 4K HTPC for someone that is NOT a gamer. Are there any cpus with on board video that can display 4K for streaming 4K video or will I need a dedicated GPU? Also any sweet htpc cases shaped like a cable box? Going to use an itx mobo

If you go with a discrete gpu the GTX 960 would probably be best right now since it has hardware H.265 decoding. I don't have the slightest idea if you'd need that much of a gpu for it though, or if the IGPs in either the new Skylake chips or the Iris Pro 6200 in Broadwell would be sufficient for 4k H.265 decoding.

For cases the Fractal Node 202 might be along the lines of what you're looking for, it looks kind of like a cable box.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsDW0Q9Jeas

If you want a really small case you should check the Dan A4-SFX. Not sure if it's available for purchase yet though.

https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php

[Wild Cobra]

Broadwell would be sufficient for 4k H.265 decoding.

How much do you know about the decoding, or where can I find it?

When the Bluray vs. HD wars were proclaimed, I predicted Bluray would win for a few reason. That it would stream fast enough to play two video formats that HD-DVD wouldn't, and that the 25 GB/layer vs. 15GB/layer allowed many (most?) feature length movies to use only one layer, whereas HD-DVD would require 2 layers for all movies. Counter arguments were HD-DVD was cheaper, but that is out the window when 1 layer vs. 2 layers are used.

Anyway, seems I should base my video card decisions by similar standards. Is there a list out there someplace on caparisons of format performance for various cards?

[baseline bum]

Damn the shrouds for the GTX 1000 series look ugly as fuck

http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/04/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080-1.jpg

[ElNono]

Hey guys im building a 4K HTPC for someone that is NOT a gamer. Are there any cpus with on board video that can display 4K for streaming 4K video or will I need a dedicated GPU? Also any sweet htpc cases shaped like a cable box? Going to use an itx mobo

AFAIK, Skylake IGP will do hardware 4k HEVC/H.265 decoding, but not all stream formats (ie: it won't do 10-bit HEVC/H.265, only does 8-bit). A card like the GTX960, as bum recommended, will do 10 (and even 16, IIRC) bit formats on hardware.

So for compatibility, you're probably better off with a dedicated card.

[baseline bum]

I just started playing Assassin's Creed 1. Not bad.

[baseline bum]

Though I hate the menu system in AC1. If I want to exit the game I have to

1. Pause and go to Exit
2. Up comes the animus menu. Click Exit Animus.
3. Your character steps out of the animus. Pause and go to Exit Game.
4. Up pops the profile select menu. Select your profile.
5. Finally you can click Exit Game, and then choose yes when it asks if you're really exiting.

It literally takes about 90 seconds to exit the fucking game. Man I hate when a game doesn't have a quick Quit to Desktop option.

[ElNono]

Though I hate the menu system in AC1. If I want to exit the game I have to

1. Pause and go to Exit
2. Up comes the animus menu. Click Exit Animus.
3. Your character steps out of the animus. Pause and go to Exit Game.
4. Up pops the profile select menu. Select your profile.
5. Finally you can click Exit Game, and then choose yes when it asks if you're really exiting.

It literally takes about 90 seconds to exit the fucking game. Man I hate when a game doesn't have a quick Quit to Desktop option.

Alt-F4... works every time...

[baseline bum]

Alt-F4... works every time...

Some games really don't like Alt+F4 though, like Dying Light, where the savegame gets screwed up.

[ElNono]

Some games really don't like Alt+F4 though, like Dying Light, where the savegame gets screwed up.

yeah, it's an automatic kill... but works well 99% of the time...

[DJR210]

Looks like Nvidia has halted production of the GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980, and GTX 970, so the Pascal GP104 chips can't be far off now. Kind of jives with newegg selling a fucking top of the line 980 Ti with an all copper heatsink for $560 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GeForce-GTX-980TI-GAMING-6G-GOLDEN-EDITION-/301762065847?hash=item46426bb5b7:g:Hf0AAOSwT5tWGRO 0).

http://www.techpowerup.com/221783/nvidia-reportedly-stops-production-of-certain-maxwell-gpus

Get in here DJR210 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=42671). You gonna get a $330-$430 GTX 1070 that should outperform the GTX 980 Ti pretty soundly?

Yeah, a 1070 sounds nice if they're priced like the 970 was.. I've started conditioning my GF to expect a useless purchase in the next couple of months

[baseline bum]

Yeah, a 1070 sounds nice if they're priced like the 970 was.. I've started conditioning my GF to expect a useless purchase in the next couple of months

Gotta get a 1440p monitor too then tbh, maybe tell her two useless purchases :lol

[baseline bum]

Hopefully we get some real details and a launch at computex next month.

[Wild Cobra]

Gotta get a 1440p monitor too then tbh, maybe tell her two useless purchases :lol

Naw... Make it the card and two monitors!

[DJR210]

Naw... Make it the card and two monitors!

I'd go Ultrawide G-Sync

[baseline bum]

I'd go Ultrawide G-Sync

Phew, GSync 3440x1440 is about $1200 or so. Add in another $600 for a GTX 1080 to drive it. Ouch.

I think I'm going to wait for the end of this year or early 2017 myself. I'm a little pissed at how badly Maxwell is aging in comparison to Hawaii in 2016 (one of the reasons I keep recommending the R9 390 to RandomGuy for best card in that price range), so I might wait to see what Vega 11 and Vega 10 have to offer. Polaris is a complete non-starter though, as Polaris 11 is a 950 competitor and Polaris 10 will probably be around 970 performance (they have been advertising it as VR for the masses since January). Nvidia is really going to put the hurt on AMD this year since team red will have nothing to compete with the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 other than perhaps deeply discounted Fury X.

Then again, if Vega sucks and GP104 is disappointing I may just dump a bunch of money into a 1440p GSync panel and keep my 970. Since you have a 680 with GSync, would you say it's still a good experience running an underpowered GPU with gsync in hard to run games like Witcher 3 and GTA V? I mean 40-45 fps feels like 60 fps with it? Also does GSync completely eliminate microstutter? It's like night and day better vs a fixed refresh rate panel, right? Do you even try to hit 60 fps anymore in hard to run games?

[baseline bum]

Hopefully Computex will bring some new GSync monitor releases too, and some better prices on 1440p GSync IPS panels.

[DJR210]

Phew, GSync 3440x1440 is about $1200 or so. Add in another $600 for a GTX 1080 to drive it. Ouch.

I think I'm going to wait for the end of this year or early 2017 myself. I'm a little pissed at how badly Maxwell is aging in comparison to Hawaii in 2016 (one of the reasons I keep recommending the R9 390 to RandomGuy (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=1813) for best card in that price range), so I might wait to see what Vega 11 and Vega 10 have to offer. Polaris is a complete non-starter though, as Polaris 11 is a 950 competitor and Polaris 10 will probably be around 970 performance (they have been advertising it as VR for the masses since January). Nvidia is really going to put the hurt on AMD this year since team red will have nothing to compete with the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 other than perhaps deeply discounted Fury X.

Then again, if Vega sucks and GP104 is disappointing I may just dump a bunch of money into a 1440p GSync panel and keep my 970. Since you have a 680 with GSync, would you say it's still a good experience running an underpowered GPU with gsync in hard to run games like Witcher 3 and GTA V? I mean 40-45 fps feels like 60 fps with it? Also does GSync completely eliminate microstutter? It's like night and day better vs a fixed refresh rate panel, right? Do you even try to hit 60 fps anymore in hard to run games?

Honestly, no matter the game I play current or not, I run at 60 FPS or higher. Even with a 680 all I really have to adjust is AA and maybe shadows to medium and/or HDAO to SSAO or off depending on the implementation and I get the FPS I want.

Dark Souls for example, has a forced V-Sync, and I turned down shadows and maybe one more option that made little difference with a +100 Mhz overclock on my GPU at it locks at 60 FPS even when panning the camera in large environments.

And yeah, a ultrawide G-Sync is about 1200 atm.. I said that though because I cant see myself buying a non-sync monitor after using one for over a year, and the cost of two G-Sync monitors like Wild Cobra mentioned would be about the cost of a 34" Ultrawide anyway.. I couldn't game on a dual monitor setup, a big ass bezel right in the middle of the viewing space is crap.. It's bad enough with 3 monitor setup and having bezels off center.

[baseline bum]

Honestly, no matter the game I play current or not, I run at 60 FPS or higher. Even with a 680 all I really have to adjust is AA and maybe shadows to medium and/or HDAO to SSAO or off depending on the implementation and I get the FPS I want.

Dark Souls for example, has a forced V-Sync, and I turned down shadows and maybe one more option that made little difference with a +100 Mhz overclock on my GPU at it locks at 60 FPS even when panning the camera in large environments.

And yeah, a ultrawide G-Sync is about 1200 atm.. I said that though because I cant see myself buying a non-sync monitor after using one for over a year, and the cost of two G-Sync monitors like Wild Cobra mentioned would be about the cost of a 34" Ultrawide anyway.. I couldn't game on a dual monitor setup, a big ass bezel right in the middle of the viewing space is crap.. It's bad enough with 3 monitor setup and having bezels off center.

That's disappointing, so 40-45 fps still feels like crap even with GSync? So do you feel its real utility is in making occasional drops into the 50s still feel like 60 fps? Or is it just to go above 60 fps without tearing? Damn that kind of turns me off to GSync, the whole reason I'd buy it is to be able to run my 970 at 1440p without having to turn my settings way down. I would never want to turn settings like HBAO+ off, that's the whole reason to even own an Nvidia GPU. If that's the case I'd rather buy a cheaper non GSync 1440p panel and use that $300-$400 savings to go up to a better gpu.

[baseline bum]

I couldn't game on a dual monitor setup, a big ass bezel right in the middle of the viewing space is crap.. It's bad enough with 3 monitor setup and having bezels off center.

I agree with you on that, I don't understand multiple monitor except for racing games and flight simulators. And for those I'd much rather have the Occulus Rift for my peripheral vision than the three monitors.

[DJR210]

That's disappointing, so 40-45 fps still feels like crap even with GSync? So do you feel its real utility is in making occasional drops into the 50s still feel like 60 fps? Or is it just to go above 60 fps without tearing? Damn that kind of turns me off to GSync, the whole reason I'd buy it is to be able to run my 970 at 1440p without having to turn my settings way down. I would never want to turn settings like HBAO+ off, that's the whole reason to even own an Nvidia GPU. If that's the case I'd rather buy a cheaper non GSync 1440p panel and use that $300-$400 savings to go up to a better gpu.

Yeah, 40-45 is still noticeably less smooth, even though its not choppy. I do feel that its made for the dips just below 60 that cause technical hiccups without it.

It does depend on the game though. Dark Souls 3 maxed at 45 FPS feels smooth as hell. To me the G-Sync just makes everything a lot smoother in general, even when the FPS is at 60 without G-Sync, i notice issues that dont necessarily show in the frame counter.. It fixes all that shit.. I cant play on my HDTV anymore tbh.

[DJR210]

I agree with you on that, I don't understand multiple monitor except for racing games and flight simulators. And for those I'd much rather have the Occulus Rift for my peripheral vision than the three monitors.

Yup

[baseline bum]

even when the FPS is at 60 without G-Sync, i notice issues that dont necessarily show in the frame counter.. It fixes all that shit.. I cant play on my HDTV anymore tbh.

So microstutter? Usually I can fix that by putting a 60 fps cap on in addition to vsync. It stops those really annoying bumps up to 61 fps that are then balanced by drops to 59 fps. I guess I'll skip GSync then, it doesn't seem worth it to me.

[DJR210]

So microstutter? Usually I can fix that by putting a 60 fps cap on in addition to vsync. It stops those really annoying bumps up to 61 fps that are then balanced by drops to 59 fps. I guess I'll skip GSync then, it doesn't seem worth it to me.

Well the real selling point is silky smooth high frame rate gaming, if you are cool at 60 FPS with V-Sync then it's not for you. NBA 2k16 at 100 FPS + G-Sync is a way better experience than 60 FPS + V-Sync IMO

[baseline bum]

Well the real selling point is silky smooth high frame rate gaming, if you are cool at 60 FPS with V-Sync then it's not for you. NBA 2k16 at 100 FPS + G-Sync is a way better experience than 60 FPS + V-Sync IMO

The games I enjoy most are open world games that really hit the cpu hard. For instance GTA V 1080p ultra I can really only run about 85 fps on my cpu (I'm usually around 95% gpu usage on my 970 at such settings, so I'm not gpu limited). Witcher 3 I could probably hit 100 fps if I wasn't gpu bound, as that shit's always at 99% gpu usage and I'm usually in the high 70s to mid 80s if I uncap the framerate and run at high with a few settings like HBAO+ and water detail maxed out. Fallout 4 is straight cpu bound. And speaking of Fallout 4, Bethesda makes two of my three favorite series of games (Elder Scrolls and Fallout; GTA is the other fav series), and both of those force vsync to 60 fps anyways.

NBA 2k16 is awful using the ingame vsync to 60 fps, massive microstutter, but it's really smooth if you add an external framecap of 60 fps to the ingame vsync. If you're into shooters like Battlefield that are really designed to be run at 120 fps I can see the appeal of GSync, but to get those kind of framerates in the games I like would require ridiculously expensive hardware that I really don't have any intention of spending so much on. I don't want to be buying a $350 unlocked i7 and dual $600 80 series cards plus an $800 GSync monitor to be able to run those crazy high framerates at 1440p. Keeping up with 60 fps is expensive enough. :lol

[Wild Cobra]

I cant see myself buying a non-sync monitor after using one for over a year, and the cost of two G-Sync monitors like Wild Cobra mentioned would be about the cost of a 34" Ultrawide anyway.. I couldn't game on a dual monitor setup, a big ass bezel right in the middle of the viewing space is crap.. It's bad enough with 3 monitor setup and having bezels off center.
I use dual monitor with games to have other stuff open at the same time. Not split up the game.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, a 1070 sounds nice if they're priced like the 970 was.. I've started conditioning my GF to expect a useless purchase in the next couple of months

Damn, starting to sound like the GTX 1070 may end up around $500 and the GTX 1080 around $650. :pctoss

$650 for anything less than the big die GP100 would be nuts. I will definitely wait for AMD's Vega if this is the case.

Looks like GP104 is 320 mm^2 from these images leaked by chiphell:

http://i1024.photobucket.com/albums/y303/martmail55/101159w888j38x6sq853jc_zpshof8axy5.jpg

http://i1024.photobucket.com/albums/y303/martmail55/101209pf79qeqdiq9ze7ic_zpsvxvf0vn3.jpg

Seeing that Polaris 10 is only 232 mm^2, GP104 is going to shit all over it.

[baseline bum]

Pretty cool to see Nvidia can get a 320 mm^2 die on the GP104 chip after a node shrink. Last time they did this the GK104 chip (GTX 680/670/660Ti) was only 294 mm^2.

[Wild Cobra]

OK, even though when it comes to politic, I disagree with most peiople here, but...

If you had $4k to spend, what would your build be?

Required: PCIe 4 lane SSD rather than mSATA and 2011 chip format.

[baseline bum]

OK, even though when it comes to politic, I disagree with most peiople here, but...

If you had $4k to spend, what would your build be?

Required: PCIe 4 lane SSD rather than mSATA and 2011 chip format.

There will be a 10-core Broadwell-E cpu coming out in the next month or so most likely, and it'll be on the X99 chipset (LGA 2011-3). It'll probably be about $1500. I'm not sure which will be the faster SSD for you: a Samsung 950 Pro or an Intel 750 Series. They're both PCIE-3.0x4, with the 750 using a PCIE slot and the 950 Pro using an M.2. I'm not that up to date on SSDs since for my uses (gaming, programming, using MATLAB, shit like that) one SSD is pretty much as good as another. So I'd listen to what ElNono has to say there, he likely knows it much better.

[Wild Cobra]

Looks like the Samsung 951 series is faster yet than the Intel 750, and less money.

Though...

There is no dispute in my mind about Intel quality.

Maybe I'll go with the Intel 750 series.

[Wild Cobra]

There will be a 10-core Broadwell-E cpu coming out in the next month or so most likely, and it'll be on the X99 chipset (LGA 2011-3). It'll probably be about $1500.

Looks like less than $1500, but I'm not going to spend 4 times more for just 30% better performance.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, a 1070 sounds nice if they're priced like the 970 was.. I've started conditioning my GF to expect a useless purchase in the next couple of months

EA's doing a Livestream announcement of Battlefield 5 on Friday. Supposedly Nvidia is going to be part of this, and introducing GP104 to the press in conjunction with this. Also review samples of the lowest tier GP104 chip have been sent out already supposedly. Sounds like they might release the GTX 1060Ti and GTX 1070 first with GDDR5, and then trickle the GTX 1080 with GDDR5X onto the market due to availability of GDDR5X still being pretty low. If they use different memory I'll definitely be looking at the 80-series instead of the 70-series this time around. I don't think I want to wait for Big Pascal GP100 since I'll pass on having a fucking 300W space heater going in the middle of summer tbh.

[baseline bum]

I just wanted to tag RandomGuy. If you haven't gotten your gpu yet, it's starting to sound a lot like Nvidia's new Pascal cards are getting ready for launch. Nvidia has an event on Friday for the tech media but closed to the public. Since review samples of these cards are starting to be shipped, it sounds like this could be to get their cards out to the press for review and to tell them when they'll lift the NDA for the reviews to get published. So we might start seeing reviews of these in a couple of weeks and full retail availability by the end of the month. These should outperform the R9 390 at similar prices, at least for the lower end Pascal cards.

[baseline bum]

And I really don't think this is bullshit this time. I'm on the newegg mailing list and they're sending me big discounts for Nvidia cards. Stuff like a brand new GTX 980 Ti for $545, a GTX 980 for $380, and a GTX 970 for $270. These cards normally sell for $650, $500, and $330 respectively. I can't recall ever seeing a GTX 980 for less than $450 and mostly they have been $500 since the 980 Ti launched last May.

[RandomGuy]

I just wanted to tag RandomGuy. If you haven't gotten your gpu yet, it's starting to sound a lot like Nvidia's new Pascal cards are getting ready for launch. Nvidia has an event on Friday for the tech media but closed to the public. Since review samples of these cards are starting to be shipped, it sounds like this could be to get their cards out to the press for review and to tell them when they'll lift the NDA for the reviews to get published. So we might start seeing reviews of these in a couple of weeks and full retail availability by the end of the month. These should outperform the R9 390 at similar prices, at least for the lower end Pascal cards.

Ugh. Been putting it off, because I have been super swamped at work, i.e. work later than shit, and on weekends.

Beautiful case and MB sitting in living room...

[baseline bum]

Ugh. Been putting it off, because I have been super swamped at work, i.e. work later than shit, and on weekends.

Beautiful case and MB sitting in living room...

This late you should really consider waiting until the new graphics cards are released. It doesn't sound like it's far away at all now, and you're probably going to get a lot more for your money.

[RandomGuy]

This late you should really consider waiting until the new graphics cards are released. It doesn't sound like it's far away at all now, and you're probably going to get a lot more for your money.

At this point I am less concerned with fully optimizing my purchase than with just getting it done, and a functioning computer created, so that we don't have 4 people squabbling over one old-ass unit.

I wants my precioussss

[baseline bum]

At this point I am less concerned with fully optimizing my purchase than with just getting it done, and a functioning computer created, so that we don't have 4 people squabbling over one old-ass unit.

I wants my precioussss

You would literally be buying at the absolute worst time because node shrinks correspond to enormous performance gains due to much higher transistor density on smaller dies (the larger die you have the worse your yields due to defects in the silicon wafers they're cut from). If you want to buy right now, you should get on newegg's mailing list ASAP. They offer deals you can't get otherwise, like the $380 GTX 980 they were selling today. It would be a better buy than a $330 R9 390.

[baseline bum]

Anyways, the fire sale on this generation's chips looks like it's starting. The cards to look at, from weakest to strongest,

GTX 970 < R9 390 < R9 390x < GTX 980 <= R9 Nano = R9 Fury < GTX 980 Ti

[baseline bum]

Yep, Nvidia is definitely unveiling Pascal on Friday.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzy46KunkqA

http://videocardz.com/59517/nvidia-teases-geforce-1000-series-with-order-of-10-campaign

DJR210, get your ass in here! RandomGuy, the new Nvidia cards are very likely coming out really soon.

[Wild Cobra]

Yep, Nvidia is definitely unveiling Pascal on Friday.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzy46KunkqA

http://videocardz.com/59517/nvidia-teases-geforce-1000-series-with-order-of-10-campaign

DJR210, get your ass in here! RandomGuy, the new Nvidia cards are very likely coming out really soon.

I may have to rethink my selections.

[RandomGuy]

You would literally be buying at the absolute worst time because node shrinks correspond to enormous performance gains due to much higher transistor density on smaller dies (the larger die you have the worse your yields due to defects in the silicon wafers they're cut from). If you want to buy right now, you should get on newegg's mailing list ASAP. They offer deals you can't get otherwise, like the $380 GTX 980 they were selling today. It would be a better buy than a $330 R9 390.

Duly noted. I will save the video card for last then.

[baseline bum]

Duly noted. I will save the video card for last then.

Just based on past history, these node shrinks can be a really big deal both on performance and price. When the 28 nm GTX 680 came out it gave 25% higher framerates than the 40 nm GTX 580 even though the 580 used Nvidia's balls to the wall highend chip for that generation (Fermi) while the GTX 680 used a midrange chip from the new generation (Kepler, Nvidia names their generations after physicists). And they sold it for the same price because it's cheaper for them to manufacture a 294mm^2 GK104 chip (used in the GTX 680) than it was a 520mm^2 GF110 chip (used in the GTX 580). So it was a real win-win for both the company and buyers. Once the Kepler drivers had a few months to mature that performance delta between 580 and 680 increased from 25% to 45%, where stabilized. So you were getting 45% more gpu for the money.

With that said, I'm not sure we'll get that kind of value this generation, but I still think the bump will be significant. The reason is Nvidia's competition isn't as robust now as it was in 2012 when the 680 was released. Nvidia has about 80% of the market share for graphics cards vs AMD's 20% right now, whereas in 2012 it was 60/40 Nvidia over AMD. But they still can't price this shit too high if they want people to upgrade.

The chip likely to be announced Friday is GP104 (e.g. GeForce Pascal 104, Pascal is the new generation), and they seem to have segmented it into three products: the GTX 1060Ti, the GTX 1070, and the GTX 1080. GP104 is supposed to be a 320mm^2 chip, which is pretty damn large for an introductory midrange offering. It sounds like the 1060 Ti is going to have 6GB of GDDR5 memory on a 192-bit bus, so it'll have significantly lower memory bandwidth that the GTX 1070, which is rumored to have 8GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus. The GTX 1080 will differentiate itself from the GTX 1070 by having 8GB GDDR5X on the 256-bit bus, but GDDR5X can clock to significantly higher speeds than GDDR5 can, giving it more memory bandwidth that will be really important for 1440p and 4k. You'll also likely pay through the nose for it though, since the GTX 1080 looks like it's going to be the first commercial product to have it.

A conservative estimate would be the GTX 1080 being 15% more powerful than a GTX 980 Ti, which is the 601mm^2 balls to the wall current (about to become previous) gen flagship Maxwell GeForce chip that retails for $650. I imagine this GTX 1080 will sell for somewhere from $600-$700, as the GTX 980 was $550 at launch but I figure this new memory is going to drive the price up a bit. I will guess the GTX 1070 will be very close in performance to the GTX 980 Ti and will probably sell around $400-$450 or so. It would actually be very disappointing based on past history of node shrinks if it's only at 980 Ti level performance, but people will still eat it up at $430 or so for 980 Ti level performance. The historical price is $400 in this 70-series segment, but I think Nvidia can get away with charging a little more since AMD won't release a competitor to GP104 until Q4 2016 or Q1 2017.

Nvidia is probably going to go for a more midrange buyer with the 1060 Ti and sell it around $300, which is the historical price for 60 Ti cards at launch. I would guess something approaching GTX 980 performance here, as the competition from AMD should be strong in this price bracket as AMD is targeting an affordable VR card called Polaris 10 for June release. The bare minimum for VR both on the HTC Vive and the Occulus Rift is the GTX 970, and so that's the absolute weakest the 1060 Ti could be if Nvidia wants to sell any of them. And the 970 is 85% of a 980.

Nvidia will later introduce much smaller chips in GP106 and GP107 for the more budget levels ($130-$250). A 320mm^2 GP104 chip is likely way too expensive too produce for it to be in the budget oriented gpus, and the only time I can recall them ever using this class of chip in that price range was in the GTX 760 at $250 back in 2013.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy, I'll tag any posts with new information and reviews as they come in. I imagine we'll have a week or two after Friday before NDAs expire so reviews can go public, but it sounds like Nvidia is going to release these cards a little ahead of the May 29-June 4 Computex show to steal AMD's thunder, which is exactly what they did last year before Computex. AMD had been working on a GPU called Fury X that was going to compete with the $1000 Nvidia GTX Titan X, and they were going to sell it for $850. Right before AMD was about to launch it Nvidia released the $650 GTX 980 Ti, which is a barely cut down GTX Titan X, I mean we're talking like a 2% difference in framerate at stock out the box speeds, and the 980 Ti actually overclocked better than the Titan X. AMD scrapped their launch and had to spend a couple of weeks trying to see how high they could tweak their clockspeeds to try to match the 980 Ti performance, and had to drop their launch price to $650 to compete with it. And it didn't sell well at all.

[baseline bum]

But don't even think about holding out for the big die Pascal chips lol. Until January the big die 610mm^2 Pascal GP100 chip is only available in Nvidia's $127,000 deep learning machines, which include 8 GP100 chips and a couple of really high-end Xeon E5 processors. GP100 doesn't hit the market standalone until January (source is the CEO of Nvidia), and then it will be going into $5000+ Tesla and Quadro cards used in scientific computing, 3d rendering for movies, etc. I'd be really surprised if we saw it in a $1000 Titan class GeForce card before late 2017.

[baseline bum]

It looks like this leak about what the gpus will look like is accurate

http://www.legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080.jpg

since it matches up pretty well with Nvidia's Pascal teaser page with the countdown until the cards are revealed

http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/05/NVIDIA-Pascal-launch-coutdown.jpg

Link to the countdown page:

http://orderof10.com/humanityshallbeenlightened

[baseline bum]

It's starting to sound like GP106 is coming in addition to GP104. Not that GP106 is likely to be worth buying, it'll probably be overpriced budget crap.

[baseline bum]

yeah, it's an automatic kill... but works well 99% of the time...

Just finished AC1. Man that game is so repetitive. I really enjoyed the first few hours, but then I found I was doing the exact same mission over and over again. E.g., fight the soldiers and rescue the peasant, pickpocket the guy, collect the flags, run to the other rooftop, kill the three soliders before the time limit was up, beat up the preacher, spy on the conversation, and kill the archers without being spotted. Is the rest of the series so repetitive like the first game is? I mean AC1 felt like it had really great potential but it's so boring doing the exact same thing over and over again. It's like they did the first section of one city and then ran out of time to finish the game and just repeated the same old shit in every other section of every other city. Is there more variety in the rest of the series? Because the mechanics of the game feel pretty cool.

Another thing that pissed me off about AC1 is I would try to do the assassinations in stealth, picking off archers, sneaking around and such, but then I would get to a point where it wouldn't let me do anything but walk into the cutscene and then I just had to swordfight my way through the target's guards.

So does the series get better?

[ElNono]

Just finished AC1. Man that game is so repetitive. I really enjoyed the first few hours, but then I found I was doing the exact same mission over and over again. E.g., fight the soldiers and rescue the peasant, pickpocket the guy, collect the flags, run to the other rooftop, kill the three soliders before the time limit was up, beat up the preacher, spy on the conversation, and kill the archers without being spotted. Is the rest of the series so repetitive like the first game is? I mean AC1 felt like it had really great potential but it's so boring doing the exact same thing over and over again. It's like they did the first section of one city and then ran out of time to finish the game and just repeated the same old shit in every other section of every other city. Is there more variety in the rest of the series? Because the mechanics of the game feel pretty cool.

Another thing that pissed me off about AC1 is I would try to do the assassinations in stealth, picking off archers, sneaking around and such, but then I would get to a point where it wouldn't let me do anything but walk into the cutscene and then I just had to swordfight my way through the target's guards.

So does the series get better?

They do add new stuff in every iteration... By the 3rd or so, you can actually do full stealth, since you get the option to do certain things to complete the mission fully stealth or not. Then they added more side mission stuff which had different type of mini-games.

[DJR210]

Just finished AC1. Man that game is so repetitive. I really enjoyed the first few hours, but then I found I was doing the exact same mission over and over again. E.g., fight the soldiers and rescue the peasant, pickpocket the guy, collect the flags, run to the other rooftop, kill the three soliders before the time limit was up, beat up the preacher, spy on the conversation, and kill the archers without being spotted. Is the rest of the series so repetitive like the first game is? I mean AC1 felt like it had really great potential but it's so boring doing the exact same thing over and over again. It's like they did the first section of one city and then ran out of time to finish the game and just repeated the same old shit in every other section of every other city. Is there more variety in the rest of the series? Because the mechanics of the game feel pretty cool.

Another thing that pissed me off about AC1 is I would try to do the assassinations in stealth, picking off archers, sneaking around and such, but then I would get to a point where it wouldn't let me do anything but walk into the cutscene and then I just had to swordfight my way through the target's guards.

So does the series get better?

I never played AC1 but II and Brotherhood are good.. I bought Revelations which I have yet to really play. I don't like Pirates (go figure) Colonial bullshit, french revolution, Indians, or whatever this new bullshit they got going on. Ancient Rome FTW

[baseline bum]

I never played AC1 but II and Brotherhood are good.. I bought Revelations which I have yet to really play. I don't like Pirates (go figure) Colonial bullshit, french revolution, Indians, or whatever this new bullshit they got going on. Ancient Rome FTW

I heard 2 is the highpoint of the series. I probably need a 1080 to play Unity and Syndicate though. :lol

[baseline bum]

They do add new stuff in every iteration... By the 3rd or so, you can actually do full stealth, since you get the option to do certain things to complete the mission fully stealth or not. Then they added more side mission stuff which had different type of mini-games.


I never played AC1 but II and Brotherhood are good.. I bought Revelations which I have yet to really play. I don't like Pirates (go figure) Colonial bullshit, french revolution, Indians, or whatever this new bullshit they got going on. Ancient Rome FTW

I just started playing AC2, and man, it's an enormous upgrade both graphically and in control responsiveness vs AC1.

[baseline bum]

AC2 is fucking hilarious, where you automatically pickpocket anyone you bump into and then they start cussing at you in Italian. Plus it looks pretty good running on 1440p DSR, I can't believe the game is from 2009 with how good it looks.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy, it looks like Nvidia is announcing the cards to the public tomorrow.

728222996138168320

If this leak is accurate, the 1080 is 26% faster than an out of the box 980 Ti. But if it's running 1860 MHz that means it's going to be a huge power hog and I wonder how much overclocking headroom it would have.

http://videocardz.com/59558/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-3dmark-benchmarks

http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/05/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080-FireStrike-Extreme-VC.png

If this is true then I would think a GTX 1070 will probably be a little ahead of the 980 Ti. But we'll have to wait for legit benchmarks and not leaks to know for sure.

[baseline bum]

EDIT: N/m

[baseline bum]

Card is ugly as fuck though :lol

http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/04/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080-8GB-GP104-400-e1461874886978.jpg

And I'd never buy a reference card, especially for something as power hungry as this card looks like it will be. I heard so many noise complaints from people who bought Titan X and reference 980 Ti.

[RandomGuy]

RandomGuy, it looks like Nvidia is announcing the cards to the public tomorrow.

728222996138168320

If this leak is accurate, the 1080 is 26% faster than an out of the box 980 Ti. But if it's running 1860 MHz that means it's going to be a huge power hog and I wonder how much overclocking headroom it would have.

http://videocardz.com/59558/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-3dmark-benchmarks

http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/05/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080-FireStrike-Extreme-VC.png

If this is true then I would think a GTX 1070 will probably be a little ahead of the 980 Ti. But we'll have to wait for legit benchmarks and not leaks to know for sure.

Well, I will save the video card for last.

Heh, wife's car started making a rather nasty noise, so I might have to push off the purchase of everything else from the planned time this weekend. (will finally have time then to work on this).

I have another week or two to wait for the video card, so keep me up to date.

[baseline bum]

Well, I will save the video card for last.

Heh, wife's car started making a rather nasty noise, so I might have to push off the purchase of everything else from the planned time this weekend. (will finally have time then to work on this).

I have another week or two to wait for the video card, so keep me up to date.

I would guess these cards won't be in stores for three weeks or so, though I suppose we'll hear tomorrow since this is an official public Nvidia event now.

[baseline bum]

Damn man, the remastered COD 4 Modern Warfare looks fucking nice.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UO9WVuZTlg

[resistanze]

Damn man, the remastered COD 4 Modern Warfare looks fucking nice.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UO9WVuZTlg

GOAT CoD game. I'd give it a go again.

[baseline bum]

GOAT CoD game. I'd give it a go again.

Too bad you gotta buy the new COD that Activision shits out in November to get it. :depressed

[DJR210]

Damn man, the remastered COD 4 Modern Warfare looks fucking nice.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UO9WVuZTlg

Yeah, too bad you need to buy the 89.99 special edition of the new POS to get the remaster

[DJR210]

:lmao @ 414K dislikes for Infinite Warfare

[baseline bum]

That's interesting, apparently Nvidia is making the announcement in Austin today.

http://orderof10.com/bundles/app/countdown/00_21_00_00-cn3Y8huwp9PVcXG.jpg



http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/nvidia-livestream-event-later-today.html

Hey everybody, Guru3D has landed in Texas for two days of briefings with Nvidia. We'll talk about the new and upcoming stuff, with that said, we'll be hosting a Twitch livestream later today so that you guys can follow the announcements live from Guru3D.com The Livestream event will start at 6PM PST / 3:00 AM Friday (night), in Amsterdam, Netherlands (please use a timezone converter for your local time). Currently I cannot share any further details, but a famous mathematician will likely be involved here. Check back here on the site, we'll have a HD embedded link up and running around the launch time of the event.

We'll stream the TWITCH ink from here, if it fails we'll go through U stream.

[baseline bum]

Their event is open to the public. Damn I should go start a youtube channel, drive up there today, and see if they'll give me a 1080 to test. :lol

728607871936516096

[baseline bum]

LOL doing their reveal in AMD territory.

[baseline bum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Sk7hoq_nA

The reveal is at 3PM CST
https://www.twitch.tv/battlefield

[baseline bum]

Apparently it's supposed to be Battlefield 1, and set in WWI.

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/battlefield_1_leak-635x709.jpg

But I guess we'll know for sure in 2 1/2 hours. :lol

[Cry Havoc]

Apparently it's supposed to be Battlefield 1, and set in WWI.

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/battlefield_1_leak-635x709.jpg

But I guess we'll know for sure in 2 1/2 hours. :lol

That looks more dieselpunk to me than straight WW1. Maybe alternate reality?

Side note: Have you (or anyone else) played Wolftenstein A New Order? It's a few years old but I finished it some months back and it was absolutely fantastic. Highly recommend for a fantastical WW2 shooter. Some of the most realistically brutal deaths in the game, you really feel them, in kind of a bad way.

[baseline bum]

That looks more dieselpunk to me than straight WW1. Maybe alternate reality?

Side note: Have you (or anyone else) played Wolftenstein A New Order? It's a few years old but I finished it some months back and it was absolutely fantastic. Highly recommend for a fantastical WW2 shooter. Some of the most realistically brutal deaths in the game, you really feel them, in kind of a bad way.

Harlem Hellfighters were a black infantry regiment in WWI and WWII according to Wikipedia. Dude on the cover is also holding a Mauser C96, which screams WWI.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, WWI it is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ

[Cry Havoc]

Damn, the 7 Nation Army song is fucking awesome paired with the trailer. The lyrics are such a natural fit. :lol

[baseline bum]

I wonder if AMD is going to start feeling the pressure to bump their release date up. Considering Nvidia is supposed to be releasing a GTX 1060 Ti according to rumors, AMD better get Polaris 10 out quick to counter that. Too bad AMD's counter to the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 won't come out until 2017 though (Vega 11).

[baseline bum]

The benchmark I'm most interested in seeing with Pascal is for Quantum Break. Maxwell gets fucking murdered by this game, supposedly the problem is if Maxwell is doing rendering work it has to flush everything and wait for the chip to idle before switching to compute, and vice versa, while AMD cards can switch between render and compute workloads immediately. Supposedly Pascal will be able to do this too, and Pascal is supposed to be a lot more like GCN than Maxwell was.

[baseline bum]

Are they actually launching today? Get in here DJR210. :lol

Nvidia posted this on their blog today and then immediately deleted it, but you can still see it in the google cache


Our First Virtual Reality Experience, VR Funhouse, Shows What Pascal Can Do for VR

With the launch of our GeForce GTX 1080 [ADD PRESS RELEASE LINK], we’re announcing the first virtual reality experience we’ve created from the ground up — NVIDIA VR Funhouse — to highlight what our Pascal-based GPU can do for VR.

VR Funhouse is built to bring a new level of immersion to VR by enhancing what you see, hear and touch through a combination of great graphics, fully interactive audio and simulated physics. The HTC Vive-compatible, room-scale experience is coming soon to your GeForce GTX PC through Valve’s Steam digital distribution service.

Players can bounce between ten different mini-games, which let them tackle carnival-inspired challenges such as tossing basketballs, popping balloons, and shoot at targets fired from a cartoonish cannon. ADD DETAILS ABOUT OPEN-SOURCING FOR COMMUNITY, IF APPROPRIATE, HERE.

While our experience is packed with whimsical touches, it’s built to show off Pascal’s groundbreaking technologies. It’s the most technically advanced VR experience yet. Lift the lid and here are just a few of the technologies you’ll find behind all the fun:

NVIDIA Flow — Grab a bow and arrow in our target-shooting mini-game. Set the arrow aflame and you’ll be able to shoot it at targets that burst into flames when they’re hit. Our NVIDIA Flow technology physically simulates experiences such as fire throughout VR Funhouse.
NVIDIA HairWorks — The whimsical feel of our colorful “The Mole the Merrier!” and “Knock’Em Silly” challenges is enhanced by NVIDIA HairWorks technology. Jab at your targets. Give them a knock and you’ll see their colorful hair bounce. Or pat them on the head to flatten their jazzy haircuts.
VRWorks Physics — Poke, punch, pound and explore. VR Funhouse is filled with objects that you can interact with in surprising ways using your hand controllers. Our PhysX technology for VR gives the objects in the game realistic physical behavior, enabling proper graphics, collision detection, and haptics force feedback.
NVIDIA FleX — In our “He’s Flexible” mini-game, you’ll be able to pick up gooey, colorful blobs — that stretch and jiggle in surprising ways in your hand — toss them at targets and watch them ooze toward the ground. You’ll find this next-generation particle-based physical simulation used all over VR Funhouse.
NVIDIA VRWorks Audio — Walk into “Flight of the Clown,” and you’ll need to use your ears to locate a stealthy drone. VRWorks Audio uses our Pascal GPUs to ray trace sound waves in real-time, realistically simulating how audio propagates and reflects across the room. The reflections and echoes created by VRWorks Audio will test your skills in locating the drone.
VR SLI — The more, the merrier. If you’ve got two GPUs, this technology will let one GPU render images to your left eye, and the other to your right, maximizing performance and minimizing latency.
But Wait, There’s More

These are just a few of the ways our VRWorks technology is enhancing VR Funhouse.

For a closer look at these technologies and others you’ll be able to experience — such as our new Single Pass Stereo and Lens Matched Shading — dive into our in-depth looks at VRWorks [INSERT LINK WHEN LIVE] and VR Funhouse [INSERT LINK WHEN LIVE] on GeForce.com.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2OVLJnrNUyIJ:https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/vr-funhouse-pascal/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

[DJR210]

Nice

[baseline bum]

GTX 1080

http://i.imgur.com/8wGsLtG.jpg

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/geforce-gtx-1080

10 GB GDDR5X clocked at 10 GHz effective speed
Base clock: 1607 MHz
Boost clock: 1733 MHz
180W TDP

Memory Bus Width: 256 bit (980 Ti is 384 bit)
Memory bandwidth: 320 GB/s (980 Ti has 336.5 GB/s)



They're showing one running at 2.1 GHz core clock in the presentation, claimed it was on air cooling. No price, no launch date so far, and no mention of the GTX 1070 or 1060 Ti. They're claiming about 22% higher performance than Titan X.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy, the GTX 1070 will be for sale on June 10th. Nvidia claims it'll be a little faster than Titan X (which is very slightly faster than the 980 Ti) and the MSRP is $379, so you're looking at about a 35% gain in performance for $50 more than the R9 390 I recommended a few months ago. That's a no-brainer in my opinion, it's far and away the best price to performance card out there at the high end. Of course assuming they're telling the truth, which we'll find out when benchmarks release in the next few weeks.

At $379 this card is going to sell like crazy, so I'd be prepared to buy at midnight on June 10 if possible.

[baseline bum]

That's about $40 cheaper than I was expecting the GTX 1070 to sell for. Nvidia is really putting some heat on AMD with this card the same way they did with the 970 in 2014.

[baseline bum]

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/10305/SSP_190_575px.JPG

[ElNono]

Might have to pick one up, tbh

[baseline bum]

Might have to pick one up, tbh

I have heard people saying Maxwell has problems switching between render and compute workloads, that you have to flush everything and wait for the GPU to idle to switch from render to compute workloads and vice-versa. While supposedly AMD doesn't have that kind of penalty. From your experience programming on Maxwell and GCN is this true? It might explain why the 970 is getting murdered by the 390 in games like Quantum Break and Hitman.

[ElNono]

I have heard people saying Maxwell has problems switching between render and compute workloads, that you have to flush everything and wait for the GPU to idle to switch from render to compute workloads and vice-versa. While supposedly AMD doesn't have that kind of penalty. From your experience programming on Maxwell and GCN is this true? It might explain why the 970 is getting murdered by the 390 in games like Quantum Break and Hitman.

Yes, AMD has a nice async compute system, BUT, it's really extremely dependent on how your setup is. For example, now I'm writing for the PS4, and while the async compute stuff is really nifty, there's other drawbacks that are platform specific. For example, the PS4 has a unified memory system. It's fast and has multiple buses, but because you can designate memory areas that are accessible by both the CPU and GPU, you can run into some bus and cache stalls. The good thing with consoles though, is that you get a lot more flexibility about processor and memory usage, so it's about finding your weak spots, figuring out what's going on, and optimizing.

I'm actually just getting started on a fairly big project (and making crazy bank, tbh), that's why I haven't been posting much :lol

[baseline bum]

Yes, AMD has a nice async compute system, BUT, it's really extremely dependent on how your setup is. For example, now I'm writing for the PS4, and while the async compute stuff is really nifty, there's other drawbacks that are platform specific. For example, the PS4 has a unified memory system. It's fast and has multiple buses, but because you can designate memory areas that are accessible by both the CPU and GPU, you can run into some bus and cache stalls. The good thing with consoles though, is that you get a lot more flexibility about processor and memory usage, so it's about finding your weak spots, figuring out what's going on, and optimizing.

I'm actually just getting started on a fairly big project (and making crazy bank, tbh), that's why I haven't been posting much :lol

Oh good, I was scared you got deported. Supposedly Pascal doesn't have this big penalty switching between compute and render workloads, so I'm really interested to see how the GCN friendly games like Hitman and Quantum Break stack up on Pascal.

[baseline bum]

Yes, AMD has a nice async compute system, BUT, it's really extremely dependent on how your setup is. For example, now I'm writing for the PS4, and while the async compute stuff is really nifty, there's other drawbacks that are platform specific. For example, the PS4 has a unified memory system. It's fast and has multiple buses, but because you can designate memory areas that are accessible by both the CPU and GPU, you can run into some bus and cache stalls. The good thing with consoles though, is that you get a lot more flexibility about processor and memory usage, so it's about finding your weak spots, figuring out what's going on, and optimizing.

I'm actually just getting started on a fairly big project (and making crazy bank, tbh), that's why I haven't been posting much :lol

Also, what do you think about the memory bandwidth on the 1080 vs 1070? They're using 256 bit buses so even at 10 GHz effective the 1080 has slightly less memory bandwidth than does that 384 bit 980 Ti with its 7 GHz GDDR5. Do you think 1070 is likely to be killed by that 256 bit bus with 7GHz or 8 GHz effective GDDR5 at 1440p? I imagine it'll really hurt it in 4k. But then again the Fury X murders everything out there for memory bandwidth with a 4096 bit bus and chips clocked at 1GHz, and it is still losing to the 980 Ti in even 4k gaming performance most of the tine.

[ElNono]

Also, what do you think about the memory bandwidth on the 1080 vs 1070? They're using 256 bit buses so even at 10 GHz effective the 1080 has slightly less memory bandwidth than does that 384 bit 980 Ti with its 7 GHz GDDR5. Do you think 1070 is likely to be killed by that 256 bit bus with 7GHz or 8 GHz effective GDDR5 at 1440p? I imagine it'll really hurt it in 4k. But then again the Fury X murders everything out there for memory bandwidth with a 4096 bit bus and chips clocked at 1GHz, and it is still losing to the 980 Ti in even 4k gaming performance most of the tine.

Actually, for 4k, the rendering pipeline is a little different. It's more of a tiled-type system. I'm still reading up on it since this thing I'm working on has to support 4k on the Neo. But there's some trickery going on so you don't have to render a full 4k frame every vsync and the bandwidth that consumes. The thing with these 'advanced' DX12 style units is that there's basically multithreading support on the card itself. As long as you can load up workloads that can be done independently and in parallel, you can really max these things out throughput-wise. IIRC, you can also chain workloads to automatically trigger when you join one or more threads, so that's a lot of stuff you had to sync from the CPU, but now the cards are smart enough so you can send up work queues and they'll mostly be entirely GPU bound.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy, here's some info about the upcoming AMD cards.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMfGJf1KWWk

Based on official word from AMD, this card isn't going to be competing with GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, but instead trying to expand the userbase of VR capable PCs. So most likely what we'd be looking at here is R9 390 level performance for a lower price than the 390 sells for, and using a lot less power, as they have already demoed Polaris 11 (the slower version of the chip) at the GTC show in January and its power consumption was really impressive. Unless they give a really steep price discount to the upcoming R9 480x vs the currently available R9 390, it looks like the GTX 1070 at $380 is going to be a much better buy. We still have to wait for benchmarks to see how GTX 1070 handles compute effects, but shoring up this weakness of the current gen Maxwell with the next gen Pascal seems to have been a focus for Nvidia, and I expect this will have been taken care of.

[DJR210]

The specs on the new Nvidia cards look sick as hell.. 8 GB of bullshit free VRAM on the 1070 is nice, too.. Regarding the GDDR5X memory on the 1080, what exactly is that gonna lead to benchmark/graphics wise?? Is it gonna provide any noticeable gains?? Less pop up?? What?

[baseline bum]

Actually, for 4k, the rendering pipeline is a little different. It's more of a tiled-type system. I'm still reading up on it since this thing I'm working on has to support 4k on the Neo. But there's some trickery going on so you don't have to render a full 4k frame every vsync and the bandwidth that consumes. The thing with these 'advanced' DX12 style units is that there's basically multithreading support on the card itself. As long as you can load up workloads that can be done independently and in parallel, you can really max these things out throughput-wise. IIRC, you can also chain workloads to automatically trigger when you join one or more threads, so that's a lot of stuff you had to sync from the CPU, but now the cards are smart enough so you can send up work queues and they'll mostly be entirely GPU bound.

Are you talking 4k on the Neo or 4k in general? Do you see the memory bandwidth of the 1070 hurting it in say 1440p vs the 980 Ti there, given the 980 Ti has a 336GB/s memory bandwidth while the 1070 will only have either 224GB/s or 256GB/s, depending on if they use 7GHz or 8GHz chips? What about 1080 at 1440p with 320GB/s?

[baseline bum]

The specs on the new Nvidia cards look sick as hell.. 8 GB of bullshit free VRAM on the 1070 is nice, too.. Regarding the GDDR5X memory on the 1080, what exactly is that gonna lead to benchmark/graphics wise?? Is it gonna provide any noticeable gains?? Less pop up?? What?

The 1070 is going to have significantly less memory bandwidth than the 1080 and 980 Ti / Titan X. The 980 Ti / Titan X have a 384 bit memory bus while the 1070 and 1080 have a 256 bit one. So with 10 GHz GDDR5X the memory bandwidth of the 1080 is

10 GHz * 256 bit = 2560 Gb/s = 320 GB/s.

With the 980 Ti / Titan X using 7 GHz GDDR5 its memory bandwidth is

7 GHz * 384 bit = 2688 Gb/s = 336 GB/s.

With 7 GHz GDDR5 the 1070 would have memory bandwidth

7 GHz * 256 bit = 1792 Gb/s = 224 GB/s,

same as the 980. Hopefully it'll have 8 GHz GDDR5 to increase the memory bandwidth to

8 GHz * 256 bit = 2048 Gb/s = 256 GB/s.

[ElNono]

Are you talking 4k on the Neo or 4k in general? Do you see the memory bandwidth of the 1070 hurting it in say 1440p vs the 980 Ti there, given the 980 Ti has a 336GB/s memory bandwidth while the 1070 will only have either 224GB/s or 256GB/s, depending on if they use 7GHz or 8GHz chips? What about 1080 at 1440p with 320GB/s?

Rendering for 4k in general requires some trickery, it's just massive amount of data and processing. The bandwidth is entirely dependent on the game/what you're rendering. You use bandwidth to read/write textures, vectors, shadow maps, depth buffers, stencil buffers, etc. If you do little compute, then bandwidth becomes more prominent, because you're likely maxing that out instead of GPU processing (Bandwidth would be your bottleneck). If you're doing a lot of compute, then GPU clock speed will likely be your bottleneck. Most modern games do multi-pass rendering though, that's why you want bandwidth to be high. On the other hand, having a better compute engine allows for better parallelism. For example if your compute work doesn't necessarily affect the current render pass, you could run them both in parallel, with bandwidth used exclusively for the render. This wasn't necessarily possible with DX11, that's why APIs like Vulcan came in (and now DX12). So, regardless of bandwidth, there's gains to be had that way. But you probably need to rework your render pipeline to take advantage of that. If you use an middleware engines like Unreal, Unity or Phyre, you get support for that stuff basically for free, which is nice.

[ElNono]

The 1070 is going to have significantly less memory bandwidth than the 1080 and 980 Ti / Titan X. The 980 Ti / Titan X have a 384 bit memory bus while the 1070 and 1080 have a 256 bit one. So with 10 GHz GDDR5X the memory bandwidth of the 1080 is

10 GHz * 256 bit = 2560 Gb/s = 320 GB/s.

With the 980 Ti / Titan X using 7 GHz GDDR5 its memory bandwidth is

7 GHz * 384 bit = 2688 Gb/s = 336 GB/s.

With 7 GHz GDDR5 the 1070 would have memory bandwidth

7 GHz * 256 bit = 1792 Gb/s = 224 GB/s,

same as the 980. Hopefully it'll have 8 GHz GDDR5 to increase the memory bandwidth to

8 GHz * 256 bit = 2048 Gb/s = 256 GB/s.

That's not correct. The X in GDDR5X means it can prefetch 16 bytes at a time as opposed to 8 bytes that GDDR5 did.

So the calculation goes from "DDR clock * 2 * (Bus Width / 8)" -> "DDR clock * 4 * (Bus Width / 8)" for GDDR5X (these are theoretical maximums in both cases).

That makes the 1080: 20 GHz * 256 bit = ~640 GB/s

See here: http://wccftech.com/micron-gddr5x-memory-analysis-nvidia-pascal-graphic-card/

[baseline bum]

That's not correct. The X in GDDR5X means it can prefetch 16 bytes at a time as opposed to 8 bytes that GDDR5 did.

So the calculation goes from "DDR clock * 2 * (Bus Width / 8)" -> "DDR clock * 4 * (Bus Width / 8)" for GDDR5X (these are theoretical maximums in both cases).

That makes the 1080: 20 GHz * 256 bit = ~640 GB/s

See here: http://wccftech.com/micron-gddr5x-memory-analysis-nvidia-pascal-graphic-card/

That's funny, they're advertising 320GB/s.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/geforce-gtx-1080

Sorry, I wasn't clear I was giving effective clock when I said 10 GHz, since that's how it's advertised.

[baseline bum]

Shit, maybe it's only the Founder's Edition cards launching May 27th and June 10th. I wouldn't want to buy those anyways since the Nvidia stock cooler sucks.



http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-quantum-leap-in-gaming:-nvidia-introduces-geforce-gtx-1080

Availability and Pricing The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 "Founders Edition" will be available on May 27 for $699. It will be available from ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, NVIDIA. Palit, PNY and Zotac. Custom boards from partners will vary by region and pricing is expected to start at $599. The GeForce GTX 1080 will also be sold in fully configured systems from leading U.S.-based system builders, including AVADirect, Cyberpower, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Geekbox, IBUYPOWER, Maingear, Origin PC, Puget Systems, V3 Gaming and Velocity Micro, as well as system integrators outside North America. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 "Founders Edition" will be available on June 10 for $449. Custom boards from partners are expected to start at $379. - See more at: http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-quantum-leap-in-gaming:-nvidia-introduces-geforce-gtx-1080#sthash.hy5yFjTe.dpuf

[ElNono]

That's funny, they're advertising 320GB/s.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/geforce-gtx-1080

Sorry, I wasn't clear I was giving effective clock when I said 10 GHz, since that's how it's advertised.

Normally, you don't hit peak anyways, because you're bound to have prefetch cache misses, so a theoretical 640GB/s is really about 480GB/s... that's both for GDDR5 and GDDR5X...

The thing is, with GDDR5X, if you don't have a lot of misses, it should be 2x as fast as GDDR5.

[ElNono]

Shit, maybe it's only the Founder's Edition cards launching May 27th and June 10th. I wouldn't want to buy those anyways since the Nvidia stock cooler sucks.

The one they were demoing that was clocked at 2.1GHz was a PNY, IIRC. It was on one of the screen caps from the presentations I saw.

[baseline bum]

That 2.1 GHz 1080 running the upcoming Doom in Vulkan:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_zaNqAqzY

Once they uncap the framerate it only drops below 100 fps twice, both times for a split second. They didn't say the resolution, I hope they didn't do something cheap and run it 1680x1050 or something.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy I do have to say the GTX 1070 looks like the most cut down 70-series chip Nvidia has ever released. The drop from 9 TFLOPS to 6.5 TFLOPS would correlate well with the GTX 1070 having the 1980 cuda cores we heard from one of the leaks about GTX 1080 a few days before release (GTX 1080 has 2560 cuda cores per official specs from Nvidia, they haven't released the specs for 1070). So still take these reports of better than Titan X performance with a grain of salt. CEOs often give boldface lies in these presentations. Like Lisa Su from AMD saying the Fury X would be an overclocker's dream last Computex when you couldn't overclock a fucking thing on it for many months after release (I'm not even sure if you can now a year later). So definitely wait for benchmarks before buying a 1070. I'll post them here and tag your name when they become available. I probably wouldn't expect 1070 benchmarks until a couple of days before release though, maybe June 7th or 8th. It still should be a really nice card for $380 though because of those clockspeeds, I imagine when benchmarks come out it'll be a little faster than Titan X at 1080p, a little slower at 1440p, and a decent bit slower at 4k.

[Wild Cobra]

RandomGuy I do have to say the GTX 1070 looks like the most cut down 70-series chip Nvidia has ever released. The drop from 9GFLOPS to 6.5 GFLOPS would correlate well with the GTX 1070 having the 1980 cuda cores we heard from one of the leaks about GTX 1080 a few days before release (GTX 1080 has 2560 cuda cores per official specs from Nvidia, they haven't released the specs for 1070). So still take these reports of better than Titan X performance with a grain of salt. CEOs often give boldface lies in these presentations. Like Lisa Su from AMD saying the Fury X would be an overclocker's dream last Computex when you couldn't overclock a fucking thing on it for many months after release (I'm not even sure if you can now a year later). So definitely wait for benchmarks before buying a 1070. I'll post them here and tag your name when they become available. I probably wouldn't expect 1070 benchmarks until a couple of days before release though, maybe June 7th or 8th. It still should be a really nice card for $380 though because of those clockspeeds, I imagine when benchmarks come out it'll be a little faster than Titan X at 1080p, a little slower at 1440p, and a decent bit slower at 4k.

Isn't the CPU doing most the FLOPS? (floating point operations)

[ElNono]

Isn't the CPU doing most the FLOPS? (floating point operations)

not for games, no

[baseline bum]

not for games, no

Maybe he just means for Kerbal Space Program lol

[ElNono]

Maybe he just means for Kerbal Space Program lol

:lol

[baseline bum]

Nvidia unveils GTX 1080 and GTX 1070: a new level in GPU power (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nvidia-unveils-gtx-1080-and-gtx-1070)
"Irresponsible levels of performance."

By Richard Leadbetter Published 07/05/2016

Nvidia has officially revealed the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, based on its new Pascal architecture, offering an astonishing leap in performance and power efficiency over its existing 900-series Maxwell cards. According to Nvidia, the GTX 1080 is faster than two GTX 980s in SLI, shipping to users on May 27th at $599. Meanwhile, the GTX 1070 offers Titan X level performance for just over one third of the price - $379 - and is set to launch on June 10th.

Both products are based on Nvidia's GP104 processor, featuring a 7.2 billion transistor count. The GTX 1080 features 2560 CUDA cores, offering 9 TFLOPs of performance, and is paired with 8GB of Micron's state-of-the-art GDDR5X (or G5X, as Nvidia called it). Meanwhile, no core count has been announced for the GTX 1070, but we do know that it ships with 8GB of standard GDDR5 and has a 6.5 TFLOP performance level.

Clock-speeds and overclocking headroom look remarkable. Boost clock on GTX 1080 is rated at higher than 1700MHz, but a real-time Unreal Engine 4 demo shown on stage saw the card overclocked on air, rock-solid at 2114MHz. On-screen stats using the EVGA Precision X monitoring software saw temperature at just 67 degrees Celsius, with the G5X memory operating at 5508MHz - 10gbps effective.

In terms of direct comparisons with the firm's previous performance leader, Nvidia revealed a power efficiency/performance graph which seems to suggest something along the lines of a 20 per cent performance increase for GTX 1080 running at 180W, compared to Titan X operating at 250W.

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/2/8/9/2/6/table.png/EG11/resize/600x-1/quality/80/format/jpg
GTX 1080 offers a sizeable performance boost over Titan X, at a much lower power level. It was also seen overclocked by 400MHz, running at 2.1GHz vs the max 1400-1500MHz you can extract from previous king of the hill.


Of course, Add-in-board manufacturers will be supplying their own products around the suggested retail prices, but Nvidia will be selling its own 'Founder's Edition' variants through select partners, bumping up prices to $699 for the GTX 1080 and $449 for the GTX 1070. Nvidia boss Jen-Hsung Huang promises "crazy overclockability" for these parts perhaps suggesting some kind of custom power delivery mechanism. We'll look into this and report back, but all Pascal cards will be overclockable - this isn't just limited to the more expensive variants.

In our recent 'In Theory' piece, we pieced together a potential scenario for the performance level of the new wave of Pascal GPUs, based on available information derived from the official spec for the much larger GP100 chip, combined with the more plausible leaks from the Far Eastern press. We suggested that Pascal could offer Titan X-level performance for GTX 970 money - based on an established precedent that saw the 970 beat its big-chip predecessor (GTX 780 Ti) once an overclock was in place. Some might say that Nvidia has exceeded our expectations here, assuming that Titan X level performance is indeed delivered at stock clocks. However, GTX 1070 gets a $40 price-bump compared to its $330 predecessor. Regardless, the price-to-performance ratio is simply remarkable.

Bearing in mind we were already quite optimistic about Pascal's chances based on the GP100 specs, the bottom line here is that on the day, Nvidia exceeded expectations last night by some distance. Jen-Hsun Huang stated several times that Pascal took over two years to complete with the input of "thousands" of engineers and a multi-billion dollar investment. The inference here is that the firm intends to maintain its massive market dominance by outspending AMD in terms of research and development.

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/2/8/9/2/6/1080.png/EG11/resize/600x-1/quality/80/format/jpg
GTX 1080 offers up 7.2bn transistors, enabling 9TFLOPs of rendering power, backed by 10gbps bandwidth offered by Micron's new GDDR5X technology. Price-wise, it replaces the GTX 980 Ti at $600.


The firm also revealed new technology at the heart of the Pascal architecture, called 'simultaneous multi-projection', with the GPU able to create 16 independent viewports simultaneously in one pass with stereo support - and no performance penalty. Two scenarios for this tech were showcased, the first being full perspective correction on satellite displays on a tri-screen set-up, positioned in a 'curved' surround arrangement.

The second was for virtual reality. Right now, VR is rendered by creating a full resolution output, warping the output to match the lenses on the HMD - and in the process, losing a lot of visible resolution. With simultaneous multi-projection, each eye view is a composite of four projections, meaning that 'wasted' resolution is massively reduced, and the end result is anything from a 40 to 80 per cent increase in performance (the on-screen demo seemed to be in the 45-50 per cent area, rising from 65fps to 96fps with the single-pass technology enabled). [UPDATE 7/5/16 3:48pm: Having discussed this in more depth with Nvidia this morning, the performance increase comes from two components - the reduction in resolution as stated, and also the hardware acceleration provided for the stereo viewpoint, which essentially halves the processing overhead for geometry.]

Other new technologies revealed at the event were software-based in nature, with the reveal of a VRWorks audio set-up based on path-traced sound using a physically modelled audio simulation. This is paired with physically-based haptic feedback for VR controllers, in combination with PhysX. Nvidia seemed to suggest that all of this new VR technology will be open sourced, and revealed that a series of tech demos - dubbed Nvidia VR Funhouse - will be made available in a single Steam download.

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/2/8/9/2/6/1070.png/EG11/resize/600x-1/quality/80/format/jpg
It's a little more expensive than its predecessor - by around $40 - but assuming that Nvidia's claims stack out, GTX 1070 should see something in the region of a 40 to 55 per cent increase in overall performance, with stock clocks offering Titan X levels of performance. In theory, once overclocked, it should beat a Titan X pushed to its limits.


Nvidia also revealed Ancel - an in-game 3D camera system, allowing you to pause gameplay, adjust special effects, brightness, field of view and then create your own 2D, 3D and surround screenshots using anything up to 1000x resolution. The Division, The Witness, Lawbreakers, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Paragon, No Man's Sky and Unreal Tournament are all set to receive Ancel support. Although it seems to operate at the driver level, clearly developer support is essential here in getting Ancel properly integrated.

There was no mention of DirectX 12 at the event - something of a sticking point for Nvidia cards thus far - but accompanying press materials describe "new asynchronous compute advances" that "improve efficiency and gaming performance", so it'll be interesting to see how Pascal performs there in an area where the existing Maxwell cards have had some issues.

Overall, it's difficult not to be impressed with the show Nvidia put on here. We knew that GTX 1080 would be the new flagship, but to post a circa 20 per cent improvement to Titan X performance is immense, factoring in the 28 per cent reduction in TDP. For its part, assuming that the Titan X comparison holds true, the GTX 1070 offers a potential 40-55 per cent improvement in performance over the GTX 970, costing just $40 more. It could be as radical a proposition as GTX 970 was back at launch - a product we described at the time as "the GPU that nukes almost the entire high-end graphics market from orbit."

Going into the event, Nvidia staff gave us the impression that Pascal would offer the same level of ambition and performance that defined the GPU classics of the past - graphics cards like the GTX 970 and the 8800GT. Of course, the jury's out until both products are in the Digital Foundry lair with the benchmarks complete, but in the meantime, hopes are sky-high based on this remarkable showing.

Nvidia's Pascal gaming cards were unveiled at an event hosted in Austin, Texas that we attended. Nvidia paid for travel and accommodation.

[baseline bum]

So Founders Edition is just reference cards. No reason to spend the premium on them, you're just buying the shitty reference cooler. Lame that they're charging more for the reference cooler, but it's what they did with the 970 that sold at $380 for reference (only at Best Buy) and $330 for the ones with better aftermarket coolers.

[Wild Cobra]

not for games, no


Maybe he just means for Kerbal Space Program lol

No, KSP is CPU intensive for the stress calculation between parts, before they fail. I wasn't sure about the gaming FLOP intensity between CPU and GPU.

[Wild Cobra]

Well, I swapped out the original GT 720 that came with my tower for an EVGA SSC (super super overclocked) GTX 950 I found for cheap. The 2D graphics mark didn't increase much. Only 15%, but the 3D is about 627% better, according to PassMark testing.

The tests aren't real accurate. not from a fresh reboot. The 950 test was right after updating the drivers available. I'm not worried about better test. The 3D difference is a very noticeable change.

I have two 1TB mSATA Samsung 850 EVO's on the way and one 512 GB M.2 Samsung 950 Pro on the way. I'll add one of the EVO's to my laptop, and the other two to my tower. I'll have three SSD's in it.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy, it looks like the GTX 1080 reviews should hit next Tuesday. Now that's a $600 card but it should give an indication of how strong the 1070 will be, since the 1070 will be a cut down 1080.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWvmt9wk0n4

[baseline bum]

Holy fuck, Alienware was giving away free GTX 770s at DreamHack. I mean a GTX 770 is still a pretty fucking awesome card.

728980553282654208

728960645576560640

[DJR210]

Holy fuck, Alienware was giving away free GTX 770s at DreamHack. I mean a GTX 770 is still a pretty fucking awesome card.

728980553282654208

728960645576560640

I would have taken it and smashed it on the ground in front of them because IDGAF

[baseline bum]

I would have taken it and smashed it on the ground in front of them because IDGAF

Or you could sell it.

[baseline bum]

I'm really enjoying AC II (far better than the original Assassin's Creed), but that last tomb is fucking infuriating with the double jumps off walls.

[ElNono]

I'm really enjoying AC II (far better than the original Assassin's Creed), but that last tomb is fucking infuriating with the double jumps off walls.

I played it a long time ago... but they were all fun at the time... the last couple of ones just got kinda repetitive and a bit boring...

[baseline bum]

the last couple of ones just got kinda repetitive and a bit boring...

Like the original? So is Rogue the last decent game in the series? I loved the first 3-4 hours or so of the original AC, but it was same fucking shit over and over again for the next 30 hours. Now ACII is probably my favorite 3D platformer I have ever played (I hated Mario 64), but from reviews it seems like it's the high water mark for the series.

[DJR210]

I played it a long time ago... but they were all fun at the time... the last couple of ones just got kinda repetitive and a bit boring...

Everybody raved about the pirate one, I thought it was stupid as fuck tbh. The game itself was on par with the others, but the pirate shit was just lame IMO

[baseline bum]

Everybody raved about the pirate one, I thought it was stupid as fuck tbh. The game itself was on par with the others, but the pirate shit was just lame IMO

At least they haven't done a futuristic one like shitty COD. I would take a Call of Duty with pirates and muskets over that Advanced Warfare bullshit.

[ElNono]

Everybody raved about the pirate one, I thought it was stupid as fuck tbh. The game itself was on par with the others, but the pirate shit was just lame IMO

I actually liked the pirate shit and sea battles, reminded me of the old Pirates! on the C= 64 but all 3D and nice.

The problem is that they rehashed that shit two more times in sequels, tbh

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy
DJR210
313

The GTX 1080 just knocked it out of the fucking park. In the Nvidia press event they were claiming 22% better performance than Titan X. It's actually more than that:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuViSYChy7Q

At 4k vs Titan X
21.5% gain on The Division
28.6% gain on Withcer 3
27.7% gain on Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
31.0% gain on Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)
26.3% gain on Far Cry Primal
36.2% gain in Hitman (DX12)
29.5% gain on Project Cars
27.0% gain on AC Unity

So Nvidia's CEO was actually underselling the card in his presentation. These results are extremely impressive, and you have to imagine the 1070 is going to be a monster too based on these results. RandomGuy, man I would say these results on the 1080 make waiting until June 10th for the 1070 a must in my opinion. It's almost certainly going to crush everything else in performance around it at $380. The 1070 is probably going to be 45-50% faster than the R9 390 for the 15% higher price.

[baseline bum]

1080 vs Titan X is an even bigger gain than 680 vs 580

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/images/perfrel_2560_1440.png https://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_680/images/perfrel_1920.gif

[baseline bum]

Nvidia may not have talked about DX12 in their presentation, but they have delivered on it.

[DJR210]

RandomGuy (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=1813)
DJR210 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=42671)
313 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=43150)

The GTX 1080 just knocked it out of the fucking park. In the Nvidia press event they were claiming 22% better performance than Titan X. It's actually more than that:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuViSYChy7Q

At 4k vs Titan X
21.5% gain on The Division
28.6% gain on Withcer 3
27.7% gain on Rise of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
31.0% gain on Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)
26.3% gain on Far Cry Primal
36.2% gain in Hitman (DX12)
29.5% gain on Project Cars
27.0% gain on AC Unity

So Nvidia's CEO was actually underselling the card in his presentation. These results are extremely impressive, and you have to imagine the 1070 is going to be a monster too based on these results. RandomGuy, man I would say these results on the 1080 make waiting until June 10th for the 1070 a must in my opinion. It's almost certainly going to crush everything else in performance around it at $380. The 1070 is probably going to be 45-50% faster than the R9 390 for the 15% higher price.

I don't want that POS 70 series crap, but I don't have 6 bills to drop on a GPU right now.. Gonna have to settle, but still a huge upgrade and for me my biggest issue is the 2GB crap with the 680..

[baseline bum]

I don't want that POS 70 series crap, but I don't have 6 bills to drop on a GPU right now.. Gonna have to settle, but still a huge upgrade and for me my biggest issue is the 2GB crap with the 680..

I don't think the 1080 would make any sense running 1080p anyways. This is a 1440p/4k card. I mean 980 Ti is a 1440p card and this fucking crushes the 980 Ti. Memory bandwidth will probably keep 1070 SLI from being a great 4k option, but it should be awesome at 1080p and 1440p. Especially considering how well Pascal overclocks. Get an EVGA ACX card (fuck the overpriced hot running reference) and you should have a monster.

[DJR210]

I don't think the 1080 would make any sense running 1080p anyways. This is a 1440p/4k card. Memory bandwidth will probably keep 1070 SLI from being a great 4k option, but it should be awesome at 1080p and 1440p. Especially considering how well Pascal overclocks. Get an EVGA ACX card (fuck the overpriced hot running reference) and you should have a monster.

4K from 2 feet away doesn't seem like it would be that big of difference anyway IMO.. 1440p seems like the sweet spot from that distance

[baseline bum]

The 1080p results look really impressive too


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

[baseline bum]

Pascal looks extremely impressive, AMD is really going to have their hands full this generation. They were already getting curb stomped by Maxwell and Pascal has corrected the weak points of Maxwell.

[313]

The 1080p results look really impressive too


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXhHivCLBwc
Nvidia :worthy:

At 1080p I'm going with a 1070 though

[313]

If I were going for 4K I'd probably be smart to wait for the 1080ti, no?

[baseline bum]

If I were going for 4K I'd probably be smart to wait for the 1080ti, no?

You'll be waiting bare minimum one year for that though. Their big die P100 chip doesn't go up for sale until January, 7.5 months from now, and we're talking $10,000 scientific computing and 3d modeling cards. So that P100 chip could see its way into probably a $1200 Titan by March or April. Then the earliest we'd see a more consumer priced version (say $750) would be three months later, so at the earliest June 2017. Probably more like September 2017 though, Nvidia releasing the 980 Ti only 3 months after Titan X was pretty strange and likely a result of them manufacturing it on an extremely mature 28 nm node.

[313]

You'll be waiting bare minimum one year for that though. Their big die P100 chip doesn't go up for sale until January, 7.5 months from now, and we're talking $10,000 scientific computing and 3d modeling cards. So that P100 chip could see its way into probably a $1200 Titan by March or April. Then the earliest we'd see a more consumer priced version (say $750) would be three months later, so at the earliest June 2017. Probably more like September 2017 though, Nvidia releasing the 980 Ti only 3 months after Titan X was pretty strange and likely a result of them manufacturing it on an extremely mature 28 nm node.
Ah didn't realize the gap between releases was that large. Are you going with the 1080 or 1070?