PC gaming hardware thread.

KovacsC · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:11

JohnCoffey wrote:

Kov the GTX 950 launches soon. That or a 750ti will do you right fella.

What price do you think these will be?

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

JohnCoffey wrote:

Bamba wrote:

I had to turn off the 3D on the new Tomb Raider game because my old PC just couldn't hack it which is, stupidly, making me consider a full upgrade again. I'll probably try and hold out until bonus time though which makes it January.

I, sadly, stopped using 3D. When I bought my "I will never do this again it's a huge waste of three and a half grand" rig I bought two Titan Blacks and a AOC 3D monitor. No modern-ish games worked with it.

Seems like it's a bit of a dead duck now. Shame, I used to really enjoy L4D and L4D2 in 3D. Nothing quite stands up to throwing a pipe bomb and then standing as close as you dare and watching the arms and legs and giblets come flying at you.

The newest Tomb Raider game has 3D support built in and, frankly, it looks fucking amazing but it's just too demanding to be properly playable on my old machine. There's also an app that adds 3D to non-3D games and it did pretty well with the stuff I tried it on but, again, you need to go back pretty far to find anything my PC could render well enough to be properly playable.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:22

Around the £100 or so mark. That's if you want to game on it (and if you do?) if not go with that £45 Radeon that will get you up and running in Win 10

Bamba wrote:

The newest Tomb Raider game has 3D support built in and, frankly, it looks fucking amazing but it's just too demanding to be properly playable on my old machine. There's also an app that adds 3D to non-3D games and it did pretty well with the stuff I tried it on but, again, you need to go back pretty far to find anything my PC could render well enough to be properly playable.

I might have to dust off my glasses and give that a try, then.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

Minecraft does anaglyph 3D. I use it when I'm building tall things. It sometimes makes my tummy funny.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2015 11:25

Limbo does that too.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

JohnCoffey wrote:

Limbo does that too.

Limbo makes my tummy funny?

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Aug 18, 2015 12:34

DavPaz wrote:

JohnCoffey wrote:

Limbo does that too.

Limbo makes my tummy funny?

Yeah it's kinda like the brown note...

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

Since noone asked, here's my work desk.

Attachment:

IMG_20150819_085011912_HDR.jpg

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:20

Needs more keyboards.

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12243

I wish I had three monitors, or at least two widescreens.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:43

Four monitors are where it's at. Tried five, that was too many.

MaliA · **Posted:** Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:45

I LIKE SPACE MINING SO MUCH I HAVE 8 SPACE MININGS

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

Grim... wrote:

Four monitors are where it's at. Tried five, that was too many.

The pc can do 4,but the desk can't

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Aug 19, 2015 12:04

Up man, up! Look at all your vertical space!

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

Grim... wrote:

Up man, up! Look at all your vertical space!

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

GTX950 has now been released but prices start at a somewhat disappointing £129, which seems expensive considering the rather more capable GTX960 starts at £147.

You can sort make a case for the 950 in that it's a capable 1080p card, and the 960 is also a capable 1080p card - and neither is able to power games at 2560x1440 which is the next step up resolution wise, so save a few pounds and go for the 950.

Leaves a gap at the 'here's a decent graphics card for £100' spot though.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Aug 21, 2015 11:18

Got my power supply and new fans fitted.

No coil whine, hurrah !

Now that Dying Light has been fixed on AMD I am going to play through it again in co op with a fellow forumite, so that should be fun.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

GTX950 review now up at Eurogamer, in all fairness it's a pretty good card in a lot of ways, very solid for 1080p, runs quiet, doesn't generate much heat, doesn't need much power, looks like cards will have a decent overclock out of the box with plenty of headroom to take them close to 960 performance levels for less cash. (You could make the argument that the 960 is a bit of overkill for 1080p whilst falling short at 1440p, so the 950 is a more sensible option for 1080p.)

It's a lot of graphics card for £130, although I think for less than £20 more the 960 still makes more sense, unless you really don't want to spend the small amount of extra cash.

Down at maybe £110 it'd be a lot more compelling IMO.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... 950-review

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sat Aug 22, 2015 13:52

Same as usual, nothing terribly exciting.

Mind you, the boring products will inevitably end up as their bread and butter cards.

I'm loving my rig now. No more whine when I game. Fans are slightly louder but there is more of them and they are all running at 12v so that's understandable. I may get some resistors for them, if they can keep my clocks where they are (I've settled for a 24/7 4.4ghz on the 5820k which I was never expecting but it seriously kicks ass at those clocks).

Hoping this Fury Nano thing can become my Crossfire card. I don't really need it as I have everything running nicely at 4k but the extra oomph would mean higher detail in games that support it (OK, so I confess I would pay another £400 to enable Hairworks and go ultra)..

asfish · **Joined:** 5th Dec, 2010 **Posts:** 3353

Quote:

Since noone asked, here's my work desk.

I have the same set up! Its a PC with a Matrox card and 3X24 inch screens.

Would never go back, had to do budgets this week, on top of the endless sheets from finance, I have to work with endless dept ones as well, so 3 screens are invaluable for the final entry and copying data from sheet to sheet.

I updated my PC with old test GPU machine that was cluttering up the workshop at work, I'd always been focused on the fact it had 4 Titans in it but the rest of the spec is mental as well. It has 2X 8 Core Xeons and 64 GB of Ram. I went with the one Titan as I don't really need any more graphics and also bought a 960GB SSD.

Will miss the Alienware which is stored away in case the work one ever needs to go back.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Sep 18, 2015 19:45

The last time I ran a Matrox card was with two 15" CRTs and I remember playing Max Payne on two monitors and getting the wow factor lol. Man, how things have changed !

Not done anything to my PC really of late as I just haven't needed to. I did buy a 480gb SSD and made a novelty mount for it though.

And fitted.

And really of late all I've been doing is gaming

no fiddling or messing. I am a good chunk through Dying Light now after starting it again (because I forgot to back up my save games when I bought the new PC..) and have been playing Dead Island Riptide with a mate. We finished that last night so now I'm just waiting on him to buy Dying Light so we can play that in co op also.

Just waiting for Fallout 4 really

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2015 20:28

Fucking bastards things, PCS are. Smartwebads has taken over and fucked the PC. I have tried Malware bytes, adw cleaner and removing chrome, removing them from control panel and it still won't go away. I think I will memory stick any files and reinstall windows.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38460

and stay off dodgy porn sites

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

What's a Smartwebad?

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10074

Grim... wrote:

Four monitors are where it's at. Tried five, that was too many.

BenQ 3201PT. Just right.

Connected to a quadro 410 with 512MB (yes, 512MB) DDR3 (yes, DDR3) because that's the only low-profile, single-slot, not-too-long, low-power, DP1.2 card I could find which would go in my HP Microserver (dual core 1.5GHz Turion II!)

It rocks a UHD desktop brilliantly but full-screen YouTube and Xbox streaming make the nvidia driver shit the bed, even if I switch to 1080p.

Yet weirdly MPC HC can play a ripped Bluray upscaled to UHD with only (only!) 50% GPU usage.

I use it to VPN to my work desktop.Going back into the office where I have a pair of 1080p monitors (i keep asking for a UHD monitor in exchange for skipping a 2x cost hardware refresh, but am never allowed. Work is very odd) makes me sad. NOT AS SAD AS THE WORK INTERNET CONNECTION WHEN I WORK FROM HOME LOL.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2015 18:03

Four of them would be pretty expensive.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10074

You should try and make the justification.

Looking at just the bottom half of my one is better than looking at two full HD monitors. I don't think a 2x2 array of monitors would be better than one full one. Even if they were 1440p, though I would have to check in person.

Its still pretty scary, if I'm honest.

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4299

Those with even a fractional interest in the life of Mr Fop will have already forgotten I was flapping around trying to choose a PC a while ago.

Well, after literally days of sweat-palmed fretting, with my opportunity-cost anxiety soaring with every scroll of the mousewheel as I dwell on configuration options (seriously, when I click buy, just let me buy it, don't present me with 600 ways I could have something better), I plumped for this:

Chillblast Centurion

Thanks to those who took the time to offer advice and wisdom, I couldn't have done it without you*.

Also got two 23 inch Asus monitors as they were on offer.

*I'd have gone to PC World, got an HP and be £300 richer.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

I gots the same box that the wires and stuff come in!

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4299

Saturnalian wrote:

I gots the same box that the wires and stuff come in!

It's a lovely box. Might move into it.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

That's a really nice PC for the money, and the SSD will make it fly. (OS, apps, and whatever games you can fit on there, all will benefit massively.)

The default graphics card is a smidge on the weak side for my taste, but it'll handle 1080p gaming fine with the odd nip and tuck to the settings - and you can always upgrade later if needs be.

The CPU is seriously powerful though.

Nice purchase

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

Is it better than my one, AE?

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Saturnalian wrote:

Is it better than my one, AE?

Blimey you'll have to remind me of the specs, got a screenshot/invoice/link?

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

Hearthly wrote:

Back to the £500 PC conundrum.....

I realise Saturn that it's very annoying when you state what you want and how much you've got to spend only for someone like me to say 'Ahhh yes but if you just spent a bit more....' - but that's exactly what I'm going to do however I do think it's worth noting, because if you can stretch to £600 then the performance jump from the £500 offerings really is stunning.

In short you're getting an overlocked quad-core i5 processor (considerably more powerful than anything seen in any of the builds suggested thusfar), 8GB of RAM, a 2GB Radeon 260X (which is reckoned to kick about as hard as the PS4's GPU) that will see you right for high quality 1080@60 gaming, a 1TB hybrid drive (1TB of traditional hard drive storage married to 8GB of super-fast SSD cache) and Windows 8.1. (It's got your HDMI as well.)

Apparently it runs nice and cool and quiet as well.

For £600 this is a seriously impressive PC, although you will need to add a keyboard and mouse which will take you past £600 (albeit not by much), but this is genuinely a PC that will last you for years.

Attachment:

600pc.JPG

This one, wasn't it!

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

Page 78: good times.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Ahhh yes I remember that one now.

Clearly Mr Fop's PC is generally a bit more powerful all round, although that's only to be expected some 18 months later and for £100 more.

CPU wise there isn't a great deal in it though (but his is faster and a newer architecture), the 'proper' SSD in Mr Fop's PC (and an M2 one at that) will outpace your SSHD, graphics card wise there isn't a massive gulf between them (as best I can recall the vanilla 750 and the 260X are pretty close in performance terms overall).

Both of them are solid PCs, and both will do just fine for all day-to-day use and high quality gaming at 1080p, with expected (albeit often minor) compromises on the slider bars and settings.

I'd expect both to have a good few years of use in them as well.

MaliA · **Posted:** Thu Oct 15, 2015 19:53

Sat! Your keep net is full!

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

HE SAID IT WAS FUTURE PROOF! I demand my money back!

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Oct 15, 2015 20:32

A bloke said that to me when he sold me a 3D telly. (that it was future proof, not that he wanted his money back)

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

Is Intel still the best to go for when it comes to CPUs? I've recently upgraded my Graphics card.. and my processor really isn't powerful enough for it.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 1:01

Cookie197 wrote:

Is Intel still the best to go for when it comes to CPUs? I've recently upgraded my Graphics card.. and my processor really isn't powerful enough for it.

It all depends. There are certain circumstances where AMD have a couple of CPUs worth considering but it depends on what parts you have already and your budget.

Once you get to I5 territory there's really nothing from AMD to compete but at the lower end of the scale they do scrap quite well with their 6 core FX6300 and FX8320E.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

The thing is though, AMD's per-core performance is so bad compared to Intel, that I'd be hard pushed to think of a scenario where I wouldn't just recommend the cheapest i5 currently available.

But yes, it does depend on what you already have in terms of motherboard and RAM and suchlike too.

(And AMD's chips aren't terrible in and of themselves.)

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 14:52

Hearthly wrote:

The thing is though, AMD's per-core performance is so bad compared to Intel, that I'd be hard pushed to think of a scenario where I wouldn't just recommend the cheapest i5 currently available.

But yes, it does depend on what you already have in terms of motherboard and RAM and suchlike too.

(And AMD's chips aren't terrible in and of themselves.)

The FX6300 is a great budget mid range chip. IIRC it costs a little bit less than a comparative I3 yet in threaded tasks will wipe the floor with the I3. The IPC of the FX Visheras is roughly as good as your I7 920 per clock so they're really not bad, just nowhere near as good as any of Intel's more highly threaded CPUs.

The 8320 used to be my budget chip of choice and I had two rigs with them in. Fine CPUS

Only issue was that to get toward 5ghz you need a very expensive motherboard.

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

My current motherboard is an Asus P5Q3 Deluxe, CPU is Core 2 Quad Q9500 and I've got 16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM. So yeah.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 21:24

Is the ram DDR3? 1.65v or lower? if so then you can keep that. What sort of thing are you looking for? IE - gaming, office duties etc? And most importantly what's your budget?

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

DDR3 1600Mhz, not sure about voltage. I've recently started a game development course at University, so I'm looking for a CPU that'll easily run big game engines (Such as Unreal 4) for the next 4/5-ish years, and of course I will be gaming on it too. Budget is kinda... not sure at this point, it'll really depend on what I can get and for how much.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

How much would a pc that can play fallout 4 cost?

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Bobbyaro wrote:

How much would a pc that can play fallout 4 cost?

Around the £600-£700 mark would get you a pre-built system with the ability to play the game at 1080p nicely maxed out.

£500, even - Not the best CPU in the world, but not bad for the cash. Personally I'd stretch out to an Intel CPU but if, for example, £500 was your limit, this is a decent PC. The star of the show here is the GTX960 graphics card, which is a really strong 1080p GPU.

http://www.ebuyer.com/718724-cyberpower ... c-ecc01272

Yeah here for an extra £100 you get a strong Intel i5 CPU, and an extra terabyte of storage, with the same excellent GTX960 graphics card.

http://www.ebuyer.com/722003-cyberpower ... c-ecc01284

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

Cheers, thought it would be around that. What about if I wasn't that fused about 1080p maxed out? Basically, can you get something for around the same Price as a ps4?

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Bobbyaro wrote:

Cheers, thought it would be around that. What about if I wasn't that fused about 1080p maxed out? Basically, can you get something for around the same Price as a ps4?

Eurogamer managed to build a PC for around £350 earlier this year that outpaced a PS4.

You're into self-build territory though.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... g-pc-guide

Be Excellent To Each Other

PC gaming hardware thread.
Takes down the torture rack.

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Be Excellent To Each Other

PC gaming hardware thread. Takes down the torture rack.

Who is online

PC gaming hardware thread.
Takes down the torture rack.