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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:44 

Joined: 31st Mar, 2008
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Right, that's it, next time I want a PC I'm just going to fucking buy a ready made one and bollocks to all this fuck shit fuck fuck ARRRRRGHHHH!

New motherboard won't boot. Constantly power cycles. Does this with regardless of if a graphics card is plugged in or not. Does it with both, one or no memory sticks installed. Is getting on my fucking nerves now.

I've sent an email to ASUS to see if they can help, plus posted about it on their technical forum, so I'll give it 48 hours, then eBuyer will be getting it back and I'll be asking for a refund. And then I think I will just go and buy a ready-made PC from somewhere.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:46 
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Unpossible!

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Flash the BIOS. Ahahahaha


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:49 
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Honey Boo Boo

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No, f-pr0t the tarball. You might need to be running teh Lunix to do this.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 13:22 

Joined: 31st Mar, 2008
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I used to build PCs for a living and I never had these problems before. Oh, dear God, I can feel the Cult of Apple drawing me back with their wonderful computers that have never given me an ounce as much shit as this bloody thing has.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 13:25 
SupaMod
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Zio wrote:
I used to build PCs for a living and I never had these problems before. Oh, dear God, I can feel the Cult of Apple drawing me back with their wonderful computers that have never given me an ounce as much shit as this bloody thing has.

I thought you are going through all this to play games?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 13:26 
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Unpossible!

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Grim... wrote:
Zio wrote:
I used to build PCs for a living and I never had these problems before. Oh, dear God, I can feel the Cult of Apple drawing me back with their wonderful computers that have never given me an ounce as much shit as this bloody thing has.

I thought you are going through all this to play games?

Must... resist...


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 13:47 

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Grim... wrote:
Zio wrote:
I used to build PCs for a living and I never had these problems before. Oh, dear God, I can feel the Cult of Apple drawing me back with their wonderful computers that have never given me an ounce as much shit as this bloody thing has.

I thought you are going through all this to play games?


Heh!

Yeah, I was, but it's left me with only one working PC and that's netbook. I'm getting very tired of the constant fucking about with this thing and would just like a PC that switches on and lets me do some things. That would be nice. If it can play games too, wonderful.

Bloody hell, two weeks ago I had a working PC that was a little behind the cutting edge, but still worked. Trying to replace the motherboard with a swankier one ended up with me fucking the until-that-point working processor. So I decide 'sod it, I'll upgrade the whole bloody lot!' and buy a brand new motherboard, processor and RAM and now, about 500 quid worse off, I have something that won't quite turn on. This grieves me somewhat.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 13:48 
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Skillmeister

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I'm glad I followed JC's advice and didn't end up building my own PC last year.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 14:35 
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Esoteric

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Dimrill wrote:
I'm glad I followed JC's advice and didn't end up building my own PC last year.


And now you see why I love Alienware so much (when you're not flashing their bioses and replacing their parts, ooer).

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 16:04 
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Esoteric

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Zio wrote:
Right, that's it, next time I want a PC I'm just going to fucking buy a ready made one and bollocks to all this fuck shit fuck fuck ARRRRRGHHHH!

New motherboard won't boot. Constantly power cycles. Does this with regardless of if a graphics card is plugged in or not. Does it with both, one or no memory sticks installed. Is getting on my fucking nerves now.

I've sent an email to ASUS to see if they can help, plus posted about it on their technical forum, so I'll give it 48 hours, then eBuyer will be getting it back and I'll be asking for a refund. And then I think I will just go and buy a ready-made PC from somewhere.


Right finally got time to sit down and reply properly (been cooking all day).

That's the problem with building PCs. If you have a single duff part there is absolutely no way to know what one it is unless when you buy the parts you buy two of everything which as we know is not really logical. PCs have always been notoriously difficult to troubleshoot should you run into a problem when building one because it's not like a duff ram stick will shout out "I'M DEAD HEY OVER HERE". I want to say I think it's your PSU tbh. Especially after all the probs you had with the other machine. But I don't even know if you're using that same one. Thankfully when I went from Core 2 to Phenom I had enough parts to keep the PC running should I run into a problem. And I did, three ferkin times. TBH I am just pretty relieved that the bastard works right now and can't wait to get a normal gpu back in it and do some gaming.

But aye, upgrading is worrying enough for me now, I simply don't have the patience to be doing full builds any more. Especially with the way everything is mass produced these days and thus nowhere near as reliable as it once was. And this is basically the reason why I love Alienware. Because (well, up until very recently) they could build the willy stiffening machines I dreamt of owning without me having to think about ordering everything and getting it all to work. Sadly that has changed a bit since they became Dellienware but I still think Dell are OK.

It's a shame that companies like Vadim went bust tbh. I mean yes they were expensive but fuck me they knew how to build a tidy PC.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 16:27 

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Right, I have now calmed down a bit. There's a little button on this motherboard which activates a function ASUS call 'MemOK'. It's for when you've fucked up overclocking your memory sticks from what I can tell, as it makes the computer boot up with safer memory settings. Now, if I hold that button and turn it on, it boots. I'm actually typing this, from Windows, on my PC right now.

That would suggest the memory is at fault, but I actually don't think it is as the power cycling thing happens even if no memory sticks are installed - whereas holding the MemOK button allows it to boot (and then obviously fail to post since there's no memory installed). And it isn't the power supply as, although I did certainly have a duff one once, I've since replaced it and, again, here I am typing a post on the affected PC, so the PSU must be doing something right. No, I'm fairly convinced it's the motherboard.

What has enabled me to calm down is actually trying things out now that I am in Windows - even with everything at it's default settings (I can get into the BIOS but not actually change anything because of this bloody fault) things are lovely. My PC is a hell of a lot nippier than it was previously and the sound card this came with makes a colossal difference (not to mention the fact I can finally play games in 5.1 surround sound on my amp). Once I've got this computer working properly it's going to be utterly fantastic, so for that reason I'm sure I can put up with a little more inconvenience while I have to return the board to eBuyer and wait for a replacement.

And then... and this is the best bit... I can finally stop fucking about with this bloody machine and actually use it properly!


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 16:37 
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Comfortably Dumb

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Dimrill wrote:
I'm glad I followed JC's advice and didn't end up building my own PC last year.


Where did you get yours from? I might get a half-decent PC at some point and I might just buy a complete system next time.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:08 
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Unpossible!

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Good god. Don't tell JC.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mother ... herboard/1

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:11 
SupaMod
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Oooh mummy.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:18 
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Paws for thought

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Quote:
A far better use for the W555 would be as an all-in-one folding farm,

Why the hell would you spend all that money, plus electricity bills, for that? Why are people so obsessed with folding at home?

It certainly isn't trusted as remotely accurate by any protein folding specialist I know. It's pointless.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:20 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Quote:
A far better use for the W555 would be as an all-in-one folding farm,

Why the hell would you spend all that money, plus electricity bills, for that? Why are people so obsessed with folding at home?

It certainly isn't trusted as remotely accurate by any protein folding specialist I know. It's pointless.

Yeah, all my protein folding specialist friends fold their proteins at work now, sometimes on the bus but never at home.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:21 
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Skillmeister

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devilman wrote:
Dimrill wrote:
I'm glad I followed JC's advice and didn't end up building my own PC last year.


Where did you get yours from? I might get a half-decent PC at some point and I might just buy a complete system next time.


Yoyotech.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:22 
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Also following JC's recommendation I bought a PC rather than make one, in my case from Overclockers. But it later transpired that they are Nazis.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:25 

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Yes, I would also recommend to everyone that they buy a PC and don't make one themselves. :(


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 17:27 
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Part physicist, part WARLORD

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I've never had any trouble building PCs, fortunately. I'll still build my next one, I reckon, unless I find something a lot cheaper than I could source the parts manually.

The only trouble I have is keeping up with the hardware market and knowing what's good. A quick bit of research does the trick there, though.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 19:06 
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DavPaz wrote:


Jesus tapdancing christ.

Gotta say it's pretty immense. However, as of a couple of days ago (I think I finally blew a stress fuse and almost threw my PC from the window) I have decided to go back to mid range stuff. I realised that the 940 was no world beater and so the 5770 should be great. Good thing is at that price point I can replace the cpu/board and gpu every year. It'll only cost me £350 a year.

So I am trying to be sensible from now on.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 19:12 
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Esoteric

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BTW. As for that mobo? I used to have one of these

http://www.corestore.org/SGI540-1.JPG

It's a Silicon Graphics SGI 550. It ran dual P3 xeons at 1ghz and a gb of Rambus. I had a Radeon 7000 in it :)

It's mobo was very similar in shape and style to the EVGA one Dav posted.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 19:45 
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Paws for thought

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JohnCoffey wrote:
It'll only cost me £350 a year.

Man, you could buy over 2 360s for that amount per year. With a little bit left over to ram some extra LEDs into it.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 21:19 
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MR EXCELLENT FACE

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JohnCoffey wrote:
Zio wrote:
Right, that's it, next time I want a PC I'm just going to fucking buy a ready made one and bollocks to all this fuck shit fuck fuck ARRRRRGHHHH!

New motherboard won't boot. Constantly power cycles. Does this with regardless of if a graphics card is plugged in or not. Does it with both, one or no memory sticks installed. Is getting on my fucking nerves now.

I've sent an email to ASUS to see if they can help, plus posted about it on their technical forum, so I'll give it 48 hours, then eBuyer will be getting it back and I'll be asking for a refund. And then I think I will just go and buy a ready-made PC from somewhere.


Right finally got time to sit down and reply properly (been cooking all day).

That's the problem with building PCs. If you have a single duff part there is absolutely no way to know what one it is unless when you buy the parts you buy two of everything which as we know is not really logical. PCs have always been notoriously difficult to troubleshoot should you run into a problem when building one because it's not like a duff ram stick will shout out "I'M DEAD HEY OVER HERE". I want to say I think it's your PSU tbh. Especially after all the probs you had with the other machine. But I don't even know if you're using that same one. Thankfully when I went from Core 2 to Phenom I had enough parts to keep the PC running should I run into a problem. And I did, three ferkin times. TBH I am just pretty relieved that the bastard works right now and can't wait to get a normal gpu back in it and do some gaming.


A port 80 debugging board (£5) will help.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:45 
SupaMod
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JohnCoffey wrote:
If you have a single duff part there is absolutely no way to know what one it is

I've never owned a motherboard that didn't have some way of handing out fault codes.
I had one that talked once - that was great until I tried to DJ using it and couldn't hear the fucking thing.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:48 
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Esoteric

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Grim... wrote:
JohnCoffey wrote:
If you have a single duff part there is absolutely no way to know what one it is

I've never owned a motherboard that didn't have some way of handing out fault codes.
I had one that talked once - that was great until I tried to DJ using it and couldn't hear the fucking thing.


F.I.C used to talk. Sadly those post codes are about as useful as a chocolate teapot or perforated condom. Well, sometimes they give you a code that tells you to RMA the motherboard which can be useful but for the most part they are woefully innaccurate.

Before they came out we had the same sort of thing as a PCI card at work. The boss paid hundreds of pounds for it thinking it would be the end of all our woes and would save us hours in fault finding and it was just fucking useless.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 17:59 
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Yay for Radeon.

Grid - faster.
Fallout 3 - slower (but I expected that being it's a DX9 game).
Windows 7 rating - higher. Now that is a fuckin mystery.

It overclocks like a dream and maintains stable temps. However, multi monitors flicker when you run the CCC so I have had to cancel the overclock (boo hiss).

Not tried Dirt 2 yet but so far it's looking one hell of a cracker for £120. And it looks nice, too :D

Temps are very impressive. With the fan on auto I am idling at 42. With it on max I idle at 32. Most I have seen it go to is 59 all out which I am thrilled about.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 16:29 
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Direct X 11 - Round one to ATI. ATI play 'change my pitch up, smack my bitch up' and Nvidia are clearly on the recieving end.

So this all began early last week, on my birthday to be precise. If anything makes me angry it's having a bad birthday and I have had a few. I've been stood up by a girl who I was only going to spend the day with because I felt bad for her and ended up sitting around for 8 hours, I've been ill (being born in January usually means I am treated to the latest dose of the flu, complete with custom name) and I've been cold.

So, on the day of my birthday (Jan 25th) I awoke to continue my second playthrough of Fallout 3. For once I was actually content with my computer after having months worth of heat problems (mmmm, 60nm GPUs) and things all seemed to be settled. I fired up Fallout 3 and was treated to a nice dose of corrupted garbled screen. No worries, a simple reboot shall fix it right? wrong. The card refused to boot with a driver loaded. I tried to cold boot about ten times and each time I was treated to a different type of corrupt screen. Now this only seemed to have started since I installed Windows 7 so I figured it was the driver. I tried updating the driver but it just seemed to get worse so I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to spend at least a portion of my birthday stressed to fuck installing Windows Vista to try and restore my system's stablity and my sanity.

But sadly it wasn't to be. Installing Vista went quite well until I installed the driver and tried to make the card run @ 1920x1080 on my spangly new Hannspree (no review but what a stonking bargain for £130 at my door) and in the end after checking my temps and seeing idles of 90c and not hearing the fan spin up I deduced that my so called prized high end card had died. Yup, it was Donald Ducked. On my birthday of all bleeding days.

Now normally this wouldn't bother me. But when you are about 60% through your second playthrough of Fallout 3 and loving every single damned moment of it it's a serious kick in the balls. Amplified largely by the fact it's your birthday and life doesn't offer the pleasures it once did as you tag on another year. The day was going to suck, and suck hard.
After a few initial annoyances with the vendor (Videocardshop) they finally admitted that I wasn't a teenage overclockerorz who abused my card and that it was going to have to go back. I got my RMA and defaulted the PC to onboard video, putting Windows 7 back on (because it shits on Vista from ten stories).

What now then? well I had spunked away a good portion of the day and after trying my bollocks off to get Fallout 3 to run on the onboard I realised it wasn't going to happen. I just wanted to put my head in my hands and cry.

It was made worse by the fact that I had pre-sold the 280 GTX to a family member and was pissing my trousers in excitement because that would have left me clear to order three Geforce 250GTS cards and run triple SLI. Waste of money? oh absolutely but to a total geek like me it's porn of the highest order. Dual SLI on the 250GTS will spank a 285 and with SLI becoming more and more commonplace as the weeks pass it had me all sticky and gooey. Triple SLI is seldom supported right now (think quad core CPUs in their infancy) but when it does it's like sex when you're married. That old cliche of it not happening very often but when it does? wow. Triple SLI on 250GTS can beat a 295GTX. It's also considerably cheaper than a 295.
But it wasn't to be and I was really angry and depressed over the fact that my dream had been ripped from my grasp and I was at the other end. Onboard fuck all use for gaming graphics. Sigh.
So realising I could now not even afford to dual SLI I decided to 'have a word with myself'. I didn't need stupid high end parts (because in all honesty it's Pandora's box) and I was going to get a nice middle ranged card that worked. Going back to the days of my 9800GT things were simple. They were simple and fun. I didn't feel like I had to constantly run GPUID and Fanspeed to check my temps and worry all the time when I heard my computer making pingy cracking sounds as the GPU got up to roasting temps. Yes the 9800GT was no world beater and sure it ran quite hot but it worked and wasn't marred with problems.

I was humbled, and it was time to take a step back. Gaming, not constant fuck arounds trying to keep things in check.

So to cut a long story shorter I decided to get a nice mid range card and fancied giving ATI another look after the love affair I had with a 9200 pro back in the early noughties.
I spent a couple of days looking at ATI's 5xxx lineup and decided that the 5850 was quite expensive and pretty much non existant. And if you wanted one the £200 suggested price tag was merely a myth. You are looking at closer to £280 by the time you add in delivery.

So I lowered my expectations to the 57 series and the 5770 seemed to be the sweet spot. I wanted the reference model (it uses the centrifugal fan design) as it looks cleaner. In the end I found the XFX 5770 1gb stock clocks for £119 with a fiver shipping.

If anything looking around at all of this boring technical info helped me waste a couple of days where I was bored to death. No games makes life really poo.
The card came and I was excited. In it went no problems and I took careful note of the fact that it only required one 6 pin PCIE plug and not two 8 pin ones like the 280 GTX which needed wiring to the local grid to even switch on. After hiding away a couple of cables I now no longer needed it went in and the drivers installed with minimal fuss (getting the Nvidia ones off was a bit of a pig, mind). First test then, Fallout 3.

Immediately I noticed it did not run as well as it did before. So I simply lowered a couple of shadow settings which in all honesty did not seem to effect the game. I'll be buggered if I know where those shadows were because the game actually seems to look nicer on the ATI card.

So, blissfully happy that things were once again simple I resumed my Fallout 3 playthrough and forgot about the shit I had gone through over the past week.
A lot of reviews have overclocked the card. They say that with a gentle overclock you achieve two things.
1. It obviously goes faster. Fast enough to shame a Geforce 260GTX without all the heat.
2. You save £40. Basically XFX do a stock clocked card called the XXX edition, charge £40 more for it and overclock it very gently.
It's very easy to do and doesn't require any real thought. ATI take care of that for you with a handy little app. So I clocked it to the XXX speed in a matter of seconds and it went very well. Immediately I noticed Fallout 3 was back to what the 280 GTX could do in levels of frames. How can this be? how can a tiny little card measuring no more than 8 inches that runs at 35% cooler perform this well? Modern technology I guess but enough to put a huge smile accross my face. Sadly the smile didn't last too long because there is a bug in the control panel that causes flickering accross multiple monitors if you have the panel open. And closing it causes the card to revert back to stock speeds. I hear that ATI are working to resolve this issue but in honesty the performance loss was minimal so sod it, back to stock clocks for now.
Here is a picture of that control panel. As you can see it's a simple case of moving a slider and hitting apply (after removing the padlock). It does not void any warranty and XFX actually encourage people to get the most out of their card.

Image

All very nice and easy to use. Also note that the temp was read about 20 seconds after quitting out of Dirt 2, a hour long play session of. so it runs 40c max less than the 280GTX, music to my ears.
Here is the card installed. I hate dust.

Image

My second test was Racedriver : Grid.

It was already installed so all I had to do was fire it up. I had a good poke through the settings and set everything as high as it would go with Vsync enabled (thanks to MrDave for making me see the error of my ways !) and 4xFSAA with full ani. I was expecting a slideshow in all honesty. What I got, however, was just lovely. The game ran smoothly and better than ever before. How it managed to run better than my 280GTX is a mystery. All I can imagine is that it got the 280 cooking and I was experiencing throttling. After a couple of hours play I realised that this 5770 really was something rather special.
So now it was time for the real test. Dirt 2. I've been so caught up in Fallout 3 that I had forgotten all about it and Direct X 11. So today I reinstalled Dirt 2 which apparently gets about 15 frames per second with DX11 enabled on this card. Hence I wasn't really in a big rush to embrace this new technology. Once installed I loaded my config file from before (it saves messing around for ages) and loaded the game. Immediately I noticed three new options available to me in the graphics settings so for a laugh I set them all to full. I did, however, reduce the FSAA to 2X as I was expecting this to be a rolling demo or at worst a slideshow and was fully expecting to have to reduce all of the settings to make the game playable.
It wasn't to be however and what I did get just absolutely blew me away.
Here is a shot of the settings, note the FPS indicator? well I have learned that it's pretty pointless running the benchmark as it will basically give you the figure stated in the screen grab. The FPS indicated is basically the minimal figure you can expect when in the game. After running the full benchmark I can hit 38 or so max.

Image

Apologies for the fact that it's a photograph. Post Direct X 9 does not allow screen grabbing via prt scrn and will result in a pasted black window. Thus I have to do it with my camera.I really don't want to install FRAPS.
It is, however, defininte proof that the game is indeed running in Direct X 11 mode.
Before I conclude I would also like to point something else out. Here is a Windows 7 rating with a 280GTX installed.

Image

And here is a Windows 7 rating with a Radeon 5770 installed.

Image

Note : The CPU score has risen a point but this is down to my recent overclock. Even with the overclock in place the 280 still scored the same. Now this increase could be down to having Direct X 11 and I do understand that Windows 7 scores are by no means a valid performance indication. That's pretty much why I have shot this video as concrete proof of performance of the 5770.
The video depicts me showing that everything is indeed maxxed out and then a brief play session to indicate the performance. It's evidence if you will because hey, actions speak louder than words. Please note this was filmed with my camera taped to a baseball cap. It wasn't intended to be pretty just an indication of how the game runs at the max settings on a graphics card that sells at full retail upon release for £119.
Couple of things to note.
1. Massive kudos to Codeys for including one of the best songs ever, in the history of all ever.
2. It's incredibly hard playing a game with a camera black taped to your hat. I don't reccomend this but I had no choice because I know full well a couple of my gaming buddies with their barbeque cards won't believe me unless I provide concrete proof of what this wee beasty is capable of.
3. This is not meant to be an indication of how lovely the game looks, merely at how it rips along. Obviously compressing it and putting it on Youtube has made it worse but you can still see how it moves.
4. When I flick down the graphics settings I am only doing so to show there are no white arrows available to the right. If there were it would mean things are not on full settings.



So as you can see even at full settings this card can really run this game to the full. Never before have I put a mid ranged/low priced card in my computer and been so utterly blown away by what it is capable of. I paid more for the 9800GT when I got it and had to spend £40 on a cooler just to keep it from burning itself out.

Conclusion.

Well, I have been away from ATI for a good few years now. I brought a 9200pro years ago because I wanted to play Need for speed underground with DirectX 9 and about a year after buying that card I found a Geforce 5950u in a pricing error that made it irresistable. IIRC the 5950 was priced at $400 with the 9800pro around $300 but I got the 5950 for $130 in a pricing cockup and was amazed that it actually arrived. Since then I have stayed with Nvidia (well, barring a 1650 pro Radeon that was just meant to get a machine displaying a pic. Gaming card it wasn't).
I have since owned a 9800GT and a 280GTX both of which being Nvidia cards.

However there is simply no denying the level that this card performs. As people who know me will vouch I tend to get very excited over computer hardware and techy toys however nothing has ever excited me this much. Usually when opting for something middle of the road you get middle of the road performance and something usually tends to have to give. But this is the first time that I have ever found an exception to that rule in nearly fifteen years (with the odd break here and there) of Pc gaming.

This card is a serious savage blow to Nvidia and even if Fermi is what it is cracked up to be I strongly doubt that Nvidia will be able to compete where it really counts, in price. If they can then it would be the first time that Nvidia have managed to win a back alley fight with ATI on pricing aswell as performance. At this price on release ATI have managed to pull something quite remarkable off and it almost makes you wonder why people would want to spend over double this on a 5850. Even more remarkable is that a pair of these cards costs less than a 5850 and performs better. Early reviews of the card all summarised that the DX11 performance of the 5770 was at that time unknown as the card released prior to Dirt 2. However, the proof of the pudding speaks for itself and far more loudly than I could have ever imagined.

So there it is Nvidia. A lesson in how to provide top level performance for mere pennies. If someone was considering buying a new card then it really doesn't get any better. Even those that paid roughly the same for one a year ago could actually consider buying one at the price asked. £120 is not a lot of cash really, and for a brand new technology it's an amazing brand new price. Whilst £120 is going to seem a fair chunk of dough to many to a gamer aware of what these things cost it is literally being given away. I mean honestly, when was the last time you could go out and spend £120 on a graphics card, bring it home, crank the balls off of game settings and actually see it perform at a playable level?

Absolutely amazing.

For reference here are the specs of the PC I am running around the card.
AMD Phenom X2 940 Black O/C 3.5ghz (via multiplier) Asetek cooled.
Asus Crosshair 2 M/B running 4gb assorted PC6400 DDR2 stock clocks.
XFX Radeon 5770 1gb (stock speeds)
Corsair X32 SSD (I haven't cheated though, the game is installed to a SATA 2 moving parts drive)
Onboard sound
Windows 7 Professional.
Hannspree 23" HDMI monitor running 1920x1080 16:9

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 16:39 
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So is it actually any good then? Not sure you've gone into enough detail.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 16:47 
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I couldn't leave a single thing to chance. It's like you saying a 360 is better at something than a PS3. Immediately if you leave a single thing to chance someone will notice.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 16:53 
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I have no idea what you're talking about, to be honest. TL;DR.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 20:38 
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Unpossible!

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that may, in fact, be the longest forum post in the world... ever!


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 20:44 
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I don't think it matches my rant over GTAIV but yes, it's classic beans and waffle I will grant you.

What I was trying to say to Myp but messed up royally was had I left out a single shred my Nvidia buddies would have completely discounted it. It's the old ostrich in the sand thing. So I left nothing to chance. Infact it seems I did leave one thing to chance because when my 285 owning friend read it he had this to say -

Quote:
Dude playing that Morocco level is no way to demonstrate how the game runs. That's cheating, load up Battersea at night.


So I did and sent him the video haha.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:00 

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Sorry John, TL:DR. You were impressed with your new Radeon though, I take it?

It turns out I did indeed have a faulty motherboard. ASUS Tech Support asked me to return it and I got a replacement at the weekend, which works fine. Dissappointingly, I can't get the kind of hefty overclock out of it that I've heard plenty of other people have been, but I suspect that this may be down to my case not having decent enough cooling. Whatever, I now have a Intel Core i5-750 CPU running perfectly at a relaxed 3.2GHz and it totally knocks the shite out of the PC it's replaced in the benchmarks I've run. I could probably get a fair bit more out of it, but why bother?

However, the last two weeks of getting that fucking thing to work have been rather stressful and so the missus has once again questioned why I don't just sell my PC either as a complete unit, or as seperate parts, on eBay and buy myself a prebuilt system from a reputable company with a decent warranty. I've done a little research and I reckon I ought to be able to get most of my money back on the computer by selling it (I shopped around for the parts to get the best prices in the first place), so... well... it appears I may have ordered an Alienware m15x laptop. Normally I wouldn't bother with an AW since they;re so overpriced, but this one with the spec I've ordered actually seems very reasonable (though I wouldn't say 'cheap').

I've also had a look to see how much I'd get for that on eBay and it seems that I could pretty much get my money back on it if the laptop arrived and I decided not to keep it. So that's what I'm doing, I'll take delivery of the machine, benchmark it and if it runs similarily to my PC I'll keep it and flog the PC. I may do that even if it's not quite as good, simply because it'll be a proper computer with a proper warranty.

For JC's benefit, the spec I've ordered is: Core i7 720QM @ 1.6 GHz (don't laugh, I've read reviews and it's meant to be an amazing CPU), 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX260M 1GB, 500GB HDD and all the various trimmings. Cost just under £1300. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, etc.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:03 
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Glad you are happy with the end result :hat:


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:05 
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Zio wrote:
Cost just the same as a nice Mac. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, unless you compare it to Apple.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:07 
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Oooh:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/02/01 ... cron_25nm/


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:10 
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Zio wrote:
I could probably get a fair bit more out of it, but why bother?


The frames, man, the frames!


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:12 
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JC, I settled in with a nice cup of tea* and a biscuit* and read through your epic post on the last page.

Your findings indicate one of 2 things. Either:

The ATi card is an unsung hero

or

The Nvidia card is a bag-o-shite

* Can of Red Bull
* Chicken Sandwich


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:13 

Joined: 31st Mar, 2008
Posts: 6093
Zardoz wrote:
Zio wrote:
Cost just the same as a nice Mac. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, unless you compare it to Apple.


Only it really doesn't. I looked on Apple's website because I owned Macs for years (iMac G3, Power Mac G4, Powerbook G4 (which I still own, though it no worky too good), Intel iMac), so naturally I was very tempted to jump straight back into Steve Jobs' welcoming embrace. But even the most expensive 15" Macbook Pro has nothing like the spec on this Alienware and it costs £1900!

It saddens me to say it, but Apple can keep fucking off for a bit longer as far as I'm concerned. I do so love their computers too. :(


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:15 

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Posts: 6093
DavPaz wrote:
The Nvidia card is a bag-o-shite


:this: probably. I have the same Nvidia card that JC had and the performance on it is not as ZOMG! as I'd been lead to believe.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:18 
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Esoteric

Joined: 12th Dec, 2008
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Zio wrote:
Sorry John, TL:DR. You were impressed with your new Radeon though, I take it?

It turns out I did indeed have a faulty motherboard. ASUS Tech Support asked me to return it and I got a replacement at the weekend, which works fine. Dissappointingly, I can't get the kind of hefty overclock out of it that I've heard plenty of other people have been, but I suspect that this may be down to my case not having decent enough cooling. Whatever, I now have a Intel Core i5-750 CPU running perfectly at a relaxed 3.2GHz and it totally knocks the shite out of the PC it's replaced in the benchmarks I've run. I could probably get a fair bit more out of it, but why bother?

However, the last two weeks of getting that fucking thing to work have been rather stressful and so the missus has once again questioned why I don't just sell my PC either as a complete unit, or as seperate parts, on eBay and buy myself a prebuilt system from a reputable company with a decent warranty. I've done a little research and I reckon I ought to be able to get most of my money back on the computer by selling it (I shopped around for the parts to get the best prices in the first place), so... well... it appears I may have ordered an Alienware m15x laptop. Normally I wouldn't bother with an AW since they;re so overpriced, but this one with the spec I've ordered actually seems very reasonable (though I wouldn't say 'cheap').

I've also had a look to see how much I'd get for that on eBay and it seems that I could pretty much get my money back on it if the laptop arrived and I decided not to keep it. So that's what I'm doing, I'll take delivery of the machine, benchmark it and if it runs similarily to my PC I'll keep it and flog the PC. I may do that even if it's not quite as good, simply because it'll be a proper computer with a proper warranty.

For JC's benefit, the spec I've ordered is: Core i7 720QM @ 1.6 GHz (don't laugh, I've read reviews and it's meant to be an amazing CPU), 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX260M 1GB, 500GB HDD and all the various trimmings. Cost just under £1300. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, etc.


congrats :) Alienwares laptops are awesome. Even Custom Pc said so (mentioning of course the price.. but quality does come at a price).

I'm aware of the funny clock speeds of laptop cpus. In honesty its not all about the clock any more. It's much more about the gpu. the 260 is more than adequate (god listen to the new me....).

In other news the irresponsible side of me is back with an air of caution.. Basically I'm going to ask Videocardshop to send me a second 5770 and credit me the rest. Then I found this motherboard

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?M ... TA2%20R3.0

Now its quite old (2007) but was the first AMD based Crossfire board. I emailed Assrock and asked them about 5 series crossfire and they replied saying that not only has it been tested and confirmed working but it also has a brand new bios update 4 days old. The seal on the deal? £32 delivered for that board.

So I think with the wonder that is the 5 series I am going to give Crossfire a try. It won't cost me anything and I wont be getting rid of the Crosshair :)

Dav, it's a bit of both. All of the older gen GPUs are a bag of shite due to the ridiculous temps they run at. It's practically impossible to use one without killing it eventually. I know what I wrote down was incredibly long winded but it was supposed to be. It wasn't there to be casual reading for a forum it was there to help any one who might be considering getting a new GPU. So I made sure I laid out everything that someone could possibly want to know to save them the three or so days of looking all around the net and doing research. Also stuck in a video to seal the deal so you can actually see it actually running a game. Something that reviewers never do. Benchmarks smenchmarks. They mean fuck all in real world terms :)

Zio. Indeed. I was actually dissapointed when I fitted that 280. I was expecting an all out wank sesh, but what I got was actually not anywhere near as impressive as the look and price at launch should have done.Yes it ran everything I threw at it but here I am 7 months later with a card almost equally as capable, running at half the temps, half the size, with half the power consumption and noise and £120 full RRP at launch.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:27 
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Zio wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
Zio wrote:
Cost just the same as a nice Mac. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, unless you compare it to Apple.


Only it really doesn't. I looked on Apple's website because I owned Macs for years (iMac G3, Power Mac G4, Powerbook G4 (which I still own, though it no worky too good), Intel iMac), so naturally I was very tempted to jump straight back into Steve Jobs' welcoming embrace. But even the most expensive 15" Macbook Pro has nothing like the spec on this Alienware and it costs £1900!

It saddens me to say it, but Apple can keep fucking off for a bit longer as far as I'm concerned. I do so love their computers too. :(

I don't game with my Mac so a lot of the spec is fluff to me, if you're comparing individual performance figures for the components compared to the price Apple will always look like much less value compared to a PC, but I highly value how they're put together and how the OS is written specifically to get the most from the hardware. I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro over a year ago and it doth rock mightily for the purposes for which it was bought and has, most importantly, it has just worked.

And yes, Steve Jobs cock tastes like honey roast chicken.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:28 
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Crossfire affirmative.. Just phoned Videoshop. 280 confirmed faulty issued £185 credit lolol

So I ordered a second 5770 haha.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:54 

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Zardoz wrote:
I don't game with my Mac so a lot of the spec is fluff to me, if you're comparing individual performance figures for the components compared to the price Apple will always look like much less value compared to a PC, but I highly value how they're put together and how the OS is written specifically to get the most from the hardware. I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro over a year ago and it doth rock mightily for the purposes for which it was bought and has, most importantly, it has just worked.

And yes, Steve Jobs cock tastes like honey roast chicken.


You'll never see me criticise anyone for choosing a Mac over a PC as I think they make wonderful computers, especially the laptops. My Powerbook G4 is now over 6 years old and all that's wrong with it is a fucked battery and a (relatively) ancient hard drive - if it was worth spending the cash on replacing both it would still be a very useable computer. If I hadn't gone quite so mental with the Steam Christmas Sale, I'd probably have gone for one of the cheaper 15" Macbook Pros as I tend to think they're worth the premium price - but I'm not spending nearly 2 grand on a machine that'll struggle with half the games I own.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:56 
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Zio wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
I don't game with my Mac so a lot of the spec is fluff to me, if you're comparing individual performance figures for the components compared to the price Apple will always look like much less value compared to a PC, but I highly value how they're put together and how the OS is written specifically to get the most from the hardware. I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro over a year ago and it doth rock mightily for the purposes for which it was bought and has, most importantly, it has just worked.

And yes, Steve Jobs cock tastes like honey roast chicken.


You'll never see me criticise anyone for choosing a Mac over a PC

You'll see me do it, usually at the point they moan some piece of software isn't available on a mac.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 13:59 
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Zardoz wrote:
I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro

/winces

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 14:00 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Zio wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
I don't game with my Mac so a lot of the spec is fluff to me, if you're comparing individual performance figures for the components compared to the price Apple will always look like much less value compared to a PC, but I highly value how they're put together and how the OS is written specifically to get the most from the hardware. I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro over a year ago and it doth rock mightily for the purposes for which it was bought and has, most importantly, it has just worked.

And yes, Steve Jobs cock tastes like honey roast chicken.


You'll never see me criticise anyone for choosing a Mac over a PC

You'll see me do it, usually at the point they moan some piece of software isn't available on a mac.

Is that the same point where they boot into windows you mean? :metul:


@Zio Obviously I am in no way slagging your decision to buy a PC, especially if it's gaming that it'll be used for mainly. You scrubber :kiss:

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 14:01 
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Grim... wrote:
Zardoz wrote:
I paid £1299 for my MacbookPro

/winces

Yeah, that's like 1 and a half surveys.

Sorry.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 14:03 
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The initial outlay is quite large, but Macs tend to hold their value quite well, don't they?


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