New System Build

[CntdwnToExtn]

So, my PII 940 and AMD 57 something just isn't cutting it anymore. Well, I'm playing Arkham Origins without issues, but that's probably the last of it.

I'm also looking forward to Oculus so that's a no doubt upgrade needed.

Sadly, I'm jumping ship to Intel from AMD (hopefully I'll be back next time!).
Skylake just doesn't seem to cut it, IMO, with the price difference (at least here in Canada) so I've gone ahead and bought a 4790K that was 100 bucks off, free shipping and some $200 bucks in free something...

For graphics, I was thinking of getting a GTX 790 for now (Oculus recommended) and then next year sometime (assuming a price drop or sale or something) getting a second one. From what I can see SLI on the 790's will take on any Titian for a much lower cost.

I could use some suggestions on mobo's, RAM, PSU, and monitor

I'm going to keep my CoolerMaster Cosmos, SSD/HDD, mouse/KB so don't need anything there....

 

[PP Mguire]

I'm running a 955BE with a Quadro M5000 (GTX 980 basically) with the Oculus and all games without issue. I think you just got the upgrade bug is all

Think you mean the 970, so that's a good card. 2 in SLI doesn't really combat my Titan, but if I was you I'd look to see if you can get a good deal on a 980 instead.

For motherboard, look at the ASRock Z97 Anniversary if you don't plan to go SLI, if you do the ASRock Extreme 4 is a good candidate or the 6 if it's cheap enough (Cad pricing is a bit wonky on that conversion).

For RAM, any 8GB 1600 kit you can muster. Cheaper the better.

PSU, depends on budget. I'd say go for something quality now. 520-650W Seasonic or Corsair (above CX) should suffice.

Monitor, again depends on budget and your preference in size. If you get a 970 or 980 I suggest sticking to 1080p.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

ugh ya, 970! I was posting this as I was running out the door lol.

my main concern was the Oculus release specs with the recommendation of a 970
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/t...pc-sdk-0-6-released-and-mobile-vr-jam-voting/

So I was trying to build to this spec, with the hopes of just being able to add another 970 down the road.

As for the SLI, I totally thought this benchmark site was with a Titan X last night. nope, just a Titan haha....numbers and letters were running into each other last night I think haha.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 SLI Review | techPowerUp

I've looked at the 980's but there just doesn't seem to be any good price breaks right now here in Canada. At least NCIX where I tend to shop. they're running between 700-900+ right now, where their 970's I can pick up for 400 each.
they have an MSI 980 down at $629 (cause I don't trust the mail-in-rebates haha) MSI GeForce GTX 980 TwinFrozr V 1216/1317MHZ 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5 DVI 3x DisplayPort HDMI PCI-E Video Card - GTX 980 GAMING 4G but not sure why that cards so low in price to begin with....been so long since I've know the hidden 'gotchas' of these things haha.

i'll take a look at the mobo. are they good for overclocking? i'm sure i'm going to dabble in this a tad haha.

IF I was to SLI down the road, would a 650w be enough? i'd figured i'd need a 850w? as i'd like to OC to have fun too.

I was thinking of sticking with a 1080P monitor too. I could probably get away with a 1440p though? I already have a Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW 1920x1200 but it's...5 years old? and only DVI


money isn't too much of a concern. but, want to spend appropriately.
1. G/F said she doesn't care
2. G/F said she doesn't care...hahaha
3. I want this to last 5+ years (don't need bleeding edge max resolution down the road)
4. I also want best bang for the buck. I'm not going to spend 1500 on a Titan X when something cheaper can get me great FPS. I'm not looking for 4K right now. I'd rather invest that extra into my 4K home theatre upgrade next year.

I'm in no hurry to build this though. I still have a lot of Origins to play. Maybe a 980 will magically get a price drop here in Canada haha.

 

[PP Mguire]

ugh ya, 970! I was posting this as I was running out the door lol.

my main concern was the Oculus release specs with the recommendation of a 970
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/t...pc-sdk-0-6-released-and-mobile-vr-jam-voting/

So I was trying to build to this spec, with the hopes of just being able to add another 970 down the road.

Currently that I know of they haven't made it so VR can utilize SLI. Although, my work machines are running a 2 version old runtime. I wouldn't bank on SLI for now though, go for the highest GPU power you can afford. My main concern is more of the 4GB RAM issue with the 970. It has 4GB, but when in full utilization the last 500MB tanks in speed. Nothing you'll notice in normal gaming but I have a hunch it won't do so great with VR. If you want I can test for you.

As for the SLI, I totally thought this benchmark site was with a Titan X last night. nope, just a Titan haha....numbers and letters were running into each other last night I think haha.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 SLI Review | techPowerUp

I own 3 Titan X cards and my roomie has a 970. SLI 970s even at full utilization comes close to a Titan X / 980ti but the extra VRAM edges it out.

I've looked at the 980's but there just doesn't seem to be any good price breaks right now here in Canada. At least NCIX where I tend to shop. they're running between 700-900+ right now, where their 970's I can pick up for 400 each.
they have an MSI 980 down at $629 (cause I don't trust the mail-in-rebates haha) MSI GeForce GTX 980 TwinFrozr V 1216/1317MHZ 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5 DVI 3x DisplayPort HDMI PCI-E Video Card - GTX 980 GAMING 4G but not sure why that cards so low in price to begin with....been so long since I've know the hidden 'gotchas' of these things haha.

Doesn't seem to have any issues that I know of. The 900 series doesn't have any weird problems minus the 970 VRAM fiasco that happened.

i'll take a look at the mobo. are they good for overclocking? i'm sure i'm going to dabble in this a tad haha.

Yes they're fine for overclocking but 100% not needed.

IF I was to SLI down the road, would a 650w be enough? i'd figured i'd need a 850w? as i'd like to OC to have fun too.

Depends on the cards you get. A top end 650W would run 2 980s and a 4690k with ease. If you plan to go balls out with higher TDP cards (like the top chip Maxwell or Pascal next year) you'll want at least 750W.

I was thinking of sticking with a 1080P monitor too. I could probably get away with a 1440p though? I already have a Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW 1920x1200 but it's...5 years old? and only DVI

I had 2 980s and a 1440p screen. I don't imagine a single 970 carrying 1440p very well at all. It's best for 1080p and nothing more. As to your monitor, nothing wrong with that.


money isn't too much of a concern. but, want to spend appropriately.
1. G/F said she doesn't care
2. G/F said she doesn't care...hahaha
3. I want this to last 5+ years (don't need bleeding edge max resolution down the road)
4. I also want best bang for the buck. I'm not going to spend 1500 on a Titan X when something cheaper can get me great FPS. I'm not looking for 4K right now. I'd rather invest that extra into my 4K home theatre upgrade next year.

I'm in no hurry to build this though. I still have a lot of Origins to play. Maybe a 980 will magically get a price drop here in Canada haha.

All in all, I'd invest the most you can get for a GPU. If you're not in any hurry, Pascal will stomp the **** out of Maxwell V2 next year Q2.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

ha, haven't even looked at what's scheduled to release. I could probably wait until Q2 start-mid. But don't want to wait until June...I've been wanting to upgrade for a while now. lol. home theatre has been taking all my money lately hahah.

 

[PP Mguire]

Educated guess suggests March.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

so, totally pulled a 180 and went with an R9 390 haha.
The 970's RAM issue really turned me off. and the 390's extra 4.5GB over the 970 (see what I did there haha) seems to help a bit when playing the higher reso's.

no good deals on a 980. 390 was bought, taxed and shipped before the starting price of a 980 so that did play a factor.

 

[PP Mguire]

It's already purchased, but I wouldn't have done that. Despite the ridiculous RAM issue (which nobody notices anyways) the 390 even at 1440p is barely faster than the 970 while sucking more juice and putting more heat out. You can refer to this thread for details regarding that.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

and that's where I look at things differently. the RAM issue was big enough for NVidia to address it, admit their mistake and do trade up programs, and whatever other damage control. Reading things, people say it's okay, people say it's not. I don't want to leave that up to chance. I want a card that I know will work and not have to worry about if i'm going to have this RAM issue.

it performs better than a 970 but sure it has more power draw. pro's and cons across the board.
right now, to me, better performance means better performance. am I going to see any difference on my power bill. no.

I dunno. i'm going to have a fun time playing.

 

[PP Mguire]

Nvidia only did damage control and a fess up because a dude ran some code to make an unrealistic situation showing the slow down addressing the last 500MB with a large chunk of data which in turn led to a massive **** storm of AMD fanboys to run a parade. This led to net wide arguments. Here's the deal that people don't tell you, when I say large chunk I mean each address was being registered with the same information. If you equate this to a game that means that a single texture has to be moved to RAM that's 4GB or larger to show an actual slow down like that. What game with any resolution today will send a single piece of texture data that's 4GB in size? 0. That's why I said before, it's nothing. It was a person looking for something wrong and found it, then the vramgate happened with idiots claiming Nvidia wasn't selling a 4GB card and it was false advertising. There was even a lawsuit that was quickly dismissed because the card actually has 4GB, with all RAM addressable and usable.

My roommate has a 970, I've done extensive testing and he's played almost all AAA titles at a slightly higher res than 1080p with exactly 0 issues. It's also whisper quiet and doesn't dump a ton of heat into his bone stock cheap case (which in turn means less heat in our computer room).

Those charts show that at 1080p a reference 970 performs better than an AIB 390 and at 1440p a 390 performs only 3% faster than a 970 even with the extra VRAM. A card like an eVGA 970 SC which is roughly 200MHz faster than the Nvidia reference card will widen the 1080p gap, and close if not surpass the 390 at 1440p. There aren't really any cons of owning a 970 over a 390 but there are a ton of pros. Much higher power consumption on the 390 equates to much higher heat output. That is a serious con to most, and it's not exactly better performing. Higher power consumption also means needing more wattage on the PSU if you decide to overclock, where overclocking the 970 won't even bring it to 390 stock levels.

The only pro I can see from having a 390 is if you went Crossfire later for 1440p, but even still I had dual 980s running 1440p and IMO those didn't even fit the bill.