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PC Gaming (Also, Advice Needed) (Page 2)
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Jawbone54  (op)
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Jan 27, 2015, 07:00 PM
 
Taking a good look at the GPU, there are two things I've noticed...

1. What is this little paper/sticker? Could this possibly be part of the problem? Again, I'm completely ignorant in such matters, so I have to ask.



2. The PCIe pins(?) seem to be slightly warped, and I don't know if this is normal. I noticed it when I opened the box in the first place, but figured it was nothing.

     
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Jan 28, 2015, 10:31 AM
 
The label appears to be a checking sticker. It would be a problem only if there is something there that is supposed to be cooled, but there usually isn't near the edge of the heatsink.

The card might possible be a bit bent, which could be an issue, but it is hard to say.

At this point I would get in contact with the board manufacturer and start pushing for an RMA.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jan 28, 2015, 12:18 PM
 
Try a different PCI-E slot, just to make sure, but if you get the same results have the retailer exchange it for you.
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Jan 28, 2015, 12:21 PM
 
Oh, I was going to post about Crucial blowing out recertified 1TB M550 SSDs (for $299) but they didn't last long (understatement), only a few minutes.
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Jawbone54  (op)
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Jan 28, 2015, 04:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Try a different PCI-E slot, just to make sure, but if you get the same results have the retailer exchange it for you.
Did several times. Same result. I'm sending it back to Amazon today.

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Oh, I was going to post about Crucial blowing out recertified 1TB M550 SSDs (for $299) but they didn't last long (understatement), only a few minutes.
Ugh. The one significant hang-up I have about my build (other than parts not working) is skimping on SSD capacity.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Feb 12, 2015, 09:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
Ugh. The one significant hang-up I have about my build (other than parts not working) is skimping on SSD capacity.
Get the video card sorted out?

You can fix the issue with the SDD very easily, get a second one and run them in RAID-0. Seriously, it's just stupidly fast, especially when you get to 3+ drives.
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Jawbone54  (op)
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Feb 13, 2015, 11:35 PM
 
I forgot to update you guys.

I finally installed the new GPU yesterday, hopped onto Skyrim, and got that wonderful prompt: "Your settings have automatically been set to Ultra." I nearly wept.

I haven't installed any mods yet, but Skyrim on PC is something I've been wanting to experience for a very long time.
     
Jawbone54  (op)
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Mar 24, 2015, 01:43 PM
 
So, roughly two months after getting set up, I have impressions of my little PC building/gaming adventure:

First, I haven't been able to invest loads of time into it due to my kids' sicknesses and a building project that I'm overseeing, but my Steam library has grown, and I've definitely had a few issues, almost all of which were resolved. First, the best parts...

1. The Games

So far, I've invested most of my time into several titles:

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — It's nothing the modern FPS titles I've played in recent years. Some gameplay elements are carried over from Counter-Strike over the years (i.e. not updated), but I'm having an absolute blast with it. The maps are laid out wonderfully, and each Demolition round plays out like a super-high-stake match of Search and Destroy in CoD speak, especially when you're the last teammate standing, and you know you're going to get ridiculed by your teammates if you make a fool of yourself. This is probably my second-favorite experience so far, behind...

Skyrim — I know it's ridiculous to be playing a title that's several years old, but this has been a completely different experience from my initial play-through on PS3. I never finished the game due to the memory issues, so I eventually abandoned it. Now, I'm running about 30-35 mods on it, and it's amazing. Skyrim is already "my kind" of game, so I'm completely lost it in right now. I've sunk 27 hours into it, and I can easily see getting to 75 before summer.

Civ V — I already owned the game before building my PC, but Civilization has always been a series that I've returned to time and time again. I love the genre, and I'll probably never stop playing.

Portal — Again, I never really finished the game. And it's weird seeing my FPS counter in the top-right reminding me that I'm playing it at "299 FPS," even though it doesn't make a difference due to my tech restrictions.

Team Fortress 2 — I haven't been able to fully dive into yet another years-old game yet, but my limited experience has been positive.

Planetside 2 — So many players. I don't know how I feel about the experience.

Prison Architect — I feel weird playing this game.

Games on my wishlist I'm looking forward to playing:
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
- Cities: Skylines (SimCity done right)
- Homeworld Remastered Collection
- Stranded Deep (great potential, but not sure it will live up to it)
- Salt
- Divinity: Original Sin
- War Thunder
- Subnautica

2. Steam

Steam is amazing. I decided to buy the parts for my PC during the winter sales, so I was able to load up on software, but I'm continually getting Emails notifying me that a game on my wish list is on sale, and it winds up being $3.59 or something absurd. Due to all of this (and the Star Wars Humble Bundle), my library and backlog are huge:

Borderlands 2
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Civilization IV
Civilization V
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Deus Ex: The Fall
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Fallout
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas
Football Manager 2012
Football Manager 2013
Football Manager 2014
FTL: Faster Than Light
Gone Home
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Just Cause
Just Cause 2
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Papers, Please
Portal
Portal 2
Prison Architect
Sniper Elite III
Star Wars: Battlefront
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Star Wars: Starfighter
Star Wars: Empire at War Gold
Star Wars: KOTOR
Star Wars: KOTOR II
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
Terraria
Torchlight 2
X-COM: UFO Defense
X-COM: Terror From the Deep
X-COM: Apocalypse
X-COM: Interceptor
X-COM: Enforcer

3. Hardware Issues

So far, my computer issues have been:
- Defective graphics card
- Defective PSU
- Defective mouse
- Defective shift key on my keyboard (happened after about two months of working fine)

I've resolved all these issues, but I'm not going to say that it hasn't been a source of frustration during a time when I really just needed everything to work. Either my luck is horrible, or the original, defective PSU caused a lot of other issues.

Oh, and I have a coil whine issue that can't be fixed, but it's a relatively minor problem.

All in all, I'm still glad I did it, but I didn't realize how many hoops I'd have to jump through. Was it worth it? I believe so. I'm also getting a ton of work done on it.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 24, 2015, 01:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
So far, my computer issues have been:
- Defective graphics card
- Defective PSU
- Defective mouse
- Defective shift key on my keyboard (happened after about two months of working fine)

I've resolved all these issues, but I'm not going to say that it hasn't been a source of frustration during a time when I really just needed everything to work. Either my luck is horrible, or the original, defective PSU caused a lot of other issues.

Oh, and I have a coil whine issue that can't be fixed, but it's a relatively minor problem.

All in all, I'm still glad I did it, but I didn't realize how many hoops I'd have to jump through. Was it worth it? I believe so. I'm also getting a ton of work done on it.
My god lord, sir
     
Jawbone54  (op)
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Mar 24, 2015, 01:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
My god lord, sir
Again, I'm almost certain it was the defective PSU that caused my first GPU to crap out, and I'm pretty much positive it caused the mouse issue, because the mouse died simultaneously. The keyboard, I'm not sure. Shouldn't have bought Razer.

The good news is that none of this set me back, since it was all so new. I did get my money back for the keyboard and bought a Corsair K65, which I should have done in the first place. It feels amazing, and I've got custom keyboard light configurations for different games. I'll post some pictures soon.
     
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Mar 24, 2015, 02:36 PM
 
A bad PSU can kill a lot of things, so it seems a likely suspect for your GPU. Mice and keyboards die, this is a fact of life. That the PSU would kill both the GPU and the mouse seems odd - they're on different voltage planes - but of course not impossible.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Mar 27, 2015, 02:36 AM
 
Yep. I'm a PSU nazi, in terms of quality, which is why I usually only buy Seasonic (and other brands that are sourced through them like most of the Corsair AX series). I know I don't really need a 1200W PSU (actually I'm pulling 850W from the wall under load so maybe I do), but the thing is bulletproof. Power supplies are a thing that most people skimp on when it should be what they pay attention to most.
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Apr 13, 2015, 01:06 PM
 
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Jawbone54  (op)
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Apr 13, 2015, 05:35 PM
 
That sale would have been so nice a few months ago when I was buying all my parts. Agh...
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Apr 13, 2015, 10:31 PM
 
Grabbed a pair for my work machine, my 500GB drive is nearly capped, and I'm gonna RAID-0 them. Just crazy, almost 2TB of SSDs for only $600.
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Apr 15, 2015, 12:22 PM
 
Leaks indicate some good news for PC gaming, for once. You may not have noticed, but the Broadwell mobile chips have radically limited number of PCIe lanes - max of 12 2.0 lanes, not possible to do more than x4 in one batch - and the rumor (hatched long before Broadwell launched) as that this was the new normal, and that you'd need the expensive "-E" variants for more lanes.

Well, it turns out that this was wrong - according to the leaks. For Skylake, Intel does fiddle with the lane configurations a bit and lock them to the platform controller variant, but even on the lowest "consumer" level chipsets, all desktop CPUs get x16 PCIe 3.0 lanes directly from the processor - ie, what we have today. It doesn't speak of the mobile variants, though, so if you want to panic about that, go ahead.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Jawbone54  (op)
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Apr 22, 2015, 11:51 AM
 
Okay, so I'm in the market for something else now. I've been using my 32" 1080p Vizio TV, which obviously sucks as a gaming monitor.

My future display probably needs to be IPS, as I need to do a lot of photo editing and graphic work, and would love the color accuracy. I also would like a 1440p display, but I'm concerned about my graphics card not being able to run some of my titles nearly as well at that resolution. Would running games at 1080p on a 1440p display look like crap? I know running games at non-native resolutions sucks, but I don't plan on buying a new card to support 1440p at high quality for quite some time.

Are there any models or brands you guys are particularly drawn to? Have you had bad experiences with any?
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Apr 22, 2015, 12:15 PM
 
I lean towards Asus and LG monitors, they've been very good lately. Also there's Monoprice, which I've heard is excellent value, and they have a "0 bright pixel" guarantee.

1080 on a 1440 monitor looks "soft", but it isn't something you notice too much after you get involved in the game. You have a 970 though, so there really isn't any game out there you can't run @1440, even on very high settings.
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Apr 22, 2015, 05:49 PM
 
A 970 does well enough at 1440p for now. May not do so forever, but for now it works. Personally I plan to get a 4K monitor and run it at 1080p when playing shooters -that is exactly a quarter of the res, so it won't get blurry.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Apr 22, 2015, 06:32 PM
 
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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May 27, 2015, 07:35 PM
 
Oh my...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD3WRvSLwIQ

Granted, real world gains from SSDs aren't so pronounced, unless you're moving a lot of data, pretty much just having an SSD is the big thing and it doesn't matter how slow or old it is, for the most part. But still... I gotta have some of these. That's just honking insane.
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Jawbone54  (op)
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May 28, 2015, 10:33 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
Oh my...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD3WRvSLwIQ

Granted, real world gains from SSDs aren't so pronounced, unless you're moving a lot of data, pretty much just having an SSD is the big thing and it doesn't matter how slow or old it is, for the most part. But still... I gotta have some of these. That's just honking insane.
Hooooooly cow...

I'll wait 'til the prices go down, but I'll be replacing my main drive with one someday.
     
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Jun 4, 2015, 07:28 AM
 
Originally Posted by mattyb View Post
I have this one: http://www.amazon.de/LG-LED-Monitor-...keywords=lg+29
...and I love it!
(too expensive though)
***
     
Jawbone54  (op)
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Jun 4, 2015, 11:13 AM
 
Originally Posted by badidea View Post
I have this one: http://www.amazon.de/LG-LED-Monitor-...keywords=lg+29
...and I love it!
(too expensive though)
Good God.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jun 4, 2015, 05:57 PM
 
Jiminy-freaking-crisco, guys... We done massively screwed up! Why did we build these custom gaming rigs when we could have just bought an iMac and gotten 60fps in modern games in Windows! How could we have been so blind when the answer was right here in front of us the whole time?!

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Jun 4, 2015, 06:32 PM
 
Oh, you can absolutely play modern games at 60 fps on an iMac - if you turn the pretties off, or play an MMO or an indie or something. Remember, when testing these things, they usually set the quality to at least high and usually ultra, and at least some games (Crysis in particular) are poorly optimized at the highest settings, probably intentionally, because it is a selling point to be the toughest game around. Personally, I prefer to have the pretties on and fps around 40, but YMMV.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jun 4, 2015, 06:48 PM
 
Yeah, but he's laughably saying at native res (!) with texture settings that aren't utter crap, @60fps. It can't, that's not what it's made for. The mere notion of it is comical. If it could, Mac lovers wouldn't be resorting to building gaming PCs.
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Jun 9, 2015, 06:07 AM
 
SWIM said that "Fury" is the new designation for Fiji-based cards inside the newest post-alpha/RC Catalyst, and Fury performance and stability has improved dramatically. It's ready for primetime. Will it eat 980Ti's lunch? Time to set the table.
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Jun 9, 2015, 07:30 AM
 
SWIM?

Yeah, Fury has been known for a while. Cue Photochops about old ATi cards Rage Fury MAXX.

Launch is apparently on the 16th now.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jun 9, 2015, 09:44 AM
 
I know it's been known, I'm saying it hasn't designated as "Fury XT" or "Fury Pro" in the drivers until now.

Someone Who Isn't Me - It's a joke. At one time it was used by people to distribute info without directly implicating themselves, but everyone simply assumed the person was talking about himself.
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Jun 9, 2015, 10:39 AM
 
I was too afraid to venture down the AMD path after reading about so many past driver issues.

What graphics cards are you guys running?
     
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Jun 9, 2015, 11:54 AM
 
The driver issue thing is ancient history. What can be an issue on occasion is that some games in nVidia's TWIMTBP program (now sometimes called Gameworks, I think it's the same) don't run well at launch, because nVidia prevents developers of such games from doing the final tuning on AMD cards. AMD usually fixes it with a beta driver inside a week. Until someone can get the FTC to do a dawn raid on nVidia, you have to play with mid quality settings the first week on about 3 games a year.

I run a Radeon 290 Tri-X now. I bought it before the Maxwell launch, when nothing nVidia had could match it in bang for buck (closest was the overpriced 780). I have used nVidia in the past - if they release a card with good performance at the money I'm willing to pay, I buy that - but recently it's like they drop one good card a generation, charge through the nose for a halo version and release overpriced garbage in the midrange.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jun 9, 2015, 12:02 PM
 
I have Red and Green cards all over the place, I don't pick favorites. If you're on a budget, like to root for the underdog, and want just raw power, go Red. If value is less of a worry, you want the best performance at the top end, and don't mind their Machiavellian business tactics, go Green.

On my gaming/experimental rig I have two AMD *name redacted* in crossfire, a pair of Titan Blacks in my secondary PC, and a pair of R9 290X in another (all AMD) rig. Also I have a trio of 980Tis ready to swap into the secondary box for comparison testing, when I get around to it.
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Jun 9, 2015, 01:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
If you're on a budget, like to root for the underdog, and want just raw power, go Red. If value is less of a worry, you want the best performance at the top end, and don't mind their Machiavellian business tactics, go Green.
Best summary of the situation I've seen. There are always exceptions, but this is the default.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jun 9, 2015, 07:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
On my gaming/experimental rig I have two AMD *name redacted* in crossfire, a pair of Titan Blacks in my secondary PC, and a pair of R9 290X in another (all AMD) rig. Also I have a trio of 980Tis ready to swap into the secondary box for comparison testing, when I get around to it.
My PA and I did this today, the machine (Haswell-E 5960X cpu @4.5GHz, w/ 64GB of RAM) pulls 1030W from the wall. Yet even under that load the fan in the power supply (EVGA T2 1600W) is inaudible and barely spins (it doesn't run at all under 40% load).
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Jun 10, 2015, 11:38 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants View Post
On my gaming/experimental rig I have two AMD *name redacted* in crossfire, a pair of Titan Blacks in my secondary PC, and a pair of R9 290X in another (all AMD) rig. Also I have a trio of 980Tis ready to swap into the secondary box for comparison testing, when I get around to it.
Good heavens, man...
     
Cap'n Tightpants
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Jun 10, 2015, 07:20 PM
 
It's no big deal, I'm a notorious tech junky.
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Jun 12, 2015, 10:49 PM
 
I really hate the stock nvidia blower cooler, 3 of them running @50% are insanely loud. They all overclocked well, though, I got 1480MHz boost clock out of them.
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Jun 15, 2015, 08:22 AM
 
Holy crap, nvidia drivers are so much more stable and better behaved compared to AMD.
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Jun 16, 2015, 03:45 PM
 
AMD reveals HBM-powered Radeon Fury graphics cards, new R300-series GPUs | PCWorld

I can't say anything, but I guess they can.

Oh, and you'll want the Fury X, for the difference in price it's a no brainer.
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Jun 16, 2015, 05:25 PM
 
R9 Nano was a bit surprising, but everything else was as leaked.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jun 17, 2015, 03:52 AM
 
Originally Posted by Jawbone54 View Post
I was too afraid to venture down the AMD path after reading about so many past driver issues.

What graphics cards are you guys running?
I grabbed an R7-265 on sale for like $130 last year. No problems running anything I throw at it, which is admittedly nothing too severe. Crysis 2 is probably as intense as I got, and it looked great. But I have low standards.
     
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Jul 5, 2015, 08:57 PM
 
I've been thinking about the Fury X, and even though I have admiration for AMD for taking the risk to design such a product, under most circumstances I can't recommend people buy it. There are numerous issues; dying pumps (I had one die during testing, almost killing the card when the thermal failsafe didn't shut it down), very unstable drivers (which still haven't been fixed satisfactorily), and the simple fact that 4GB just isn't enough memory for 4K gaming* (which is what the card is designed for). Combine with that AMD's recent abandonment of Mantle (I know, DX12, but still...), and lack of HDMI 2.0 (I thought at the time that was just a beta test omission, but turns out it wasn't). That last part really hurts too, given it's supposed to be a media center card and 4K HDTVs use HDMI 2.0. That's just... daft.

IF a person is buying the cards specifically for Crossfire (HBM shines in multi GPU configs), and IF they aren't playing games that use lots of texture memory, and IF they don't mind some rather severe driver limitations with Crossfire game profiles and overall wonky stability. No, no, I can't even recommend it then, not when the 980TI is so close in performance, is more stable, and has more memory and game support.

Essentially, the Fury X is a great tech demo and proof of concept, but a poor consumer-level product. That's a sad thing for me to confess, I wanted to love them and for AMD to knock this one out of the park (to "bring balance to the Force") but it wasn't to be. Maybe next year when the 8GB cards come out w/ HDMI 2.0 and more mature drivers, maybe...


*My "normal" Skyrim mods run the game to >4.5GB and led to serious performance issues, meaning I had to disable several. Also SoM ran out on a couple of occasions. That shouldn't happen with a product at this level.
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Jul 6, 2015, 03:59 AM
 
HDMI 2.0 is possible via adapters, and it's a terrible interface anyway. Those adapters are expensive now ($50 or thereabouts), but they will drop in price, and Fury X isn't exactly cheap.

Pumps are a concern. One can hope that your issue was a beta issue, but long term, watercooling tends to die. It is simply not a long term solution.

4GB video RAM... I'm not sure which way to leap here. Anandtech, which is the site I trust best, says that the new memory compression helps a lot and memory only runs out when framerates are too low to be playable anyway. Others have issues.

The main problem, however, is that Fury doesn't crush the 980 Ti. It basically matches it (depends a bit on the game and the settings), but it has an insane theoretical advantage in shaders and memory bandwidth. It is missing some geometry performance, but I think that the details in texture filtering may be what handicaps it (Fury has more texture units, but it can only process 8-bit textures at full performance. 16-bit textures are half performance, and 32-bit are a quarter. nVidia's Maxwell chips do 8-bit and 16-bit textures at full performance and 32-bit at half, so they will win on higher quality textures)

Anyway: High MSAA can kill performance - use a shader-based AA instead. Drop the texture filtering to something sane, like 4x instead of 16x. Consider limiting tessellation, especially if it's a Gameworks game.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jul 6, 2015, 12:50 PM
 
Frankly, and I'm not taking away from the Fury X as tech (it's amazing tech), but those are tradeoffs that shouldn't exist at the $650 price point (or even at $550). That's a lot of $ and a major gaming investment. So I immediately put myself in the average Joe's shoes of a 2 year upgrade cycle and think, "If I need to do that now, what's the scene going to look like in 24 months?"

The 980TI snuck up on them, they didn't expect nvidia to sacrifice Titan X with such a hot TI variant, but that's exactly what happened. AMD was targeting the regular 980 (which the Fury X totally demolishes) @$650, only to get caught in a real life Queen's gambit. If you're into chess and enjoy such strategy plays it was a beautiful move that was executed to perfection by NV (they even saturated the 1st tier market with Titan Xs to help "sell" it), much to the Red team's dismay. From a gamer perspective I don't agree with a lot of their practices, much like Intel they take no prisoners and in the long run they're hurting PC gaming. But from a purely objective business standpoint it was ****ing brilliant.

I need to explain where I come from on video adapters, my track record in home theater with active adapters has been horrendous. They flake, they die, I disconnect then reconnect, unplug, plug back in, sync then resync... then finally throw a fit and pitch the thing in the trash. I don't want to deal with them, and after a few months most other people won't want to either. Now add in the complexity of Freesync and... Geez, it makes me spaz just thinking about it. If you follow the spec properly and use quality certified (not necessarily expensive) cables HDMI 2.0 works well, you just can't take shortcuts and liberties with the specification, like with 1.x.

Admittedly, I only ran out of vram in 4K, and in only 3 titles (one is in closed beta). That's 3 out of ~80 titles I tested, not a huge deal... until you think about the future. There are some major eye candy games in the pipe that are going to eat memory like no others before. Will the Fury X keep up without compromises? I don't believe so. On the bleeding edge will DX12's unified memory schemes in SLI/CF save the day? I have some doubts, and on that level there really shouldn't be any.

Then there's the pumps. One of mine died. Okay, stuff happens and it's a beta product. However, they are noisy things. I have 3 layers of Dynamat inside my main rig (with vibration isolation rings on everything) and with the insulated door on I can't hear them from my chair, but if I take it off a pump whine @2.5kHz is clearly audible. At the time I was told to not worry about it, "it's a beta product, we know about that". However, I guess they ignored what testers were saying and didn't address it properly, because from what I can tell in pictures the only thing they did to really counter it is use a thicker padded box around the pump package with an isolation pad under it. It's the exact same Cooler Master unit inside.
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Jul 6, 2015, 01:17 PM
 
You're right about how the 980 Ti came "from nowhere" to steal Fury's thunder. That was nVidia eating a loss to show who's boss.

4GB memory and the texture unit limitations make me think that AMD probably wants you to use 8-bit textures for best effect. That solves two of the three big limitations of Fury X. We'll have to see how that works out, but AMD's console advantage isn't relevant here - it is easy enough to make the "Ultra" quality textures for the top PC version 16-bit, even if the console version uses 8-bit textures for top performance.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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Jul 6, 2015, 02:12 PM
 
How long into one of these GPU's life cycle do they usually drop in price? If I had built my rig half a year later, I'd have waited a bit longer for the 980 Ti.
     
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Jul 6, 2015, 03:16 PM
 
The TI flagships really don't, at least not in the new market. By the time they would drop the TI is discontinued and the new flagship comes out. Now, at 3-4 months into their cycle, manufacturer refurbs start coming out (IOW, refurbed 980TIs should be available sometime around September). They're as good as new, have a truncated warranty, but are priced at a 20-30% discount.
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Aug 12, 2015, 08:53 AM
 
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Jawbone54  (op)
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Aug 12, 2015, 09:52 AM
 
Crap.

This is the problem with having built a PC. I'm wanting to continually drop money on stuff like this. Going to hold off for a year or two — maybe they'll drop even more by that time.
     
 
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