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"I need a New PC!" 2012 Thread. Ivy, SSDs, and reading the OP. [Part 2]

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G

garath

Member
Whooter said:
Not strictly a PC-related question, but does anyone have a recommendation for a wireless router?

I'm using a DLink DIR-655 which has suddenly started just "disappearing". All the wireless devices will drop connection to it, and it disappears from any scans of wireless networks. The router has to be power cycled to make it reappear. I've used this router for well over a year without issue, but this has now happened 3 times in the past 36 hours.

I'd suspect my new computer has something to do with it, but I have no idea what it could possibly do to cause that...
Click to expand...

The same thing happened to my older D-link gaming router. It didn't start that way but after a couple years I had to power cycle it 2-3x a week to keep all my mobile devices connected to it.

The powerline cable idea is great except for mobile devices :)

After much deliberation (and reading that D-link continually has this issue) and research, I ended up purchasing this router:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0096239FG/?tag=neogaf0e-20

2 months in without so much as a single power cycle. It has better range than my old dlink and the DD-WRT firmware is pretty darn good.
 
S

SimonM7

Member
I built a PC in time for Christmas 2010, which is still doing quite alright. I thought I'd bump the performance up a notch by getting a new graphics card, some ram and an SSD. I'm mainly wondering how much of a bottleneck my CPU config is.


It's an Intel Core I5 760 2.80GHz. It's running at stock speed. I'd be upgrading from a Radeon 6870 to a 7970 GHz edition card, probably Sapphire.

Thoughts on this would be wonderful.
 
K

kharma45

Member
SimonM7 said:
I built a PC in time for Christmas 2010, which is still doing quite alright. I thought I'd bump the performance up a notch by getting a new graphics card, some ram and an SSD. I'm mainly wondering how much of a bottleneck my CPU config is.

It's an Intel Core I5 760 2.80GHz. It's running at stock speed. I'd be upgrading from a Radeon 6870 to a 7970 GHz edition card, probably Sapphire.

Thoughts on this would be wonderful.
Click to expand...

I'd recommend getting a custom cooler for your CPU if you don't have one and OCing it, you should be able to get at least another 1GHz out of it.

A 6870 to 7970 will see a very good boost http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/539?vs=618
 
V

Varna

Member
Akkad said:
So it's normal for one core to be a little warmer (5 degrees) than the rest in a 3570K?
Click to expand...

Core 0 is often 5C or so lower then the rest on my chip.

Is it normal for Ivy chips not to downclock themselves once you overclock? All my power saver options are still enabled but the chip won't come down from 4.6. The voltage is definitely being change though 1.12~1.210.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Akkad said:
So it's normal for one core to be a little warmer (5 degrees) than the rest in a 3570K?
Click to expand...
Yep. Probably Core #1 or #2, right? Core #0 ususally stays the coolest.
Varna said:
Core 0 is often 5C or so lower then the rest on my chip.

Is it normal for Ivy chips not to downclock themselves once you overclock? All my power saver options are still enabled but the chip won't come down from 4.6. The voltage is definitely being change though 1.12~1.210.
Click to expand...
What kind of motherboard do you have? That is some pretty huge variation there in voltage. Do you have any options for altering PLLC, or LLC?

*edit*

Also, I think I may have finally found my next case that I will be saving for.

aeQ8Y.jpg


F1prz.jpg
Click to expand...
 
S

scogoth

Member
Kinda off topic but does relate to PC gaming.... Dafaq did nvidia just come up with? It's so out of left field but I guess it's cool and would help a LOT of people here who are trying to build HTPCs for gaming. Render the game on your comp using full GPU power, stream to nvidias shield for inputs then stream to tv for display.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6548/nvidia-ces-2013-press-event-live-blog


And mkenyon.....^^^^^^
Why do you want a PowerMac that's been smashed with a hammer?
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
scogoth said:
Kinda off topic but does relate to PC gaming.... Dafaq did nvidia just come up with? It's so out of left field but I guess it's cool and would help a LOT of people here who are trying to build HTPCs for gaming. Render the game on your comp using full GPU power, stream to nvidias shield for inputs then stream to tv for display.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6548/nvidia-ces-2013-press-event-live-blog
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm pretty interested. I think there will almost certainly be some input lag, which has me worried. I did some testing for a company pushing the WiDi tech, and that stuff was nearly unusable in anything requiring precise input.

But wireless tech is a magical world that I don't understand, so I could be totally wrong.

In any case, it seems like the type of games that I would want to play on this would already be fairly easy to run on a low-end HTPC. Walking Dead, platformers, etc.
scogoth said:
And mkenyon.....^^^^^^
Why do you want a PowerMac that's been smashed with a hammer?
Click to expand...
That Mac case was built and partially designed by Lian Li, and has been a source of much desire for many many many years. Everytime I got my hands on one, I would just lose the drive to properly mod it due to lack of confidence in my cutting/drilling skills.

Imagine this guy with a black powdercoat exterior and white interior. mmmmmm yesss.
 
V

Varna

Member
mkenyon said:
What kind of motherboard do you have? That is some pretty huge variation there in voltage. Do you have any options for altering PLLC, or LLC?
Click to expand...

Asus Sabertooth z77.

It sits idle at 1.1208 and kicks up to 1.2009 during Prime 95. It never downclocks like my Sandy chip though

I ran it for 12 hours @ 1.21 vcore so I can safely assumes BSODs are probably caused by something else?

EDIT: Those options are left at auto. Tried messing around with the LLC but I was having crashes (non-bsod).
 
S

scogoth

Member
mkenyon said:
Yeah, I'm pretty interested. I think there will almost certainly be some input lag, which has me worried. I did some testing for a company pushing the WiDi tech, and that stuff was nearly unusable in anything requiring precise input.

But wireless tech is a magical world that I don't understand, so I could be totally wrong.

In any case, it seems like the type of games that I would want to play on this would already be fairly easy to run on a low-end HTPC. Walking Dead, platformers, etc.

That Mac case was built and partially designed by Lian Li, and has been a source of much desire for many many many years. Everytime I got my hands on one, I would just lose the drive to properly mod it due to lack of confidence in my cutting/drilling skills.

Imagine this guy with a black powdercoat exterior and white interior. mmmmmm yesss.
Click to expand...

It's not all that magical! It would be very interesting to see how they pull it off with so many different vendors coming into play, the NIC on the PC, wireless APs, the receiver unit on the TV. The WiiU controller is stellar at keeping latency down to mere milliseconds but that is an entirely proprietary setup. Anyway looks like we are a dying breed with cloud gaming, steaming games and handheld android controllers, goodbye PC gaming its been a great run.

With nehalem I said that it would be the last great PC gaming CPU and really the only game that requires more power is BF3 multiplayer. I'm calling next gen GPUs the last real powerhouses before cloud gaming takes over. We will see the intel strategy of low power and lower power spread its poison to GPUs.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Varna said:
Asus Sabertooth z77.

It sits idle at 1.1208 and kicks up to 1.2009 during Prime 95. It never downclocks like my Sandy chip though

I ran it for 12 hours @ 1.21 vcore so I can safely assumes BSODs are probably caused by something else?

EDIT: Those options are left at auto. Tried messing around with the LLC but I was having crashes (non-bsod).
Click to expand...
That's really really strange.

I'd just straight up disable speedstepping and the various power saving features. We're talking about a tiny amount of watts here, less than a lightbulb.
scogoth said:
With nehalem I said that it would be the last great PC gaming CPU and really the only game that requires more power is BF3 multiplayer. I'm calling next gen GPUs the last real powerhouses before cloud gaming takes over. We will see the intel strategy of low power and lower power spread its poison to GPUs.
Click to expand...
High end PC Gaming has been and always will be a luxury. I see this cloud business taking over the same space that occupies most folks who don't have new systems every few years, but are playing on old hardware. That huge part of the bell curve we are reminded about when you see the results of the Steam hardware census business.

Hardware sales consistently go up year over year, and there's a lot of reasons for it to continue to do so. There's always the group of titles and new display tech that is pushing the boundaries of hardware and what you can do. That's not going to change anytime soon.
 
A

Akkad

Banned
I'm selling these 3 GTs for $33 if anybody is interested, I have used for probably 3 or 4 months and they come with everything except the original packaging. I wanna sell them all together not separate if possible.

9vk.JPG
[/IMG]
Click to expand...
 
K

Kipp

but I am taking tiny steps forward
crimzonflame said:
Where can I purchase MS Office for the cheapest price? Im not a student, and I am Canadian.
Click to expand...

Is there a reason you want MS Office instead of something free like OpenOffice or Libre? I personally use OpenOffice and I like it more than MS Office.

Also, after typing office so many times the word is starting to seem very weird...
 
N

NoRéN

Member
Kipp said:
Is there a reason you want MS Office instead of something free like OpenOffice or Libre? I personally use OpenOffice and I like it more than MS Office.

Also, after typing office so many times the word is starting to seem very weird...
Click to expand...

I don't remember OpenOffice being this good. I got it for my new build and so far I do not miss MS Office one bit.
 
G

garath

Member
Well my click on my old mx518 was starting to get a little soft so on the many recommendations around the interweb and here in this thread I went with the Steelseries Sensei RAW. Amazon has it for $47 right now which is one of the lowest prices I've seen since I've been watching it (only lower was the big sale direct through Steelseries around black Friday).

It's a little lighter (90 grams vs 106 of the mx518) and the profile is different than I'm used to but it sounds like an incredible mouse. Hopefully it pays off. I'm a pretty competitive gamer (though I don't formally compete in anything anymore).
 
G

garath

Member
ashbash159 said:
I only got my new graphics card a week ago, but I have had problems with it where games will crash after 5 minutes.

Here is the graphics card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX670 Graphics Card(2GB GDDR5, PCI-E)

It crashes in:
  • Far Cry 3
  • Battlefield 3
  • Sleeping Dogs

Please help, it's really frustrating!
Click to expand...

What's your driver situation?

-Did you have an nvidia card before?
-Did you update to the latest non-beta drivers?


Best first thing to try is uninstall the drivers, use a driver cleaner and reinstall the latest non-beta drivers.
 
A

ashbash159

Member
garath said:
What's your driver situation?

-Did you have an nvidia card before?
-Did you update to the latest non-beta drivers?


Best first thing to try is uninstall the drivers, use a driver cleaner and reinstall the latest non-beta drivers.
Click to expand...

  • I have not had an Nvidia card since 2006.
  • I have updated to the latest Nvidia driver version 310.90.

I will try uninstalling the drivers.
What driver cleaner do you recommend I use?
 
G

garath

Member
ashbash159 said:
  • I have not had an Nvidia card since 2006.
  • I have updated to the latest Nvidia driver version 310.90.

I will try uninstalling the drivers.
What driver cleaner do you recommend I use?
Click to expand...

I believe the one most people use is actually called driver sweeper.

There may be some left over AMD driver. I haven't switched card brands in ages (when I buy a new card I just uninstall the old driver and install latest) but when I did, I made sure to use driver sweeper to avoid any conflicts.

Toodles linked a great guide for eliminating any AMD leftover driver files on the next post you may want to try:

http://www.overclock.net/t/988215/h...l-ati-amd-software-drivers-for-graphics-cards
 
N

Noaloha

Member
Speaking of graphics cards and crashes, I've had a persistantly irritating issue with my 7970 since I bought it 5 months ago. It's a beast of a thing and eats up games but I have this awful niggling suspicion that it might be faulty.

Every so often, maybe once or twice a gaming session, my computer will hard-crash, and it happens/happened across several games. GW2, FF14, Dishonored, Sleeping Dogs, Planetside 2, Natural Selection 2, Hawken, Chivalry, Tribes:A, etc. I'm certain it would occur with other games in my backlog too.

The crashes are never BSODs. Visually they're always either complete game-freezes or a blank screen covered in thin vertical lines of two similar colours (eg. light green & dark green) and audibly the crash always keeps the current ambient game sound playing for a few seconds, then jarringly switches to a fast playback of a fraction of a second's sound. Resetting computer is the only fix. Occasionally, though not recently, not even the reset button worked and I'd have to unplug the entire system. The point at which the games crash is random too. Just as likely to crash in a very quiet spot of a game as one of heavy-load.

Is there a way to test this shit somehow to make sure that it's the card that is at fault? And if it is faulty, how long after purchase can you still RMA a card like this?

I've left it so long because of a combination of laziness, not wishing to be without my sexy new card and a general uncertainty that the card is even the culprit.

EDIT: in response to the recent advice, I really don't think I personally am looking at a driver issue. The issue has persisted across all the drivers I've used since Summer of last year and I use this method for switching/reinstalling.
 
G

garath

Member
Toodles said:
Speaking of graphics cards and crashes, I've had a persistantly irritating issue with my 7970 since I bought it 5 months ago. It's a beast of a thing and eats up games but I have this awful niggling suspicion that it might be faulty.

Every so often, maybe once or twice a gaming session, my computer will hard-crash, and it happens/happened across several games. GW2, FF14, Dishonored, Sleeping Dogs, Planetside 2, Natural Selection 2, Hawken, Chivalry, Tribes:A, etc. I'm certain it would occur with other games in my backlog too.

The crashes are never BSODs. Visually they're always either complete game-freezes or a blank screen covered in thin vertical lines of two similar colours (eg. light green & dark green) and audibly the crash always keeps the current ambient game sound playing for a few seconds, then jarringly switches to a fast playback of a fraction of a second's sound. Resetting computer is the only fix. Occasionally, though not recently, not even the reset button worked and I'd have to unplug the entire system. The point at which the games crash is random too. Just as likely to crash in a very quiet spot of a game as one of heavy-load.

Is there a way to test this shit somehow to make sure that it's the card that is at fault? And if it is faulty, how long after purchase can you still RMA a card like this?

I've left it so long because of a combination of laziness, not wishing to be without my sexy new card and a general uncertainty that the card is even the culprit.

EDIT: in response to the recent advice, I really don't think I personally am looking at a driver issue. The issue has persisted across all the drivers I've used since Summer of last year and I use this method for switching/reinstalling.
Click to expand...

Honestly in your case it doesn't sound like driver issues. His is a little different as he just installed a new card from a different vendor. I feel pretty strongly his case is a driver one.

Yours.. well.. sounds like it could be a bad card. You'll have to rely on the warranty to get it fixed. I had bad cards in the past and intermittent issues like that are hard to prove. Hopefully it's a good brand and they have good customer service and RMA it for you.

Other than that you can monitor temps (keep a monitor program open while you game and have it log to a file) and see if maybe it's overheating or something but it's likely just faulty.
 
S

Syntsui

Member
I just started upgrading my PC (4 strong years with my Geforce 8800GT) and I bought an
MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3072 MB. I pretend to upgrade my CPU in 7-8 months (today I have an Intel Core 2Duo E7300 overclocked to 3,4GHz). For now, it's holding up well.

Just tested Skyrim with everything on Ultra (720p only though, plan to upgrade my monitor in 7-8 months too) and I got like 50fps average. It's pretty good if it wasn't for it's inconsistency it goes up and down all the time and its really frustrating.

I want to know if there is a way to LOCK the framerate, I read that vsync does that but I turned it on and off and didn't see much difference. Is there any program that actually does this?

By the way, i am using the last driver I saw on guru3d (8.95-120214a-134393C-ATI). Is there any better driver? A guy told me guru3d was the best one for drivers and this was the latest one there so...

I am just getting in this gaming pc thing, and I would really appreciate some light. One more thing, is it normal that Skyrim runs waaay better than Dark Souls? I thought Skyrim was way more demanding, hell, even The Witcher II runs way better than Dark Souls. Do I need to tweak something to run it in a stable/locked 30fps in 720p?

My PC right now is:

CPU: Intel Core 2Duo E7300 overclocked to 3,4GHz (will upgrade in the future)

GPU: MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3072 MB

RAM: 4GB (3,25GB 32bits lol) of a poor kingston DDR2 card (will upgrade in the future with 64bit OS)

Really good power supply (650W Corsair) and cooler (A50 Corsair), I think I will never have to change then
 
K

kharma45

Member
You need to go through Dabs for the RMA at this stage.

The type of crashes sound similar to what happened my MSI card and they just replaced it but never told me what was wrong.
 
N

Noaloha

Member
Hmmm. I'd certainly prefer to use Dabs!

Just in case Dabs try to fob me off and say "You need to go to Asus about this!", can I ask why you advise I should use Dabs at this stage?
 
F

fierrotlepou

Member
So guys, I think my Macbook Pro's (2011, 15", 2.2GHz) HDD is dying. Before I buy a new one (SSD) I'd like to be sure, of course. A scan from SMART utility shows me these results.

5aRQH.png
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that it's really FUBAR?

The symptoms:

- everything runs rather slow, a format doesn't really help for long
- rebooting takes ages
 
A

ashbash159

Member
I just done a fresh install of Windows 8. I done nothing but download and then install the latest Nvidia drivers. After the PC reboot, the screen would remain black. I could not get Windows 8 Safe Mode to show up, so I gave up and then done another fresh Windows 8 install. At the moment I have the default driver, version 306.97. Version 310.90 is the driver version that makes my computer break. What do you suggest I do? Thanks in advance.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
ashbash159 said:
I just done a fresh install of Windows 8. I done nothing but download and then install the latest Nvidia drivers. After the PC reboot, the screen would remain black. It could not get Windows 8 Safe Mode to show up, so I gave up and then done another fresh Windows 8 install. At the moment I have the default driver, version 306.97. Version 310.90 is the driver version that makes my computer break. What do you suggest I do? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
*edit* misread the post.

When you update, you should delete everything in C:\NVIDIA\, and make sure that you uninstall everything that says NVIDIA in Add/Remove programs (or the win 8 equivalent if it is different). Then reboot, then install newest drivers.
 
A

ashbash159

Member
mkenyon said:
*edit* misread the post.

When you update, you should delete everything in C:\NVIDIA\, and make sure that you uninstall everything that says NVIDIA in Add/Remove programs (or the win 8 equivalent if it is different). Then reboot, then install newest drivers.
Click to expand...

I uninstalled the 3 programs from Nvidia, deleted files from C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation (there were no files, just the folder) and C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation (there were files in here). I will now reboot.

Edit 1: I successfully rebooted. Now I am downloading the 310.90 driver. I will install this and then reboot. (This is the point where my computer would no boot up properly. We'll see! :S)

Edit 2: Before I install 310.90, the drivers I unistalled were automatically reinstalled when I just checked right now (NVIDIA 3D Vision Driver 306.97, NVIDIA Graphics Driver 306.97 and NVIDIA Update 1.10.8). Now if I were to install the 310.90 drivers it would probably break as it has done so before. I'm not sure what I should do now.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
It's really important that you delete everything in C:\NVIDIA\

That's where the driver installs unpack everything. The reason why it keeps installing is because the OS knows to look there to automatically reinstall everything.
 
A

ashbash159

Member
mkenyon said:
It's really important that you delete everything in C:\NVIDIA\

That's where the driver installs unpack everything. The reason why it keeps installing is because the OS knows to look there to automatically reinstall everything.
Click to expand...

There is no C:\NVIDIA\. I have not unpacked a driver that I've downloaded.

Anyway what caused Windows 8 to install these drivers automatically? Is it something that comes with Windows 8, or is it downloaded in the background, or is it installed from the GPU itself?
 
D

daoster

Member
Thinking about building a new PC...are the Standard/Enhanced builds on the front page still viable builds, or will the 2013 edition have some updated builds?
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Yeah, something that windows did automatically. I'm unfamiliar with the Win 8 update process to further help :(
daoster said:
Thinking about building a new PC...are the Standard/Enhanced builds on the front page still viable builds, or will the 2013 edition have some updated builds?
Click to expand...
Prices will change slightly, but the parts will stay the same.
 
N

NoRéN

Member
ashbash159 said:
Edit 2: Before I install 310.90, the drivers I unistalled were automatically reinstalled when I just checked right now (NVIDIA 3D Vision Driver 306.97, NVIDIA Graphics Driver 306.97 and NVIDIA Update 1.10.8). Now if I were to install the 310.90 drivers it would probably break as it has done so before. I'm not sure what I should do now.
Click to expand...

I decided to update myself after seeing your post. I did what mkenyon said and deleted the contents on c:/nvidia. Then I uninstalled the nvidia graphis driver and update using ccleaner. I restarted the pc and upon doing so I downloaded and installed the new drivers. Seems to have worked. I'm on win7 so I don't know what's different.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Yeah, it's ridiculous that the installers don't autorun some program that deletes everything in that folder. It totally screws up installations every time.

This process has been a bit worse for AMD, and I think that's where a lot of the 'LoL AMD drivers' attitude comes from.
 
M

mr2xxx

Banned
ashbash159 said:
I just done a fresh install of Windows 8. I done nothing but download and then install the latest Nvidia drivers. After the PC reboot, the screen would remain black. I could not get Windows 8 Safe Mode to show up, so I gave up and then done another fresh Windows 8 install. At the moment I have the default driver, version 306.97. Version 310.90 is the driver version that makes my computer break. What do you suggest I do? Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I had similar issues. Newest nvidia drivers wouldn't work so I used older ones.
 
N

NoRéN

Member
mkenyon said:
Yeah, it's ridiculous that the installers don't autorun some program that deletes everything in that folder. It totally screws up installations every time.

This process has been a bit worse for AMD, and I think that's where a lot of the 'LoL AMD drivers' attitude comes from.
Click to expand...

It would certainly make it alot easier.

In my case, when I uninstalled everything and rebooted as you mentioned above, nvidia would try and reinstall old drivers. It was weird.
 
T

timnich

Member
timnich said:
Need a bit of help. I bought a brand new motherboard for my pc. I installed everything, put on windows 7. Then as it starts up the desktop for the first time, it shuts after 20 sec of being on the desktop. Now my pc is stuck on loop, showing the bios start up screen and restarting immediately.

Could my cpu be fried? I've tested every other component so I know it's not anything else. Also, the first time I installed my aftermarket cooler I ran into some trouble with the thermal paste. I put on way too much, and some got on the underside. I had since cleaned it and had the cpu work fine until today when I installed a new motherboard. This time I put on very little, could I have not put on enough?
Click to expand...

I am out of my mind here. I have reapplied the thermal paste, went and bought the highest quality thermal paste, went and bought a NEW processor, used the stock cooler, and still nothing. I'm out almost $300 and still have this problem. I'm just about ready to quit PC gaming I'm so frustrated. Can anyone help me please? I would really appreciate it.
 
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