Support NeoGAF

[Hero_of_the_Day]

Newest Nvidia drivers are fucking wrecking my computer. Updated to the latest beta and was getting constant display driver crashes. Went back to the latest stable release, it kept crashing too (little less often). Was in the middle of installing the stable release before that and the whole computer just went black and beeped once. Had to manually power it down. Gonna scrub the bitch clean and try the 310.90 again after that. Hope this shit stops. Geforce 670 BTW.

EDIT: Nope. 310.90 crashed also after less than five minutes. Afraid my card is dying or something. At least it's still under warranty if so.

 

[Koroviev]

Quick question: If I upgrade from Win 7 to Win 8, will there be any big compatibility issues with games and such?

Considering to get Windows 8, but hopefully it ain't a big hassle.

Idk if this is still the case, but the audio in Bioshock didn't work when I tried playing it. Figured that might be relevant to you

 

[Azzurri]

How come Dell, or Samsung doesn't make a 30" 1600p Glossy monitor, only AG, or semi gloss.?

 

[teiresias]

Newest Nvidia drivers are fucking wrecking my computer. Updated to the latest beta and was getting constant display driver crashes. Went back to the latest stable release, it kept crashing too (little less often). Was in the middle of installing the stable release before that and the whole computer just went black and beeped once. Had to manually power it down. Gonna scrub the bitch clean and try the 310.90 again after that. Hope this shit stops. Geforce 670 BTW.

EDIT: Nope. 310.90 crashed also after less than five minutes. Afraid my card is dying or something. At least it's still under warranty if so.

I'm having similar issues lately but I suspect my motherboard is starting to get flaky so it would be nice for Intel to hurry up the Haswell release so I can test my theory.

Which 670 do you have?

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

I'm having similar issues lately but I suspect my motherboard is starting to get flaky so it would be nice for Intel to hurry up the Haswell release so I can test my theory.

Which 670 do you have?

EVGA. I've tried the latest beta and the last three stable, all are crashing. This isn't the first time I've had this shit happen. It seems like it goes through fits like this, then suddenly it will just work fine.

I've been out of town for the last two weeks, but before I left I played through all of DmC perfectly fine. Get back, update, and everything goes to shit, even using the last drivers that had been working fine. I suspect it's my motherboard as well actually as I had a 560ti when I first built it and it would go through fits like this as well on the same board.


EDIT: What the fuck? There is some weird shit going on. I opened up MSI afterburner to see if I saw anything interesting. Was just sitting here on my laptop with the desktop doing nothing. Looked over after five minutes or so and noticed my GPU usage was at 99% and then the driver crashed a couple seconds later. Came back for a minute, shot up again, crashed again. No overclocking going on anywhere on my system, card has never been OC'd.

What the shit could be going on?


EDIT 2: Just happened again. I wasn't paying attention again, but actually heard the card's fan ramp up right before it crashed. I have another power supply around. I guess I'll try that since I'm 99% sure it's either the motherboard or power supply. Fuck me.

 

[scogoth]

Delidded and debezelled. Feeling good right bout now, didn't destroy a $330 CPU.

 

[kennah]

NICE!

 

[scogoth]

WOW temps dropped 30C with delidding and Liquid Ultra

 

[Kipp]

WOW temps dropped 30C with delidding and Liquid Ultra

That is nuts.
Definitely let us know what you get it OC'd to!

 

[comu]

Hi

£66 - Asus P8Z77-V LX2 LGA1155 Z77 ATX Motherboard

or

£74 - Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 S 1155, DDR3 SATA III - 6Gb/s PCIe 3.0 (x16) ATX Motherboard


Going by the description on Yoyotech (where I'll be buying), it says the second one supports integrated Intel HD graphics and the first one doesn't. I'll be getting the i3 3225 which has Intel HD 4000.


Thanks

 

[Hazaro]

PC GAF, I have a very unusual scenario and I need an extra set of heads to figure it out.

I currently have an i7-2600k with an AMD 7850 and I'm pretty happy with it.

However, I want to revive my older computer (which was on it's second fried mobo): A QX6600 with 4 gigs of DDR2 RAM. I already bought a new Motherboard for it, which should be arriving anytime soon.

However, here's the scenario: This is the third motherboard this computer has been used on. They always fry with time. Since I spent a pretty penny on that processor waaaay back (I think it was upwards of 900 bucks - yeah, i'm stupid), I want to keep it working as long as possible.

I personally think the culprit is the 8800 GTX it has been paired with for it's entire life: It's a beastly videocard that's power hungry and heats up immensely. The Video Card usually starts showing signs of going bad, and then the motherboard usually goes up in flames (not literally). One of the video outputs of the card never works right (sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't), and I want to get rid of it.

I'll mainly use this machine as a Server, but I really want it to be gaming-capable. Which modern-videocard would be on par with a QX6600 which can't be overclocked (heat issues in my region on the world) and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg?

Sidenote, My cousin has an i3-2100 with an old 9600GT in it: I guess I could buy a new videocard for that and use the 9600GT on the QX6600, but she does some light gaming with it. Then again, i'm on the same scenario: Which videocard would be good for an i3 that's used for low amounts of gaming?

7770 or 7850. i3 is very capable.

I'd guess your PSU on your QX system is screwing things up. Seen it happen before.

First off wanted to thank the OP and other users for all of the work putting together such a great resource for PC building. I haven't built my own PC for 6 years and so it was a great refresher to read up on parts and everything.

But of course, as with any PC, I have issues!

My build:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz
Motherboard: MSI Z77 MPower ATX LGA1155
Memory: Corsair 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: 2 x 500 GB HDD 7200 RPM SATA (Games are installed here)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD (Windows 7 OS drive)
Video Card: Radeon HD 4890 Pro 1GB (am getting a new video card shortly, but this is the problem I will describe below)
Case: CoolerMaster HAF XM
Power Supply: Antec HCG 750W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V
Optical Drive: SATA DVD-RW

Everything is great, load times, etc. Cleaned up my installations/drives so only Windows and bare essentials are on the 128GB SSD. Installed the latest AMD/ATI drivers for my card on C: drive. Pointed all my game installed to D: drive (the first of two 500GB SATA drives). Installed World of WarCraft as a test. Bumped up all the settings to Ultra (as they were on my old PC, a Core2Duo rig with the HD 4890 and 4GB of RAM). On that old rig, the game looked pretty (as pretty as WoW can be at least), and the framerate was pretty solid 60fps. On this new PC however, it chugs between 20-30 fps, and the higher resolution/effects clearly are not being applied (poor, blurry textures on trees/foliage, etc.). The case fans are also going nuts.

Any advice would be really appreciated!

I don't play WoW, but have any updates changed the settings or draw distance or things like that? Your FPS really should not be that low. Does the performance seem much lower in other games?

Budget $400

Current Rig:
CPU: 1055T @3.9
GPU: 5850 @85/1100
MOBO: ASRock 970 Extreme3
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB
HDD: Caviar Black 1TB
PSU: Corsair 750TX
Res: 1080P

Option 1:
FX 63/8320 and 7950

Option 2:
7950 and SSD

Option 3:
3570K, mobo and SSD

I can always increase my 5850 oc, if needed. I'm looking for purely gaming improvements and I play an assortment of genres.

I'd go with option 2 now. Option 1 would give you the best performance, but the 1055T at 3.9 is really mitigating a lot of advantage the 8320 would give, even OC'd.

This is driving me insane. I want to die or slap someone. Computer boots into Windows 8, mouse, keyboard, and wireless ethernet card bot not working. Can't get anywhere past the windows 8 screen because mouse + KB don't work. Boot into Bios and everything works. I can't boot into safe mode in Windows because I can't prompt it with Keyboard not working! WTF am I suppose to do.. I don't even know what's broken, tried 10 different mouses in my house.. tempted to just go to tiger direct and buy a new motherboard. GRRRR no clue what's wrong.

What motherboard would be a good purchase? My setup is-

MSI 560
i5 2500k
ASUS P8H67-M LX (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel H67 SATA 6Gb/s Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (Don't wana buy a Micro ATX again..)

I'm late, but did you try plugging into a non USB3.0 port, and trying a different keyboard?

Hi

£66 - Asus P8Z77-V LX2 LGA1155 Z77 ATX Motherboard
or
£74 - Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 S 1155, DDR3 SATA III - 6Gb/s PCIe 3.0 (x16) ATX Motherboard

Going by the description on Yoyotech (where I'll be buying), it says the second one supports integrated Intel HD graphics and the first one doesn't. I'll be getting the i3 3225 which has Intel HD 4000.
Thanks

Both will support it. I ran down the comparison on ASUS... seems like the LX2 has more bullet points and for some reason is cheaper.

 

[RibbedHero]

EVGA. I've tried the latest beta and the last three stable, all are crashing. This isn't the first time I've had this shit happen. It seems like it goes through fits like this, then suddenly it will just work fine.

I've been out of town for the last two weeks, but before I left I played through all of DmC perfectly fine. Get back, update, and everything goes to shit, even using the last drivers that had been working fine. I suspect it's my motherboard as well actually as I had a 560ti when I first built it and it would go through fits like this as well on the same board.


EDIT: What the fuck? There is some weird shit going on. I opened up MSI afterburner to see if I saw anything interesting. Was just sitting here on my laptop with the desktop doing nothing. Looked over after five minutes or so and noticed my GPU usage was at 99% and then the driver crashed a couple seconds later. Came back for a minute, shot up again, crashed again. No overclocking going on anywhere on my system, card has never been OC'd.

What the shit could be going on?


EDIT 2: Just happened again. I wasn't paying attention again, but actually heard the card's fan ramp up right before it crashed. I have another power supply around. I guess I'll try that since I'm 99% sure it's either the motherboard or power supply. Fuck me.

Check taskmanager, you probably have a task called iehighutil.exe running. It's a virus that people have inserted into the torrents of pirated games and software amongst other things.

That shit will use up your GPU to mine bitcoins, without changing the fanspeed.

 

[LiveWire]

I don't play WoW, but have any updates changed the settings or draw distance or things like that? Your FPS really should not be that low. Does the performance seem much lower in other games?

Thanks very much for the reply! Well I tried two games, WoW and StarCraft 2. Both on Ultra settings, both had run fine before (at 1920x1080 even, on my 55" plasma HDTV). I'm now on a 1680x1050 computer monitor (before I consider getting a new monitor).

Anyway, I suspected much as you did that the FPS and general appearance should not be that bad. When I built this PC I used the very latest Catalyst drivers. WoW looked bad, SC2 was really bad--the textures on Tychus's combat suit weren't loading, it was just a blue mess. I downgraded to a driver from 2011 and-viola!--everything is back up to proper appearance. BUT, the FPS is still 10-20 lower than what I was getting on my old rig -- at 1920x1080!

Is it just bad drivers from AMD/ATI? Really concerns me because before I ran into this problem I already ordered an HD 7970 for this new rig. :/

 

[Hero_of_the_Day]

Check taskmanager, you probably have a task called iehighutil.exe running. It's a virus that people have inserted into the torrents of pirated games and software amongst other things.

That shit will use up your GPU to mine bitcoins, without changing the fanspeed.

Nothing. The fan speed did go up the time it did it after I posted that picture. At least it sounded like it did. Like I said in my second edit, that's actually what caught my attention cause I suddenly heard my fan speed up.

Looking around the internet the number one suggestion seems to be power supply, which I actually had a spare old one around. So far it's working and hasn't crashed yet. I'll give it the rest of the night and if it doesn't crash again I'll order a new supply.

Should have looked at reviews before I bought this one. Not highly recommended, which explain why I got it for such a good price. Got a couple years out of it at least.

 

[Hazaro]

Thanks very much for the reply! Well I tried two games, WoW and StarCraft 2. Both on Ultra settings, both had run fine before (at 1920x1080 even, on my 55" plasma HDTV). I'm now on a 1680x1050 computer monitor (before I consider getting a new monitor).

Anyway, I suspected much as you did that the FPS and general appearance should not be that bad. When I built this PC I used the very latest Catalyst drivers. WoW looked bad, SC2 was really bad--the textures on Tychus's combat suit weren't loading, it was just a blue mess. I downgraded to a driver from 2011 and-viola!--everything is back up to proper appearance. BUT, the FPS is still 10-20 lower than what I was getting on my old rig -- at 1920x1080!

Is it just bad drivers from AMD/ATI? Really concerns me because before I ran into this problem I already ordered an HD 7970 for this new rig. :/

Shutdown, wait a minute, turn off power.
Reseat your GPU and unplug and replug all power connectors.

What PSU are you using for your system? Is your GPU overheating or low on fan speed or GPU % utilization? Check using MSI Afterburner. Do you get artifacts on using MSI Kombustor or OCCT GPU test?

 

[Ionic]

My Logitech G5 mouse is finally starting to die (after many, many hackjob repairs), so I think it's time for a refresh. I'm thinking of sticking with the G5-like design of the G500, but I don't know much about the newer high end mice. Are there any mouse recommendations for a primarily FPS player?

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

Looking at some over the top pc hardware:

Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
Crucial m4 256GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz
Cooler Master HAF 912 (don't see the point in larger... my old full tower CM was a waist of space).
Seasonic 850W 80 Plus Gold
Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB SATA 6Gb/s
ASUS P9X79 WS LGA 2011 Intel X79

Running around 1800$ without video card, screen or sound card. Then again not just for games but a lot of geographic spacial analysis software.

Any opinions or anything that would be better? Graphic card wise I will be porting my old gtx 580... just don't see anything worth while yet at a price that makes sense.

Can't believe my current I7 950 seats idle at 7 gigs of ram on windows 7...

 

[blindrocket]

I just noticed that I have 64Mb shared ram and I can't seem to find a way to disable that in the BIOS. I assumed it was for the on-board VGA option (via CPU?), but can I change that since I'm using a dedicated GPU or do I have to still share the memory?

I figured it out.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/366506-33-asrock-extreme4-disable-onboard-graphics

Seems strange to have a setting on another page that overrides the graphical settings in the BIOS. Glad it's fixable though. I want ALL of my RAM.

 

[ColonelColon]

Could be a corruption within the game itself. Try a few other graphically intensive games and see if you can notice anything, and try some stuff like the Heaven 4 and Valley benches.

I ran a bunch of benchmarks (Arkham City, Valley, Heaven, FEAR, RE6, Dirt 3, Just Cause 2, Metro 2033, and Sleeping Dogs) and I haven't seen anything out of place yet. But maybe the damaged VRAM has only been accessed when I load the Crysis 2 level from a save? I'm running Video Memory Stress Test now to see if it comes up with any errors.

 

[demented]

Ok guys so I made a new PC for myself, or well a list of what I'm going to buy and it fit great in my budget, less than I expected and hopefully will serve me good for years.

Here's the list of things I'm going to buy and after it list of things I already have and going to use. I'm gonna sell rest and use that money to cover the cost of new PC so I won't mention it. Please give any advice or thoughts on this.

New:
CPU Intel® Core™ i5-3570K, 3.40GHz
Heatsink Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO, RR-TX3E-22PK-R1 (will serve me good if/when I OC)
MB ASRock Z77 EXTREME4
Memory DDR3 2x4GB 1866Mhz Patriot Viper 3 Black Mamba XMP, PV38G186C9K (next best was 13$ more for 2400, not sure if I should upgrade, can OC this one to 2133 and 2400 is overkill in my opinion)
SSD SATA3 120GB Intel® 520 Series (could have gotten 330 series for bit less but this one has 2 more years on warranty which for SSD is important imo)
Graphics card AMD Radeon 7950 XFX GHZ GHOST 3GB (Asus was a lot more, saphire too kinda and Gigabyte was about the same but this one was at same shop with the rest of these things so easier to get it all in 1 spot, maybe a discount too)

Old:

BenQ G2400WD Black 24" 5ms, 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor
COOLER MASTER COSMOS 1000 RC-1000-KSN1-GP Black/ Silver Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro1000 RS-A00-EMBA 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply (overkill but unless I'm losing performance getting rid of it now isn't worth the hassle)
ASUS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model DRW-2014L1T LightScribe Support
SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM
2x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Razer Deathadder mouse, Logitech G15 keyboard, 2.1 speakers, xonar DG sound card, got good headphones too, microphone, camera etc lol

 

[Widdly Scuds]

finally got around to cleaning up my cables.

before:

after:

Now I need to rearrange my desk.

edit: here's an album of my build process to accompany my old post http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=48521362&postcount=5533

 

[kennah]

Loving all the prodigy pics lately

 

[mkenyon]

The build begins for real.

 

[SquiddyCracker]

The build begins for real.

Gorgeous.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

The build begins for real.

Bookmarked! Can't wait to read your log!

Looking at your parts list, a couple questions - apologies if you plan to answer them in your log; I can wait if that's the case.

First, what was the reasoning behind the 690? It's a killer card, honestly. But funnily enough, I kind of expected something more exotic from you. Considering you still have to deal with all the regular "issues" of SLI, why not two 4GB 680s for a little more performance and the extra VRAM? Or why not a Titan to avoid SLI?

Secondly, do you see any point at all to go beyond 16GBs of RAM? I see that's what you stuck with, and I imagine that would be fine for 99% of people. But if you find a good deal, is worth splurging on 32GB? Maybe put together a RAM disk or something?

 

[Sutton Dagger]

Fanfuckintastic... I've been having a go at the overclocking as described in the op, and I reached a point where the clock was too high for the voltage, and I had a lock up. So I did a hard reset and the USB ports or whatever haven't activated (from the lockup), and because I have a wireless kb and mouse I'm unable to get back into the bios... What can I do?

 

[JoseDFrog]

Fanfuckintastic... I've been having a go at the overclocking as described in the op, and I reached a point where the clock was too high for the voltage, and I had a lock up. So I did a hard reset and the USB ports or whatever haven't activated (from the lockup), and because I have a wireless kb and mouse I'm unable to get back into the bios... What can I do?

See that battery in your motherboard... Pull it out

 

[Smokey]

Got my 2600k up to 4.7ghz on just 1.3v, up from 4.6ghz. H80i putting in work, temps topped out at 62c. I've posted this before but I think I have a really good chip and 5ghz could be a possibility!

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Got my 2600k up to 4.7ghz on just 1.3v, up from 4.6ghz. H80i putting in work, temps topped out at 62c. I've posted this before but I think I have a really good chip and 5ghz could be a possibility!

Good luck and keep us updated! Pretty good for a $90 cooler!

 

[Argyle]

Well, it looks like my unlocked 6950 has just kicked the bucket. Either the video cuts out after a few minutes or the machine fails to POST (I get the video card error POST beep code).

Looking to replace it with a 7970. What's your guys recommendation? I might lightly overclock it but I do not intend to replace the cooler, etc. Would prefer something that is relatively quiet at load...

Considering the Sapphire 7970, but the XFX DD is cheaper at Newegg (but no reviews yet ). Any thoughts?

Sapphire:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202008

XFX (I know it's clocked lower):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150665

 

[Sutton Dagger]

See that battery in your motherboard... Pull it out

Shit, it's under the gpu, any other way?

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Hey guys, I have come up with this. The main use of this computer is "future proof". Now, what I mean by that is future proof for indie games, and games that don't have lots of graphical fidelity. I don't care about high resolutions (will most likely stick to 1080p), AA, or hell, even 60fps.

I want a computer that 7 years down the line, I can still play the next Civilization, or Steam Greenlight game, or Kickstarter game (Shadow Run/Wasteland). Basically, games that will probably never see the light of day on a console (I will be buying a PS4 for the big budget AAA games).

Used NCIX and I think I have come up with a PC that should last me a long time, right? Anything in here I need to improve? Anything I can cut back on?

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500 Quad Core Processor LGA1155 3.3GHZ Sandy
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V Lk ATX LGA1155 Z77 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue Lowprofile 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9-24
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Fermi 822MHZ 1024MB 4008MHZ GDDR5
Power Supply: Antec HCG-520M 520W ATX12V Modular SINGLE-RAIL 40A 80PLUS
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache


Dunno, seems like a massive improvement over my current PC (7800gt era PC lol).

Thanks a lot guys. Great thread.

 

[SquiddyCracker]

You might even be able to go without a GPU, and rely on an built-in GPU.
Then you can always add a cheap GPU in the future once indie games require one.

 

[Hazaro]

Hey guys, I have come up with this. The main use of this computer is "future proof". Now, what I mean by that is future proof for indie games, and games that don't have lots of graphical fidelity. I don't care about high resolutions (will most likely stick to 1080p), AA, or hell, even 60fps.

I want a computer that 7 years down the line, I can still play the next Civilization, or Steam Greenlight game, or Kickstarter game (Shadow Run/Wasteland). Basically, games that will probably never see the light of day on a console (I will be buying a PS4 for the big budget AAA games).

Used NCIX and I think I have come up with a PC that should last me a long time, right? Anything in here I need to improve? Anything I can cut back on?

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500 Quad Core Processor LGA1155 3.3GHZ Sandy
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V Lk ATX LGA1155 Z77 DDR3 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue Lowprofile 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9-24
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Fermi 822MHZ 1024MB 4008MHZ GDDR5
Power Supply: Antec HCG-520M 520W ATX12V Modular SINGLE-RAIL 40A 80PLUS
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache


Dunno, seems like a massive improvement over my current PC (7800gt era PC lol).

Thanks a lot guys. Great thread.

3570K and a 7850 instead if you can swing it.

Ok guys so I made a new PC for myself, or well a list of what I'm going to buy and it fit great in my budget, less than I expected and hopefully will serve me good for years.

Here's the list of things I'm going to buy and after it list of things I already have and going to use. I'm gonna sell rest and use that money to cover the cost of new PC so I won't mention it. Please give any advice or thoughts on this.

New:
Heatsink Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO, RR-TX3E-22PK-R1 (will serve me good if/when I OC)

Just sub in a 212 EVO, or Xigmatek, or Zalman rifle style cooler in there instead.

Looking at some over the top pc hardware:

Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
Seagate Desktop HDD 4 TB SATA 6Gb/s

Running around 1800$ without video card, screen or sound card. Then again not just for games but a lot of geographic spacial analysis software.

Any opinions or anything that would be better? Graphic card wise I will be porting my old gtx 580... just don't see anything worth while yet at a price that makes sense.

Can't believe my current I7 950 seats idle at 7 gigs of ram on windows 7...

I'd favor a Corsair AIO water personally. Also be sure you have an active backup as 4TB drives apart from Toshiba's are all new and they don't make HDD's like they used to.

 

[LiveWire]

Shutdown, wait a minute, turn off power.
Reseat your GPU and unplug and replug all power connectors.

What PSU are you using for your system? Is your GPU overheating or low on fan speed or GPU % utilization? Check using MSI Afterburner. Do you get artifacts on using MSI Kombustor or OCCT GPU test?

Here's the PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371049

Fan speed 72%
Fan Tachometer: jumps from a few k to few hundred k every second
GPU usage: 99%
GPU temp 76 degrees C

The card was in a much more confined, less ventilated case than the one it is currently in...I have no idea why it's struggling to keep up at a lower resolution with better cooling. No artifacts using the MSI Kombustor test.

 

[ColonelColon]

I posted earlier about a problem I was having with Crysis 2:

Yes, it's running in DX11. Here's a screenshot:

As I said before, I only see this texture corruption when I load this area from a save. If I start from the beginning of the level, the textures are fine. But every time I save and quit, then load the game from a nearby checkpoint, the textures on these objects are stretched out like the VRAM is damaged. I haven't yet seen problems in other games, but it looks like I've damaged the card. I can't believe I've done this.

I just tried plugging in my previous graphics card (a Radeon 5750), and the textures were still stretched when I loaded up the save. This would normally lead me to believe that my new card hasn't been damaged, and that this is simply some kind of software glitch. However, I also used Video Memory Stress Test, and it found thousands of errors on my Radeon 7950. Has anyone here used this program before? Is it reliable or does it detect false positives? I'm hoping I don't already need to RMA this card. I just got it a couple days ago.

 

[Mandoric]

Shit, it's under the gpu, any other way?

Check the manual, some boards have a jumper for it. (But it's probably under the GPU too.)

212 Evo coming in tomorrow, can't wait to be rid of the stock HSF and maybe get voltage up a little over stock.

 

[mkenyon]

Bookmarked! Can't wait to read your log!

Looking at your parts list, a couple questions - apologies if you plan to answer them in your log; I can wait if that's the case.

First, what was the reasoning behind the 690? It's a killer card, honestly. But funnily enough, I kind of expected something more exotic from you. Considering you still have to deal with all the regular "issues" of SLI, why not two 4GB 680s for a little more performance and the extra VRAM? Or why not a Titan to avoid SLI?

Secondly, do you see any point at all to go beyond 16GBs of RAM? I see that's what you stuck with, and I imagine that would be fine for 99% of people. But if you find a good deal, is worth splurging on 32GB? Maybe put together a RAM disk or something?

mATX motherboard, and I'm waffling between adding a soundcard or an external DAC that I'd mount somehow in the case. So, trying to limit it to just one PCB of rendering power. I would prefer the Titan, but I received a deal on this one that I just could not say no to. Basically saved $450 compared to what I would have spent on a Titan + Block. I had a 690 in the past too, and it was a pretty great experience outside of a few minor issues. This 690 was originally slated to go to a friend, but he ended up wanting to pass, so I went for it myself.

I think more than 8GB is kind of overkill for 99% of gaming machines. 16GB is a bit beyond that. 32GB is more like virtual machine or multimedia creation territory. I'm not too hot on RAM disks either due to how they have to offload every time you turn off you computer. That's a lot of writing too and from the SSDs that I'd prefer to avoid. Besides, it's not like I need anything to run faster than it already is with SSDs.

 

[killertofu]

My GTX 670 has stopped detecting on DVI. It goes through the motherboard boot but then my display goes to sleep. Any idea what's up? It works when I plug HDMi though

Edit. Nvm it started working...

 

[Cassius]

Pulling my hair out, trying to decide whether or not to wait for Haswell.

My current rig is a tired old Athlon II X2 that is weighing down my new 7870 XT.

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

I'd favor a Corsair AIO water personally. Also be sure you have an active backup as 4TB drives apart from Toshiba's are all new and they don't make HDD's like they used to.

Thank you for the tips!! Yes, always have redundancy... and you're right HDs used to be higher quality and last longer!!

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

Pulling my hair out, trying to decide whether or not to wait for Haswell.

My current rig is a tired old Athlon II X2 that is weighing down my new 7870 XT.

From what I read Haswell wont be be that much better performance wise. And I didn't see any 6 cores announced for it. However that said its just a few months away, supposed to come in June or so.

 

[Stuggernaut]

Ok this may seem like a stupid question...but here goes.

With my new system that in the works, it will be the first computer I have that can use a 64 bit OS.

I have Windows 8 now, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Both 32 bit.

Do I have to buy a completely new version of Windows? Or can I just change one of them to 64 bit?

I don't mind Windows 8 at all so I'm indifferent to which one I get.

 

[scogoth]

Ok this may seem like a stupid question...but here goes.

With my new system that in the works, it will be the first computer I have that can use a 64 bit OS.

I have Windows 8 now, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Both 32 bit.

Do I have to buy a completely new version of Windows? Or can I just change one of them to 64 bit?

I don't mind Windows 8 at all so I'm indifferent to which one I get.

Get a hold of a 64-bit copy and use the same licence key.

 

[Hazaro]

Pulling my hair out, trying to decide whether or not to wait for Haswell.

My current rig is a tired old Athlon II X2 that is weighing down my new 7870 XT.

Depends on your budget and what you want. That's a tough wait for another 3 months.

I posted earlier about a problem I was having with Crysis 2:

I just tried plugging in my previous graphics card (a Radeon 5750), and the textures were still stretched when I loaded up the save. This would normally lead me to believe that my new card hasn't been damaged, and that this is simply some kind of software glitch. However, I also used Video Memory Stress Test, and it found thousands of errors on my Radeon 7950. Has anyone here used this program before? Is it reliable or does it detect false positives? I'm hoping I don't already need to RMA this card. I just got it a couple days ago.

Does OCCT GPU RAM check find anything? What if you downclock the memory on the card?

As said before if it doesn't happen in other games or on new saves don't worry about it too much yet, but see if you can setup an advance RMA.

Here's the PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371049

Fan speed 72%
Fan Tachometer: jumps from a few k to few hundred k every second
GPU usage: 99%
GPU temp 76 degrees C

The card was in a much more confined, less ventilated case than the one it is currently in...I have no idea why it's struggling to keep up at a lower resolution with better cooling. No artifacts using the MSI Kombustor test.

Hmm... Is it running at 100% util outside of games? You might have a virus if so.

Also I suggest reseating it as I said before.

 

[catmincer]

Pulling my hair out, trying to decide whether or not to wait for Haswell.

My current rig is a tired old Athlon II X2 that is weighing down my new 7870 XT.

If it's just the CPU that's a problem perhaps look at something like an FX-6300 to tide you over?

 

[civilstrife]

A BP-550 Plus PSU was suggested to me in this thread for the following build, instead of a Corsair CX Series CX600M

Could anyone explain to me why it's a better choice even though its Wattage is lower?

I want to hit buy, but I want to make sure I'm picking the right PSU. Is it relatively future-proof? Will it allow me to CF my 7970 if I choose to at some point?

CPU:3570k
Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V LK
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon 7970
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Desktop Memory Kit - 8GB (2x 4GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, 9-9-9-24
SSD:Samsung 840 Pro 128Gb
HDD: 2TB Barracuda SATA III w/ 64MB Cache

Thanks!

 

[mrklaw]

Nice prodigy build. What's the fan in the front? How are people setting this up for cooling? I see that it has top and bottom vents, but is it simpler just to go straight front to back, with CPU cooler fan in line with the airflow? I would probably remove the middle drive bay, and I don't think I'll use an optical drive, so I guess there is the option for a H60 or similar from the top vents, but it looks like air would be fine.

I notice you've gone for a water cooler for the CPU, is that set up as an exhaust or intake at the back? And if your CPU is water cooled, and your GPU has its own big intake, is such a large front fan necessary?

 

[mrklaw]

2GB 670, 4gb 670 (for a little more futureproofing), or 3GB 7970?

I'm wondering if the next consoles might mean the compute side getting pushed a bit more, which might favour AMD, but then I'm likely to put this in a bitfenix prodigy and the 7970 seems quite a bit more power hungry than the 670. How are they for noise?

 

[Hazaro]

A BP-550 Plus PSU was suggested to me in this thread for the following build, instead of a Corsair CX Series CX600M

Could anyone explain to me why it's a better choice even though its Wattage is lower?

I want to hit buy, but I want to make sure I'm picking the right PSU. Is it relatively future-proof? Will it allow me to CF my 7970 if I choose to at some point?

CPU:3570k
Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V LK
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon 7970
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Desktop Memory Kit - 8GB (2x 4GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, 9-9-9-24
SSD:Samsung 840 Pro 128Gb
HDD: 2TB Barracuda SATA III w/ 64MB Cache

Thanks!

Modular, same price, pretty solid quality, much lower amount of DOA and issues. More than enough power for a single card. It's a no brainer.
Corsair has gone through like 10 PSU makers and designs now. Just because it says Corsair on it doesn't mean it's good. Each PSU from any company should be judged on it's own merit.

The old CX380 and CX400W's were good units. The current CX and GS line are very lackluster in value for your money.