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[mkenyon]

Same price? 680.

There might be a Titan Lite released in a few months. The major 7xx/8xxx refresh will likely happen late Q3 or Q4.

Finally, I can enjoy Crysis 3 1440p@60fps.

Badass

Your Titans should cool down quite a bit if you move one of those top exhausts to the bottom. Between the restricted front fans and the fact that you have two Titans exhausting, that's some serious negative pressure.

 

[kennah]

Finally, I can enjoy Crysis 3 1440p@60fps.

The one loose cable at the bottom is making me twitch.

 

[knitoe]

Your Titans should cool down quite a bit if you move one of those top exhausts to the bottom. Between the restricted front fans and the fact that you have two Titans exhausting, that's some serious negative pressure.

I also have a 180mm side case fan.

The one loose cable at the bottom is making me twitch.

Connector for side case fan.

 

[kennah]

Phew. I can stop panicking

Spoiler

You gonna use the f2p bundle code?

 

[mkenyon]

I also have a 180mm side case fan.

Ohhhhhhh that's an Arc Midi, innit?

Love those two Titans so much....

 

[knitoe]

Phew. I can stop panicking

Spoiler

You gonna use the f2p bundle code?

Didn't even know what that bundle was. Just looked at what's included, nope. If it came with a code, you can have if you want.

Edit: Don't see any code in the boxes. Do I go email Amazon for them?

 

[kennah]

Didn't even know what that bundle was. Just looked at what's included, nope. If it came with a code, you can have if you want.

That'd be awesome! No one wants me in their Planetside 2 Squad

 

[metalshade]

So more research reveals that the 7950 specs say it needs a 550 watt psu, but that is not entirely true, is it, manufacturers always list higher draws than actual to compensate for people with duff psu's, thats right isn't it?
Plus my cx500 is quite a decent supply, and they can actually pull more than they actually list safely too, if I remember correctly.
I should be alright, I think, but definitely a psu should be my next upgrade.
Guess I will find out when I try to get it to post, whenever my upgrades arrive.

Speaking of which, my old card. MSI 6870 1GB OC is now going for sale. Few months old, never OC'd past the factory OC of 920mhz, well ventilated and cared for. Boxed with all cables/software etc. About £110 is a decent asking price right?

 

[Kipp]

TY

I thought the same thing! Even the sticker on the side of the PSU is yellow. Was a total accident.

Haha. Amazing. That really worked out quite well.

In other news, just got home from my last final ever and my 144hz monitor was waiting on my doorstep! IT'S HAPPENING.

 

[kharma45]

So more research reveals that the 7950 specs say it needs a 550 watt psu, but that is not entirely true, is it, manufacturers always list higher draws than actual to compensate for people with duff psu's, thats right isn't it?
Plus my cx500 is quite a decent supply, and they can actually pull more than they actually list safely too, if I remember correctly.
I should be alright, I think, but definitely a psu should be my next upgrade.
Guess I will find out when I try to get it to post, whenever my upgrades arrive.

Speaking of which, my old card. MSI 6870 1GB OC is now going for sale. Few months old, never OC'd past the factory OC of 920mhz, well ventilated and cared for. Boxed with all cables/software etc. About £110 is a decent asking price right?

I'd go a bit lower maybe, for £16 more you're getting a 7850

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008RJZ5Z6/

 

[Najaf]

Memory question.

I'm running 12GB of this triple channel memory.

I'm thinking of replacing my 1366 board and i7-930 with a ASRock Z77 extreme6 and appropriate 1155 cpu.

If I want to wait on new memory, will four of my triple channel units work on that board?

Thanks!

 

[kennah]

Yep. Would probably be fine. You've got a decent enough system, I'd just wait until June myself and get Haswell.

 

[metalshade]

I'd go a bit lower maybe, for £16 more you're getting a 7850

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008RJZ5Z6/

Gotcha.
Might be selling it privately soon though, see what offers come my way.
Any ideas about my power problems btw?

 

[kharma45]

Gotcha.
Might be selling it privately soon though, see what offers come my way.
Any ideas about my power problems btw?

Yeah see what you can get. If it were me I'd be happy for £100 but try for £110 and see what you can get.

PSU should be fine for the 7950.

 

[Najaf]

Yep. Would probably be fine. You've got a decent enough system, I'd just wait until June myself and get Haswell.

I did not know it was that soon. Good tip. Thanks.

Spoiler

And now I see the date staring at me on the OP

 

[iavi]

Probably old news, but some Haswell benches have leaked onto the net The 4770k.

We're looking at about the same jump in performance that Sandy to Ivy provided, but with more OC headroom.

 

[Double D]

My Corsair G600 should be fine handling a 680, right?

 

[metalshade]

PSU should be fine for the 7950.

Thanks kharma, thats made me feel a bit better, I was starting to regret the upgrade bug getting its teeth into me.
But now its all fine, next up, watercooling, sabretooth boards and ramdisks!

 

[kharma45]

Thanks kharma, thats made me feel a bit better, I was starting to regret the upgrade bug getting its teeth into me.
But now its all fine, next up, watercooling, sabretooth boards and ramdisks!

To be blunt it's not the best PSU but as long as you're not going to be stressing it out it'll be fine for a single GPU.

 

[metalshade]

To be blunt it's not the best PSU but as long as you're not going to be stressing it out it'll be fine for a single GPU.

Yeah, I built on a budget, but I tried to make sure I didn't skimp on things too much. It has been just fine so far, but I haven't OC'd anything yet.

Appreciate the help though.

 

[knitoe]

That'd be awesome! No one wants me in their Planetside 2 Squad

Amazon doesn't currently have the Titan cards as part of the promotion. Going to have to make some emails and calls.

 

[M3z_]

I'm still skeptical about the severity of the crossfire latency issues. Not to say that they don't exist, maybe I'm just totally terrible at perceiving it. When I switched from reference 680's in SLI to 7970's in crossfire after upgrading to 1440p I definitely ran into what I would call considerable frame latency out of the box(despite fraps and afterburner reporting very high frame rates), but after about a day and a half of tweaking settings I was able to achieve a fluidity that was very similar to my SLI configuration. I will state that I never got it to feel as smooth as my 680's, but very close. Beyond that I know there was a user at OCN that tried to replicate these results, albeit without the custom software used by the article, and was not able to get the same level of latency. Maybe he was a fanboy or what not I don't know I didn't rummage through his post history, but I would like to see more sources come to the same results.

I just wonder how they tested the 7970's from a settings perspective, because I will totally admit that when I first bought my 7970's and set them up I thought they were trash until I spent over a day's time setting things up. On the other hand when I setup my 680's in SLI I just plugged and played and they worked beautifully.

My experience from a purely human level of perception and not custom synthetic testing has been that crossfire is 1.) a pain the ass to setup, but very powerful, and 2.) not as smooth as SLI, but not by a large margin.

I'm totally willing to believe that SLI is a better dual card solution, but I have a hard time believing it's as hapless as the article paints it. I'd like to see other sites run the same kind of testing and what efforts they put into counteract the latency and how those different attempts effected results.

 

[kennah]

Amazon doesn't currently have the Titan cards as part of the promotion. Going to have to make some emails and calls.

No worries.

 

[Kipp]

WOOO! Installing W7 now! Very, very first impressions (as in, looking at the windows installation screen) is that the monitor is fantastic. It very well could be that I'm coming from a 4 year old TN monitor, but the fact that this monitor is TN and is matte doesn't seem to hurt the colors at all. The colors look even more vivid than said Dell TN monitor.

Oh, also of note, the PC fired up without a problem. I just hit the power button and all was well.

 

[mkenyon]

WOOO! Installing W7 now! Very, very first impressions (as in, looking at the windows installation screen) is that the monitor is fantastic. It very well could be that I'm coming from a 4 year old TN monitor, but the fact that this monitor is TN and is matte doesn't seem to hurt the colors at all. The colors look even more vivid than said Dell TN monitor.

Oh, also of note, the PC fired up without a problem. I just hit the power button and all was well.

Please let me know how you like it! Be sure to set it to 144Hz (drool) in the control panel, it might not be on by default.

I'm totally willing to believe that SLI is a better dual card solution, but I have a hard time believing it's as hapless as the article paints it. I'd like to see other sites run the same kind of testing and what efforts they put into counteract the latency and how those different attempts effected results.

This is frame time polled from Direct X rather than the overlay:

The thing is, is that the really low frame latency in succession with the huge spikes makes zero sense from a rendering perspective, even with uneven rendering. It shouldn't be that 'hard' and then that 'easy' within a single frame. When an engine chugs, it generally does it for at least a few seconds or even a half of a second which is still a huge portion of these graphs. Given that, the information that PC Perspective seems to have uncovered seems really convincing.

Here's Scott Wasson's take on the matter. I tend to agree with what he is saying, and I definitely think these tests need to be reproduced until they are considered legitimate like any experiment.

 

[Kipp]

Please let me know how you like it! Be sure to set it to 144Hz (drool) in the control panel, it might not be on by default.

Will do!

 

[M3z_]

Please let me know how you like it! Be sure to set it to 144Hz (drool) in the control panel, it might not be on by default.

This is frame time polled from Direct X rather than the overlay:

The thing is, is that the really low frame latency in succession with the huge spikes makes zero sense from a rendering perspective, even with uneven rendering. It shouldn't be that 'hard' and then that 'easy' within a single frame. When an engine chugs, it generally does it for at least a few seconds or even a half of a second which is still a huge portion of these graphs. Given that, the information that PC Perspective seems to have uncovered seems really convincing.

Here's Scott Wasson's take on the matter. I tend to agree with what he is saying, and I definitely think these tests need to be reproduced until they are considered legitimate like any experiment.

I guess what I really mean is that I question the severity of the difference from the perceived perspective. I mean currently in you can tell me that the Titan exhibits 2ms latency, SLI exhibits 4ms, and Crossfire exhibits 6ms, but I don't have a way to reconcile those objective numbers with the effect the play on my subjective experience.

Right now people have been dealing with FPS for so long that people can approximate and simulate in their head what the difference between what a game running at 30fps feels like vs. what a game at 60fps feels like. We've all played games we know were running at those frame rates and have a idea of what those values really mean to your perceived experience.

For example right now if you told me theoretically that Bioshock Infinite was going to be release in two formats, one was hard capped at 45fps and another was hard capped at 50fps. They then said the version that was hard capped at 45fps was going to sell for the normal retail price of $60 but the high framerate version that is hard capped at 50fps was going to sell at a premium, $100. I would be able to make a value judgement between the two because I have a strong idea of what the difference between 45fps v. 50fps means to me v. the difference $40 makes to me. In that circumstance I would choose to save my money and accept the 45fps version. However if you were to change those framerates to 20fps or 25fps and keep the same price disparity, my opinion would change because I know I value 5 frames a lot more at a frame rate sub 30fps than I value 5fps post 45fps.

I simply do not have these sorts of relationships with frame latency data and my perception as I do with fps and my perception because frame latency is new. I don't think many people do(if any), and I find it hard to accept phrasing that writes off crossfire as essentially broken when my experience with it is to the contrary. As I said I am completely willing to accept that Crossfire is is not objectively performing as well as as SLI in respects to frame latency, just what exactly does 4ms frame latency mean v. 6 ms to the human eye, and what degree of frame latency is supposed to be acceptable v. not acceptable so on and so on.

 

[mkenyon]

8.3ms = 120FPS (1000/120)
11.1ms = 90FPS (1000/90)
16.7ms = 60FPS (1000/60)
33.3ms = 30FPS (1000/30)

It's the same kind of data, it's just all of it rather than an average of all frames rendered over a second.

So when you say something like 'time spent beyond 50ms', it's like saying 'instances when FPS dropped below 20FPS', just more accurately.

 

[Psychotext]

My graphics card seems like it's about to give up (starting to get graphical corruption) and looking around it seems a 7950 might suit me best but I'm really (REALLY) picky about how loud I think is acceptable for a graphics card.

Are there any particularly quiet models? I've seen the Vapor-X model recommended (I've had reasonably good experiences with them in the path), as well as an Asus DCu II model (though this looks like it might put a lot of stress on the motherboard as it's huge).

 

[Haly]

Thinking of jumping on the IPS bandwagon now that the monoprice IPS is back in stock. My main question is if my graphics card can run DOTA2 at max or near max without sacrificing too much framerate.

These are the official system requirements:

DotA 2 Minimum System Requirements:
OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / XP 64 bit Compatible with 7 / Vista)
Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista / 7
Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

DotA 2 Recommended System Requirements:
OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / XP (64 bit Compatible with 7 / Vista)
Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista / 7
Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better
Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

My specs are:
i5-3570K @ 4.4 Ghz max
Radeon 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5
16 GB RAM

And my friend is looking into getting one too could anyone tell me if his GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 would be able to run it, that would be great.

 

[mkenyon]

Both cards will run it with 8.3ms frame times (120FPS) with ease. Just turn down a few settings to get there.

 

[rohlfinator]

Please let me know how you like it! Be sure to set it to 144Hz (drool) in the control panel, it might not be on by default.

This is frame time polled from Direct X rather than the overlay:

I wish he would do something more like "% of time spent over 50ms" because charts like this one aren't terribly useful without knowing the total length of the benchmark. Obviously lower is better, but if that's only 22ms out of a 60-second benchmark, that's small enough to be basically imperceptible.

The difference is more extreme in some of the other games, but even then it's kind of hard to tell how significant it is.

 

[Dave_6]

Mr. Pocket's complete build:

*drool worthy pics*

3570K @ 4.4GHz, 1.21V
MSI Z77 MPower
Gigabyte GTX 670 @ 1180MHz
Fractal Define R4 Titanium
Crucial M4 256GB
Seagate 1TB Drive
Corsair H60
Corsair 2x4GB DDR3 1600, 1.35V

Ok I've managed to stay out of this thread for a few days and as I visit it for the first time since, I see these awesome pics. You're making me glad that I've so far hung onto my R4. Yeah I sold the 670 but I can always buy another GPU!

 

[MarshMellow96]

Why are 120hz monitors suddenly so hard to find? I'm trying to pick up one that perhaps has 3D support for AMD, you know, just so I can fool around with it a bit, but no where is selling them..

 

[Haly]

Both cards will run it with 8.3ms frame times (120FPS) with ease. Just turn down a few settings to get there.

Cool, thanks! Although they're now suddenly out of stock again, I'll be ready next time.

 

[mkenyon]

I wish he would do something more like "% of time spent over 50ms" because charts like this one aren't terribly useful without knowing the total length of the benchmark. Obviously lower is better, but if that's only 22ms out of a 60-second benchmark, that's small enough to be basically imperceptible.

The difference is more extreme in some of the other games, but even then it's kind of hard to tell how significant it is.

Frame Latency by percentile is the chart that would give you that info:

 

[killertofu]

Are RAM sticks always supposed to be one after the other? Mine aren't color coded so I slapped two right next to each other

 

[Anton668]

Are RAM sticks always supposed to be one after the other? Mine aren't color coded so I slapped two right next to each other

should say in your MB manual
which MB?

 

[killertofu]

should say in your MB manual
which MB?

I have a gigabyte z77x-ud3h

 

[Anton668]

seems...

or optimum performance, when enabling
Dual Channel mode with two memory modules, we recommend that you install them in the DDR3_1
and DDR3_2 sockets.

ETA:

 

[killertofu]

seems...

Hm I'll have to check which sockets theyre on when I get home.

 

[M3z_]

Here is a 3dmark of my 7970 PE I posted a picture of earlier. This is at 1150 core/1500 mem 13.2 beta drivers.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6237148

Was able to get that at stock volts(1.112) as well. I tried 1200 on the core but the temps sky rocket into the mid 80's so I just ended the test, didn't crash but not worth messing with if the temps got that high with the fans locked at 100%.

ASIC rating is 82.6%. The thing overclocks extremely well relative to the volts running through it, which is what I hear is the big difference between the actual Lightning and the PE. I have read that the Lightnings have lower ASIC ratings and require more volts to overclock, but with that they are also more stable with higher voltage, so they have better LN2 capability. Since I'm just on the air cooler seems like the PE's might of been the better choice even though I was hoping to get lightnings. This card crashes if you put 1.25 volts through it, which isn't that many volts imo, but it doesn't really matter cause it doesn't need remotely that much voltage to run an nice stable overclock.

 

[demented]

Just a quick mobo question, MB LGA1155 Z77 ASRock Z77 EXTREME4 got recommended to me but is there a better option, having price in mind of course out of these:
http://emmi.rs/proizvodi.10.html?go...ponuda=&cipset=&slotsocket=&limit=-1&offset=0

Don't want to get shafted with number of pci express slots or usb3 or whatever.

 

[brentech]

Doing 2nd day tests on my 3570k on the asrock extreme 4. Overclocked to 4.5ghz with 212 evo cooler.
Last night I mentioned I was at temps of 68 and 70C max.

Today, my max temps have jumped up to 79C.

Kind of odd, but still no errors or any sort of issues to report.

 

[mkenyon]

For "max temps", make sure you are adding up the four cores and then averaging it. That'll be what you will want to use to assess max temp.

Just a quick mobo question, MB LGA1155 Z77 ASRock Z77 EXTREME4 got recommended to me but is there a better option, having price in mind of course out of these:
http://emmi.rs/proizvodi.10.html?go...ponuda=&cipset=&slotsocket=&limit=-1&offset=0

Don't want to get shafted with number of pci express slots or usb3 or whatever.

1) Do you want to watercool?

2) Do you want to push your CPU to its limit?

3) Do you want to run 3-way SLI/X-Fire?

4) Any other things that you will absolutely need? Good onboard sound? WiFi? Thunderbolt?

5) Max price? Preferred price?

 

[brentech]

I have to say I'm impressed with the onboard sound on the ASRock E4.
Same speaker setup as my old system, but sounds so much better fidelity.

 

[Lanbeast]

Out with the old power supply, in with the new...and we're back in business! Thanks for the suggestion guys. Now I can hold off 'til Haswell and do a full upgrade.

 

[DeVeAn]

A 4C swing is perfectly fine. Like Hazaro said, that's a tighter range than most people get.

When I had mine (in retrospect) half-off, it ran like the stock cooler except quieter. Fixing it gave me about 15 degrees in Prime95 and 20+ in less demanding tasks, at 300mhz and 0.1 volts higher. So it's pretty obvious in operation if you're not clamped down all the way.

Well it runs like the stock cooler at 4Ghz 1.3V so I think I am getting to do what it should. Anyone know why I randomly get the fan to spin at max speeds on boot up? For some reason its at full speed I get the error reboot and its fine. Maybe something in the BIOS to control it?

 

[Varna]

Did you apply the VRM heatsinks well?
Do anything with max power draw and overclocking?

It was nice and secure. Made sure not to over tighten it because I know that can cause issues. I wasn't doing any heavy overclocking. I had a profile for when I wanted to squeeze a bit more out of 3D Mark but I never messed with voltage. Just a mild boost to power target, clock and memory. definitely will not do that one again.

 

[Kipp]

Oh my goodness. Finally got to the point in my setup where I got around to switching to 144hz... Let's just say I have a massive grin on my face right now that won't go away. Absolutely cannot wait to try a game with this.