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"I Need a New PC!" 2014 Part 1. 1080p and 60FPS is so last-gen and your 2500K is fine

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Just experienced my first issue with my new build, and it's not a technical one. I always enter my live password whenever I log in (dont ask me why, I just do) but my PC would not recognise it. I had to log in to Live via my phone and reset the password.

Should I be concerned?
did your regular password work on your phone?.


If so it could be something as simple as your keyboard layout changing randomly making all the punctuation in your password come out wrong. Check the keyboard layout / locale on the start screen before you log in
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Hi PC-GAF!

So my 2008 machine build just had a huge PSU death and I just upgraded to a 620-ish watt supply.

My current build is:

-i7 920 CPU
-12GB DDR3 RAM
-Radeon HD 4890

Been considering upgrading the Radeon 4890 to an Nvidia, possibly 700-series. Is my CPU dated at this point? Any reason not to do so and go a bit lower outside of cost based on my specs? Will this setup satisfy for Titanfall?
 

Ashhong

Member
Case looks good, about the Windows,if you go Windows 8.1 install the start menu mods. Also, games perform better on Windows 8.1 than 7.

Wait, is this really true? Specifically for league of legends? If so I might just bite the bullet and get windows 8.1 instead of putting 7 on my new ssd....
 
Monitor question here.

Do 1440 monitors exist below 27"? I'll likely be upgrading my graphics card when the new Maxwell GPUs are out and I'm wondering if I should throw in a new monitor for shits and giggles. Thing is my current monitor even at 24" feels too large for me. And that's with a bezel of about 1/2".

It's too big for a few days, but after that it's fine.
 
Wait, is this really true? Specifically for league of legends? If so I might just bite the bullet and get windows 8.1 instead of putting 7 on my new ssd....

Yes, but only a little and for some games, so I wouldn't upgrade just for the one or two frame rate increase since I already have 7 and Win 9 is apparently coming soon with a rumored DirectX 12 being exclusive to it.
 
never went the other way before, so tell me if this is wrong,

going from amd to nvidia i should.

1. dl nvidia drivers.
2. uninstall amd drivers.
3. swap the cards.
4. install nvidia drivers.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Wait, is this really true? Specifically for league of legends? If so I might just bite the bullet and get windows 8.1 instead of putting 7 on my new ssd....
League of Legends can run at 120fps on just about anything.
never went the other way before, so tell me if this is wrong,

going from amd to nvidia i should.

1. dl nvidia drivers.
2. Uninstall amd drivers.
3. Delete everything in C:\AMD
4. Restart computer to make sure it's removed.
5. Turn off PC.
6. Swap the cards.
7. Install nvidia drivers.
fixt
 

Ashhong

Member
League of Legends can run at 120fps on just about anything.

Anything except my apparently crappy PC consisting of an E7200 and 512mb 4870 lol. I get like 60 if it's a good day with it regularly dropping to 30.

Yes, but only a little and for some games, so I wouldn't upgrade just for the one or two frame rate increase since I already have 7 and Win 9 is apparently coming soon with a rumored DirectX 12 being exclusive to it.

9 is already being rumored? Jesus Christ.
 

jonno394

Member
did your regular password work on your phone?.


If so it could be something as simple as your keyboard layout changing randomly making all the punctuation in your password come out wrong. Check the keyboard layout / locale on the start screen before you log in

Nope, had to reset it completely via my secondary email account.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Anything except my apparently crappy PC consisting of an E7200 and 512mb 4870 lol. I get like 60 if it's a good day with it regularly dropping to 30.
Yeah, the performance increases with 8.1 are in single digit gains, and with even reduced performance in a number of other games. It also has some wonky mouse stuff that you have to fix, which is annoying.
 
never went the other way before, so tell me if this is wrong,

going from amd to nvidia i should.

1. dl nvidia drivers.
2. uninstall amd drivers.
3. swap the cards.
4. install nvidia drivers.

What I would do is

1. Download Nvidia Drivers
2. Reboot to Safe Mode
3. Run Display Driver Uninstaller, choose the "Clean and Shutdown (for installing a new graphics card)" option.
4. Install new card
5. Boot PC and install drivers download in step 1


I do it this way as DDU uninstalls everything, including the AMD folder and stuff that might stay stuck in the registry. It also keeps Windows Update from automatically trying to install/download video drivers (if you have your PC set up that way) so you can install your downloaded version first
 

dengatron

Member
So I'm all built and installed and up to date and running well but for some reason the os and chrome are gigantic, and look like I'm running at a tiny resolution when I'm definitely at 1080p. Any suggestions?
 
I currently have a 550 ti with an i5 3470 (not 3470k) and I game on a 1680x1050 monitor. Is it work upgrading to a 750 ti? Is there a better nvidia card I should consider at the $150 price point?
 

Water

Member
Monitor question here.

Do 1440 monitors exist below 27"? I'll likely be upgrading my graphics card when the new Maxwell GPUs are out and I'm wondering if I should throw in a new monitor for shits and giggles. Thing is my current monitor even at 24" feels too large for me. And that's with a bezel of about 1/2".
1440p no, 4k yes.
 

mmarc30

Neo Member
Hey guys I am thinking of building a computer with the maximum price to power ratio. Any suggestions for this build?
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($176.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H77M Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB Video Card ($248.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $774.90
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-11 16:27 EDT-0400)
 

dengatron

Member
Can you take a screenshot?

ibw00xu21QgWiS.png

yes, it does look this gigantic on my monitor.
 

H4r4kiri

Member
So i started to build my Moms PC. The motherboard didnt ship yet, so I just installed the Diskdrive, PSU and SSD.

Case is a CoolerMaster N200. You can see the whole hardware a couple pages before.
Weird thing is that I had to install the SSD ( Crucial M500) upside down. Is that normal ? The other way the screwholes didnt match.

I dont know how to upload pics or how I can show you :(
 

tehbible

Member
So i started to build my Moms PC. The motherboard didnt ship yet, so I just installed the Diskdrive, PSU and SSD.

Case is a CoolerMaster N200. You can see the whole hardware a couple pages before.
Weird thing is that I had to install the SSD ( Crucial M500) upside down. Is that normal ? The other way the screwholes didnt match.

I dont know how to upload pics or how I can show you :(

That's fine. You can install it any which way. There are no mechanical moving parts in it. I have the same exact case. You install it right under the 3.5 drive bays if i recall correctly.
 

H4r4kiri

Member
That's fine. You can install it any which way. There are no mechanical moving parts in it. I have the same exact case. You install it right under the 3.5 drive bays if i recall correctly.

You could do that or above the other Harddrive Cage, where i did it :)
 

Panzon

Member
Monitor question here.

Do 1440 monitors exist below 27"? I'll likely be upgrading my graphics card when the new Maxwell GPUs are out and I'm wondering if I should throw in a new monitor for shits and giggles. Thing is my current monitor even at 24" feels too large for me. And that's with a bezel of about 1/2".
This is my problem as well but too bad they dont exist. As beautiful as 1440p is, 27 inches is just waaay too much of a strain on my poor little eyes
 
I need some serious help right now. I just upgraded my five year old 1gb 4890 to a 2gb R7 265 today and somehow I am still GPU bottlenecked. I assumed I'd be getting an almost 100 percent performance increase. I am running an i7920 at 4ghz, 6gb ram, windows 7 64bit, 1080p resolution and playing Guild Wars 2. On my old card, typically I would see 20-40 percent CPU utilization and almost always 99 percent GPU utilization. Obviously that sounds completely normal as it's clear that GPU was a major bottleneck for me. Well after installing the new R7 card, up to date drivers, etc. I boot up Guild Wars 2 and I'm STILL getting constant 99 percent GPU utilization. I'm getting literally the exact same frame rates as well. I was so pumped to be finally able to turn up the graphical settings, super-sampling and all that jazz but I'm left here feeling like I never even upgraded my GPU at all. I just ran a 3d-mark 11 test and the results indicate slightly better than a 7850 which is perfect, but I'm not seeing those results in-game for some reason. I think I'm just going to sell this card or return it and wait for the new 22nm Nvidia cards to come out.
 

Om3ga

Member
Well I only use my lap top at home. I have around £1500 to spend including insurance but can stretch to £2k if needed. I have no idea how to set up a pc or what insides to choose as I have never had one.

I have always been a lap top / PS4 gamer and only use the laptop in doors.
I think they were asking what are your plans with the PC you want to build or buy.

Do you want to game at 4K? Is 1080p 60fps fine for you? Do you want to be able to play games on the go?

It's hard to gauge what you're looking for, you have a 2k budget you can look at the $1000-$1500 enthusiasts build and play everything that comes your way, or you can save some money and still be able to play most games on high/very high 1080p 60fps and go with the $600-$800 builds.

You should check out the op and see which build is more suited for your tastes.

Generally you'll be paying alot more for a laptop with less power than a desktop, but some people like that portability. You should also check out the laptop thread and see if there's anything there that would interest you.

You could also just get both? 800-1200 desktop + 800-1200 gaming laptop. *shrugs* just have to know exactly what you want and what are your needs as a gamer.
 

appaws

Banned
I currently have a 550 ti with an i5 3470 (not 3470k) and I game on a 1680x1050 monitor. Is it work upgrading to a 750 ti? Is there a better nvidia card I should consider at the $150 price point?

The 750ti is it for Nvidia at that price point.

If you can get an R7 265 at that price it is a somewhat better performing card.

Do you have any plans to upgrade your display? I am not sure what the best course would be if you stay at that res...
 
What taxes your GPU more regarding temp, MSAA settings or textures?

Like TitanFall for example, would higher MSAA cause my Gpu to sweat more compared to having insane textures?
 

mkenyon

Banned
glad amd knows who butters their bread

http://promotions.newegg.com/AMD/14...promotions.newegg.com/vga/14-1197/300x120.jpg


Anyone with experience with gigabyte? Thinking of getting one of their cards with windforce, but im not familiar with their reliability and Customer service.
That's Newegg. AMD is actually working to release SKUs that avoid Miners picking them off. They're not sure what to do with the current situation, because the miners have them by the balls in a large way. If they ramp up production to help bring prices back down, they might end up fucking themselves over by having a glut of cards on the market. While good for gamers in the short term, this would be disastrous in the long term as it would threaten their stability.

They've come out and said Gamers are their best customers, and they're doing what they can.

Ultimately though, it's the retailers that are screwing gamers, not AMD. The MSRP on their cards haven't changed. In the European market where miners aren't nearly as common, prices on a lot of the cards are right where they should be.

But fuuuuuuuuuuuuck this sucks.

And Gigabyte is awesome.
I need some serious help right now. I just upgraded my five year old 1gb 4890 to a 2gb R7 265 today and somehow I am still GPU bottlenecked. I assumed I'd be getting an almost 100 percent performance increase. I am running an i7920 at 4ghz, 6gb ram, windows 7 64bit, 1080p resolution and playing Guild Wars 2. On my old card, typically I would see 20-40 percent CPU utilization and almost always 99 percent GPU utilization. Obviously that sounds completely normal as it's clear that GPU was a major bottleneck for me. Well after installing the new R7 card, up to date drivers, etc. I boot up Guild Wars 2 and I'm STILL getting constant 99 percent GPU utilization. I'm getting literally the exact same frame rates as well. I was so pumped to be finally able to turn up the graphical settings, super-sampling and all that jazz but I'm left here feeling like I never even upgraded my GPU at all. I just ran a 3d-mark 11 test and the results indicate slightly better than a 7850 which is perfect, but I'm not seeing those results in-game for some reason. I think I'm just going to sell this card or return it and wait for the new 22nm Nvidia cards to come out.
Looking at utilization to figure out where a bottleneck might be is not accurate to deduce a problem. It seems fairly logical, but it just does not work like that. I'm not sure where it started, perhaps the HardForums, but it's an Internet Old Wives' Tale at this point.

Guild Wars 2 (and every MMO as well as multiplayer games) is extremely CPU bound.

*edit*

Think about it this way, frames are still being rendered at full speed by the GPU. But physics, game logic, and game state are all still being handled by the CPU. CPU usage won't be at 100% because the game is not n-threaded to saturate all 8 of your threads. It needs really high IPC with very speedy cores, and while your 920 is still pretty good, it's getting long in the tooth at this point.
 
That's Newegg. AMD is actually working to release SKUs that avoid Miners picking them off. They're not sure what to do with the current situation, because the miners have them by the balls in a large way. If they ramp up production to help bring prices back down, they might end up fucking themselves over by having a glut of cards on the market. While good for gamers in the short term, this would be disastrous in the long term as it would threaten their stability.

They've come out and said Gamers are their best customers, and they're doing what they can.

Ultimately though, it's the retailers that are screwing gamers, not AMD. The MSRP on their cards haven't changed. In the European market where miners aren't nearly as common, prices on a lot of the cards are right where they should be.

But fuuuuuuuuuuuuck this sucks.

And Gigabyte is awesome.

Looking at utilization to figure out where a bottleneck might be is not accurate to deduce a problem. It seems fairly logical, but it just does not work like that. I'm not sure where it started, perhaps the HardForums, but it's an Internet Old Wives' Tale at this point.

Guild Wars 2 (and every MMO as well as multiplayer games) is extremely CPU bound.

*edit*

Think about it this way, frames are still being rendered at full speed by the GPU. But physics, game logic, and game state are all still being handled by the CPU. CPU usage won't be at 100% because the game is not n-threaded to saturate all 8 of your threads. It needs really high IPC with very speedy cores, and while your 920 is still pretty good, it's getting long in the tooth at this point.

Thanks for that explanation. Isn't "super-sampling" almost entirely a GPU dependent setting. When I enable that it completely destroys my frames. I'd have assumed the 265 would be more than capable of running that setting enabled but apparently not. Furthermore, I'm in the wilderness, in a completely isolated zone while ascertaining the performance of this GPU. It's not like I'm in a heavy zerg blob in wvw. During those times my frames can drop to as little as 5 FPS which obviously indicates a lack of optimization of the game itself or a CPU bottleneck. I never expected my frame rate to offer an improvement in those situations but for lounging about in a near isolated zone I completely expected this card to be able to max the settings. Very disappointed.
 
Been offered the following for £450

Intel i5 3570S
12GB 1333mhz DDR3 RAM (1x8GB + 1x4GB)
MSI H77-G43 Micro ATX motherboard
HIS IceQ AMD Radeon 7950 3GB Graphics card
120GB Sandisk Ultra Plus SSD 
500GB WD Green 5400rpm hard disk drive
XFX Pro Core 650w

Wouldn't be what I'd choose personally but wondering what gaf thinks.
 

Stubo

Member
If my primary partition is the SSD, will all the updates I install through Windows Update be installed unto the SSD?

Windows update will update OS files, so updates are installed where your OS is installed which should be your SSD.
To add to this - you want all of your Windows stuff to be on your SSD because it makes everything you're doing faster.

Don't worry about Windows and Steam running you out of space. You can set up a Steam library on your 1tb drive and then when you're installing any game you'll be able to pick between the SSD and your data drive to install each individual game. It's super useful and means that you can put your most used games (or ones which benefit most from fast loading) on the SSD and everything else on the spinning HDD.

Oh, and if you do end up wanting to switch to air over water, the Hyper 212 Evo is everyone's base recommendation (I still use one), or the Noctua NH-D14 if you want the best air cooler there is (in my opinion).
 
Does anyone here have one of those micro atx small form factor powerful PCs? Thinking about building one of the recomended ones in the OP but 'm worried about heat/noise/upgradeability.
 

pilferk

Neo Member
Just experienced my first issue with my new build, and it's not a technical one. I always enter my live password whenever I log in (dont ask me why, I just do) but my PC would not recognise it. I had to log in to Live via my phone and reset the password.

Should I be concerned?

Nope. Live is having login issues today....it was/is probably related to that.

Others have said a password reset fixes their issues, too. Not sure why...
 

x3sphere

Member
Be warned with buying motherboards from Newegg... there was a popped capacitor on my board so I decided to RMA it and they claim bent pins on the CPU socket.

It's highly unlikely I bent them during installation, I've built dozens of PCs and the board otherwise seemed fine aside from the popped capacitor. Unfortunately I have no way to prove it so I'm out of luck. Didn't feel like having them ship it back and send it to Gigabyte for RMA, so just took the 50% refund. Plus I don't know if Newegg's RMA department bent them during inspection. Lost $100 for nothing, thanks Newegg.

Apparently this is a common occurrence with their RMA department, lots of reports about this, wish I knew beforehand. From now on I'm ordering from Amazon even if it means paying a higher price.
 

TheBear

Member
The Gigabyte WF3 290 is $529aud. Is this a good card and a good price?
Was hoping to pay less than $500 but compared to nvidia it still seems like really good value.
 

Pachimari

Member
Have you installed the drivers? Take a look at the device manager for any exclamation marks.

There's an exclamation mark at Network Controller.

So I went to the official website and downloaded and installed the latest driver but there's still an exclamation mark. =/
 

LilJoka

Member
Does anyone here have one of those micro atx small form factor powerful PCs? Thinking about building one of the recomended ones in the OP but 'm worried about heat/noise/upgradeability.

Im planning mine something like this
Lian Li PC 354B
Asus Rampage IV Gene
i7 4960X
Ati 5850 - yes its old lol
Corsair H80i
Corsair TX650
3xHDD's
Crucial M4 128GB SSD

I think upgradeability is not an issue, unless you want to go SLI/XFire which i see no reason to ever do. I always run a good GPU, then get another good GPU in a couple years down the line. SLI/XFire is not very efficient in terms of power consumption/heat output/noise and also game compatibility/scaling.

Similar Haswell build could be done, but tbh if you want to go 1150/1155 go Mini ITX. Fractual Node 304 build, Asus Z87/Z77 ITX board, GTX 780, 8/16GB DDR3.
 
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