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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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mug

Member
Hello PC-GAF :)

I'm finalizing the configuration for my NAS server and I would like to check here if I didn't do any big mistake (I don't plan to use Raid or the zfs filesystem - I just want a networked machine dedicated to storage, not a securized back-up solution)

CPU: Intel Celeron G1820 2.7GHz
Mobo: ASUS H87I-PLUS C2
RAM: 4GB, probably noname
Case: Node 304
OS: FreeNas
PSU: a 360W 80PLUS Gold
HD: a 3To Western Green, to begin with

My biggest problem was to find a mini-ITX motherboard which come with 6 SATA ports and a CPU with a low power consumption (I'm a little lost between the different Intel Atom models).

Is it looking good ?
Why 6 SATA ports?
 

gilljoy

Member
So I'm about to buy these components:

CPU
: Intel Core i5 4670K 4x 3.40GHz So.1150 BOX (€ 193,83)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87E-ITX Intel Z87 So.1150 Dual (€ 114,85)
Video Card: 2048MB MSI GeForce GTX 760 Twin Frozr (€ 206,64)
Power Supply: 430 Watt Corsair CX Series Non-Modular 80+ Bronze (€ 37,89)
RAM: 8GB Kingston HyperX blu. DDR3-1600 DIMM (€ 59,83)
SSD: 120GB Crucial M500 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA (€ 55,52)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy

= 736,82€

Do you think it's alright? Should I change something?

The only thing I can think of would be to get a modular PSU that fits in the prodigy, its a small case the less wires you have the better.

Also no HDD? the M500 is a good SSD but its only 120gb, I'd pick up a 1tb WD blue drive for games / media
 

mylasthope

Neo Member
Hey guys,

My case includes a front panel usb 3.0 header and a usb 2.0 header. Am I supposed to plug both of them into the motherboard or can I just plug the 3.0 in and leave the 2.0 unplugged? Watching a video on youtube and the builder (future looks) has plugged both of them in.
 

Sylvatica

Member
The only thing I can think of would be to get a modular PSU that fits in the prodigy, its a small case the less wires you have the better.

Also no HDD? the M500 is a good SSD but its only 120gb, I'd pick up a 1tb WD blue drive for games / media

My bad , I will take the HDD and Optical Drive from my old PC.
I thought about a modular PSU but read somewhere it's tricky with the Prodigy, 'cause it lays right against the chassis?
 

gilljoy

Member
My bad , I will take the HDD and Optical Drive from my old PC.
I thought about a modular PSU but read somewhere it's tricky with the Prodigy, 'cause it lays right against the chassis?

Good because 120gb is just too small considering titanfall for example is 50gb.

I've not built in a prodigy before but I'm sure some members in the thread have and will probably advise you better than me.
 

knitoe

Member
Hey guys,

My case includes a front panel usb 3.0 header and a usb 2.0 header. Am I supposed to plug both of them into the motherboard or can I just plug the 3.0 in and leave the 2.0 unplugged? Watching a video on youtube and the builder (future looks) has plugged both of them in.
Plug them both in if they are available on your MB. Otherwise, only the front 3.0 input(s) will work.
 

Bleepey

Member
Someone said my motherboard only supports a maximum speed of ram, is there a way to tell. What the maximum speed my ram can take is?
 

Bleepey

Member
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£152.39 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£58.56 @ Dabs)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£67.73 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£56.54 @ Scan.co.uk)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (£191.60 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-PW ATX Mid Tower Case (£40.21 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£36.04 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£79.69 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £682.76
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-21 04:39 BST+0100)
 

knitoe

Member
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£152.39 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£58.56 @ Dabs)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£67.73 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£56.54 @ Scan.co.uk)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 670 2GB Video Card (£191.60 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Enermax ECA3253-PW ATX Mid Tower Case (£40.21 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£36.04 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£79.69 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £682.76
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-21 04:39 BST+0100)

According to the MB spec:
-Supports DDR3 1600/1333/1066 non-ECC, un-buffered memory

Unless price is similar, buy DDR3 1600.

Also, why not K processor with overclockable MB? Possible 1+ GHz overclock would be a huge gain for gaming.
 
After seeing so many configurations lately, I'm curious: Are there really that many people using the boxed cooler?
Haven't seen any CPU cooler recommendations at all. It would annoy the hell out of me spending over 900 bucks on a rig and go with a noisy boxed cooler
 

knitoe

Member
After seeing so many configurations lately, I'm curious: Are there really that many people using the boxed cooler?
Haven't seen any CPU cooler recommendations at all. It would annoy the hell out of me spending over 900 bucks on a rig and go with a noisy boxed cooler
The OP has recommendations, which includes coolers.
 

mylasthope

Neo Member
Hey guys,

I'm eyeing either the EVGA 780 Classified or the Gigabyte 780 GHz Edition. I can't find a review with a clear winner between the two. I know mkenyon recommended the Gigabyte one over an Asus 780, but I may be able to save $30ish if I went with the classified over the Gigabyte. Any opinions on the two? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! :)
 
I had a slight problem with my two weeks old build today. The fans were all spinning very fast and were very loud. Nothing was overheating, but the fans were just going bonkers for some reason. I spent about an hour trying to tweak things in the BIOS, downloading software to limit fan speeds, but nothing worked. I was about to post here but decided to just try connecting one of the chassis fans to a different part of the motherboard. I also made sure everything was connected properly and all fans were spinning correctly. So far, it seems to have done the trick and the pc is very quiet again like it was before. I'm not sure if it's permanently fixed or not, but we'll see.
 

molnizzle

Member
Help me, GAF. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get rid of motion judder at 30fps.

I recently built an inexpensive SFF PC to play through my last gen backlog. I've stayed away from PC gaming for the last few years because I absolutely loathe tinkering, so I'm a bit out of practice here.

At first I started with Windows 8.1. After many hours of fucking with it I was finally set up... then I discovered that D3DOverrider didn't work. There are some workarounds, but they're not 100% and they happened to not work in both of the games I tested (The Witcher 2 and Saints Row: The Third). So I decided to suck it up and reformat to Windows 7.

Things were looking up at first, TW2 played like a dream at 30fps with D3DO forcing VSync + triple buffering. In Win8 I had to use some random .dll hack to get rid of the judder. Then I get to SR3... and now it's triple buffering that is giving me obscene motion judder. When forcing standard double buffered VSync through Inspector the judder is gone, but then i have horrible input lag.

The only judder-free solution without input lag has been nVidia's "adaptive" VSync, but unfortunately it also has shitloads of tearing. That defeats the purpose.

What can I do here? I'm legitimately upset about this and feel like I just wasted my money. Why the fuck is it so hard to have decent motion on PC? Most console games run at 30fps and don't suffer from any of these issues. Is there any way I can accomplish the same thing in Windows?

I'll try anything at this point. I've literally wasted over two dozen hours messing with this shit. I'm losing my mind.
 

JimPanzer

Member
I recently checked again for the temperatures of my i5 3570k@4.4.ghz again and I'm now a bit worried that they might be too high.

I get ca. 43 degree celsius in idle mode and ca. 73-75 degree celsius under prime95. I'm using a hyper 212 evo and one chassis fan.

what you say gaf?
 
Help me, GAF. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get rid of motion judder at 30fps.

I recently built an inexpensive SFF PC to play through my last gen backlog. I've stayed away from PC gaming for the last few years because I absolutely loathe tinkering, so I'm a bit out of practice here.

At first I started with Windows 8.1. After many hours of fucking with it I was finally set up... then I discovered that D3DOverrider didn't work. There are some workarounds, but they're not 100% and they happened to not work in both of the games I tested (The Witcher 2 and Saints Row: The Third). So I decided to suck it up and reformat to Windows 7.

Things were looking up at first, TW2 played like a dream at 30fps with D3DO forcing VSync + triple buffering. In Win8 I had to use some random .dll hack to get rid of the judder. Then I get to SR3... and now it's triple buffering that is giving me obscene motion judder. When forcing standard double buffered VSync through Inspector the judder is gone, but then i have horrible input lag.

The only judder-free solution without input lag has been nVidia's "adaptive" VSync, but unfortunately it also has shitloads of tearing. That defeats the purpose.

What can I do here? I'm legitimately upset about this and feel like I just wasted my money. Why the fuck is it so hard to have decent motion on PC? Most console games run at 30fps and don't suffer from any of these issues. Is there any way I can accomplish the same thing in Windows?

I'll try anything at this point. I've literally wasted over two dozen hours messing with this shit. I'm losing my mind.

Set a 30 or 31 FPS limit, and turn vsync on.
 

Panzon

Member
How do you install mods to Steam games? I'm trying to get some Batman Arkham city mods but can't find a proper tutorial anywhere. Sorry if it's inappropriate to ask here
 

KJ869

Member
How do you install mods to Steam games? I'm trying to get some Batman Arkham city mods but can't find a proper tutorial anywhere. Sorry if it's inappropriate to ask here

Some games have workshop support, rest you just need to follow the mods instructions, usually replacing game files or adding files and editing config files, for example http://www.nexusmods.com/batmanarkhamorigins/mods/6/? has clear instructions how to use this specific mod with AO
 
I had a slight problem with my two weeks old build today. The fans were all spinning very fast and were very loud. Nothing was overheating, but the fans were just going bonkers for some reason. I spent about an hour trying to tweak things in the BIOS, downloading software to limit fan speeds, but nothing worked. I was about to post here but decided to just try connecting one of the chassis fans to a different part of the motherboard. I also made sure everything was connected properly and all fans were spinning correctly. So far, it seems to have done the trick and the pc is very quiet again like it was before. I'm not sure if it's permanently fixed or not, but we'll see.

For some reason I don't know, my rig did started to do the same thing, a month or two ago. But just the CPU cooler fan. The temps never were over 40°C at idle, and this was the max in summer when ambient temperature was almost 30°C.

But now it's just spins with 100%, at 1500-1600rpm, with temps at 27-31°C.
Got it temporary fixed using speedfan, but I'm a bit scared I might damage something with leaving it permanently at lowered settings, so I only slow it down while browsing. ALTHOUGH after a 3 hour session of Borderlands2, temps are at 45°C, so I should be fine.

Is there a way to change speedfans in BIOS? I've never touched anything in there except for changing the HDD boot order.
 

dosh

Member
Hi all. I'm looking into buying a new GPU, the most important point to me being silence.

I was looking at GTX 660 Ti and GTX 770 cards, but I'm a bit lost when it comes to manufacturers. Are there brands I need to avoid?
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Hi all. I'm looking into buying a new GPU, the most important point to me being silence.

I was looking at GTX 660 Ti and GTX 770 cards, but I'm a bit lost when it comes to manufacturers. Are there brands I need to avoid?
760 or 770.
Anything with dual/tri-fan cooler is good. Blower style is not needed imo (noise isn't worth trade off). eVGA has Step-up program. If you are in EU you may want a better supported company with warranty service closer to you.

GPU types (More reading)
Seagate HDD still poo?
Everything is one big SKU blur until some catastrophic failures come along or someone gives me RMA data.

I still get to be upset about Seagate subbing their shitty Green 2TB drives while selling a 'Samsung'.
 

paskowitz

Member
I have an AsRock z87 Extreme4 mobo. One of the features of the board is an HDMI in (a la XB1). I have the A-Tuning program, which enables HDMI switching, installed. However, when I try to use HDMI switching nothing happens. What is really strange is if I hit alt tab or go into taskmanager I can see the damn program is running, but when I select it, it isfucking invisible.

Obviously I tried uninstall reinstall. Would flashing the bios help? IO connector bad? Defective mobo? HDMI/HDTV incompatibility?
 
I have an AsRock z87 Extreme4 mobo. One of the features of the board is an HDMI in (a la XB1). I have the A-Tuning program, which enables HDMI switching, installed. However, when I try to use HDMI switching nothing happens. What is really strange is if I hit alt tab or go into taskmanager I can see the damn program is running, but when I select it, it isfucking invisible.

Obviously I tried uninstall reinstall. Would flashing the bios help? IO connector bad? Defective mobo? HDMI/HDTV incompatibility?

Did you try running it as administrator?
 

Bleepey

Member
According to the MB spec:
-Supports DDR3 1600/1333/1066 non-ECC, un-buffered memory

Unless price is similar, buy DDR3 1600.

Also, why not K processor with overclockable MB? Possible 1+ GHz overclock would be a huge gain for gaming.

It was going to cost £100 extra for it (£50 extra for mobo, £30 for cooler £20extra for k series CPU). I thought fuck it might as well get a better GPU. From what I read it only increases frame rate by a small part.
 

Asiriya

Neo Member
I'm debating between whether I want to go for a full tower build, I've seen a lot of people praising mATX recently and quite like the idea of a smaller case. If I did go ATX I love the Haf XB/Air 540 cube idea and so I'm trying to weigh them up.

People with the 540; is there any easy way to expand beyond the two 3.5" bays? Ideally I think I would want four.

If not, has anyone heard rumblings of a revision appearing?

I quite like the look of the Haf XC too (it's a lot more like the 540) but I haven't seen much since ~January, has anyone else?
 

appaws

Banned
anyone suggest upgrading from i5 3570k vs 4670k? worth it?

No way. Maybe a 10% gain...

I recently checked again for the temperatures of my i5 3570k@4.4.ghz again and I'm now a bit worried that they might be too high.

I get ca. 43 degree celsius in idle mode and ca. 73-75 degree celsius under prime95. I'm using a hyper 212 evo and one chassis fan.

what you say gaf?

We have about the same setup, but I use SP120 Quiet Editions in push-pull running at 40% speed. That seems high for idle temp. Mine are in the mid-30s...but I guess it depends where you are. If you are in a really warm place they might be a little higher. 73-75 is a good temp under load. If I crank up Prime 95 and my fans to 100% I end up with temps in the high 70s under load @4.4ghz.

I'm debating between whether I want to go for a full tower build, I've seen a lot of people praising mATX recently and quite like the idea of a smaller case. If I did go ATX I love the Haf XB/Air 540 cube idea and so I'm trying to weigh them up.

People with the 540; is there any easy way to expand beyond the two 3.5" bays? Ideally I think I would want four.

If not, has anyone heard rumblings of a revision appearing?

I quite like the look of the Haf XC too (it's a lot more like the 540) but I haven't seen much since ~January, has anyone else?

I use the 540. I have seen some people over at the owners thread at Overclock.net who do some things to put in more space for 3.5 inch drives. There is a lot of useable space in the back above where the PSU goes.

That Cooler Master Cube case looks fantastic. Love the "wrap-around" window!
 

riflen

Member
Help me, GAF. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get rid of motion judder at 30fps.

I recently built an inexpensive SFF PC to play through my last gen backlog. I've stayed away from PC gaming for the last few years because I absolutely loathe tinkering, so I'm a bit out of practice here.

At first I started with Windows 8.1. After many hours of fucking with it I was finally set up... then I discovered that D3DOverrider didn't work. There are some workarounds, but they're not 100% and they happened to not work in both of the games I tested (The Witcher 2 and Saints Row: The Third). So I decided to suck it up and reformat to Windows 7.

Things were looking up at first, TW2 played like a dream at 30fps with D3DO forcing VSync + triple buffering. In Win8 I had to use some random .dll hack to get rid of the judder. Then I get to SR3... and now it's triple buffering that is giving me obscene motion judder. When forcing standard double buffered VSync through Inspector the judder is gone, but then i have horrible input lag.

The only judder-free solution without input lag has been nVidia's "adaptive" VSync, but unfortunately it also has shitloads of tearing. That defeats the purpose.

What can I do here? I'm legitimately upset about this and feel like I just wasted my money. Why the fuck is it so hard to have decent motion on PC? Most console games run at 30fps and don't suffer from any of these issues. Is there any way I can accomplish the same thing in Windows?

I'll try anything at this point. I've literally wasted over two dozen hours messing with this shit. I'm losing my mind.

You've not wasted your money. It can be a bugger to get rid of judder, tearing and input lag in all games. Some titles will require more attention than others, but I found it helps when you understand why phenomena like input lag and tearing occur. Essentially, there is no magic bullet right now (G-Sync is the closest thing to that) and you'll need to experiment. Apologies if you know all this already.

First off, adaptive v-sync will disable v-sync when you cannot maintain the requisite frame-rate. If that happens you'll get tearing until the frame-rate returns to the required rate. It was designed to address judder and make a changeable frame-rate less jarring. It will not help input lag if you are at the requisite frame-rate or higher, as it uses standard double-buffered v-sync.

Standard adaptive v-sync requires 60+fps, if you choose adaptive half, you'll need to maintain 30+fps to keep v-sync enabled. So if you are seeing tearing using adaptive v-sync, then you're not maintaining the requisite frame-rate, or you've capped it too low. Input lag will not be present when v-sync is disabled, as you've observed.

Input lag is caused when you enable v-sync and the system is generating more frames-per-second than the v-sync rate is allowing to be displayed. I believe this is because the extra frames are held until the display is ready to show them. In this scenario you're essentially viewing the past as far as the game engine is concerned.
As you can't correct your inputs until you see the result of them on screen, this leads to very sluggish, high-latency input response. This is awful when using a mouse, but not so noticeable with a game-pad, I find.

Triple buffering can reduce input lag, but if it's not available, you should cap the game's frame-rate. If the game has a frame-rate limiter, try using it before Afterburner or Inspector. Capping at a few frames-per-second less than the v-sync limit might give better results for some games. i.e. 58fps or 28fps cap.

I find that D3DO does not work well for all games. For some titles, using the in-game v-sync feature (perhaps with a frame-cap to battle input lag) works best. For others, the in-game v-sync is garbage and you're better off disabling it in-game and forcing though Inspector.

To be fair, console games have not solved this problem at all. Mostly they employ double-buffered v-sync and put up with input-lag by hiding behind high-latency controls. Sorry for the wall of text.
 

Rafy

Member
New z97 AsRock boards!

c103ef44_Z97-OC-Formula.jpeg
This is the z97 OC Formula and i think this is around the £140-£170 mark.


And the Fatal1ty killer that looks slightly cheaper but still pretty decent.

these are just two of them, here is the complete list:


ASRock Z97 OC Formula
ASRock Z97 Extreme 6
ASRock Z97 Extreme 4
ASRock FATAL1TY Z97X Killer
ASRock FATAL1TY Z97 Killer

You can find the rest here: http://wccftech.com/asrock-z97-moth...e-6-fatal1ty-z97x-killer-z97eitx-ac-detailed/
 

kiyomi

Member
Have there been any interesting Z97 mATX boards announced/leaked yet? I've bought my mATX case but I'm kinda waiting on Devil's Canyon before I build. When do we expect to see Z97 mATX boards being released and reviewed? Most of everything I've seen has been ATX or mITX.
 

Asiriya

Neo Member
I use the 540. I have seen some people over at the owners thread at Overclock.net who do some things to put in more space for 3.5 inch drives. There is a lot of useable space in the back above where the PSU goes.

That Cooler Master Cube case looks fantastic. Love the "wrap-around" window!

Yeh, it looks like there's tons of room on the PSU side. Don't understand why they didn't add a little rack of 3.5"s that could be connected to the 2.5" rack. I'll have a look and see if I can find anything that isn't too destructive. Cheers.

Have there been any interesting Z97 mATX boards announced/leaked yet? I've bought my mATX case but I'm kinda waiting on Devil's Canyon before I build. When do we expect to see Z97 mATX boards being released and reviewed? Most of everything I've seen has been ATX or mITX.

I'd like to know this too, When is the Devil's Canyon release in the UK? Though I heard 11th of May or something, has that been confirmed?
 

Rafy

Member
Yeh, it looks like there's tons of room on the PSU side. Don't understand why they didn't add a little rack of 3.5"s that could be connected to the 2.5" rack. I'll have a look and see if I can find anything that isn't too destructive. Cheers.



I'd like to know this too, When is the Devil's Canyon release in the UK? Though I heard 11th of May or something, has that been confirmed?


That's the non K series refresh, K chips come out June 2nd but U do not know if that is UK, pretty sure it's global though.
 

Water

Member
Hmm. It has just occurred to me that a laptop with a decent GPU would be really useful for my work in the near future, whereas a desktop PC is more for fun, so looks like my PC building project will go on hold for a while longer. Unfortunate, but kind of convenient too since it'll allow me to freely wait for the components I wanted in the first place instead of settling on anything less. And even a laptop with a 860m will be screaming fast compared to what I have.
 
For some reason I don't know, my rig did started to do the same thing, a month or two ago. But just the CPU cooler fan. The temps never were over 40°C at idle, and this was the max in summer when ambient temperature was almost 30°C.

But now it's just spins with 100%, at 1500-1600rpm, with temps at 27-31°C.
Got it temporary fixed using speedfan, but I'm a bit scared I might damage something with leaving it permanently at lowered settings, so I only slow it down while browsing. ALTHOUGH after a 3 hour session of Borderlands2, temps are at 45°C, so I should be fine.

Is there a way to change speedfans in BIOS? I've never touched anything in there except for changing the HDD boot order.

I'm pretty new at this stuff, so don't take my word on anything lol. When I go into my BIOS's advanced settings, there's a monitor tab that shows the heat of the cpu, fan speeds, and a bunch of other stuff. There is a way for me to change what percentage the fans run at, but like I said it didn't seem to fix the problem or do anything at all. So I guess I'm not sure if you really can change fan speed in BIOS.

Perhaps just try what I did, which literally was only moving one of the fans to another place on the motherboard (and making sure everything is connected properly). Good luck getting it fixed dude.
 
I recently checked again for the temperatures of my i5 3570k@4.4.ghz again and I'm now a bit worried that they might be too high.

I get ca. 43 degree celsius in idle mode and ca. 73-75 degree celsius under prime95. I'm using a hyper 212 evo and one chassis fan.

what you say gaf?

My load temps using IntelBurnTestV2 are around 68-74 degrees using the hyper 212. I have 3 case fans (one intake and two exhaust).

Edit: @4.4GHz using I5-3570K

Idle temps are a lot lower but I am in UK and it isn't exactly toasty here at the moment.
 
I'm pretty new at this stuff, so don't take my word on anything lol. When I go into my BIOS's advanced settings, there's a monitor tab that shows the heat of the cpu, fan speeds, and a bunch of other stuff. There is a way for me to change what percentage the fans run at, but like I said it didn't seem to fix the problem or do anything at all. So I guess I'm not sure if you really can change fan speed in BIOS.

Perhaps just try what I did, which literally was only moving one of the fans to another place on the motherboard (and making sure everything is connected properly). Good luck getting it fixed dude.

Thanks, I'll try that when I'm at home. But I'd be fine with changing settings in speedfan every time I reboot, if the BIOS doesn't give me an option to change it.
 
So I ordered my parts for my build this week, ill post the full build later, but I went with a bitfenix prodigy case, and went with the noctua c14 CPU cooler. It came today and holy fuck is it large. Sometimes I forget how big these are from the pictures they show when purchasing
 

molnizzle

Member
You've not wasted your money. It can be a bugger to get rid of judder, tearing and input lag in all games. Some titles will require more attention than others, but I found it helps when you understand why phenomena like input lag and tearing occur. Essentially, there is no magic bullet right now (G-Sync is the closest thing to that) and you'll need to experiment. Apologies if you know all this already.

First off, adaptive v-sync will disable v-sync when you cannot maintain the requisite frame-rate. If that happens you'll get tearing until the frame-rate returns to the required rate. It was designed to address judder and make a changeable frame-rate less jarring. It will not help input lag if you are at the requisite frame-rate or higher, as it uses standard double-buffered v-sync.

Standard adaptive v-sync requires 60+fps, if you choose adaptive half, you'll need to maintain 30+fps to keep v-sync enabled. So if you are seeing tearing using adaptive v-sync, then you're not maintaining the requisite frame-rate, or you've capped it too low. Input lag will not be present when v-sync is disabled, as you've observed.

Input lag is caused when you enable v-sync and the system is generating more frames-per-second than the v-sync rate is allowing to be displayed. I believe this is because the extra frames are held until the display is ready to show them. In this scenario you're essentially viewing the past as far as the game engine is concerned.
As you can't correct your inputs until you see the result of them on screen, this leads to very sluggish, high-latency input response. This is awful when using a mouse, but not so noticeable with a game-pad, I find.

Triple buffering can reduce input lag, but if it's not available, you should cap the game's frame-rate. If the game has a frame-rate limiter, try using it before Afterburner or Inspector. Capping at a few frames-per-second less than the v-sync limit might give better results for some games. i.e. 58fps or 28fps cap.

I find that D3DO does not work well for all games. For some titles, using the in-game v-sync feature (perhaps with a frame-cap to battle input lag) works best. For others, the in-game v-sync is garbage and you're better off disabling it in-game and forcing though Inspector.

To be fair, console games have not solved this problem at all. Mostly they employ double-buffered v-sync and put up with input-lag by hiding behind high-latency controls. Sorry for the wall of text.

Thank you for this. I hadn't tried a 28fps cap (or 31fps cap, as was suggested earlier) because those options weren't available to me in Inspector. I had tried 29fps since that was available, but that was even worse than leaving it at 30 or not setting a cap at all. I did some digging and found that I needed to add them to the config file myself using their hex values. I now have fps caps available from 28-32 fps.

I'm shocked both at how well the new caps work and how different they need to be for different games. SR3 finally ran perfectly with the 28fps cap. Smooth motion, no tearing and no perceptible input lag. Anything other than 28fps gave me tearing, input lag or both. The Witcher 2, however, needed a 31fps cap. Anything other than 31fps gave me tearing. Borderlands, Metro 2033 and Crysis also worked best at 31fps.

I haven't tested any other games, but so far it seems that either 28 or 31 is the magic fps cap. I did all tests using nVidia's adaptive VSync set to 1/2 my refresh rate. "Frames ahead limit" set to 2, D3DO completely disabled. Everything was gravy.

In light of this new discovery... I think I'm going to switch back to Windows 8. The performance delta between Win7 and Win8 seems to be much more apparent on lower end hardware. In SR3 I'm finally without tearing or input lag, but now I get occasional fps drops to the mid 20's along with some audio hitching. This happens no matter how low I drop the settings, so I'm thinking that my Pentium CPU is the bottleneck. This never happened in Win8, I couldn't get the game to drop a frame there if I tried — even on Ultra settings with 8x MSAA.

Can't wait to re-install my operating system again. -_-

You live and you learn...
 
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