The "I Just Bought" thread

A pair of nVidia 3dvision2 glasses.

I'm still very happy with these glasses, I use them a lot more than I thought I would. It really enhances my gaming experience by increasing the wow (notice the lower case lettering? IT'S NOT THAT MMO I NO LONGER PLAY!!) factor.

They don't hurt as much as they did. My skin and subcutanous tissue in the aural area has adapted, so I don't need painkillers anymore.

I still look silly wearing them.

pibbur who admits that quite often he looks silly while not wearing them also.
 
The laptop of my oldest daughter had a breakdown. So, as the good father I am, I let her have mine, wich in addition to actually working, was a bit more resourceful than the one she had. She's very pleased.

Unfortunately this left me without a laptop ….

….

This is what i bought:
cdcb2402-4c83-4150-9978-f9e138764fe0.jpg


ASUS G750JH 17.3" Full HD
GeForce GTX 780M,Core i7-4700HQ,32GB RAM,256GB SSD,750GB HDD,Blu-Ray,Windows 8

1. It's extremely fast, much faster than my floortop pc.
2. It's got some serious cooling, fortunately the hot air emerging from it will only affect those sitting in front of me.
3. I didn't think an SSD disk would affect starting Windows that much.
4. It supports NVidia 3D vision (I really look good wearing those glasses)
5. It weighs less that 4.3 kg.
6. It's got windows 8. Which works well, but I still think the new UI is UGLY!! It directly stimulates my area postrema, the part of my brain (and yours) that controls sickness and vomiting. Fortunately I already have an Object Desktop (Stardock) subscription, so the good old Start menu is back.
7. There is enough space for handling the mouse between the keyboard and the front end of the machine.
8. Like it's predecessor it's got a horror and music theme, and is called "Igor". The machine that WAS Igor and is now controlled by my oldest, is now sailing under the name "Mnemosyne".

pibbur who now belongs to the Republic of Gamers. And who has to watch his daughter carefully, so her current laptop remains alive and kicking for at least a year.
 
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Giving your daughter an old computer to get yourself a new gamer machine - this is ingenious … and evil:
 

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Got the Samsung telly and as a nice bonus there is £75 off a second Samsung item, so I've treated myself to an 512Mb 840 Pro SSD. Huge boost in boot up speed and save/load times (I really should test it out on Gothic 3). Very pleased with it.
 
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Broke the bank… again. I got tired of lagging in Fallout New Vegas with my irritatingly slow AMD Phenom II 965 chip and architecture.

So I decided to upgrade to an Intel i7 finally. And of course that entailed a new motherboard. Oh and some new memory. And of course a new 6gb/s SSD because my old 3gb/s drive simply couldn't do. Oh, and a new case. And a new power supply… and… and… and my wallet discovered I should have left well enough alone.

  • Intel i7 4770k
  • Corsair h100i cooler
  • Asus Maximus Hero motherboard
  • 16gb G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series RAM (2133MHz)
  • Samsung 840 Pro 128gb for the OS, replacing Intel x-25m
  • Cooler Master HAF-X case
  • PC Power & Cooling 950W PSU <—- Only thing I don't feel guilty about blowing money on; my current psu is nearly 7 years old! Still going strong but starting to get nervous.

…It'll definitely feel nice to be bottlenecked by my video card again. The Phenom II has been a thorn in my side ever since I originally tried to save a few bucks and bought it in 2009.
 
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Broke the bank… again. I got tired of lagging in Fallout New Vegas with my irritatingly slow AMD Phenom II 965 chip and architecture.

So I decided to upgrade to an Intel i7 finally. And of course that entailed a new motherboard. Oh and some new memory. And of course a new 6gb/s SSD because my old 3gb/s drive simply couldn't do. Oh, and a new case. And a new power supply… and… and… and my wallet discovered I should have left well enough alone.

  • Intel i7 4770k
  • Corsair h100i cooler
  • Asus Maximus Hero motherboard
  • 16gb G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series RAM (2133MHz)
  • Samsung 840 Pro 128gb for the OS, replacing Intel x-25m
  • Cooler Master HAF-X case
  • PC Power & Cooling 950W PSU <—- Only thing I don't feel guilty about blowing money on; my current psu is nearly 7 years old! Still going strong but starting to get nervous.

…It'll definitely feel nice to be bottlenecked by my video card again. The Phenom II has been a thorn in my side ever since I originally tried to save a few bucks and bought it in 2009.
I bought i7 in 2008 with 6gb memory, cooler master haf-x, 1000w psu, etc. Still runs everything without lag. The only thing I have changed is gpu. So if you buy quality it can last for looong time (and even longer if you buy it at the right time).

For me the only reason to buy new pc now is to save electricity (I get complaints abt that constantly) and to get steam games to our primary living room. Might have to wait for that steam box though to see if it could be an alternative. Windows 8 without native gamepad or kinect support is no good interface for living room tv.
 
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Broke the bank… again. I got tired of lagging in Fallout New Vegas with my irritatingly slow AMD Phenom II 965 chip and architecture.

Post some impressions after you get it all up and running. I doubt a Phenom II 965 was holding you back in FO:NV though.
 
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If you tweak view distances and object Loding excessively there might be some CPU dependency. Although in that case I suspect moving the game from an HD to an SSD might produce a much more pronounced difference anyways (Since the game streams objects textures etc much more often on heavily modified visuals).
(edit: Actually not just "might" ;) as I have seen a very pronounced improvement when I moved the steam folder from my Raptor Raid 0 to a samsung 840 non Pro. I have a 256 840 Pro as main and a couple of 830s too on the system. Great gear :) )

That said, moving from an i7 960@4 GHZ to an i7 3770k @4,5 GHZ a few months ago, produced absolutely no visible difference to either of my heavily modified New Vegas or Fallout 3 installs…
 
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Bethesda's stuff is HIGHLY single-threaded and mostly confined to a single core. While current-gen AMDs can sorta kinda keep up with last-gen intels in proper multi-core applications, they get absolutely annihilated when it comes to instructions per core per cycle.

Once you get a lot of texture packs running, New Vegas can actually be pretty demanding; even moreso if you throw an ENB into the mix. One of my Phenom cores is routinely running at 80-90% - it is infuriating.

edit: it's really hard to find data on per core performance; this is an old table of single-threaded performance values, not quite the same.
 
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Hmm, can't say I've really followed AMD the last 6-7 years or so, so you might be right if they are as weak as you make them sound.

For the record the most gain I had from my upgrade (mostly done to get Sata3, usb 3.0, new ram/mobo and because I needed a new toy to play ;) ) was 30% on (heavily tweaked CPed) Gothic 3 and Gothic 2 with Vurts mod (So yeah, definitely good for dated single threaded engines).

I rounded out my upgrade with a very nice Foris 2333 IPs monitor a couple of weeks ago (always wanted an Eizo) and I am hoping to stop making my wallet cry with these guys. That is if the Witcher 3 does not stress my GTX 670 too much… Sheesh I hope I got it out of my system for the next 5 years or so. Stuff has gotten ridiculously expensive…
 
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I've just been very frustrated lately; looking at that table kind of puts things into perspective: my AMD Phenom 965 has single threaded performance worse than the Core 2 Duo e6600 I had… 10? years ago.
 
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I've just been very frustrated lately; looking at that table kind of puts things into perspective: my AMD Phenom 965 has single threaded performance worse than the Core 2 Duo e6600 I had… 10? years ago.

Not sure if I would put too much stock into that table. My CPU prior to having a Phenom 965 was a Core 2 Duo E6700, and I can't think of a single application that was faster on that.

Funny thing is that I've been resisting upgrading my CPU and Mobo…not because of cost, but because I'm too lazy to reformat my hard drive. :)
 
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For a long time, the choice of CPU has been almost trivial - but in the past few years, games have finally started to utilise multiple threads efficiently. If you're into games with fancy engines - I'd say now is a very good time to upgrade your CPU.
 
"Tall Tales" by Jeff Smith
"Quest for the Spart by Tom Sniegoski, illustrated by Jeff Smith

Both from the "Bone" universe.

I used to collect "Bone" in the 90s, then somehow lost track of it.

"Bone" and "Akiko" (by Mark Crilley) are the only comic series I really like - apart from the usual suspects (Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke).
 
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Been having so much fun with my new i7 setup. Constant 60fps in New Vegas areas where I was getting 30fps before. Almost enough to bring a nerdy tear to my eye.

i7 4770k @ 4.4Ghz
16gb 2133Mhz RAM
New Samsung Pro SSD

Happy Happy Joy Joy!


...can't wait to throw Supreme Commander at this thing. My artillery barrages shall be epic!
 
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Nice!

Hey, how is that H100i for noise? Using the default fans ?

I tried to built a mostly noiseless and cool system so I opted for a 3770k and Noctua/Scythe (case) fans and a Thermalright Silver arrow for the CPU.

Is the H100i keeping up with the 4770k at an acceptable noise level?
Tried to push it further ?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, you got my nerdy curiosity piqued ;)
 
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Hey, how is that H100i for noise? Using the default fans ?

Pretty good actually. I think the loudest fan in my case is from the PC Power Silencer psu… which is good enough for me. I'm using a pair of Quiet Corsair SP120 fans on the h100i's radiator, though.

Although I would have preferred a push-pull fan setup, the Corsair 500r case didn't have room for it. Still, it's been fine in retrospect. Running at 4.4ghz only has me idling at 30-35C°; max-load under prime95 had me at 75-77C° …but from what I gather, that's normal for a Haswell chip (things run hot!) with 95% of the efficiency.

I read some reviews about a Noctua NH-D14 outperforming the h100i and, even if that's true, I very much prefer the minisccule case footprint of the h100i.
 
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