Building new gaming desktop

Originally Posted by Drithius
Personally, I always go Asus. I went Intel once (yes, intel board), and God did I regret it.

What trouble did the Intel board give you? I've never really come across Intel motherboards outside of servers.

Oh god, it was a while ago. There was some kind of problem with the RAM sockets on a 'Bad Axe 2' board; I forget the particulars but, suffice it to say, I got BSODs unless I babied the timings. Troubleshooted with different DIMMs.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
That seems very doubtful to me. Where did you pick that up?

From pretty much every tech site that's talked about it.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
The 980Ti is just going to be another version of the 28nm GM200 chip that is currently found on the TitanX. The 980Ti is rumored to get less VRAM (6GB instead of 12GB) and possibly higher clocks which might put it slightly above the TitanX but it remains to be seen whether all shader clusters will be active on the Ti or if nVidia will be using partially defective GM200s for the 980Ti. Any increase in clock speed might be mitigated by less shader clusters in that case.

It's being said that the 980 Ti will indeed have all 3072 CUDA cores active. True, it's basically going to be a Titan X with 6GB of RAM, but the Titan X is an insanely fast GPU that most people can't afford. What's significant here is that this is going to bring that type of performance to the mainstream gamer crowd where it was previously a niche product at $1100-$1200.

The early reports are claiming around $600 for the 980 Ti which, if true, is going to create even more problems for AMD unless they've got an ace up their sleeve. I've seen it claimed that the 390X is going to be on par with the Titan X, but I'll believe that when I see it. AMD has consistently disappointed me for years.

AMD/ATI gpus have always done fine by me; the only thing they lack of course is Nvidia's proprietary Physx B.S.

@JDR13: OK, but you said "… nearly 50% faster than the current high end cards" so I was wondering where the 980Ti is supposed to get that kind of power from to be 50% faster than a TitanX which is the current high end. Or even if you meant the GTX 980, then the TitanX is at +25% to +30% of the GTX 980 which means that the 980Ti would have to give us yet another +20% to +25% boost.

I don't see that happening. Where is that kind of performance supposed to come from? Even if the rumors of untouched clusters turn out correct, then the rumored clock frequency increase of roughly +10% will naturally not result in +50% performance (or the aforementioned +20% to 25% respectively).

The only reference on some tech sites re the 50% that I could find was that there supposedly was a leak in September last year showing the GTX 980Ti might be 50% faster than the now "ancient" Titan Black but even the GTX 980 is quite a bit faster than a Titan Black already.
Also, the fact that the GTX 980Ti is still not here yet and that it is supposed to ship in September this year makes me wonder about the validity of the leak. Someone had leaked benchmarks of a video card that wouldn't ship for another full year back then? OK, maybe…

Oh well, all rumors anyway. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens in (or until) September. All I can say is if TSMC gets its act together this time and Pascal ships in the first half of 2016, then I wouldn't buy the very last high end card of this generation at $600+ unless I'd really, really have to for some reason. Chances are very high that Pascal + DirectX 12 will make the performance of next gen cards skyrocket.
nVidia and AMD were ready to switch to 20nm back in 2013 and were only held back by TSMC's unwillingness and/or incompetence to switch to the 20nm node (unwilling because of Apple booking major capacity and paying better). So the GPU makers were forced to milk 28nm to the very last drop. They've certainly had plenty of time in the last two years to do some serious R&D on their next gen designs on top of the R&D and engineering that had already been done for the immanent switch to 20nm that never happened.
That's why I'm 100% convinced that nVidia Pascal in 16nm and AMD's whatever islands in 14nm will blow our collective socks off.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
@JDR13: OK, but you said "… nearly 50% faster than the current high end cards" so I was wondering where the 980Ti is supposed to get that kind of power from to be 50% faster than a TitanX which is the current high end. Or even if you meant the GTX 980, then the TitanX is at +25% to +30% of the GTX 980 which means that the 980Ti would have to give us yet another +20% to +25% boost..

Obviously not 50% faster than a Titan X, but that was just released 3-4 weeks ago and wasn't available when those articles were written. I'm talking about high-end mainstream cards like the GTX 980 and 970.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
The only reference on some tech sites re the 50% that I could find was that there supposedly was a leak in September last year showing the GTX 980Ti might be 50% faster than the now "ancient" Titan Black but even the GTX 980 is quite a bit faster than a Titan Black already..

The GTX 980 is about on par with the Titan Black in most of the benchmarks I've seen. A few FPS faster in some games and slower in others. If you consider the additional cores, the 50% higher memory bandwidth, and what I assume will be higher clock speeds, I don't think it's that much of a stretch that the 980 Ti might be around 50% faster. Preview articles usually tend to exaggerate a bit.

I agree about the leaks though. You can't count on them to be accurate. Things is, they often are surprisingly accurate when it comes to video cards. That's why I said "supposed" though.

Also, I think you're being overly optimistic if you honestly believe that Pascal will be available in the first half of 2016. Given the delays with their current stuff and the dearth of information regarding Pascal, I would be genuinely shocked if it shipped that soon. Everything I've read about it simply says "2016" or "Around 2016". I think it's far more likely that we're looking at the 2016 holiday season at the earliest.

Originally Posted by Drithius
AMD/ATI gpus have always done fine by me; the only thing they lack of course is Nvidia's proprietary Physx B.S.

I prefer Nvidia because their cards allow more options for anti-aliasing, and that's the single most important graphics option to me. With the Nvidia Inspector software, you can force AA in a lot of games that don't support it otherwise. There isn't a comparable program for AMD cards yet that I'm aware of.

There isn't, but AMD driver aka Catalyst has something called adaptive antialiasing.
It doesn't exist on nVidia side, but then again, there is no reason why it should.

How much will you spend?

Here is the guide for building gaming pc, the budget is around 1000 dollar, take a look http://pc4u.org/best-gaming-pc-build-under-1000/

Originally Posted by wiretripped
My sole requirement is that it runs the Witcher 3 smoothly

On what settings?

At this point we can really only guess how this system will run Witcher3. Sure, it's probable that its optimized for all the recent gtx900 cards, and no doubt a few models back, but if you really want to make in informed decision you should hold off until the benchmarks start appearing.

I'd say get a better videocard. Doesn't the 970 have some issue where it can only access 3.5gig of its 4 vram?

I remember another similar tech thread not too long ago where I was saying something about waiting for the 384bit memory Maxwell card because clearly at 256bit the 980 isn't the highend. (gtx580 was 384bit, but then 680 was 256bit because it still got high end performance and the original Titan, 384bit, was designed to last you two generations, hence the huge pricetag)

Well, the 384bit Maxwell is now out and its the new Titan X.

Let me try to find that thread… brb

Originally Posted by SirJames
GTX 500 series
560 = 256bit (64bit * 4)
570 = 320bit (64*5)
580 = 384bit (64*6)
So the 580 uses 6x256MB ram chips to make its total 1536mb. I always like an even number of chips, but we'll get to that…


GTX 600 series
660 = 192bit (64*3)!?
670 = 256bit (64*4)
680 = 256bit (64*4) **My card! Hooray!**
TITAN = 384bit (64*6)
Perhaps here is where I should have spoken of "interface" as nvidias claim was they have some fancy way off utilizing memory so that they can make good use of an uneven number of ram chips. But note that the TITAN, not the 680, is the equivalent of the 580 "high end" card.
People who bought a TITAN paid the most in nvidias history for the high end card which was rationalized by the fact that it was going to be the most powerful card of the 700 series generation too.

GTX 700 series
760 = 256bit
770 = 256bit
780 = 384bit
780ti = 384bit
The 600 series Kepler chips proved so good that nvidia didn't even need to do a real new generation of cards and rebranded the 680 as a 770 while having the 780 actually come in behind the true high end 600 series card, the TITAN.

GTX 900 series
750 = 128bit
750ti = 128bit
960 = ???
970 = 256bit
980 = 256bit
980ti = ???
I'm including the 750 cards in the 900 series as they use the Maxwell architecture the 900 series uses.

So, it looks like we've seen the super low end cards and the mid range cards are out now. I reckon soon we'll see the high end 384bit card and low 960… HOWEVER the 960 might be too good and cut into the mid range sales so we won't get that budget beast option for a while.

That's from here.
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25712

Looking at my local computer shop prices….

3g 780ti = $500
4g 970 = ~$450
4g 980 = $670 to $1200
12g TitanX = $1600

Fark, what a rip off. So what would I get, hmmmm…. I don't like the 970 due to so much bad press, but I have seen one in action playing Battlefield4 and it ran it flawlessly. I'd probably pick up a cheap 980 that comes close to a 970 price. I don't see any great deals. The 780ti is probably worth a look.

Originally Posted by walker
How much will you spend?

Originally Posted by walker
Here is the guide for building gaming pc, the budget is around 1000 dollar, take a look http://pc4u.org/best-gaming-pc-build-under-1000/

I was thinking max €1500. Prices are a little higher here in Belgium, so that would probably amount roughly to the same number in dollars if I got a similar system in the US.

Thanks for the link, I'll have a look.

Originally Posted by SirJames
On what settings?

At this point we can really only guess how this system will run Witcher3. Sure, it's probable that its optimized for all the recent gtx900 cards, and no doubt a few models back, but if you really want to make in informed decision you should hold off until the benchmarks start appearing.

Well, it doesn't need to run on "ultra" settings, but I'd like "(very) high" at least.

Originally Posted by SirJames
I'd say get a better videocard. Doesn't the 970 have some issue where it can only access 3.5gig of its 4 vram?

It does. But, everywhere I look it says you get the most bang for your buck with the 970 at the moment, regardless of that fact.

Originally Posted by SirJames
I remember another similar tech thread not too long ago where I was saying something about waiting for the 384bit memory Maxwell card because clearly at 256bit the 980 isn't the highend. (gtx580 was 384bit, but then 680 was 256bit because it still got high end performance and the original Titan, 384bit, was designed to last you two generations, hence the huge pricetag)

Well, the 384bit Maxwell is now out and its the new Titan X.

Let me try to find that thread… brb



That's from here.
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25712

Looking at my local computer shop prices….

3g 780ti = $500
4g 970 = ~$450
4g 980 = $670 to $1200
12g TitanX = $1600

Fark, what a rip off. So what would I get, hmmmm…. I don't like the 970 due to so much bad press, but I have seen one in action playing Battlefield4 and it ran it flawlessly. I'd probably pick up a cheap 980 that comes close to a 970 price. I don't see any great deals. The 780ti is probably worth a look.

Yeah, it gets pricey quickly, doesn't it? That's why I listed the 970.

Originally Posted by walker
Here is the guide for building gaming pc, the budget is around 1000 dollar, take a look http://pc4u.org/best-gaming-pc-build-under-1000/

April 2015 - that is totally wrong or the article author lost touch with PC games.

1. Suggested is some duocore i3. From gaming perspective, it's outdated. You need 4 cores at least CPU.

2. Can't talk about suggested Radeon apparently it's great GPU but I haven't seen it in actual world.
But the author says GTX 750ti or 760. Do skip even thinking about 750ti willya? It comes with 1Gb VRAM, new games want 2 as minimum. 760 is however a good suggestion, although one should not expect miracles with unoptimized games on it. Then again with those games even SLI titans would have hiccups.

3. HDD, any HDD, became irrelevant as gamerunner. Still is good enough for backups, installers and bonus deluxe or DLC whatnot. Today you should go for SDD of at least 128Gb size ment only for a game you're currently playing. Why 128 (in fact 120)? Because expected size of upcoming Star Citizen is 100Gb.

4. 450W PSU? Just don't. Don't go lower than 550, and even then do check what GPU specs say and adapt to it.

Wiretripped, look here:

http://tweakers.net/reviews/3930/4/d…mesysteem.html



And buy from the Netherlands, see the same site, much cheaper.

Hey, quick update for ya!

I just saw some leaked specs for 980ti

384bit, 2816 shader cores…

No word on the price yet, and probably too late, but this card could be the one.

Titan X has already had enough time to attract the rich enthusiasts, now theyre going after the "$1600 videocard? you've gotta be joking" enthusiasts who are waiting for an affordable 384bit Maxwell.

Anyway, I saw Witcher 3 running on a 970 too. Apparently max settings, but it wasn't really that impressive. Kinda just looks like a game. It ran perfectly so you should be fine.