The PC Building/Post Your Specs Here Thread

[bran]

New GPU should be arriving today.

Actually a pretty packed schedule today and tomorrow..... don't know I'll get to put it in and run it yet.

14 days..........

[OmarBradley]

Installed.... solid reporting back from Valley Benchmarks, nothing surprising, but pretty good. BF4 looked noticeably better, W2 not so much, but my previous card was the basically top of the line for that year any way (2011).

The real test will be AC:Unity....... it's reinstalling now onto the bigger SSD.

[bran]

Installed.... solid reporting back from Valley Benchmarks, nothing surprising, but pretty good. BF4 looked noticeably better, W2 not so much, but my previous card was the basically top of the line for that year any way (2011).

The real test will be AC:Unity....... it's reinstalling now onto the bigger SSD.

yeah im curious to see what you get out of unity.

[OmarBradley]

The ASIC reading was quite low..... below 60%, not far below... but below. Little disappointed in that, from a supposedly top tier version of the EVGA 970, but whatever, if it performs awesome, that's what I care about. FPS was pretty solid throughout Valley, averaged around 60, hit up to 90. Clock speed around was 1350mhz, may OC a tad. Was reading the wrong figure for memory before I edited this...... max memory usage is reported at 3543MB... a bit higher than I thought I'd ever get to, but I'd have to bet that was AC: Unity.

It is running reasonably cool though. Maxed at 74C in Valley (which is the same figure I've heard in other reviews too), forgot to check during BF4. Even after loading AC: Unity, fans never got higher than 32% speed. I can't even notice the fans turn on, they're fairly quiet and the CPU fan drowns them out. I've also noticed 0 coil whine, which a solid number of reviews on NewEgg have reported occurring with this card. Pretty pleased so far... but like you said, AC: Unity, and then W3 will be the real tests. Hoping that CDPR optimized PhysX for W3, as it's finally a feature I'll be able to use.

EDIT: About to run back to work, so didn't get to do any benchmark testing with AC: Unity, but I just loaded it up for about 15 minutes. No issues whatsoever, I had everything on its highest possible setting, except for two settings which I had on Very High (Ultra being one higher), and AA at 4x instead of 8x. Also had all of the effects turned on like bloom, Vsync, etc.. Very very pleased. The game is still rubbish, but it looked and ran pretty much as good as it can - and that's pretty darn good for 1 card to do.

Edited May 6, 2015 by OmarBradley

[OmarBradley]

It's dealing quite well with W3 on Ultra settings with all postprocessing settings on. Getting a steady 55-60 FPS, card hits 76C at most, but even then fan speed is only at about 33%!

[bran]

It's dealing quite well with W3 on Ultra settings with all postprocessing settings on. Getting a steady 55-60 FPS, card hits 76C at most, but even then fan speed is only at about 33%!

yeah if i max out everything on 1080p i will get around 40 fps. i just turned off hair works and set my foliage distance to high and that gives me a steady 50-60 fps no problem.

[OmarBradley]

It's dealing quite well with W3 on Ultra settings with all postprocessing settings on. Getting a steady 55-60 FPS, card hits 76C at most, but even then fan speed is only at about 33%!

yeah if i max out everything on 1080p i will get around 40 fps. i just turned off hair works and set my foliage distance to high and that gives me a steady 50-60 fps no problem.

Ah I've been using Hairworks, but my card is optimized for it.

[bran]

It's dealing quite well with W3 on Ultra settings with all postprocessing settings on. Getting a steady 55-60 FPS, card hits 76C at most, but even then fan speed is only at about 33%!

yeah if i max out everything on 1080p i will get around 40 fps. i just turned off hair works and set my foliage distance to high and that gives me a steady 50-60 fps no problem.

Ah I've been using Hairworks, but my card is optimized for it.

it makes a weird stuttering motion when you pan the camera, it doesnt do it all the time but it does it enough that it gives me a headache

[OmarBradley]

NVIDIA is getting a lot of shit on forums, being accused of purposely not optimizing previous flagship/high end cards (780's, etc.), and even purposely dumbing down their performance capabilities - with the alleged motivation being a desire to raise 900 series sales.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/831639/geforce-700-600-series/nvidia-is-deliberately-downgrading-kepler-gpus-performance-in-favor-of-maxwell-/

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/835446/geforce-700-600-series/amd-cards-getting-better-performance-in-gameworks-than-700-series-/

Sucks, I mean - my 970 is running like a charm, pretty much doing the absolute best a single 970 can do, but if I were one of those people who bought a 780 Ti or SLI set up last year, I'd be furious.

[OmarBradley]

Windows 10 coming late July, free upgrade for current Windows users..... it seems the only thing I'd be interested in would be DX12, otherwise it seems like W10 is not terribly different from W7, and in the ways it is different, it's stuff from W8 that I don't like/haven't gotten used to or performance increases that I don't really need like faster boot up.... my SSD does that.

Preliminary testing shows DX12 being a significant improvement over DX11, but I don't think there has been extensive enough real world testing yet to show guaranteed performance increases.

Edited June 1, 2015 by OmarBradley

[Amir]

Windows 10 coming late July, free upgrade for current Windows users..... it seems the only thing I'd be interested in would be DX12, otherwise it seems like W10 is not terribly different from W7, and in the ways it is different, it's stuff from W8 that I don't like/haven't gotten used to or performance increases that I don't really need like faster boot up.... my SSD does that.

Preliminary testing shows DX12 being a significant improvement over DX11, but I don't think there has been extensive enough real world testing yet to show guaranteed performance increases.

How much difference in performance would you see with DX12 on older hardware/with DX11 graphics cards? I know they'll release drivers, but for a 2012 machine would it be worth the hard drive/SSD space to upgrade? I like Windows 7 as is, only MS OS since XP that I like.

[OmarBradley]

Windows 10 coming late July, free upgrade for current Windows users..... it seems the only thing I'd be interested in would be DX12, otherwise it seems like W10 is not terribly different from W7, and in the ways it is different, it's stuff from W8 that I don't like/haven't gotten used to or performance increases that I don't really need like faster boot up.... my SSD does that.

Preliminary testing shows DX12 being a significant improvement over DX11, but I don't think there has been extensive enough real world testing yet to show guaranteed performance increases.

How much difference in performance would you see with DX12 on older hardware/with DX11 graphics cards? I know they'll release drivers, but for a 2012 machine would it be worth the hard drive/SSD space to upgrade? I like Windows 7 as is, only MS OS since XP that I like.

Yeah exactly, it will probably only be optimized for newer hardware, and certainly only newer games. As far as will it be worth it for a 2012 era card (7900 series, GTX 600, etc.), I have no idea. An article I read though that compared DX12 and DX11 seemed to say that the improvement was moreso in how DX deals with the processor in allowing the GPU to operate efficiently, rather than dealing with the GPU directly. So theoretically, if you have a i7 from 2012 (which I do), it should be a solid boost in performance.

But like I said, there hasn't been much real world testing yet, and we won't know for sure until games ship with DX12 in mind.

Edited June 1, 2015 by OmarBradley

[OmarBradley]

Anyone get W10 yet?

[Strange Broue]

lol win10

Win10 is basically a spyware with constant updates

Stick to Win 7 Ultimate

here's my specs for gaming:

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R 2.0 motherboard (even the onboard 7.1 audio card is good)

AMD FX 8350 8 core CPU (overclocked to 4,5 Ghz) with Nepton 280 L liquid CPU cooler

Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SSD

SEAGATE Barracuda 2TB 7200rpm 64MB SATA3 ST2000DM001 HDD

Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC 4GB GDDR5 512bit PCI-E (11227-00-40G) Video card ( I don't care about DX 12 because Win10, but if i change my mind, this card will support DX12)

Cooler Master haf 932 advanced case

XFX PRO 750 W Black Edition Full Modular 80 Plus Gold certified power supply (plenty of room for overclock)

LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (planned, because i need a Blu ray player/writer now)

Asus VX228H 60Hz 21.5" Monitor 1 ms response time

Genius SW-HF5.1 5000 (second hand buy, but delivers good performance, actually better than his successor model, 6000)

This rig is perfect for 1080p gaming, but the card can capable of even more performance (aka 1440p, 4K is maybe too much for this card, but i don't care atm)

Edited August 27, 2015 by Strange Broue

[bran]

^^^^ nice setup

im going to save up for the 390x i want to get it by christmas.

[bran]

well didnt need to save up my brothers went in halves and bought me a new sapphire 390x for my birthday

[AxlisOld]

Not a new PC issue, but the power supply just blew out on my media PC from 2004. It was an Antec 500w, not sure how I blew it on an old Sempron, probably the fact that it had been running for give or take 500 days straight.

[OmarBradley]

Not a new PC issue, but the power supply just blew out on my media PC from 2004. It was an Antec 500w, not sure how I blew it on an old Sempron, probably the fact that it had been running for give or take 500 days straight.

My go to list for current PSU's:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html

Edited November 28, 2015 by OmarBradley

[bran]

so i will be upgrading from a fx 6300 to a fx 8350 i know amd isnt as good as intel or nvidia but for bang for the buck these amd processors get it done.

[OmarBradley]

My roommate got Windows 10 on his laptop. I do not really like the layout, and it's running noticeably slower than W8 was (though that could be his laptop not being powerful enough to run W10 perfectly?). I know it's a very anecdotal case, but I am now very apprehensive to upgrade. The layout redesign from 7 to 8 really bothered me. 10 looks more W8 than it does W7. Hate those stupid square buttons for everything.

[bran]

My roommate got Windows 10 on his laptop. I do not really like the layout, and it's running noticeably slower than W8 was (though that could be his laptop not being powerful enough to run W10 perfectly?). I know it's a very anecdotal case, but I am now very apprehensive to upgrade. The layout redesign from 7 to 8 really bothered me. 10 looks more W8 than it does W7. Hate those stupid square buttons for everything.

10 is definitely more like 8 unfortunately, its better but not as good as 7.

[OmarBradley]

My roommate got Windows 10 on his laptop. I do not really like the layout, and it's running noticeably slower than W8 was (though that could be his laptop not being powerful enough to run W10 perfectly?). I know it's a very anecdotal case, but I am now very apprehensive to upgrade. The layout redesign from 7 to 8 really bothered me. 10 looks more W8 than it does W7. Hate those stupid square buttons for everything.

10 is definitely more like 8 unfortunately, its better but not as good as 7.

Shame, guess I'll stick with 7 on my current build. Next comp purchase will have to be W10 I guess.

[Amir]

7 is a great OS, I really love it. Spend most of my time on OS X but the times I do have to use 7 for gaming it's just so smooth. 98, XP, and 7 are my picks for the 3 best Windows OSes.

Only briefly spent time with 8 and 8.1 and don't care for them, not had a chance to play with 10 yet.

[bran]

7 is a great OS, I really love it. Spend most of my time on OS X but the times I do have to use 7 for gaming it's just so smooth. 98, XP, and 7 are my picks for the 3 best Windows OSes.

Only briefly spent time with 8 and 8.1 and don't care for them, not had a chance to play with 10 yet.

the PC i game on came with windows 8.1 unfortunately, so i just upgraded to 10 since it was free. the pc i surf the net on and do my work on is a window 7.

[bran]

I really wish I had a PC just for gaming.

I really want to play GTA V and Witcher 3 full-spec.

witcher 3 really shines on the PC, and i have no doubt down the road CDPR will release an enhanced version for free for pc users(they have done so with the first 2) which will really push systems in terms of graphics, shit witcher 2 with uber sampling still cripples all but top end pc's.

if you can save up and buy a mid range that would be the best bet, a mid range will run 450- 500 dollars but you will still get better performance than a xbox one or ps4, and you can upgrade as you see fit.