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Golgot 04-21-15 01:23 PM

Gaming your Machine
 
Thought we had a thread on running & assembling gaming rigs, but seems not.

I'm a noob at this, but will have many a question over coming months, so thought I'd slap em here for the knowledgeable.

Here's some ongoing tittle tattle...

(About whether I can get some decent mileage out of a straight GPU upgrade)

Originally Posted by Tacitus (Post 1293544)
Yoda's got a similar CPU doesn't he [A8-5500]? Confirm or deny, boss! :p

If so then I'd say try a GTX 960 like he has. You'll pay between £160 and £190 depending on flavour and might even be able to swing a free game if you buy from official Nvidia suppliers. They're giving away Witcher 3 right now, but that game might just be with 970s and 980s.

EDIT - The stupid end of the PC building community goes something like this: One out of four front USB ports fails on your case, do you -

A) Make do with three, seeing as you rarely have any more than one thing plugged into the front of the PC at a time?

Or

2) Spend £70 on a new case?

Some people really are too daft for words...

The case arrives tomorrow, by the way. :p
Oo, that is much more in my budget range :D. I was looking at the 970 and it looks like a beast - that's a whole next gen price tag in one go though pretty much. Would also have to up my power source by the looks, I'm on 450W

I've mainly got an eye on Battlefront as the next AAA I want to run, so might just nurse GTA for now (see how the patches go etc) and then see how prices are on 970s, maybe get a tie-in giveaway there? :)

And Tatty.... didn't you just buy a new case recently? :D

Yoda 04-21-15 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by Tacitus (Post 1293544)
Yoda's got a similar CPU doesn't he? Confirm or deny, boss! :
I...think? :laugh: I thought it was a little slower, but I'm not too far. I can double check when I get home.

The GPU you recommended has worked quite well--some occasionally stuttering on GTA V, but nothing disconcerting. It does seem to be "on" a bit more, but then, it's just got the one fan and it's a lot smaller, so I think that's to be expected. I'm definitely pleased with it so far, so I'll toss in a seconded recommendation if Gol's considering it.

Tacitus 04-21-15 01:34 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Ok then, what we need is a synchronised golg and boss benchmark. Identical settings, 1080p, then see how the 960 stacks up against golg's card. ;)

Benchmark results are in the Rockstar folder in My Documents.

And yes, I got a new case about 18 months ago when I built the new PC. This one

After a few months I realised I'd gone for form over function in a big way - It's a dust trap, not particularly easy to work on and I had to choose my last GPU very carefully because my initial choice wouldn't fit. The shoddy quality of the front USB ports made my mind up for me.

I've bought a Silverstone Kublai. It'll take a 16" GPU if such a monstrosity were ever to exist. ;)

Yoda 04-21-15 01:37 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
I ran some kind of in-game benchmark when I first installed the game, and the game crashed. :laugh: Though it got through a couple of minutes first.

I've heard this from a handful of reviewers, about the game actually running really well on PC, but just crashing sometimes.

Golgot 04-21-15 01:39 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Oo they give you a results breakdown? Nice, ok will run post-patch one tomorrow and see how it looks :)

Cool, you're making me feel better about the capacious ugly box I plumped for :D

*EDIT* Yods the benchmark test often crashes at start because the story intro also starts as well. If you run it now should be fine I think.

PS No worries if the comparison is a faff, I think I know already that my card is meant for lesser things ;)

Tacitus 04-21-15 01:42 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Yep, the benchmark did the same with me when I loaded it up initially. Start from your latest save in Story Mode then run it again and things should be fine.

Yoda 04-21-15 01:46 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Dig. If I play this evening I'll run it again and letcha know.

Austruck 04-21-15 01:52 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
I'm posting in this thread because eventually I'll be upping my specs or something... perhaps by year's end to get ready for Obduction, if nothing else. I want that game to SING!

Tacitus 04-21-15 02:04 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Ok, here's my benchmark results - http://pastebin.com/tKnADBAk

Golgot 04-22-15 05:43 AM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
There we go. Although that's me on sub-pretty settings, so poss not that great for a like-for-like comparison.

Tacitus 04-22-15 09:14 AM

I guess this fits here.

New case ..... installed! 2 hours and reasonably painless - I need a SATA power extension cable for the DVD Drive (which I only fitted while I'm transferring my DVDs to the NAS so I'm loath to spend the money) and the HDD light seems permanently on, which will need me to swap the jumper cables around.

Old case gutted:

http://i.imgur.com/gyV0HTH.jpg

Innards cleaned:

http://i.imgur.com/J6TsUo9.jpg

Transposed into new case:

http://i.imgur.com/FAK5DV0.jpg

Which has some nifty SSD mounts:

http://i.imgur.com/50ywddU.jpg

Finished!

http://i.imgur.com/HxRwxJe.jpg

I'm giving the old case to a friend so that's worked out well. Was intending to remove the silent fans (two 140mms and a 120mm) from the old case but the new one seems to be really well cooled natively, with only one 120mm fan needed. Did a quick stress test and it's only 1C higher than with 3 fans running and today's a warm day inside.

If anyone's after a solid case, this Silverstone seems fantastic. I bought it mainly on this review, and it hasn't disappointed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ws2EtXXtPg

Golgot 04-22-15 11:09 AM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Woo, puter porn :D

Liking the window - that'd really itch my laggardy defluffing tendencies. (Prob shouldn't mention fluffing in this context tho ;))

Do you reckon it just has really good airflow / layout / aeration then, to work with just one fan?

Tacitus 04-22-15 11:31 AM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
That's the first case I've ever bought with a window. Where it's sitting right now you can't see it anyway but it's definitely handy for seeing if your fans are working - the case is so quiet now with just one fan (although I'll probably swap it out for one of my 140mm silent ones as I'm not mad keen on the existing one's LED) that I had to check and make sure I'd plugged the CPU fan in. ;)

I've given it a much longer stress test - GPU and CPU - and am getting similar temps to the last case so I'd say it's much more efficient. You can see from the third picture that there's no obstructions between the front fan and the motherboard. There's normally a hard drive caddy sitting on top of the bottom one (as seen in the video) which can also be suspended from the optical drive cage - I didn't need it at all so removed it creating room for the John Holmes (well, you were talking about fluffing :p) of GPUs.

You can see the HDD caddys in the old case. They weren't removable and definitely disturbed the airflow.

Tacitus 04-22-15 12:12 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
If you're after a GPU upgrade, golg, have a look at this - Link

Ok, the power that thing draws will probably dim all the street lights on your road and it's pretty elderly tech right now but for pure brute force for the money it's immense value. ;)

To put it into perspective it's a bit more powerful than my 780 but over £100 cheaper...

Golgot 04-22-15 12:22 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Holy crap 600W :D

But that does look worth upgrading the power supply for, for sure :)

Cheers man, that's def on the list. That's the sort of thing I was hoping for, a slightly out-of-date monster that's slipped into being affordable :)

Tacitus 04-22-15 12:35 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
I still think the more sensible route would be to spend a few quid more on a 970. It's much more modern, will give you probably the same performance at 1080p and will cost you £50 less a year to run in terms of your electricity bill. A monster like that 290X would probably mean you getting a new case and certainly a new PSU whereas the 970s draw a lot less juice and you can buy them in low profile, single fan iterations.

Heck, listen to me being all responsible. You should totally buy an R9 295 X2! TWO 290Xs on a single board and its own water cooler! ;D

*cough* Sorry. 970 all the way. ;)

Golgot 04-22-15 01:13 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
I think I may already have sold myself on the 960 to be honest. Not sure I can justify spending much more than that, and I'm not really trying to future proof, just play some specific AAAs solidly (and a whole ton of old releases fantastically :)). Of course I'll probably change my mind when something new and sparkly slides over the gaming horizon...

Reckon I'm gonna hold fire until I know the specs for Battlefront (and whether or not it's likely to be good), and then go for that mid-range sweetspot ;). (GTA is actually behaving surprisingly well - definitely playable. Patch seems to have helped with my water-at-speed issue too :))

Tacitus 04-22-15 02:49 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Wait until Yoda posts his benchmark, too. The 7850 was a decent card (equivalent to probably an Nvidia 750ti in today's money) and I suspect the CPU is holding it back.

Have you tried overclocking it?

Golgot 04-22-15 04:20 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
Nope haven't tried yet, but did read pre-purchase that it takes well to it. Got the '2C cooler than default' fan too. I don't actually know how you guys monitor heat etc so would have to look into that if I start playing I guess. Don't wanna fricassee the poor thing!

Tacitus 04-22-15 04:39 PM

Re: Gaming your Machine
 
I use MSI Afterburner now (you don't need an MSI branded card to use it) mainly because Nvidia's native overclocking tools are awful. EVGA Precision is another popular one.

From my time with my last card, the HD7950, I remember the native CCC to be pretty decent for overclocking. There are plenty of tutorials but it's always best to go in small steps until you find the sweet spot between performance gains and temperature. Finally, I'll run Unigine Valley at max settings for 10 or 15 minutes to see what the temps are like but be ready to ALT+F4 if you feel them getting uncomfortably high.

Valley's a good benchmark tool for seeing what improvements overclocking brings, too. Get a benchmark before you start. ;)

EDIT - I've been running my 780 overclocked from almost day one. It's rocking 780ti levels now and is solid as a rock. I needed to create a custom fan profile in Afterburner though - The card was hitting 75C on Valley without it but 65 with the fan turned up a bit.


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