What Are You Running?

[Cowboy1600]

Single 4Gb 670 > dual 660s. 660s will give marginally better performance (~5%) but not nearly enough for the cost (~$250 more to go two 2Gb 660s over a single 4Gb 670) and potential headf**kkery of SLI cards. It also leaves you nowhere to go in future if required. Put the $250 towards a 1440 monitor (Catleap).

Microstuttering, screen tearing and simple refusal to play ball FTL.

Also stick with 1600mhz ram.

[BlackTemplar]

Main

Case: Corsair 800D
Motherboard: ROG R4E
CPU & CPU Cooler: Core i7 3820 OCed
RAM: 32GB G.Skill RipjawZ 1600mhz
Monitor: 2x Overlord Tempest OC, 120hz 27" IPS 1440p
Graphics Card: 2x GTX 570s SLI
HDD(s): Raid 0 2x Crucial M4s 256gb, 2x Hitachi 2TB 7200rpm storage drives
OS Used: Windows 7 Pro
Peripherals: Mionix Naos 8200, Ducky Shine with Cherry MX Blacks, AD700, xbox 360 controller

Server

Case: Lian Li A77F
Motherboard: Asus generic z77
CPU & CPU Cooler: Core i3 3220
RAM: 16GB Kingston ram 1600mhz
Monitor: None
Graphics Card: onboard
HDD(s): 12x 3TB Toshiba 7200rpm RAID 6, 5x 2TB Hitachi 5400rpm RAID 5

OS Used: Windows server 2008 R2

Peripherals: hardware raid card, dual gigabit NIC

LAN

Case: Fractal Arc Mini
Motherboard: ROG M4G
CPU & CPU Cooler: Core i5 2500k OCed
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Monitor: 2x 24" Benq
Graphics Card: GTX 560 TI
HDD(s): Crucial M4, Hitachi 2TB 7200TB
OS Used: Windows 7 Pro
Peripherals: Coolermaster tenkeyless Cherry MX red, Logitech G5

[r34davE]

Single 4Gb 670 > dual 660s. 660s will give marginally better performance (~5%) but not nearly enough for the cost (~$250 more to go two 2Gb 660s over a single 4Gb 670) and potential headf**kkery of SLI cards. It also leaves you nowhere to go in future if required. Put the $250 towards a 1440 monitor (Catleap).

Microstuttering, screen tearing and simple refusal to play ball FTL.

Also stick with 1600mhz ram.

Thanks for the advice

From all the real-world comparisons I've read, twin 660s will outdo anything except a 690 and seeing as I already have one 660, I'd rather pay $230 for a second one than pay over a grand for a 690... I've seen microstutter mentioned on a few forums but no-one seems to go into any depth about what it actually is - only that it's rarely noticeable on most decent mobo/GPU setups?

As for the RAM, that was a typo sorry - I already came to that conclusion myself because ivy bridge doesn't seem to utilise higher RAM speeds

Oh and I have no desire to change my monitor as it would involve buying a computer desk and chair and sacrificing sitting on the couch... My computer is my TV

[Manuel Kasko]

My computer is my TV hahaha

This is exactly my situation

32 inch full HD TV is my computer screen

Couldn't find any evidence that made sense changing it

[bozodos]

SLI works a lot better than you'd think actually, I had 2x GTX 460's for a while. Found the lack of video ram and the fact that Nvidia don't optimise new drivers SLI profiles for older cards to be the biggest problem (i.e about a year after release only the 5xx cards were having optimizations done).

The amount of scaling that you'll get depends from game to game as well (compared to one single powerful GPU). I also recommend both having a decent sized case, and using reference cards.

Microstutter is more an issue for tri SLI and AMD Crossfire setups; I wouldn't worry about it.

Buy the fastest rated RAM with the loosest timings for the best price, it'll make more of a difference than latency these days, but neither is it really worth spending big dollars on

[r34davE]

Thanks for all the info dude - you sound very knowledgeable!

Quick question; what are you referring to when you say "reference cards"?

Cheers

[Manuel Kasko]

Dave reference cards are the basic cards

Before people like sapphire etc get ahold of them and add OCing and better fans.

They are pretty much the platform for the card when it's first released. Most of the time they have pretty basic fans etc on them

[Manuel Kasko]

Newly upgraded build:

CPU: i7 3770K

GPU: sapphire HD 7950 OC V2

Ram: 8gb

Motherboard: ASrock Z77 pro3

PSU: Antec High current gamer 620W

Upgraded this yesterday with a fresh install of windows 7. Later down the track I might start looking into how to OC but for now I think this should be fine.

Getting a stable 50-60fps on ultra on battlefield 3

[iseekool]

Got myself a second hand Dell Precision T3500 for cheap and upgraded some stuff.

CPU: Intel Xeon W3520. Quad core, HT, 2.66GHz turbo mode to 2.9GHz

GPU: Gigabyte 2GB GTX650Ti (originally had a lower end Quadro card)

RAM: 24GB Kingston

HDD: 2x 500GB WD Blue

OS: Win7 Pro x64

[HR31_RB20DET]

Case: Antec 300
Motherboard: Asus M5A99X EVO R2
CPU & CPU Cooler: AMD 955 black O/C 3.7ghz, Corsair H55 Hydro

RAM: 8gb Patriot Viper 1600mhz
Monitor: 24" Asus
Graphics Card: MSI 7870 O/C
OS Used: Windows 7 Pro
Peripherals: Logitech G110 keyboard, MX5500 Mouse, Z2300 speakers.

Edited April 6, 2013 by HR31_RB20DET

[Artic Choc]

this is my set up at the moment

Case: NZXT switch 810
Motherboard: Asus p8z77 - m
CPU & CPU Cooler: intel i7 3770
RAM: G.skill ripjaws-z 2133mhz 4gb x4
Monitor: soniq LED 40 " tv & soniq LED 32" tv
Graphics Card: Gigabyte gt 640 OC
HDD(s): Seagate 120gb SSD, seagate 1TB HDD
OS Used: win 7
Peripherals: logitech wireless mouse and keyboard

[Cowboy1600]

I've just added a Thermaltake Extreme 2.0 water cooler and a 250Gb Samsung 840 SSD to my system. I've not got 430Gb or SSD installed

The TE2.0 is pretty sweet. I didn't do any before and after but probably should have. It's also surprisingly quite. I was expecting it to be loud but it's not, even under load.

[BrynDETT]

Built this computer 5 months ago, thinking i was gunna get back into games... now it plays music and browses the web lol

Case: thermaltake armour

Mobo : asus p8z77-v deluxe

Cpu: Intel I7 3770k @ 4.8ghz , 1.42v.. de-lidded with thermaltake water 2.0 extreme

Ram: Corsair vengance 2 x 8gb sticks

Gpu: 2x Asus gtx680 4gb in SLI @ +116mhz core , +266mhz gpu mem

Psu: Corsair HX850

Logitech g510 and thermaltake level 10 mouse

[Leroy Peterson]

lol if you want to sell one of those gfx cards, ill take it

[BrynDETT]

sorry mate, ill hang onto them for a while..bf4 comes out soon!!! lol

[r34davE]

Just an update, I've now been running my new setup for over 6 months and I have to say I have NO regrets! Everyone talking about issues with SLI must be basing it on experiences with crap cards cos I haven't had a single issue and setting it up requires absolutely no hassles (it prompts you to activate SLI when you first fire up windows). I have been trying to find a game that will push my cards but nothing I throw at them seems to bog them down. I max out all my settings on Prototype 2, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Civ V, etc and it runs a charm. My windows experience score is 7.9 too.

[bozodos]

are you playing BF4 ok with it? haha.

[UNR33L]

are you playing BF4 ok with it? haha.

just ordered a 780 for some ultra 2560x1440 goodness!

(coming from a 660ti) so should hopefully be about double performance, the 660ti is going alright with BF4 on high I must admit but you do get the occasional explosion lag or water lag.

ruled out the 290s because of the noise / heat reports, even if they keep up you can't overclock them if you wanted to like you could with a 780

Edited November 10, 2013 by UNR33L

[JimmyRickard]

Hey guys just wondering if anyone in here can help me out.

I recently bought a 7970 for BF4 in my old rig, and whilst I got a decent boost I am nowhere near 60fps on high settings. I did a graph thing while running BF4, and apparently the CPU is up the shit.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfnqv63p5q...Win32-0001.png

I have a Gigabyte MA790Gp Motherboard. Would an AMD 8320 CPU fix my frame rate issues? Are there better CPU's to choose from? Is the motherboard itself causing issues also? What's the benefit of replacing it? Also I was going to chuck in another 4GB of ram.

Here's my system:

AMD 955 Phenom
4GB DDR2 ram
ATI Radeon 7970
Gigabyte MA790Gp Motherboard
Seasonic M12 80plus 500Watt. PSU

Thanks guys

[BrynDETT]

Not sure if 1 780 would be great at that reso . My sli gtx680 4gb struggle on the dam level on ultra at only 1080.. V sync on though..

and to the above post id say deff try more ram . From memory my pc uses about 5gb with my normal apps open and bf4, plus if u get more ram u could turn ur page file off