What Are You Running?

[bozodos]

yeah the older Nvidia cards only do 2 screens, which is why my workstation has a 5770

these days I'd be looking at the AMD 290 over a GTX 770 / 760, or a second hand 670 over a 760.

[Birds]

The 290 seems like good value. But, if you're running a 27" 1440, get a 4gb 770. They are an awesome mid range for the money.

[UNR33L]

290s are good when they actually run at the advertised speeds..

inb4 95c and throttling down

[Birds]

Interestingly, I've found the GTX cards to be understated in almost all graphics/games benchmark tests. Either matching them with shitty hardware or AMD been shaking hands with people!

[bozodos]

Recent testing in the office shows otherwise.

290 / 290X cards smash their NV equivalents in all of the benchmarks - the 290X we tested was definitely faster than a 780ti. As for the cooling issue, we used a Gelid aftermarket cooler that dropped temps in Uber mode by 20 degrees.

they might run hotter, but at a significantly lower price, they're a pretty compelling buy, especially for >1080 resolutions. This is from a place where we've all always been all Nvidia as well

[UNR33L]

Problem is you need the aftermarket cooler, you can OC the stock cooled reference TI like a mofo

Either way both great cards, but not a fan of ATI drivers really. Oh and seen some evidence that shows mantle to be worst looking in game for dat dere 10% or what ever it is in bf4 lol

[bozodos]

That's why we're all Nvidia here - the damn drivers. From what I've seen the later releases seem to be fairly stable though. That and there is now a plethora of non reference cards with beefier cooling anyway

[UNR33L]

I used to be ATI when the 5850s came out, had 2 of them in crossfire they were awesome compared to any nvidia at the time but lately been nvidia fanboi

[Birds]

Benchmarks aren't everything though, quantity over quality sometimes. An example being that BF4 is made for ATI cards, so similar specs and benchmarks will still favour the ATI in an FPS contest. Bitcoin mining being another. But not all rendering is equal, and drivers/support/control/OC are very good in the NV house. 290 seems like very good value all round.

[Mayuri Krab]

Went & bought a netgear 4 bay Nas unit along with 3x WD 3TB red drives to off load all my animes/movies/TVshows to that instead.

One of my old 2TB WD green is dying (WD20EARS) & luckily I had most of the stuff on there backed up to a external drive before hand, seems like all the drives that have shown signs of dying were WD greens (2 so far), with the exception of 2 segates that were DOA... the oldest hard drive, an old samsung 7200rpm unit (that I use as my main game install drive besides the SSD boot drive) I salvaged from my old PC bulit is still working flawless.

Random people have being telling me leaving bit torrent running wears hard drives out faster, Is there any truth to that or complete BS? That dying WD green was one of the main drives that I had BT constantly running most of the time, coincidence?

Edited February 12, 2014 by Mayuri Krab

[niZmO_Man]

The green WD drives are pretty shit. Only to be used for archiving. Constantly running them will kill them. Or so I've read. Avoid if you're going to use them regularly.

[scotty nm35]

I use WD green, and they have been continuously running, some for over 5 years. Never had a drive go on me yet, perhaps I am just lucky...

[niZmO_Man]

I have three, although they aren't regularly used. Still works fine.

Perhaps they RAID5 people are having issues? Either way, it's the stuff I've read online about them.

[liger]

i've gone through 4x WD greens ((WD20EADS). never again. currently moving over to the seagate SV35's

Edited February 13, 2014 by liger

[bozodos]

Yep seen enough failures of Greens on various RAIDS - the speculation is that the drive's powerdown energy saving features create havoc in the array. I'd be using regular drives.

If you're paranoid about drive wear, use a Red or a Black / Blue as a scratch disk for your torrents, then have them automatically move to a Green on completion.

My standalone Greens have been going for 3-5 years respectively, no complaints, make sure they get adequate airflow and aren't subject to vibration

[Leroy Peterson]

planning on doing some shopping next month, am tossing up between EVGA GTX760 (because i like EVGA support + tools and ive only ever had nvidia cards) OR sapphire R9 280X (got some good wraps. would have preferred a toxic, but extra $200 for some cooling...)

nvidia has better base clock speeds but more pricey... i would prefer SLI over cross-fire mainly due to chipset availability in next 12 months.

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA/51149-04G-P4-3768-KR

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Graphics_Cards/AMD/51789-SA-R9280X-3GD5-OC

also thinking of picking up another SSD
http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Hard_Drives_&_SSDs/Solid_State_(SSD)/48725-CSSD-F128GBGS-BK

and desperately need new keyboard
http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Keyboards/Mechanical/50630-DK2108S-AUSALT

[HR31_RB20DET]

Have the MSI twin frozr 280X and cooling not an issue, overclocked reaches 70 degrees max (30+ air temps) on auto fan speed which only gets up to 40% and is dead silent.

[UNR33L]

planning on doing some shopping next month, am tossing up between EVGA GTX760 (because i like EVGA support + tools and ive only ever had nvidia cards) OR sapphire R9 280X (got some good wraps. would have preferred a toxic, but extra $200 for some cooling...)

nvidia has better base clock speeds but more pricey... i would prefer SLI over cross-fire mainly due to chipset availability in next 12 months.

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA/51149-04G-P4-3768-KR

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Graphics_Cards/AMD/51789-SA-R9280X-3GD5-OC

also thinking of picking up another SSD

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Hard_Drives_&_SSDs/Solid_State_(SSD)/48725-CSSD-F128GBGS-BK

and desperately need new keyboard

http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Keyboards/Mechanical/50630-DK2108S-AUSALT

I'd be looking at a old 680, or 770 GTX (considering they are the same card, and better than the 760 if you gonna spend $400)

e.g http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1486&products_id=23601

also the samsung SSDs are awesome

[Leroy Peterson]

I got the 280X (and after a few hours of trying to get drivers to work) seems pretty good with Rome 2. runs nice and cool.

Samsung and Corsair are same thing basically, ended up with Corsair 128gb and meh: its a hard drive.

[UNR33L]

I got the 280X (and after a few hours of trying to get drivers to work) seems pretty good with Rome 2. runs nice and cool.

Samsung and Corsair are same thing basically, ended up with Corsair 128gb and meh: its a hard drive.

ah yeah thats right forgot you were having driver problems lol

and yep thats it, my ssd isn't the best anymore but in terms of real world performance meh not going to notice any difference if I got the latest and greatest one.