What Are You Running?

[Dylan454]

Alright the motherboard I was going to get had 2 Gpu slots but I can get a cheaper one with only one. And the money I save there I can get a 970.

Ok so if I keep every thing else but change the motherboard and get a 970 would that be good for what I want.

Edited April 17, 2015 by Dylan454

[Anfanee]

I don't know why people still bother with two cards, nothing bun a den of rats there. Sooo many games have issues with them. Not to mention the cost......

My 5 year old GTX 570 is still going strong. So much money can be wasted in GPU's.

as above. Cost vs performance. Can build a whole PC for $1400 that will play everything easily for quite a while.

It can be so easy to get carried away when building a PC

[Anfanee]

Sweet. It isn't a bad cooler but I thought it would have been better for £26, maybe should have bought a Hyper 212 instead of the TX3 since it has two more heat pipes.

+1 i have the Hyper 212 and it is f**king fantastic. A little loud, though fine for what i do. The only reason i would watercool over the 212 is to quiet down the PC.

[Dylan454]

My fist try ended up at $2500 lol as I need a keyboard and monitor it is a bit more expensive. I have a 520 1 gb card haha in a laptop that can play wart under at low at 30 FPS

[Anfanee]

a monitor will bring it up......

all depends on what you want to do. for games i usually go on the cheap and upgrade my card more often. Though i have got lucky with the GTX570 lasting f**king ages.

Keep in mind everyone is different in how they want things to be done.

Though i'm getting back into graphic design as well as my partner doing photoshopping. So ill probably build a new PC soon and make it a complete beast because i hate rendering times.

[Dylan454]

all I want to do is play games. I have always had an Xbox, but I looked at all my 360 games and thought of the PC I could have got with them and I can't play 360 games anymore unlike PC.

Edited April 17, 2015 by Dylan454

[Anfanee]

top of the line I5, hyper 212 cooler, 16gb of ram, gtx 970, 250gb ssd, 1TB HDD

Pick brands......

Job done.

[Anfanee]

Do you care about what the PC looks like?

[Dylan454]

I don't really but my brother goes off if It doesn't have pretty lights haha and as it will be shared by us He has a say.

[Anfanee]

I'll PM you something i just threw together

[Dylan454]

Sweet any help I can get.

[Leroy Peterson]

IMO, spend decent money on stuff you're not going to replace in the near future. screen is important, CPU, motherboard.

GPU's come and go. memory can easily be replaced too. i also think you can go without an SSD on that budget. i think money would be best spent elsewhere. you can always get one later when doing a fresh install.

i used to be an nvidia man (and i dont doubt theyre good cards) but their software started coming with too much bullocks. so i tried the R9 280X and ive had a few niggles with brand new games, ill admit. But im playing GTA 5 right now and its doing a great job (other than 1 small common problem ). solid frames on high settings and im using almost all the 3gb of memory it has.

[Anfanee]

Yes a good Screen is important.

[flano87]

Anyone here who is keen on the PC for gaming I would highly recommend a program called DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) for uninstalling your older video card drivers or even just older files you may not know still exist that are currently in use or not in use, these are generally files/folders and registry key entries not removed by the provided uninstallers (from AMD/Nvidia)

the benefits of doing this is having a completely fresh install not interfering with anything else on your system, and potentially gaining some valuable extra FPS, usually a higher minimum framerate. ..... Most people are made aware to extract the most performance its best to have the latest driver! but not everyone realises all the old shit left behind from previous drivers!

start by grabbing the Catalyst 15.4 Beta Driver for AMD, Geforce 350.12 WHQL Driver for Nvidia

then download the latest DDU version at this link: http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/ddudownload.htm

Its quite simple to do yourself it will only just take a little bit of time but the overall gaming experience should benefit from this!!

1. Boot into just regulaur safemode on your OS, Run the DDU.exe application

2. Select either AMD/NVIDIA from the dropdown-list within DDU, click the massive button that reads "Clean & Restart"

3. boot into Windows.... If you are connected to the net or even offline I think windows versions on most occasions will be likely to try and find a generic driver to install for the videocard(s)..

4. wait about 10 - 15 minutes, if a windows notification has popped up it has finished f-ing around going about installing a generic videocard driver... manually hit restart one more time.

5. When windows starts once more go ahead and run the Installers for either the amd 15.4 beta, or nvidia 350.12 whq drivers...

6. BAM!!! enjoy the game of your choice!

[T-Rex]

Use an Intel CPU, I would not use an AMD for gaming.

ASRock motherboards are brilliant for the price, stick with them.

8gb RAM is a minimum, 12 or 16 would be better. 1600MHz used to be the recommended max for gaming but these days the price difference between DDR3 1600 and DDR3 2133 is minimal so I would go the 2133MHz.

The monitor is not good enough for gaming. 1920x1080 minimum with a response time at least 5ms unless its a IPS then 10ms is acceptable. I gamed for 3 years using 1680x1050 and the move to a good quality 1920x1080 was a HUGE improvement! Now 2560x1440 is the norm and soon 3840x2160 4K will be the new ultimate!

4gb graphics memory is fine with 1920x1080, but some games are approaching 6gb at 1080p, ridiculous but true!

I prefer Nvidia graphics, but understand that Radeon is often cheaper for the performance, albeit horrendously inefficient!

850W power supply is overkill for a single card. I'm planning on running Titan X or GTX 980Ti SLI overclocked on a 750w power supply and I'm confident it will run fine.

I used to run SLI for years and reaped the benefits as it is the cheaper than single card performance, although many on here disagree, simply they are wrong! As you are after medium gaming performance a single card is your best option.

Go over budget to get an SSD, once you have had one you will never turn back. I'm on my 3rd (120gb, 256gb, 512gb) and keep upgrading as I run out of space. the 512gb has been good. 150gb free with 20 games installed.

For a gaming rig its not necessary to have a permanent disk drive, I use a cheap Samsung portable drive to free up space in the case. Personal preference though.

I have a GTX 780Ti that I will be selling when I know more about the 980Ti. If your interested let me know, it is a better card than the R9 290.

[Dylan454]

Ok new build, I'm pretty happy with this. it also has a better monitor what do you guys think.

[FireFox-89]

Can't wait till the end of the year, so long as they are worth it I'll be upgrading my platform to a Z170 board and an Intel Skylake Core i7 but if they are following the same bullshit 6-8% performance improvements then yet again I'll be sticking with my Z77 Gigabyte board and my trusty Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K.

[Leroy Peterson]

Looks pretty good chief.

[FireFox-89]

My 5 year old GTX 570 is still going strong. So much money can be wasted in GPU's.

Those old Fermi's are still pretty decent. I know someone with an EVGA GeForce GTX 460 and even though it is showing its age still runs pretty well but he does have to knock the settings down and also I know someone with a pair of GTX 580's and they still kick ass to this day.

My brothers has quite an old PC that he is still using. Asus P5EX38, a Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.0GHz and an EVGA GeForce GTX 760. Until around a year ago he was using a BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 which at almost 7 years old (along with the rest of the system minus the GTX 760) is still running strong.

[Dylan454]

What do you guys think is better a 970 black edition or a 970 wind force ?