Desktop Computers

Most people are waiting until the new chipset (Pascal) comes out which is looking more and more like it'll be next year. I run BDO with a 6xx something or another and it's fine.

Noodlemod_sl said:

I'm building a new PC but want to hold off on getting a 970/980 with new stuff right around the corner - what's my best bang for the buck for a video card to tide me over?

I see the 750Ti someone linked for only $100ish - is that good enough for BDO and such right now? I don't really want to spring 300 on a 970 if new stuff is coming.

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Snag this

EVGA GeForce GTX 950, Silent Cooling Gaming Graphics Card $119.99 after rebate ($139.99 - $20 Rebate) - Slickdeals.net

A 950 is about 25-50% faster than a 750Ti, depending on the game. Easily worth the extra $20.

Awesome, will snag that

Can I get some PC advice? I'm planning on building a new rig, the initial goal was just a PC capable of running the Oculus... but I've transitioned into "Just make an amazing computer that lasts you years." territory. I haven't really been keeping up on whats what though, and feel like I'm probably over killing it a bit. I already dropped the RAM from 32 to 16, and the Power supply from 1200 or something, but what do you guys think? I've seen a couple of things mentioning Skylake processors over Haswell, but Passmark rates this one much higher so? And the board, too much? Alternatives?

Thanks!

On a side note, a friend of mine just spend over 5k on a new tower.... it seems like that would be very hard to do, he had to have just gone absolute best of everything, or the company he had make it for him (Originpc I think) just robbed him.

Either way, ouch.

moontayle_sl said:

Most people are waiting until the new chipset (Pascal) comes out which is looking more and more like it'll be next year. I run BDO with a 6xx something or another and it's fine.

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If by next year, you mean next month. Next gen Tesla cards don't come out until Q1 2017, that has exactly jack fuck all with Pascal consumer parts. Pascal/Polaris gaming parts are STILL on track for late May / early June release, just like they have been for months now.

Everything I read kind of backs up the good Pascal next year stuff. Here's a random google search from a couple of days ago saying the entry level Pascal cards will be out this fall (Nvidia Pascal GTX 1060 Coming In The Fall, GTX 1080 And GTX 1070 Launching This Summer - Pascal Architecture Detailed | MobiPicker), but everything I read is saying you should wait until next year, probably late next year, for the high end versions of the cards.

I don't know, but most of what I read made me think I may as well buy 980 now instead of potentially waiting 15 months for a better card. Again, no proof of anything, just a lot of talk on various forums saying it makes sense from a marketing standpoint. Nvidia is on top, so they have no reason to release better cards, and when they do, they will make a lot more money piecing slightly better versions of the same card out over a year or more than they would releasing them all at once.

Every single tech site that follows this closely is reporting a likely Computex launch at the VERY latest for both AMD and nVidia parts. I fail to see how you spending 4 seconds Googling and finding confirmation of what I said makes you believe it less, but whatever. How is May 31, 2016 15 months away? 1080 and 1070 (or whatever the final real nomenclature is) are supposed to be the launch product line - that IS the high end consumer parts.

Since you can't be bothered:

NVIDIA already sending out invitations for Pascal launch to the press | VideoCardz.com
NVIDIA GeForce 1000 series arriving at Computex | VideoCardz.com
AMD Radeon R9 490X and R9 490 launches in June | VideoCardz.com
NVIDIA announces Pascal GP100 with 3840 CUDA cores | VideoCardz.com
NVIDIA releases Pascal architecture whitepaper | VideoCardz.com

That was all of about 30 seconds of skimming stories on one website. There's many many many many more.

Onoes_sl said:

Can I get some PC advice? I'm planning on building a new rig, the initial goal was just a PC capable of running the Oculus... but I've transitioned into "Just make an amazing computer that lasts you years." territory. I haven't really been keeping up on whats what though, and feel like I'm probably over killing it a bit. I already dropped the RAM from 32 to 16, and the Power supply from 1200 or something, but what do you guys think? I've seen a couple of things mentioning Skylake processors over Haswell, but Passmark rates this one much higher so? And the board, too much? Alternatives?

Thanks!

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Can you use pcpartpicker.com?

I think the board is overkill but if you got the money meh

Onoes_sl said:

Can I get some PC advice? I'm planning on building a new rig, the initial goal was just a PC capable of running the Oculus... but I've transitioned into "Just make an amazing computer that lasts you years." territory. I haven't really been keeping up on whats what though, and feel like I'm probably over killing it a bit. I already dropped the RAM from 32 to 16, and the Power supply from 1200 or something, but what do you guys think? I've seen a couple of things mentioning Skylake processors over Haswell, but Passmark rates this one much higher so? And the board, too much? Alternatives?

Thanks!

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I wouldn't get that Corsair H90 CPU cooler...the radiator is super small, and overclocking a 6-core CPU will definitely be a little more heat intense than OCing a more standard 4 core CPU. Bump on up to the H110i which is only like $10 more but has a radiator that is twice as large(and can support twice as many fans, either 2 if you just line 1 side of the radiator, or 4 if you line both sides)

And you will most definitely want to OC your CPU, your 5820k should easily bump up to 4.5ghz, if not even 4.6 or 4.7 without too much tinkering. Oculus rift performance looks to be more influenced by CPu core/thread speed than the overall number of cores/threads. Thus 4.5ghz 4 core will probably outperform stock 3.3ghz 6 core. So bump that 6 core up.

Agreed on the cooler, spring for the larger radiator.

Not sold on the 512gb PCI ssd, is it really worth paying twice the price over a regular SATA ssd?

980ti seems expensive for some reason, I paid like 50$ less for that exact same card a couple months ago, wonder why it's up so much?

Also jesus fuck 1151-v3 motherboards are crazy expensive.

Ronne_sl said:

Agreed on the cooler, spring for the larger radiator.

Not sold on the 512gb PCI ssd, is it really worth paying twice the price over a regular SATA ssd?

980ti seems expensive for some reason, I paid like 50$ less for that exact same card a couple months ago, wonder why it's up so much?

Also jesus fuck 1151-v3 motherboards are crazy expensive.

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The difference is speed between those and regular SSDs is pretty big. They run on a pcie x4 bus essentially, so they have much higher bandwidth than sata 3.

So when my Vive rolls out and I invariably need to upgrade my video card, what will be the best bang for the buck around this time next month (assuming order isnt bungled)

Big Phoenix_sl said:

980ti didn't come out until may of last year, so its successor will probably be released first half of 2017.

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This is true, but the 'enthusiast' grade parts are always delayed by a year (other than Titan's, which are basically setting money on fire). But that doesn't justify buying a 980 Ti now - the high end Pascal parts should outperform the enthusiast grade Maxwell parts significantly, for significantly less than they're selling for today.

Voyce_sl said:

So when my Vive rolls out and I invariably need to upgrade my video card, what will be the best bang for the buck around this time next month (assuming order isnt bungled)

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Assuming they maintain their strategy from the last go around, 1070 will probably be the sweet spot of price, performance, and efficiency. Polaris 10 looks like it may go into 480X parts, which may also lay claim to that. Nobody will know until reviews, benchmarks, and release pricing is announced.

Flipmode_sl said:

The difference is speed between those and regular SSDs is pretty big. They run on a pcie x4 bus essentially, so they have much higher bandwidth than sata 3.

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True, but how often would you utilize that performance? I guess if you're throwing money it's fine, but I'd find PCI SSDs more useful for enterprise uses.

I don't think the price premium of M.2 PCI-E SSD drives are worth it in a gaming machine. I'd much rather spend my $350 on a 1TB Sata3 SSD than a 512GB PCI-E.

The virtually indistinguishable performance gains (in normal, everyday usage like gaming and web browsing) aren't worth the significantly smaller capacities for the same price.

Does it really matter if your machine boots in 8 seconds instead of 10? Or if the loading screen in your game is 1.5 seconds instead of 2 seconds? The performance difference isn't anywhere close to the platter HD to SSD leap.

I feel like PCI-E SSDs are about as useful for most people as 3200mhz RAM vs 2400mhz RAM (i.e. not at all)

Fulorian_sl said:

If by next year, you mean next month. Next gen Tesla cards don't come out until Q1 2017, that has exactly jack fuck all with Pascal consumer parts. Pascal/Polaris gaming parts are STILL on track for late May / early June release, just like they have been for months now.

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Earlier this month Nvidia had a keynote at the GPU Technology Conference. At the time they only said, "The Tesla P100 is in volume production today and will ship ?soon." Jen-Hsun Huang said that really means it will show up in the cloud first, and ship via OEMs in Q1 2017." The article I pulled that from (and linked earlier) also said, "Nvidia did not announce when we would be seeing a consumer-oriented Pascal chip."

At least one of your linked articles pulled from the same conference, and indeed has no release date listed. Now, if it shows up at the conference next month, cool. I'm just going off what they said at their keynote, i.e. "OEMs in Q1 2017"

The Tesla P100 has absolutely nothing to do with any gaming parts. Anything said about Tesla has no relevance WHATSOEVER to the GeForce line.

nVidia usually 'announces' their consumer chips about 5 minutes before they go on sale. That's a meaningless statement.

It's already known that volume production on Pascal and Polaris began last fall and there's usually a 6-9 month window from the beginning of volume production to releases.

AMD President & CEO Lisa Su - Q4 2015 Earnings Call
We remain focused on completing our strategic work around three key growth pillars. First, in PCs, even in a declining overall market, we believe we can regain client compute and discrete graphics share for the year, driven by gaming, VR, commercial, and our most competitive product roadmap in more than a decade.
We have clear opportunities to regain GPU share in 2016 based on the performance per watt of our new GPUs and software leadership. Earlier this quarter at CES, we announced our new Polaris GPU architecture, which we expect to begin shipping in the middle of 2016.

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And...

AMD CEO Lisa Su, confirmed yesterday that Polaris will indeed launch in Q2 - April-May-June - and stated that the exact date will be announced ahead of time. All leaks and whispers that we've come across point towards a June launch. Su's comments certainly lend legitimacy to what we've been hearing. So far we've seen specifications for both of AMD's Polaris graphics chips, Polaris 10 and 11, leak online and even AMD's fabled Vega 10 flagship GPU. So the launch of Polaris is evidently nearing.

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Report : AMD To Take Share From Nvidia With Polaris - June Launch Claims Reinforced By CEO