PC Gaming

[Solidus]

I've got a 1080p monitor, 24". Nothing super-fancy.

Just to emphasize, the card I recently bought was not a 780ti. Just an overclocked 780. Seems to me like the 980 has noticeable frame rate improvements and I feel the difference will be even greater with an overclocked version. I could wait for a Classified as well... wish we knew when either that or Zotac's AMP! Extreme version would be released.

Well, the reason I asked, was because I read that a 980 will be overkill on a 1080p monitor . A lot of the newer, higher-end cards are designed with 1440p and 4k resolutions in mind, and that also applies to the benchmarks that tested with those resolutions (especially on Tom's Hardware and AnandTech). So, if you just plan on gaming on your 1080p display, you should be more than okay with your 780 Classifieds in SLI. That is, unless, you absolutely must upgrade to the newest hardware.

They do, but it's not perfect and things will crash more often, there's also not support for every game. And there's other things where SLI isn't supported, like if you're a 3D artist there's almost no 3D software that supports SLI.
The developer is also part of making things work in SLI, so Nvidia doesn't have control over it all just from drivers. And developers are not designing the game with SLI in mind, they might do something a certain way that works fine normally, but with SLI it has problems. They don't usually go back and change how something works to fix it.

That's good info. I was really planning to pick up another Asus 780, but I guess I might just stick with the single one I have now.

Factory Overclocks are for the Superclocked versions, Classifieds are a class onto themselves for when you want to get serious with overclocking.
They usually come with a custom PCB and are designed for extreme overclocking
Ironically though you would need to buy a watercooling unit before attempting to overclock it which it doesnt come with, I wouldn't recommend it with the ACX cooler, I havent overclocked it yet so I still use the default ACX cooler on mine

Sounds awesome . I know that EVGA cards overclock VERY well. Even in the cheapo GTX 650 that I was using, I was able to boost the core clock by 277 MHz, and increase the memory clock to 80 MHz. I literally saw a 10% FPS boost in most of my games. It still wasn't good enough for 60 FPS gaming, though.

 

[Solidus]

On another note, I just checked the thermal spec sheet for the i5 3570k, and it states that the maximum allowable temperature for the processor is 67.4 degrees. I guess that means, I was .4 degrees off from my PC turning off a few days ago .

 

[Brainiac]

On another note, I just checked the thermal spec sheet for the i5 3570k, and it states that the maximum allowable temperature for the processor is 67.4 degrees. I guess that means, I was .4 degrees off from my PC turning off a few days ago .

Is that with the new cooler?
BTW, I can't reccomend enough... Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste

 

[Kibagami]

Well, the reason I asked, was because I read that a 980 will be overkill on a 1080p monitor . A lot of the newer, higher-end cards are designed with 1440p and 4k resolutions in mind, and that also applies to the benchmarks that tested with those resolutions (especially on Tom's Hardware and AnandTech). So, if you just plan on gaming on your 1080p display, you should be more than okay with your 780 Classifieds in SLI. That is, unless, you absolutely must upgrade to the newest hardware.

Yeah, I wanna get a real monitor. Right now I use my TV. It's been having problems going from HDMI to DVI. One thing I hate about AMD are their drivers.

 

[Brainiac]

Yeah, I wanna get a real monitor. Right now I use my TV. It's been having problems going from HDMI to DVI. One thing I hate about AMD are their drivers.

My TV is 4K, well the downstairs one is, and I hardly ever connect my rig to it, but when I get my 980, I may have to relocate my PC downstairs permanently

and I can agree about AMD, I had a 5770 before my 770 Classified(what an upgrade that was), and now I'll never go back to AMD. Nvidia is a thousand times better

 

[Kibagami]

My TV is 4K, well the downstairs one is, and I hardly ever connect my rig to it, but when I get my 980, I may have to relocate my PC downstairs permanently

and I can agree about AMD, I had a 5770 before my 770 Classified(what an upgrade that was), and now I'll never go back to AMD. Nvidia is a thousand times better

How big is your 4K TV?

 

[Solidus]

Is that with the new cooler?
BTW, I can't reccomend enough... Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste

No that was from the stock Intel cooler. I've come to see how Intel did a really terrible job designing them.

I've got some Arctic Silver 5 left over from when I replaced the CPU chip in my DLP television, earlier this year. I won't recommend any other thermal paste, either. Arctic Silver is the best.

 

[Brainiac]

How big is your 4K TV?

55, its the 8500 from samsung

No that was from the stock Intel cooler. I've come to see how Intel did a really terrible job designing them.

I've got some Arctic Silver 5 left over from when I replaced the CPU chip in my DLP television, earlier this year. I won't recommend any other thermal paste, either. Arctic Silver is the best.

Cool

 

[Kibagami]

55, its the 8500 from samsung

Does your TV throttle the refresh rate when it reaches 4K? I saw a 4K SEIKI TV that throttles the refresh rate to 30Hz when it reaches 4K. Makes me wonder what would happen. Also, are you gonna SLI?

 

[Solidus]

This is awesome. I did a stress test with my Corsair H55 cooler, and the maximum temperature I got was 43 degrees from one of the cores. At idle the hottest core settles around 37 to 39 degrees. Still not the best temperatures, but it's an immense improvement over the high temps I was getting. The stock Intel cooler is so inefficient at heat dissipation.

 

[Kibagami]

This is awesome. I did a stress test with my Corsair H55 cooler, and the maximum temperature I got was 43 degrees from one of the cores. At idle the hottest core settles around 37 to 39 degrees. Still not the best temperatures, but it's an immense improvement over the high temps I was getting. The stock Intel cooler is so inefficient at heat dissipation.

Dude, that's like really good.

 

[darthviper107]

The stock coolers are designed for general use, if you're going to do some serious computing then you'd want to replace it anyway. That's why the high-end processors don't come with coolers.

 

[Brainiac]

@Solidus Nice one.... at least you don't have to put up with high temps anymore and can game without worry

 

[Jackhepburn]

Guys, what do you think? £561. Seems a good price to me. Hard drive may be small but I always use my 3TB WD External anyway, I can put longer load time games onto the internal SSD.



Also, I got a message about a graphics card, I think it was Solidus? It accidentally got deleted so sorry about the lack of reply

 

[Brainiac]

Guys, what do you think? £561. Seems a good price to me. Hard drive may be small but I always use my 3TB WD External anyway, I can put longer load time games onto the internal SSD.



Also, I got a message about a graphics card, I think it was Solidus? It accidentally got deleted so sorry about the lack of reply

850 on the PSU seems like overkill, I would say you could get away with a 5/600W PSU and for reliance I would go with a Corsair/Seasonic one over Aerocool, but they arent bad either

I'm wondering what kind of displays you have as well.

The SSD seems like it would just be used for the OS and programs, and like you said you have plenty of storage anyway.

 

[Jackhepburn]

850 on the PSU seems like overkill, I would say you could get away with a 5/600W PSU and for reliance I would go with a Corsair/Seasonic one over Aerocool, but they arent bad either

I'm wondering what kind of displays you have as well.

The SSD seems like it would just be used for the OS and programs, and like you said you have plenty of storage anyway.

The 850 is definitely overkill, I may get rid of that and get a 600, as it is part of the prebuilt system. The display would be my LG 47LA790W 3D smart tv, with my surround sound also

 

[Solidus]

Yeah, I agree, 800 W seems a bit excessive for that setup. On the other hand, 600 W would be more than adequate to suit your needs, especially if you want to upgrade to a more powerful graphics card later on. But, all in all, I think that's a very good price for the PC. I usually wouldn't recommend AMD, but the AMD FX 8350 is a good gaming CPU, and with games it's very much on par with the Intel i5 3570K (the processor that I'm using right now). I say you should go for it.

What operating system does it have, by the way?

 

[Jackhepburn]

It doesn't have one included but I do however have copies of both Windows 7 and 8, so I'd decide between the two. Does seem a good price, that's delivered also.

 

[Solidus]

It's good you don't have to buy an OS .

 

[Brainiac]

Windows 8.1 is great. I'm also curious as to why your going with a prebuilt system. In my experience its often cheaper to buy the parts yourself and assemble them. However I did work it out to around the same price your paying +/- a few pounds buying separate... I guess wherever your buying from is getting some bulk discounts.... anyway its decent value I guess