TheMightyEthan Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) I think it's a 960. Digital Foundry just did a review of the 950, in which they compared its performance to the 960, and in their tests the 960 was bottoming out at 40 fps in Crysis 3, and that's with settings turned down to get the average up to 60. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-nvidia-geforce-gtx-950-review They have this nice chart, with 960 framerates on the right: *Edit - They were performing those tests with an i7 to eliminate any CPU bottlenecking. *Edit 2 - It appears that on that second test Crysis 3 on High was averaging 74 fps, so maybe it actually is the i5 that's your bottleneck. Edited August 25, 2015 by TheMightyEthan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. GOH! Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 That GTX 960 may be a weak link, performance-wise, on higher resolutions. It should be great for those games at 1080p, I'd reckon. I am fairly certain that if things are not "well-fitted," as you say, they would not cause framerate drops; generally, if your components are loose or ill-fitted, the problems they cause are more of the "PC won't turn on" variety. The biggest physical build things for newbies to be sure of are that the screws holding the mobo are well-seated so the mobo doesn't short out and that you applied thermal paste to the CPU. The thing about unknown quantities is that they're only unknown until you discover them, And those of us building PCs for a while have already encountered the vast majority of minor annoyances that may seem huge or scary to a PC newbie. It kind of astounds me that you say "everything" is an unknown quantity. That said, the price of freedom is the occasional error. And as a PC gamer and console gamer, I think you're overstating the relative complexity and number of errors PC gamers get in general. I haven't had a game crash out on me in months, and I've been playing heavily. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 Oh the joys of building my first PC. I turned it on and the graphics card just starts screaming. It was SO LOUD. Apparently that's the sound it makes when you forget to plug the graphics card power cords into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted August 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 I wouldn't bother with Windows 7 updates, jump straight onto Windows 10. Take advantage of your card with some juicy DX12 goodness. Also no need to do as many updates since Win10 is cumulative (and pretty new out the gate so not got 5 years of updates to install). I'd say the UX is pretty similar these days. Especially for most of the things modern consoles do. Especially with a Nividia card. Set up GeForce Experience and you've got the "Share" functionality, stream to Twitch, save videos etc. Need to grab video editing software I guess if you want to go more complex than that but plenty to grab. Then Steam does your library pretty easy for the most part, including remote installs n what not. 360 pad n DS4 (which I know you have) are plug-n-play too. If you've built the rig yourself and it hasn't exploded then you've got past the main hard hurdle, the rest is just regular computer stuff. Much the same side of issues you'd have if your computer was for accounting as it was for gaming. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomTervo Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) The freedom is quite incredible. I daresay fully worth it. But I would happily have managed on with my PS4 and other consoles if it weren't for these PC-intensive projects I'm working on. Good call, GOH, about things not being fitted properly causing much larger issues. I needn't really worry about that. I worry that maybe some foreign body got on my CPU while I was fitting it (hair/dust) but that would probably cause bigger issues, too. A lot of things certainly feel like an unknown quantity. Bear in mind that at this stage I'm basically a layman. Imagine I'm a housewife who doesn't know much about tech (I'm not that bad, but... the perspective). I've plugged all this stuff together, it seemed to turn on okay, but I feel like at any moment something could break in a oner. Software side, shit is haywire as fuck, too. "Oh, this very old game isn't running as well as it should. Why is this happening? I have literally no idea and don't know how to start finding out. There are 10 settings I can adjust which affect it but all of it feels like unhappy compromise and doesn't shed any light on the core issue." "Oh, Windows update is repeatedly failing to configure updates. For one thing, this is turning my boot-ups into half-hour affairs rather than the 7 seconds it takes without updates. But more importantly, is this impacting my drivers or something else to do with how everything is running? Does this tie to my first concern? Is it affecting my games directly?" "Oh, I thought my drivers were up to date, but then it said I needed to update windows before I can install the newest ones. The updates are struggling along, but does this mean with my new Windows errors are getting in the way any new driver updates I can't install?" "As far as I can tell, Windows 10 would dodge quite a few of the issues I'm having, and I think I'm entitled to the free upgrade. But with all these Windows Update errors, I'm not getting the 'Upgrade for free' notice yet. Can I ever get this with these update failures blocking my way?" "So from Ethan's post above, it looks like my i5 is probably a bottleneck. How do I identify this, categorically? Is that even possible? Down the line, will I have to shell out £300 for an i7 then go through the nightmare of dismantling everything to fit a new CPU? None of these are really killer questions or big problems. But when I could just (for argument's sake) buy a console in one hour from a shop (rather than 3 days delivery + a whole day building), for less than half my PC's cost, run many of the games just as well, and not have a care in the fucking world... It's not such a clear-cut thing. Obviously I'm not hating on the whole thing - all these posts are basically 'Kenshi's First World Problems'. With a PC you obviously just get so much more of everything in one box. And this thing could last me yonks, far, far longer than a console (although that i5 is worrying me now). I just have a very low level of tolerance, and very low patience, for PC problems, due to past experiences (in the darker ages of PC gaming) when things would work less often and be much harder to troubleshoot. Edited August 25, 2015 by kenshi_ryden Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 No need to wait for the Win 10 notification, just go here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomTervo Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 Legend, thanks, I'll try that immediately when I get back home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomTervo Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) Haha, apparently 'Windows isn't activated on my PC'. Even though I put in the code and everything at installation. No Windows 10 for me. PC is fun. Edit: wasn't a big issue at all, but still just another road block on the block of roads. Had to call MS and activate, yadda Edited August 25, 2015 by kenshi_ryden Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. GOH! Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 I do think that if you're doing serious graphics work, the GTX 960 will have to go around the same time the i5 becomes outclassed. The [NUMBER]60 versions of nVidia GPUs tend to be good for fewer years than the [NUMBERS]80 versions, in my experience. That said, there's been a very annoying trend among some game developers (more often indies, in my experience) to really, really, really rely on CPU speed in a way I haven't seen since the late 90's and early 00's. I have no idea why this is, but it's really annoying, since I have an older i5-2400k which is great for the vast majority of new games, but causes problems in a handful and is even below minimum specs for a few AAA's, though those games are nonetheless maintain a solid >45 fps on ultra settings at 1080p (Witcher 3 comes to mind). So, at some point, you might have to upgrade to an i7, I suppose. Then again, I am hesitant to ever chalk up game performance hiccups to the CPU, unless it's a simulation game. Fun fact: the most processor-intensive game I have ever played is Dwarf Fortress, which doesn't even really have graphics but brings high-end processors to their knees. If you're truly doing professional graphics work on your machine, I'm surprised you already didn't spring for an i7; I was under the impression the biggest performance gains consumers see when switching from an i5 to an i7 are found in professional applications (aside from a few extra fps when pushing the limits of high-resolution gaming). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomTervo Posted August 25, 2015 Report Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) Thanks for the advice. I can easily afford to go i7 and 970/80 a year or two down the line. At this point, financially, I'm going no further than i5 and 960. However, I'm interested in overclocking. I had to buy my i5 from a brick n mortar store at short notice, and the guy said the one I chose is made for overclocking. How does one overclock? Well, the only professional software I'll be using will probably be Unreal 4's SDK. Maybe other SDKs in due course, but hopefully I won't need to do any too-intensive asset-loading. Dwarf Fortress is a classic processor-killer. I remember it's one of the few things I could play back on a girlfriend's new laptop - it had integrated graphics, pretty mediocre RAM, but a boss processor. DF all the way. PS with Windows 10 on the machine now, things are going much smoother! Plus it looks fucking nice. I think I actually prefer this layout to any Windows I've used before, and even to most Mac OS's. Which I did not expect. It's lovely. Edited August 25, 2015 by kenshi_ryden 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted August 27, 2015 Report Share Posted August 27, 2015 However, I'm interested in overclocking. I had to buy my i5 from a brick n mortar store at short notice, and the guy said the one I chose is made for overclocking. How does one overclock? You don't unless you need to. It's not worth the hassle. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted February 22, 2016 Report Share Posted February 22, 2016 Any of you have a mouse that you just love? Or do you just use a cheap generic one? I'm currently using a cheap one. It has a double click button though! But I'm looking for a 2nd one for home and (soon) gaming use. Probably the most comfortable mouse I used was the Logitech M500. It's corded, because the wireless one uses AA batteries which makes the mouse heavier, which I find annoying. This is probably what I'm going to get again. Functionally though, I really like the Razer Naga, with the 12 buttons/numpad on the side. I bind play/pause, back/forward, volume up/down/mute on the side buttons, freeing up the F-keys for actual F-key functions. I've had 2 (actually, I think I've had 3 since 2011) of these and they all developed problems with clicking after a year though, so I don't really want to get another one. I also tried this thing, a cheaper alternative. but the shape plus the force needed to click the middle wheel feels weird (it actually made me actively avoid using the middle click) and makes my wrist hurt after a while. I've heard good things about the Steelseries alternative, but at this point I want to try 1 in person first before buying one. So, any mouse suggestions (and do we have a US amazon link yet?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 22, 2016 Report Share Posted February 22, 2016 I really like my Logitech G500. It doesn't have as many buttons as the Naga, but it has enough for my needs (I also have a Logitech keyboard with extra programmable buttons so that helps). Currently it's listed for $150 on Amazon though and I'm pretty sure I didn't pay anything even remotely approaching that much for it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 22, 2016 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2016 I had the G5 which was rather nice, I believe the G500 is the newer version of that. I'm currently on a Madcatz RAT. I like it, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's a bit of a beast, though fits my palm rather nicely. Not sure I'd want a mouse with an integrated keyboard but each to their own. Personally I've never owned a razer product but mainly cos everyone I've known with them they've usually fallen apart as overprice "gamer" tat. Your best bet is avoiding anything "gamer" focused for the most part. Personally I think Microsoft are an oft overlooked hardware manufacturer, though best I can tell from an attempt at a recent keyboard recommendation they're not in that business any more which is a bit of a bummer (well accessories at least, they're obviously doing the Surface stuff). I've a nice HP mouse at work, cheap n wired and nicer than the shit my boss somehow picks up (I chose my own mouse, he then reimbursed for it. He is an apple person so doesn't really grasp anything that doesn't come in white and aluminium) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eleven Posted February 23, 2016 Report Share Posted February 23, 2016 That Madcatz one is a weird looking mouse. And it looks huge! The G500 has that hyper scrolling thing, which I don't like. You can switch it to "click to click" mode but what ends up happening is that the click to click mode is also too sensitive, you can barely feel the click. At least that's what I've noticed with my previous logitech mice. (Also, kinda obnoxious scrolling sound though (especially when you scroll fast). I was using 1 for a year at my last job but I always had earphones on, so I didn't even notice. I might have annoyed a few seatmates but no one ever really complained. Still felt like a bit of a douche though when I realized it.) I never really paid attention to microsoft mice! The only one that I'm aware of was the thin foldable one. But it seems too small for me, even though people kind of rave about it. Has anyone tried those vertical mice things? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 23, 2016 Report Share Posted February 23, 2016 I find the clicky scroll mode find (I also don't like the smooth scrolling) and you can adjust the scroll speed to whatever you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 29, 2016 Report Share Posted November 29, 2016 *throws a phoenix down* Thought I'd bring this thread back since I just upgraded my PC. Apparently my last post was actually 2 builds ago (and I bought a new graphics card the same day I posted it, but never mentioned it for some reason). Anyway, here is my new PC: Mobo: MSI Z170-A ProCPU: Intel Core i7 6700k Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EvoRAM: 2x8GB G.SKILL NT Series DDR4 2400 GPU: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition Sadly I no longer have a DVD drive because the one I'd been using since 2005 is IDE and my new mobo doesn't have any IDE slots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted November 29, 2016 Report Share Posted November 29, 2016 This is about three months old now. 980TI is from last year for MGSV (the most love/hate game of all time). Mobo: ASUS Z170-P CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo RAM: 4 x 4GB GeIL EVO POTENZA DRR4 2400 GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 980TI GAMING 6G LE This should last me a long while. Everything but the GPU should last me probably four years before I even think about upgrading them (very similar to my previous build). Next in line is a 1440p, 144 hz, G-Sync monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted November 30, 2016 Author Report Share Posted November 30, 2016 Man my PC will be turning 3 in a month. I guess I should get it a cake. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B for Brian Posted May 21, 2018 Report Share Posted May 21, 2018 My baby. It isn't much, but it's mine. The System: Motherboard: Asus AB350-Pro Gaming CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1400 @3.2Ghz OC@3.7Ghz RAM: 2x Kingston Hyper X Fury 4GB 1866Mhz (8143MB total) GPU: AMD R9 380 2GB SSD: Samsung 850 EVO HDD: Firecude Hyprid 1TB PSU: Rosewill 500w OS: Windows 10/Antergos with Budgie Dual-Boot Monitors: 2x AOC 22" Borderless 60Hz Mouse: Logitech G502 Proteus Core RGB Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2016 Headset: Razer Tiamat Speakers: BOSE Companion 2 - Series II Controllers: Xbox One, Steam 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayc4life Posted October 15, 2018 Report Share Posted October 15, 2018 Looked back on this thread and realized I never actually posted my setup from my old build in 2012. Welp. Anyway, new build for 2018: Case: Cooler Master MasterBox 5 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-AB350M-DS3H RAM: Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR4 CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 HDD: Western Digital Black 2TB SSD: Crucial CT512MX 500GB GPU: Nvidia GTX 1070 Gigabyte G1 Gaming PSU: Corsair CX Series 750 Watt Monitor: Alienware AW2518H G-Sync 25" Mouse: Corsair Sabre RGB Laser Keyboard: Corsair Strafe Red (CherryMX Red) Headset: Astro A40 Earbuds: Sennheiser MX170 Microphone: Blue Snowball ICE 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted October 15, 2018 Report Share Posted October 15, 2018 All y'all with your 32 GB of RAM making me feel inadequate with 16... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayc4life Posted October 17, 2018 Report Share Posted October 17, 2018 On 10/15/2018 at 10:11 AM, TheMightyEthan said: All y'all with your 32 GB of RAM making me feel inadequate with 16... My last rig started with 8. Bought 16 2 years in, intending to just upgrade, then said "ah, to hell with it, and used both pairs for a combined 24. 32 futureproofs me a bit, in the sense that I can use the extra memory to stream on Twitch without worrying about running out of resources There's gonna be a lot of games real soon that are gonna be big resource hogs, and I plan on being at least a bit ahead of that curve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted October 17, 2018 Report Share Posted October 17, 2018 I've figured I'm safe at 16GB system plus 8GB video ram since PS4 Pro only has 8 total and XBOX has 12 total, and most games are developed with consoles as the lead platform. But even so, I still get jealous of people with better systems than me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. GOH! Posted October 24, 2018 Report Share Posted October 24, 2018 (edited) RAM gives diminishing returns for gaming after 16 GB unless you need it for simultaneous video stuff, like streaming. Edited October 24, 2018 by Mr. GOH! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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