Off Topic Thread V2.0

Headshot

Sonics2k wrote: »

I've had so many freaking problems and arguments with Asus I'm thinking of selling my own Asus ROG Swift and getting something else instead.

Is the ROG causing you issues? Iv heard quality control isnt the best

Sonics2k

Wright wrote: »

How does this happen when their GPU game had never been stronger?

AMD picked up a bad rep a good few years back for their GPU's, which were simply being outdone step by step by NVidia.

They tend to be louder, more power consuming and for a long time simply weren't as good.

In my own opinion, NVidia also just made better looking cards. The reference model is gorgeous in my own opinion. Despite being more expensive, many gamers felt it was justified by the bonus' of the cards.

It'll be a real shame if AMD go, the new cards are pretty damn good, but as others have mentioned, it's only now that they've caught up with 980 series and DX12 may be a bit late for it to really make a difference as the idea of NVidia being better is already in many gamers heads.

Also advertising. Lots and lots of advertising.

Sonics2k

Headshot wrote: »

Is the ROG causing you issues? Iv heard quality control isnt the best

Originally had an issue with a faulty PSU that came with my ROG Swift. They sent me a new monitor instead of PSU, after 3 weeks of waiting, and the delivery bloke wouldn't take my actual monitor, which was working fine.

So I took them both home, and despite joking about keeping both of them, contact Asus straight away to let them know about the mistake. They responded with an email saying they can't help me with it, and gave me a phone number which doesn't work in Ireland, despite me telling them in the previous email it didn't work. Managed to get the number for Asus Ireland, which apparently closes at 4pm and not 5pm. I work in an electronic repair centre and showed the "new" monitor they sent me, the LCD is obviously burnt out, doesn't power on properly only showing a large white haze on the screen, wouldn't reach more than 85hz when it did work and is just a pile of crap.

It's clearly an old RMA monitor which was sent back as faulty.

I'm half tempted to just send back the "new" piece of crap and sell my own one, which I've now got working fine because I just got one of the lads I work with to fix it. Count my losses (€600) and buy an Acer one or something with whatever I can get from selling this.

Damn shame, because I love this monitor, but I don't want to deal with them anymore.

Wright

Sonics2k wrote: »

AMD picked up a bad rep a good few years back for their GPU's, which were simply being outdone step by step by NVidia.

They tend to be louder, more power consuming and for a long time simply weren't as good.

In my own opinion, NVidia also just made better looking cards. The reference model is gorgeous in my own opinion. Despite being more expensive, many gamers felt it was justified by the bonus' of the cards.

It'll be a real shame if AMD go, the new cards are pretty damn good, but as others have mentioned, it's only now that they've caught up with 980 series and DX12 may be a bit late for it to really make a difference as the idea of NVidia being better is already in many gamers heads.

Also advertising. Lots and lots of advertising.

That doesn't explain how their adoption has dropped. How has their adoption dropped despite their cards being real alternatives, more than ever before?

Gumbi

They're terrible at marketting and made a few poor design decisions. The TERRIBLE reference coolers on the 290(x)s hurt their rep alot. The performance itself was really good, and compared favourably to nVidia's best, and pricing was excellent.

But the "out of the box" performance just wasn't there vs nVidia, a layman sticks in a 290x and gets heat and noise, whereas the 780 would be cooler and quieter. The non reference models took ages to come out then.

nVidia also gained quite a bit of an effiency lead with this/last gen. And they can take the performance crown with 980ti/Titan X which allows them to charge scandalous prices for them. Tech wise, the 290/390 match up brilliantly with the 970, and are cheaper, but a lot of damage has already been done to the brand, it's hard for the numbers only to shine.

Venom

Gumbi wrote: »

They're terrible at marketting and made a few poor design decisions. The TERRIBLE reference coolers on the 290(x)s hurt their rep alot. The performance itself was really good, and compared favourably to nVidia's best, and pricing was excellent.

But the "out of the box" performance just wasn't there vs nVidia, a layman sticks in a 290x and gets heat and noise, whereas the 780 would be cooler and quieter. The non reference models took ages to come out then.

nVidia also gained quite a bit of an effiency lead with this/last gen. And they can take the performance crown with 980ti/Titan X which allows them to charge scandalous prices for them. Tech wise, the 290/390 match up brilliantly with the 970, and are cheaper, but a lot of damage has already been done to the brand, it's hard for the numbers only to shine.

Yeah AMD really seem to love shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to PR matters. They also need to up there game when it comes to drivers overall and day one drivers for big game releases. Drivers coming out two weeks after a game has, is just way to long

Headshot

I have to say iv been very happy with windows 10. Going very nice for me and somtimes I think im still using windows 7

Serephucus

I'm slowly switching over to Linux, mainly because I don't like the direction MS is going. an OS as a service has some benefits, but it also has drawbacks too.

On a mobile device, I don't mind my location data being harvested, or my voice or input data - I use Google Now a lot on my phone - but for my OS? None of that is useful, so it can **** right off.

As it stands, there are only a couple of things holding me back from using Linux full time* - No SVP, and no Unity client (though this one is changing, so I hear)

*Excluding games. I accept I'll still be booting into W10 for Steam.

challengemaster

Lu Tze wrote: »

In more graphics card news the GTX 950 is finally launching looks good, depending on what price it retails at. See an MSI version for GBP128 on amazon for pre-order

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asus-geforce-gtx-950-strix,4270.html

With the release of the GeForce GTX 950, NVIDIA is providing a price of $159 for the GTX 950, while the GTX 960 is priced at $199. This gives AIB partners like MSI a little bit of wiggle room to offer a card for around $160, with a better cooler and factory overclocks out of the box.

Read more at http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7302/msi-geforce-gtx-950-gaming-2g-video-card-review/index.html

Looks promising alright

HowAreWe

how much better will that 950 be compared to say the 750Ti?

TerrorFirmer

Nvidia also have AMD totally walloped in the budget segment, AMD for example have nothing to rival the GTX750 and GTX750Ti at all - excellent performers which critically requires very little power, making it the perfect upgrade for millions of shop-bought PC's that have weaker power supplies.

The GTX950 will probably continue this trend. I don't think it's the higher-end cards the companies have to worry about as much - what percentage of gamers are using cards in the GTX980 class? A very small minority. The real battle would be across the GTX750Ti to the GTX970 class cards.

As someone else said the R9 290 did serious damage to AMD as well, that reference cooler was an abomination. I bought one at launch, and told myself a bit of noise wasn't the end of the world for the stellar performance. I had to sell it on the noise was so bad. If you think people were exaggerating when they said the card sounded like a hairdryer inside your PC when under load, they weren't - it did actually sound like that.

AMD have some good offerings in all brackets apart from the budget segment, but the power consumption issue is a major one. Tell someone that card A and B are broadly similar but card B uses far less power, and it's a no brainer. It's killing AMD. Most of the 'Nvidia killer' cards they release are broadly competitive with their rival product, but do so at enormous power cost.

Nvidia's driver support is also so much better, which is way I personally tend to go Nvidia. This is another very critical point.

What's really keeping them afloat is their focus on areas that neither Intel or Nvidia really excel, but I could see them dropping out of the mainstream gaming market in time to come.

They never recovered against Intel after the Core 2 launch and that was almost 10 years ago now.

challengemaster

HowAreWe wrote: »

how much better will that 950 be compared to say the 750Ti?

20-50 average FPS boost depending on game at 1920x1080

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asus-geforce-gtx-950-strix,4270.html#p5

TerrorFirmer

A perfect example. GTX950 at $159 is competitive with the $199 380 while using a whopping 90W less power under load.

It also supports SLI which the GTX750Ti didn't (which was disappointing, I always wished I could try!) which would be interesting to see.

Wright

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

A perfect example. GTX950 at $159 is competitive with the $199 380 while using a whopping 90W less power under load.

... the newly announced 950 is benching equal to the 380? Pretty sure that's not the case, the 960 is on average 2 frames behind the 380 on most things. Not worth the extra 80w for 2 frames but still.

TerrorFirmer

From that review above of the Strix 950. Beats the 370 and challenges the 380 frequently in average framerate.

When I started this review, I expected the GeForce GTX 950 to deliver performance closer to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 Ti. That board served up excellent frame rates at a good price back when it surfaced. And it was the first Maxwell-based GPU, so I didn't believe big efficiency gains were still possible.

Nvidia has a habit of launching new cards aimed at replacing hardware from two generations prior. They often have similar performance characteristics as the outgoing series with a slightly lower price tag. A great example of this is the GTX 960, which was billed as an upgrade for GeForce GTX 660 owners and enabled similar frame rates as the GTX 760 at a lower price point. So, to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of Asus’ GeForce GTX 950 Strix would be an understatement. In almost all cases, the GTX 950 Strix barely trailed our GeForce GTX 960. After overclocking, it closed the gap even more.

AMD’s competition at this price point, frankly, doesn't keep up. There were no occasions in our testing where the Radeon R7 370 finished ahead of the Asus GTX 950 Strix. Not only that, but Nvidia’s GPU draws less power, too.

Wright

Looks like that part of the market is getting very saturated with too many cards trading similar blows. Would still consider a 380 the sweet spot card of this year. nVidia done screwed up not releasing a true 4GB 960ti to compensate for the 970 debacle. The 660ti was one of the best sweet spot cards ever, IMO.

HowAreWe

Was gonna upgrade my 750ti to a 390 but had to spend my money on real life things instead

might upgrade in a month or two, not sure if I will still go for a 390, was hoping AMD would release a 380x.

(I am an ATI fan boy at heart, feel dirty owning this 750ti but I will admit its pretty decent :pac:)

game4it70

Another update on my Corsair rma.

Corsair support has said they don't carry the same keyboard i sent back with red switches anymore.They offered me the same model but with Brown or Blue switches instead.

Which are better for gaming (battlefield 4 mainly) Brown or Blues?
I'm not to fussed about typing or noise.

Danger781

People will say Browns for gaming but it all comes down to personal preference.

Tactile bump of browns vs clickiness of blues.
Blues require slightly more force (50cN vs 45cN)

VenomIreland

game4it70 wrote: »

Another update on my Corsair rma.

Corsair support has said they don't carry the same keyboard i sent back with red switches anymore.They offered me the same model but with Brown or Blue switches instead.

Which are better for gaming (battlefield 4 mainly) Brown or Blues?
I'm not to fussed about typing or noise.

If you have the opportunity to use a switch tester, do. I prefer browns myself so I have them in both of my keyboards.

Danger781

VenomIreland wrote: »

If you have the opportunity to use a switch tester, do. I prefer browns myself so I have them in both of my keyboards.

Since getting my tester I've wanted MX Green switches, and I never would have considered them before this.

VenomIreland

Danger781 wrote: »

Since getting my tester I've wanted MX Green switches, and I never would have considered them before this.

If I could've gotten Greens in my Pok3r, I would have!

game4it70

Thanks lads,
I think I'll go with the Browns.

BloodBath

I'm in love with the corsair K65 but it only comes with reds. Is there anything similar, no num pad, under €100, with browns or blues?

cadete

Lads, did someone here post their overclocking results recently in this thread, just finished mine and wanted to compare, im sure it was a 4690k

Edit found it!

Sonics2k

cadete wrote: »

Lads, did someone here post their overclocking results recently in this thread, just finished mine and wanted to compare, im sure it was a 4690k

Edit found it!

Quite a few of us did recently!

cadete

Sonics2k wrote: »

Quite a few of us did recently!

It was your results i was looking for my results are not the big improvement i was hoping for, 500 points behind your firestrike result, with a very similar oc, just going to run the valley bench now when it downloads, will pop up some shots then

cadete

results on fire storm

Wright

BloodBath wrote: »

I'm in love with the corsair K65 but it only comes with reds. Is there anything similar, no num pad, under €100, with browns or blues?

We should get a mechanical OT going in the building section

Luck100

BloodBath wrote: »

I'm in love with the corsair K65 but it only comes with reds. Is there anything similar, no num pad, under €100, with browns or blues?

Cooler Master Storm Quick Fire TK works well for me. It's compact format with arrows and numpad combined. 75 pounds on amazon UK at the moment but supposedly was down to 50 pounds in May.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooler-Master-SGK-4020-GKCM1-UK-Professional-Mechanical/dp/B00C67C79C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1440200142&sr=8-2&keywords=Cooler+Master+Storm+Quick+Fire+TK