Off Topic Thread V2.0

ShadowHearth

challengemaster wrote: »

I don't know what keyboards you've been using but I've never had to replace one because it fell apart or some such.

Even the utmost shítty of keyboards (Medion wireless keyboard that came with a PC from ALDI) over 10 years ago is still perfect and IMO has been fantastic to use from typing to gaming.

I understand that mechanical Keyboards are nice and sexy, but I would be one of those people, who would put keyboard upgrade like this on a back burner.

Like yourself, for the last 7 years I used a keyboard that came with dell xps 420. Its worth less then 5eu, but it never gave up on me and always worked like a champ. I got used to it and anything else just felt uncomfortable.



Looks like I wont be getting Mechanical Keyboard for a while as I moved my pc to Bedroom and got it hooked up with 42inch TV + 2312hm on the side. I am switching everything to wireless now. :pac:
I got one of these now and it is fantastic. Costed feck all and works/feels great. I cant see myself buying wireless keyboard any time soon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-K360-Wireless-Keyboard-Victorian/dp/B005BUNK1U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422537422&sr=8-2&keywords=logitech+k360
On other topic, lads. Do 7.1 headsets worth it? Do they actually work or its just a gimmick? I would be looking for a wireless PC headset in the very near future.

Serephucus

Gimmick. I have a Vengeance 2000 headset (which have 7.1 Dolby support, but I leave it disabled) and it's actually not half bad. I also have a Sennheiser RS 180, which is a vast improvement in sound quality - I'm actually getting rid of it if you're interested Shadow - though I don't use it much any more. There's also Steelseries H Wireless to consider, though it's pretty pricey.

Genghiz Cohen

I had Plantronics 780 and the big blue button definitely improved the sound quality. Could have been intentionally nerfed before hand though.

justjustin

AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

AMD Roy: "Anyone returning their GTX970 and wanting a great deal on a Radeon with a full 4GB please let us know"

AMD: "4 GB means 4 GB."

Cheeky chaps. How soon until we see this reflected in prices over here? It feels like a bad time to buy, but so tempting if EU prices were to drop accordingly in the coming couple of weeks.

Danger781

Amazon UK prices dropped by about €10 on the two I just looked at. Doesn't really make me eager to jump on the bandwagon. Have 2 x GTX970's on the way to me... I feel like I made a mistake

Genghiz Cohen

Danger781 wrote: »

Amazon UK prices dropped by about €10 on the two I just looked at. Doesn't really make me eager to jump on the bandwagon. Have 2 x GTX970's on the way to me... I feel like I made a mistake

You gonna use more than 3.5GB of VRAM?

Danger781

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

You gonna use more than 3.5GB of VRAM?

I've never kept track of how much I use normally

1440p though, so if I'm not now then I may be in the near future..

Genghiz Cohen

Internet says the issues only present if you go above 3.5, I'd imagine you are fine at 1440p.

EoinHef

Advanced warfare @1440p at max settings goes over 3.5gb in some scenarios. It certainly doesnt need higher than 1440p to encounter the problem. Is it going to happen in most of todays games? No.
Will it happen in a lot of games that come out in 2016? Possibly. Who knows what vram requirements will be in a years time.

Nvidia really messed this up not correcting the info on the card,it took forum folk to discover this before Nvidia owned up,poor form really for such an expensive product.

Ive encountered problems running Arma 3 @1440p but havent had a chance to do a proper bit of testing to see what causing it.

Ina lot of cases as the card starts to approach the limit of the first pool of vram it creates frametime variance aswell. So in theory you would encounter stuttering,no use having 60fps if the frametimes are all over the place.

Link to PCPer article,they test BF4(resolution scalimg in that games makes it easier to test)and Advanced Warfare:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Looking-GTX-970-Memory-Performance


EDIT: Sorry that first paragraph was supposed to read 1440p not 1080p,ive been reading too much about this today and brain is a bit fried!!

Gumbi

All controversy aside, I still think the 970 is a great card. And I own (and love) a 290. nVidia definitely effed up with this though.

EoinHef

I wouldnt disagree,ill be keeping mine but it leaves a sour taste. It comes across as very shady marketing. Im not saying that was Nvidia's intent but how they could leave such glaring errors on the spec sheet so long with out correcting them does not look great.

ShadowHearth

I guess if you are going 1080p then it is still fine card, but if you plan on 1440p and 4k in near future then 970 makes the balls of it. sli 970 was looking like a great 4k starter setup, specially for those 21:9 4k monitors, which have less pixels too and 2x970 were a golden spot.

I really want AMD to do well and get up there, but I really really dislike their childish PR right now. It makes them look retarded.

TerrorFirmer

I don't think it's childish, it's capitalizing on their competitors mistakes. That's pretty typical of competitors - Aer Lingus and Ryanair often use similar campaigns, for example, usually it's pretty good natured, as I think AMD's new campaign is.

eddie404

hi , what kit you recommend to use for an office that manage timeshares of people? i mean a medium system , we are gonna help people to get rid of timeshares and timeshares attorney services, hope you understand, i dont speak english very well , tnx

Genghiz Cohen

eddie404 wrote: »

hi , what kit you recommend to use for an office that manage timeshares of people? i mean a medium system , we are gonna help people to get rid of timeshares and timeshares attorney services, hope you understand, i dont speak english very well , tnx

So you want a PC for general office work?

EoinHef

EoinHef wrote: »

Ive encountered problems running Arma 3 @1440p but havent had a chance to do a proper bit of testing to see what causing it.

Played about 2 hours of Arma 3 and set it to ultra @1440p,average of about 30-45 fps with dips into the mid twenties with an overclocked 970(Clock speeds are below in MSI AB). Rest of the rig is in my sig. Max VRAM usage according to HWInfo64 was 2602MB(2.6GB). This is the latest version of HWInfo64 so im going to guess its accurate,to me thats reasonably surprising but good to see that it doesnt even really go much higher than 2.5gb,which suggests there is plenty of headroom....in Arma 3 at least which i consider to be a brute to run but a game that i love and also one of the best looking games on PC imo. I used a workshop benchmark,king of the hill and wasteland servers. Looking for areas with with a lot going on.

As regards the 970,the performance of the card has been,to me at least,pretty spectacular. I came from 7950 CF with a good overclock so i expected to be taking a pretty big hit in performance moving to a single card. But to be honest im delighted how the card has performed,i mean 1500/1900MHz stable is some achievement while also peaking at 63C and using somewhere around 350-400W or maybe less:D

Performance in games is great aswell,scores in benches are good and really ive nothing to complain about. So hopefully with the work Nvidia are supposed to be doing on drivers,from reading about the memory it looks more like a hardware limitation though,Im sure some clever drivers will help but the tech is what it is. Hopefully its not going to be an issue

Ill be monitoring the memory usage over the next while(cause im sad like that:P)and if anything crops up ill post. If anyone is looking to buy a 970 it may be helpful.

Headshot

Can I get some advice

This is my current GPU
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-353-SP
Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X OC 8192MB

I want to go back to Nvidia. Can I get suggests to what can I get better than the above GPU. I presume ill have to go sli, not sure thou

Gbear

Bleh.

It really is starting to feel like a long slog waiting for the new AMD cards.

I'm sitting on an ould 7950. They're great cards but it's more and more of a struggle to play games at 1440p - even with fairly undemanding ones.

I'm starting to get tempted by skipping the upcoming 380x, getting a 290x and waiting until the rumoured 20nm 390x in 2016.

Or maybe getting a 2nd used 7950 will tide me over.

Headshot

id sell you my Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X OC 8192MB lol

Serephucus

It's worth noting as well that these programs giving memory usage are only showing memory allocated by the GPU, not what's actually being used, so odds are it's a little lower - I don't know by how much though, as I'm not sure how the GPU provisions memory.

wotzgoingon

Headshot wrote: »

id sell you my Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X OC 8192MB lol

How much?

challengemaster

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I really want AMD to do well and get up there, but I really really dislike their childish PR right now. It makes them look retarded.

Au contraire. It's Intel/Nvidia that look retarded now. People lose confidence, perfect time to boost sales.

It happens everywhere.

http://cdn.wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Audi-vs-BMW-Billboard-Ad-war-3.jpeg

Headshot

wotzgoingon wrote: »

How much?

Im open to offers via pm

Headshot

That battlefield hardline looks pretty cool.

I reckon im going to try the beta

justjustin

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Internet says the issues only present if you go above 3.5, I'd imagine you are fine at 1440p.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I guess if you are going 1080p then it is still fine card, but if you plan on 1440p and 4k in near future then 970 makes the balls of it.

CoD AW @1080p

Someone posted this on reddit - CoD AW @1080p high settings. Toward the end of the video he reduces texture quality to low.

eoin91

I would blame the COD developers for that problem more then Nvida. Why in the first place is the game (at only 1080p) hogging so much VRAM. Yes Nvida messed up with this and should be held accountable, but as EoinHef shows even with a demanding game at 1440p there is still plenty of wiggle room before hitting the 3.5GB problem, so there is no reason COD should have this problem

TerrorFirmer

That's exactly what I thought. AW is no-where near as hardware demanding or visually complex as other games, no idea why it would have such massive vram requirements.

Danger781

Still debating returning my two cards. They're currently sitting in PM awaiting collection.

Burgo

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That's exactly what I thought. AW is no-where near as hardware demanding or visually complex as other games, no idea why it would have such massive vram requirements.

Didn't Ghosts have some ridiculous vram requirements? I think it was patched out at some point but started out at around 6gb or something.

kearneybobs

Far Cry 4 reaches just under 3.5GB VRAM on my 970. Highest I've seen it is 3.45GB. No performance changes noticed at that level but then again I haven't gone over the 3.5GB threshold.

Only a a matter of time before it get pushed over that and it goes tits up.

Overclockers (whom I've bought mine from) are accepting returns for their 970s and I'm tempted to send it back to them and change over to AMD and get something along the lines of 8GB 290x. I can't really afford the upgrade to a 980 at the moment but change over to AMD would be viable with about £30 more investment which I can get behind. Haven't been with AMD in 10 years.

Anyone got any suggestions on what to do?
My set up is:
Z87 G45 Gaming mobo
i5 -4670K
8GB ddr3-1600
MSI GTX 970
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W
Fractal Define R4 case, titanium with window
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB, 2TB 7200 RPM +640GB +250GB
G930 Headset, G700 mouse and G19 Keyboard!