Off Topic Thread V2.0

ShadowHearth

**** it lads. I havent treated my old pc for very long time. Went for the 1060 G1
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-g1-gaming-6144mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-18f-gi.html

Just bent over and took it. 970, as a lot of you mentioned, got its performance peak, 1060 will still get faster and will have plenty of power for me to do 2560x1080 gaming. Hopefully in few weeks I will order monitor too.

Thanks to everyone for help today. It was a csotly afternoon.

Robert ninja

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Reference RX 480s are in stock.

€270 on Mindfactory

£228 on OCUK

~5-10fps less than GTX 1060 but at €100 less.

Or an overclocked GTX 970. This KFA2 EXOC is same as in my machine, great at 1080p; think I average 55fps in Witcher 3 with Ultra settings.
For €250 it's a steal (I paid damn near €330!)

What kind of performance do you get on that 970 on Witcher 3 at non-max settings? If you have the spare time sometime, could you try it out with variable framerate, disable v-sync, motion blur, blur, depth of field, anti aliasing. Most other settings at HIGH. Textures, Detail, AO and number of background characters at ultra.

What I want to know is, can you get it to reliably play @ 120fps? That would be joy to me, especially if it comes close to the settings I mentioned because I don't mind making even a few more sacrafices for smooth, non-blurred motion. I had to play TW3 @ 720p on my 660ti to get 50+fps

K.O.Kiki

Robert ninja wrote: »

What kind of performance do you get on that 970 on Witcher 3 at non-max settings? If you have the spare time sometime, could you try it out with variable framerate, disable v-sync, motion blur, blur, depth of field, anti aliasing. Most other settings at HIGH. Textures, Detail, AO and number of background characters at ultra.

What I want to know is, can you get it to reliably play @ 120fps? That would be joy to me, especially if it comes close to the settings I mentioned because I don't mind making even a few more sacrafices for smooth, non-blurred motion. I had to play TW3 @ 720p on my 660ti to get 50+fps

Yeah, will try tonight or tomorrow.

SickBoy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I can't think of a time in the last 10 years where people were talking about new cards in terms in 200-300 and not 400-500.

You must keep in mind that this if for third tier performance though.

justsomebloke

SickBoy wrote: »

You must keep in mind that this if for third tier performance though.

4th tier card, given there is a new titan soon

SickBoy

justsomebloke wrote: »

4th tier card, given there is a new titan soon

Granted but for now people are talking about spending 250 - 300 for third tier performance, that to me is bonkers!

Cuddlesworth

SickBoy wrote: »

You must keep in mind that this if for third tier performance though.

Yep except that with a 1080p monitor, its completely viable tier at a great price point.

People look at the charts but don't notice that the difference between 60 and 70 fps at 1080p means both cards work perfectly and will continue to work well for a long time yet. DX12 and low level API's(like what Mantle/Vulkan showed first) only mean performance will increase dramatically in new titles over the next 2/3 years.

TerrorFirmer

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I can't think of a time in the last 10 years where people were talking about new cards in terms in 200-300 and not 400-500.

That has always been true of the higher end cards in any given new line up, but not in this performance bracket. We're talking about a GTX960 class replacement card, and 300 euro is crazy money for that bracket.

It's closer to the same money as the GTX970 when it was released. Same as the GTX1070 is a 970 class replacement but costs over 100 more than the 970 did. At this rate an Nvidia GTX750Ti replacement will be 200! The GTX970 matched the 780Ti at almost half the price....the GTX1070 matched the 980Ti at...oh, wait. The exact same price. What we're seeing this gen is a radical break from the norm.

For the vast majority of people 300 is too expensive for a card alone, and this bracket has always traditionally been the affordable mid-range. If AMD can get the RX470 out at around the €180 mark it'll be in an excellent position. Ditto for the RX460 at around €130.

Nvidia seems to have no answer for this portion of the market whatsoever despite absolutely dominating with the 750 and 750Ti which I can only imagine sold by the bucket load, and doing very well with the GTX960. All they're doing is dropping prices on the GTX960 and 950 but neither is going to be a strong answer to the RX cards at the same price point. Win-win for Nvidia.

At the moment though overall I think the GPU market is in a pretty desperate state. Maybe Nvidia are more clever than I'm giving them credit for. With a lot of people preferring to either remain with or switch to Nvidia, and GTX1070 at the price it is, and GTX1060 also very pricey, it means that a lot of people will probably just buy up GTX970 stock at the reduced prices.

SickBoy

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That has always been true of the higher end cards in any given new line up, but not in this performance bracket. We're talking about a GTX960 class replacement card, and 300 euro is crazy money for that bracket.

It's closer to the same money as the GTX970 when it was released. Same as the GTX1070 is a 970 class replacement but costs over 100 more than the 970 did. At this rate an Nvidia GTX750Ti replacement will be 200! The GTX970 matched the 780Ti at almost half the price....the GTX1070 matched the 980Ti at...oh, wait. The exact same price. What we're seeing this gen is a radical break from the norm.

For the vast majority of people 300 is too expensive for a card alone, and this bracket has always traditionally been the affordable mid-range. If AMD can get the RX470 out at around the €180 mark it'll be in an excellent position. Ditto for the RX460 at around €130.

Nvidia seems to have no answer for this portion of the market whatsoever despite absolutely dominating with the 750 and 750Ti which I can only imagine sold by the bucket load, and doing very well with the GTX960. All they're doing is dropping prices on the GTX960 and 950 but neither is going to be a strong answer to the RX cards at the same price point. Win-win for Nvidia.

At the moment though overall I think the GPU market is in a pretty desperate state. Maybe Nvidia are more clever than I'm giving them credit for. With a lot of people preferring to either remain with or switch to Nvidia, and GTX1070 at the price it is, and GTX1060 also very pricey, it means that a lot of people will probably just buy up GTX970 stock at the reduced prices.

Nvidia marketing played a blinder.
Announcing the card at the price levels that the AIB were going to retail at but with no option to buy AIB for almost a month.
They created a frenzy showing the high performance with temperature levels being so low, gamers were salivating.
I was sceptical of seeing AIB cards for cheaper than the REFERENCE cards, I mean why would the likes of ASUS, MSI and EVGA be expected to produce a card superior to the reference design and charge less?
We were hoodwinked by Nvidia folks, Founders Edition my arse!

Revoker88

Well there is no competition for Nvidia in the bracket the 1070/80 are in,with Vega possibly towards end of year or possibly early next year Nvidia can charge what they like as there is nowhere else to get a single card that has the same levels of performance. If AMD release Vega and it only matches Nvidia's high end line Nvidia will just drop the price of the line and deal AMD another blow. And they will have had 6-8 months of people paying a premium.

I think its their business strategy department not there marketing division that needs the praise.

As usual lack of competition is bad for consumers:(

Cuddlesworth

EoinHef wrote: »

I think its their business strategy department not there marketing division that needs the praise.

As usual lack of competition is bad for consumers:(

Maybe. I've read that 80% of the discreet graphics market is under the 150$ price point. I'm a little surprised at this point that ATI and Nvidia waste so much of their time on pissing about for the top spot.

Venom

EoinHef wrote: »

Well there is no competition for Nvidia in the bracket the 1070/80 are in,with Vega possibly towards end of year or possibly early next year Nvidia can charge what they like as there is nowhere else to get a single card that has the same levels of performance. If AMD release Vega and it only matches Nvidia's high end line Nvidia will just drop the price of the line and deal AMD another blow. And they will have had 6-8 months of people paying a premium.

I think its their business strategy department not there marketing division that needs the praise.

As usual lack of competition is bad for consumers:(

Going by the rumored Q4 2016 to Q2 2017 Vega release date, AMD will be up against the 1080TI and new Titan by then.

Venom

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Maybe. I've read that 80% of the discreet graphics market is under the 150$ price point. I'm a little surprised at this point that ATI and Nvidia waste so much of their time on pissing about for the top spot.

Could well be true but would depend if the likes of Dell/HP office PC's are included in the stats.

Cuddlesworth

Venom wrote: »

Could well be true but would depend if the likes of Dell/HP office PC's are included in the stats.

I would assume they are, custom builds are the minority. I don't see anything under 1k on HP's site that has anything better then a R5 370 or GTX960.

AlmightyCushion

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Maybe. I've read that 80% of the discreet graphics market is under the 150$ price point. I'm a little surprised at this point that ATI and Nvidia waste so much of their time on pissing about for the top spot.

Much, much better margin the higher the price point.

Revoker88

Venom wrote: »

Going by the rumored Q4 2016 to Q2 2017 Vega release date, AMD will be up against the 1080TI and new Titan by then.

True,AMD have a big job ahead of them i reckon to do anything in the top end. I hope they can pull something out of the bag though

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Maybe. I've read that 80% of the discreet graphics market is under the 150$ price point. I'm a little surprised at this point that ATI and Nvidia waste so much of their time on pissing about for the top spot.

There has to be a reason that the high end is so valued. Exactly what it is ive no idea really especially when you read the hardware surveys but it seems Nvidia are one step ahead of AMD most of the time in that bracket. The fact Nvidia are going to have the high end market for the next while is depressing. Im hopeful we can see Vega make back some ground for AMD when it does launch.
Lets hope they can leverage the improvements that there GPU's have in the various new api's.

Even died in the wool Nvidia fans benefit from competition helping keep prices in check.

MarkAnthony

The high end is extremely profitable in the business and educational sectors. The low end is pennies per unit (exaggeration but not much) on consoles.

K.O.Kiki

@Robert_ninja

Did some gameplay testing in Vellen.

GPU is overclocked to:

• 1265MHz Core (1417MHz boost)
• 1953MHz VRAM

I get locked 60fps 71-80fps with post-processing High / graphics preset High; and 45-54fps with post-processing High / graphics preset Ultra (Hairworks is ON in both)

Haven't been to Crookback Bog or a busy city yet though.

*edit*
Forgot I'd set Triple Buffering + Adaptive-Sync, which locks fps to monitor Hz.

Venom

EoinHef wrote: »

True,AMD have a big job ahead of them i reckon to do anything in the top end. I hope they can pull something out of the bag though



There has to be a reason that the high end is so valued. Exactly what it is ive no idea really especially when you read the hardware surveys but it seems Nvidia are one step ahead of AMD most of the time in that bracket. The fact Nvidia are going to have the high end market for the next while is depressing. Im hopeful we can see Vega make back some ground for AMD when it does launch.
Lets hope they can leverage the improvements that there GPU's have in the various new api's.

Even died in the wool Nvidia fans benefit from competition helping keep prices in check.

The only way AMD will make any ground is to fire every last member of its marketing and PR team and start over with people who know what their doing.

AMD allowed the hype for the 480 to run wild just like they did with the Fury/R9 300 series which didn't work then so why would it work this time?

By not correcting some of the more outrageous claims made by sites like WFFCtech and then to pour fuel on the fire themselves with the stupid 2 480's vs 1080 stunt was only going to lead to disappointment yet again.

They offered no real info on what new tech the Polaris chips held just its a cheap VR ready card unlike Nvidia who talked about power draw, new VR tech, 3D sound, better screen scaling and the new screen shot tech from the get go.

The whole issue with the PCI-E slot power draw should never have happened considering how important this launch was to the company and AIB cards are still rarer than hen's teeth.

Yes we need more players in the GPU market. Just imagine if we had as many GPU makers as we have PSU, mice or keyboard manufacturers! Talk about a golden age. Sadly i just don't see AMD being up to the challenge.

For the record my current GPU is a R9 280X and previous was a 5970 so its not like I don't buy AMD gear

K.O.Kiki

Venom wrote:

Just imagine if we had as many GPU makers

90s OpenGL vs Direct3D, anyone? :pac:

MarkAnthony

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

90s OpenGL vs Direct3D, anyone? :pac:

Glide is where it's at biatch!

TerrorFirmer

MarkAnthony wrote: »

Glide is where it's at biatch!

Voodoo2 is where SLI all began, the good old days....:)

Had a Voodoo2 until recently, planned to build an old games machine, just never got around to it.

Robert ninja

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

@Robert_ninja

Did some gameplay testing in Vellen.

GPU is overclocked to:

• 1265MHz Core (1417MHz boost)
• 1953MHz VRAM

I get locked 60fps 71-80fps with post-processing High / graphics preset High; and 45-54fps with post-processing High / graphics preset Ultra (Hairworks is ON in both)

Haven't been to Crookback Bog or a busy city yet though.

*edit*
Forgot I'd set Triple Buffering + Adaptive-Sync, which locks fps to monitor Hz.

Thanks for taking the time. I really wanted to see what would happen with min/no post processing, though, since that's how I play most of my games. Seems to really struggle getting anywhere beyond 60 though.

MiskyBoyy

Terry finally got his PC up and running

K.O.Kiki

Robert ninja wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time. I really wanted to see what would happen with min/no post processing, though, since that's how I play most of my games. Seems to really struggle getting anywhere beyond 60 though.

My GTX 970 EXOC is running above 60fps 99% of the time.

Tried out Low everything, was getting 110-120fps.

Didn't like how it looked though! :pac: Back to High.

dunworth1

MiskyBoyy wrote: »

Terry finally got his PC up and running

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieoZ8VDfVlc

pc gaming is going main stream :pac:

K.O.Kiki

dunworth1 wrote: »

pc gaming is going main stream :pac:

"See, you can only be a PC gamer if you have $6k to blow on an i7 + SLI 1080 setup with a G-sync monitor!"

:pac::pac:

Robert ninja

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgOfR-Oc4U

These are making me want to get the RX 480. That's €300. Is there a better card in this price range?

TerrorFirmer

Robert ninja wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgOfR-Oc4U

These are making me want to get the RX 480. That's €300. Is there a better card in this price range?

2nd hand 980Ti's now going for around €350, and by their nature most with the majority warranty remaining, and would be a rock solid buy from a reputable seller. Otherwise, for new cards, nope.

K.O.Kiki

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

2nd hand 980Ti's now going for around €350, and by their nature most with the majority warranty remaining, and would be a rock solid buy from a reputable seller. Otherwise, for new cards, nope.

If you can find me a 980Ti for €350 I will buy it.