obobski
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Posts posted by obobski
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consoles are getting better as well, they will never surpass the PC but they are doing well. though i do have to complain about one major feature that consoles used to be great for which was the co-op gameplay. i really miss that these days as companies keep forcing people to play online to game together because they think no one wants to play together on one console... it's quite sad. i always enjoyed playing split screen with my brother when he came over to visit.
I think its an error to assume that "consoles" are trying to "catch up" to PCs (or vice versa) - they're different machines designed for different applications, and each is more ideal for its targeted application. Side-by-side or local co-op was certainly a unique feature (it did exist on PCs too) - my guess would be that not enough users actually needed or wanted it for developers to spend the time getting it to work though. Remember that game developers and publishers are in business to make money, so they'll build what they think they can sell - they aren't arbitrarily being "the decider" on things and forcing people to try and accede to their will.
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1. Story may be good, but honestly it's not THAT good to switch genres, it was decent for RTS but I mainly appreciated WC for gameplay mechanics, balance and some real evolution, especially jump they made from 2 > 3 (as many players who used to play MP, I'm sure), less for story, and I simply can't stand MMO as a genre. Bliz brutally killed one of my fav games, and I just hope they won't bury StarCraft like that, but it doesn't look too promising really...
2. I agree that there was time, when Total Annihilation was very popular among RTS but today it became something more of a niche, hence Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation (as spiritual successors) played by more or less specific public, so I don't really see analogies... C&C3 TW, C&C RA3 and StarCraft2 stays true and viewed mostly as classic RTS today, it accepted by much bigger audience than TA-esque games. Well, there isn't much to argue, since my point is clear and we have kinda of agreement in views on "tactical simplifications", that and very foggy future of SC series are my only concernes to be honest, I just don't want to see another decent RTS being dead.
I agree entirely with both points. I guess I'm more jaded, since I've always been more of a C&C and TA fan, and already lived through their deaths years ago - SC2 all by itself was a nice extension to a genre that I've long-since accepted is rooted squarely in the past (and I'm just happy that I can still play all of the old gems (some of them are even on GOG now)).
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@obobski - I have a friend who still uses a DOS program to run his business. Just last year managed to get him to upgrade to WinXP with a dual boot ( WinXP & DOS) So he could use USB instead of floppy disks for his daily backup.
I honestly have no problems with "old" hardware or software if it works - it isn't like it was designed in retrospect with the intention of sucking (in many cases it was designed to be state of the art), and if it meets the needs of the application then why fight it. My bigger axe to grind is with the Internet as a business and entity, and how bloated and insecure it has become (and I've seen this happen at an increased pace in recent years) - if that weren't on the table, I'm sure there'd still be many happy Pentium IIs running Windows 98 and 486s running DOS 6.22 and PowerPCs running Classic OS 9 and OS X 10.3.x or 10.4.x among other things, as opposed to more or less HAVING to run the latest-and-greatest just to "keep up" with the modern web.
@ the killing a DVD drive, I thought only Solaris could do that. :teehee:
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As an owner, and long-time user, of both (and not just one brand of console, and not just Windows), I'd say my answer is "both" or "all of the above." I like videogames and videogame accessories, not class politics or holy wars, and whatever widget allows me to enjoy videogames and videogame accessories will get my dollar. I think both platforms have strengths and weaknesses (the biggest, as I see it, is that consoles are more elegant solutions, while PCs are more flexible). I don't think there's any benefit to consumers if we were to say all gaming must exist on one platform (be it Windows, PlayStation, etc) - monopolies never benefit the consumer, only the supplier.
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I had *just* finished upgrading all my machines to Windows 7 or Vista (hey, it works, and its surprisingly cheap these days) when Windows 10 was announced, and basically due to laziness didn't upgrade to it originally - and now it's looking like that was the right choice given the number of "my machine is a brick" or "XYZ doesn't work" or "random unknown network traffic" etc threads, topics, discussions, articles, blah blah blah I've seen about 10. And the fix seems super simple - remove all of the net nanny junk. But that stuff was probably put in by committee (I imagine the design process looking a lot like in Robocop when they re-design him by committee) and therefore would have to be taken out by committee too. :psyduck:
Haha! I'm still under XP and won't change it! :armscrossed:
I actually just finished a "new" computer with Windows 2000 Pro - ignoring that it's entirely unsafe for the web, its still a quite nice OS. :teehee:
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Haven't heard of any issues, but admittedly haven't logged into Steam in a day or two. AFAIK there is no such thing as "direct contact" - its pretty much the absolutely fantastic circular system you described, and even then, good luck getting a response (or a response that makes sense or is appropriate to your circumstance) at times. Best of luck.
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The R390 is not much different in real world scenarios than the 290. I previously had two R9 290s and then switched to two GTX 970s. Keep in mind I had the 290s for more than a year and knew them like the back of my hand.
Despite a well ventilated and cooled case, I was never happy with the heat or power that they used, especially in Crossfire. The one saving grace was that the model I had(and I suspect this was true of most R9 290 that were good quality chips), was able to under volt quite significantly - to the point that on stock clocks (and even with some overclock) I could undervolt the card enough to save up to ten or fifteen degrees per card.Which brand/model 290s did you have? Anything based on the OEM design will run hot and loud (I'm convinced OEMs just hate their own hardware, and design cooling solutions to take that hatred out in a passive aggressive way), and throttle considerably under load (especially if running the "Quiet" BIOS and in CrossFire), but there are third-party designs that use (significantly) improved coolers that largely fixed all of those problems, and produce cards that are just as competitive with anything else WRT noise, running temps, etc. Power consumption for Hawaii is still high, but only when under heavy load (the same is true for nVidia too - modern cards are pretty good when it comes to power management).
They also had (not sure if 390 is affected by this) some issue supporting 1600p monitors with their VSR upscaling/downscaling technology.
Honestly the whole VSR/DSR thing smacks of "hypetrain" to me - nVidia released it as a "new killer app feature" for Maxwell and AMD followed them down that rabbit hole. It was completely unnecessary/redundant for AMD cards, as they had already re-introduced SSAA with GCN. But I get that it's just a buzzword compliance competition - they have to have it because nVidia has it, and nVidia has it because AMD didn't have it...
As far as "issues" - can you be more specific? I've never noticed, or read about, any big problems with either implementation, but I'm admittedly more keen to just use conventional AA, especially if SSAA is an option.
Despite most benchmarks having the R9 290/390 and GTX 970 neck and neck at 1440p/1600p, I have found the 970s to be often faster - particularly when using in-house Nvidia features such as TAA (which is a great Anti-aliasing method).
Welcome to nVidia vendor-lock-in stuff. There are actually entire games that will run faster on nVidia cards with nVidia drivers due to artificial bottlenecks borne out of nVidia's recent anti-competitive practices. Consumers are the real losers.
They also have a smoother feel to them in terms of texture loading and VRAM management.
Let's not go down this rabbit hole of how the card "feels" or makes you feel. Numbers, benchmarks, facts, etc please. That said, SLI has been much better optimized over the years for micro-stutter than CrossFire has, and while AMD has made significant strides in the last few years, nVidia is still "better" at this. None of that matters for single-card though (and based on somewhat dated data (from Tom's Hardware), it doesn't matter for 3-way SLI/CrossFire either).
They run cooler considerably, the fans are nowhere near as grating when they speed up.
Depends heavily on specific model, case configuration, etc. The stock 290 is a very loud and very hot card, but there are OEM boards that don't exhibit that behavior.
The power draw is shockingly lower.
If by "shockingly" you mean around 200W under max load (DC side, for the entire system), then yes, it is "shockingly" lower. Honestly my feeling on this is that A) if you're really that worried about power consumption and efficiency, an ultra high performance gaming computer shouldn't be on your radar and B) with modern graphics cards (from either side), power management features have gotten to the point where non-gaming usage is quite light and unless you're running the absolute bleeding edge of games (at the absolute highest of settings) even gaming usage is usually well managed in terms of balancing performance, heat, and power consumption (e.g. my 290X running Fallout 3 on Ultra with 4x SSAA only reports around 52W DC draw, and the entire system's AC side draw is under 200W; with newer DX11 games I've seen it go a bit higher, but nothing outlandish - it's *LOTS* better than DX10-gen hardware (cook your bacon while you game), and not too far removed from high-end DX9-era stuff; FurMark/Uniengine/etc of course will see big numbers on the board but those aren't games). This isn't meant to be a flip dismissal - I'm not saying we should go out and burn Styrofoam and heat our houses with whale oil, but at the same time I don't think there's a huge argument to be made on the power consumption line unless you're dealing with a cramped case (where heat may be a problem for any high-power part), or have a limited PSU. With something like the 750W EVGA mentioned earlier, I can't imagine there being any problems with 970 *or* 390.
- Support Physx
More nVidia vendor-lock-in stuff. There's not *tons* of games that use this, and GPU PhysX doesn't actually carry the entire SDK (it only accelerates part of the PhysX SDK). Of course, if you need PhysX, you have no choice: you're buying an nVidia card. You can either run a hacked Hybrid solution with a Radeon providing 3D and an nVidia card doing PhysX, or get an nVidia card to do both (any of the newer nVidia cards are more than capable of doing both with ease). In this case, the 970 is an easy suggestion, but honestly I can't even think of the last game I played that even offered me PhysX (I used to run a GeForce in my main gaming PC and don't even think I ever used PhysX outside of a demo - I know there are games that use it, but apart from Batman and some Ageia-era stuff I can't name any).
SLI works in windowed mode (true of all Nvidia cards)
afaik windowed-mode did not/does not work on either platform, so if they have it working for SLI thats a relatively new development (and news to me). Either way, that's a "win" if it's something you need and shouldn't be discounted.
DSR (Nvidia's version of upscale/downscale technology), supports your native resolution and is more flexible
More flexible how?
The 970 is an awesome card for handling chroma/luma upscaling for video viewing. There is a neat program named Potplayer, that can be complimented or supplemented with a video plugin named MadVR. Together you can set the PotPlayer to automatically upscale, filter and present videos in a higher native resolution than your desktop. Watching something in 4k (though it still has some grain - it's not real 4k) that was previously 480p or worse, is pretty awesome. I've been going over a 480p set of Star Trek Next Generation, using some serious upscallng at 3840x2160 resolution. It looks as good as most quality 720p/1080p copies. All powered by a single GTX 970
You can do all sorts of insane (and imho needless) stuff with madVR, but it isn't unique to nVidia cards (thankfully). Out of the box, modern nVidia, AMD, and Intel GPUs are basically equivalent for video functionality, excepting AMD's cross-compatibility with their TV tuners, and nVidia's plug-in functionality for gameplay streaming.
In the past few years, Nvidia drivers have been more nice to work with.
Unless you:
A) Play old games
B) Work with old software
C) Run older versions of Windows
D) Run "mixed" systems (e.g. graphics cards from multiple vendors)
E) Have Windows 10 (this is sadly a thing)
nVidia's latest-and-greatest drivers usually work great until you start looking backwards, and then you may or may not get to play the "which nVidia driver version supports X game properly" game. It gets annoying, especially if you're intending the machine to be a do-everything system. This isn't to say AMD/ATi drivers are flawless - they've been a slow march to improvement for years, and I'd say finally started to attain that sometime around 2009, and more recently (in the last year or so) have gotten quite good (and I would say that from casual observation, I've had less backwards compatibility complaints with 290X than with GTX 660).
All in all none of these are significant deal-breakers - if you aren't worried about older games or software, aren't touching multi-GPU, aren't using the latest-and-greatest buzzword compliance features, etc we end up where we started: they're basically equivalent and I'd go with whatever is cheaper because its cheaper. If we're to get more nitpicky about specific features (e.g. do you need PhysX, do you play a lot of games that are held hostage by Gameworks, are you considering multi-GPU, is legacy support an issue, do you care about full DX12 support, etc) then you should get more nitpicky about which card you pick, but even with that in mind we've come A LONG way from "the old days" where you had huge variations in performance and capabilities between manufacturers, across generations, etc; it's hard to make a genuinely "bad" choice with modern graphics cards, and consumers do benefit from that at the end of the day.
The concern over the GTX 970 having only 3.5gb of 'good' VRAM is not what people make it out to be. The performance loss when accessing that remaining .5gb is not noticeable - additionally, if you're pushing 3.5gb+ in a game, you've probably got some type of third party mods and third party mods aren't particularly efficient in their VRAM usage. Point being, you could have a 12gb Titan and still suffer VRAM related issues, simply because the mod or extra usage is inefficient. GTA 5 comes to mind when you over crank the special advanced features and the game becomes unstable.
Most modern games at typical/normal settings don't use enough memory to actually be a problem for a 3-4GB card, and nVidia released numbers to support that claim after they were caught in the debacle over the 970. Also remember, the fastest graphics card in the world still "only" has 4GB of VRAM (the R9 295X2). This is from nVidia's original response to the 970 thing:
https://techreport.com/news/27721/nvidia-admits-explains-geforce-gtx-970-memory-allocation-issue (look at how insanely high the settings have to be to even push it over 3.5GB)
As far as "the game managing VRAM" - the game isn't actually aware of any hardware resources directly, and does no low-level management of hardware resources. It only makes calls into the APIs it works with (e.g. DirectX), which in turn sit on top of the HAL and work with drivers - multiple layers exist between the game and the hardware (and there is no delineation on the application/API side between video memory "on card" and "off card"). Because everything (at the hardware level) is handled by the drivers, VRAM usage in the same application at the same settings can vary between different configurations (e.g. nVidia vs AMD; different driver versions; different GPU generations; etc) depending on how well (or not well) everything works. This provides a nice overview and has some numbers/charts (I literally found this with a quick web-search looking for some graphs; I only read the first page of posts):
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18663534 (you would be forgiven for logically thinking memory usage in the same game at the same settings should be equal, or at least equal between different GPUs from the same manufacturer, but it isn't - I've observed similar things with my HD 4890, GTX 660, and R9 290X, but I didn't make any pretty charts, and only used two games (Fallout 3 and Skyrim))
Also remember that most games, even today, are still 32-bit applications, so they're only capable of mapping up to 2GB of memory (with LAA up to 3GB on 32-bit, or 4GB on 64-bit, but I'm not aware of any games that come with LAA flagged out of the box; there are mods that enable it for New Vegas and Skyrim using MSDN devkit code, and that generally work well enough for their intended purpose). So having a system with 48GB of memory and 12GB of VRAM isn't doing anything (for better or worse) with such a game. For 64-bit games that could change, but just because 64-bit applications *can* map a mountain of memory, doesn't mean you're also given all manner of computational resources to handle all that new data. Still, it will be interesting to see how Fallout 4 changes over time with modding, and what it will look like in 4-5 years.
Soap-boxy part of my post:
My personal axe to grind with the 970 is just how poorly nVidia handled the entire situation with the memory bug, and the original lying, and the further things that have come out about the 900-series (like the lack of full DX12 support). And more largely their anti-competitive stuff like GameWorks, and the locking-out of PhysX, and on and on. nVidia has made some absolutely awesome hardware over the years, and will hopefully continue to do so, but all of the drama they've created recently just seems to do nothing but hurt consumers.
Whatever you do, don't get a GTX 980 or a 980 Ti. The former has a poor price/performance ratio and the latter is slower than two GTX 970s in SLI, while also being more expensive.
SLI, or CrossFire, isn't guaranteed performance. You're much more dependent on driver optimization and application compatibility, and even then there is no guarantee of "good scaling" at all times. I'd much rather have a single GPU (or more broadly, processor) that can accomplish my performance goals than trying to fight with the ghost of Gene Amdahl in the attempt to save a couple bucks; multi-card is more of a "my performance goals exceed what exists currently, so I'm going tractor-pull style and just strapping more engines to my tractor" thing imho. IOW, SLI with something like the 970 or 390 doesn't make a lot of sense (IMO) - I'd rather have the Fury X/980/etc (or a pair of them if going "for the moon") than a pair of mid-range/upper-mid-range cards.
I'd agree with the 980 Ti being silly expensive; same goes for a lot of other "flagship" graphics cards that've come out recently. The 980 isn't so bad price/performance if you can get it under $500 (which is possible) but at the $600~ mark I'd get Fury X instead.
Damn, so it looks like both the 390 and 970 have their ups and downs. In all honestly this had made me even more confused as to which one I should buy haha. But in any case thanks everyone for the advice, I'll have to think long and hard about it. However, the PSU i was looking at is completely sold out, with the special deal anyway. Do any of you have any good PSUs you could recommend?
I would just go onto jonnyguru and see what's reviewed well - recently EVGA has been good, Corsair has been good but their cheaper stuff has been sliding into mediocrity recently, PC Power & Cooling may have some closeout stuff on ebay, Seasonic is usually good, etc. There's lots of good options.
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I would go with the Radeon, and here's why:
- Its cheaper. Honestly the two of them offer competitive performance and present-day functionality so whatever is cheaper should win and that should be that.
- nVidia blatantly lied about DirectX 12 support (on all 900-series GeForce cards) and the memory capabilities (on the 970 specifically); the GTX 970 should be regarded as a 3.5GB card and it does not support async compute in DX12 (which the GCN-based Radeons do). Personally I'd say vote with your wallet and send a message that selling a product that does not, and can not, meet its claimed specifications is not okay, and that your dollar will pay for something that can deliver everything the box says it can (which AMD can currently do).
- nVidia has released a couple of rounds of absolutely wretched drivers recently (and has a long track record of breaking old/legacy games and applications if it suits contemporary benchmarks), and if you're running Windows 10 you will forced to use whatever is the latest, even if it makes your machine a brick. AMD/ATi has a far from perfect record for driver development, but I haven't heard many (any?) reports of "loaded Win10 and my machine is a brick" from AMD graphics (whereas this is actually likely to become a meme its so common with nVidia cards).
- AMD has done a lot better with respect to adding new features to GCN over the years, while nVidia has recently been playing a game of vendor lock-out and forced upgrades, so if some new whizbang feature comes out in their drivers that you want, guess what, have to buy a new nVidia card to enable it; AMD has just been adding the features in no problem.
The 8GB of VRAM will do absolutely nothing for you and isn't a benefit or liability - nothing today needs more than 4GB (and honestly very little even needs that, especially if you're running at more normal/typical resolutions like 1080p or SVGA), and by the time we get into games that can actually draw on 8GB+ of video memory, the GPUs of today will be likely woefully out of their league. So that's nothing I'd be overly worried about. The 390 is identical to the 290 series (and there are 8GB 290s), so if you can find a 290 or a 4GB variant for less money, save your money and go that route.
This isn't meant to be "AMD fanboy" or "nVidia fanboy" opinion either - I own, and have owned, many Radeon and GeForce cards (along with a lot of other brands of cards) - I preference whatever works, is a good value for money, and doesn't create headaches down the line. Currently that looks a lot like Radeon; in the future that may change, its impossible to say.
As far as the PSU, 750W would be fine for either card and a modern PC, as long as you aren't trying to run like 20 hard-drives or some other huge, taxing peripheral off of it, but for a contemporary CPU, either of those cards, normal peripherals, etc it should be no problem at all. I'd probably dump MSI for the Radeon though, as their customer service ranges from mediocre to awful IME; go with Sapphire or XFX (which are much more on-par with EVGA).
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Well said... I was frustrated with win 8.1 and hoping to get away. It has been a good move on my primary gaming rig. This issue has been to difficult to work around and I would like to get back to game time with my son and not "working on the computer."
If you have Windows Pro you have downgrade rights to the two previous versions of Windows - so you could get 7 Pro. Alternately it'd probably be worth the $90 and change to get a copy of 7 and be done with it (Home Premium and Pro are essentially identical from an end-user/consumer perspective; Pro includes two socket support and some extra networking functionality that you're unlikely to ever touch at home). The number of "my machine is a brick" after installing Windows 10 (especially with nvidia graphics) that I've seen recently is staggering, and it is 100% thanks to the forced updates and forced driver updates creating problems that didn't exist previously. Windows 8 and lower don't have that "feature" so you're good to go there; if you can't get along with Metro then Windows 7 is a very reasonable choice and hooey to the shills who insist its "wildly outdated" or "nobody uses it" - it constitutes a super-majority of systems today, and is still very well supported (and I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is forced, kicking and screaming, to keep 7 alive just as they did XP because they have been unable to offer a replacement product that the market wants or will adopt).
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There's a flaw in your reasoning, namely that you're equating texture resolution to viewport resolution. They are not the same, nor are they directly comparable. High resolution/high quality textures will always impart better visual quality, even at the same viewport resolution. That said, there's not really a "need" for insanely high resolution textures (its largely just a "I want eye candy" thing) all over, and the performance impact is significant. It is probably fair to say that 2K textures are more than sufficient for the majority of objects, regardless of screen resolution (and many things use significantly lower resolution textures, and go entirely unnoticed - the recent obsession with "everything must be 4K textures" doesn't make much sense imho). The comparison to movie content is completely inaccurate and irrelevant (and there really isn't good "4K content" for any sort of meaningful comparison to be made currently - there's highly compressed streaming content but that isn't a fair comparison to HD-DVD/Blu-ray/Hi-Vision/etc).
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Benchmarks point to the 980 Ti being more than capable of running the game at high settings at 1080p or thereabouts; if you have a lot of mods (or any of the other half-dozen unanswered variables I suggested, along with probably another half dozen or more that I haven't thought of), are running at an extremely high resolution, or perhaps even *due* to your drivers being the absolute latest ("latest and greatest" is not always best) etc that may explain poor performance.
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Do you have drivers installed for your graphics card? Have you updated them since Fallout 4's release? Have you updated Fallout 4 since its release? (I'm assuming Steam would default to do this, but I know it can be disabled (never seen it happen by accident but I'll admit being guilty of turning off automatic updates on a game or two in the past to prevent constant downloading, only to run into problems when the game is missing an update a few months down the line...))
Also, and this is based on all previous Bethesda games: it is unlikely the game will ever run correctly at higher than 60 FPS. It's an engine limitation. Sure you can disable vsync/frame-rate-limiter and run at higher rates but the physics engine, many animations, many scripts, etc will behave erratically and in unpredictable ways, and the game is far more likely to crash, so running at 60 FPS is really a better place to be (and no, I won't go down the rabbit hole of "well I am a genetically different humanoid and my mutation is a higher sensitivity to "quality" and therefore I require "higher quality" from my tech gadgets than the typical homo sapien"). That said, based on benchmark reviews, there's no reason a 980 Ti and i7 4790k shouldn't be maintaining 60 FPS in Fallout 4 (at normal resolutions, e.g. 1080p), especially at lower settings, unless you've got issues with the install and/or drivers and/or mods that are hindering things.
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Need more information - which specific processor, graphics card, motherboard, PSU, how much RAM, what kind of enclosure, what kind of budget, what OS, what resolution monitor(s), etc etc etc are we dealing with.
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Honestly, just upgrade the system back to Windows 7 or 8 and have a working machine again. These kinds of issues aren't surprising (at all) to hear about with Windows 10, and its likely a matter of the forced driver updates being incompatible with the Optimus solution in your computer. No need to have Windows 10 either - 7 and 8.1 are still well supported, and (from your own initial query) working solutions for your hardware. Let this be a lesson in why "have teh latest!!!111oneoneoneone omgzzz" is not always best practice in system administration and move on (with Windows 8.1 or 7) would be my advice. :blush:
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With more information about what you currently have, a more in-depth discussion could be had, otherwise there's not much anyone can really tell you - "it's a computer" is just too vague (and this isn't meant as a dig or insult).
The Alienware you've linked to isn't a bad mid-range gaming system - it should run Fallout 4 or Skyrim quite happily, but there's no guarantee of performance with mods (just too many variables at play - I'm not saying it won't run mods, I am saying mods produce unpredictable performance requirements and/or conflicts). This also assumes you aren't running at extremely high resolutions (e.g. QHD or above). I would also highly suggest re-considering Windows 10, and going with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 instead, as many users have reported significant issues with Windows 10's forced updates (and forced driver updates) causing compatibility problems with many games and applications (and in some extreme cases, leaving the system unusable), as well as the significant number of unanswered questions regarding Windows 10's data collection and telemetry features (which Microsoft largely has been silent about).
Fortunately it appears Alienware is now offering their Graphics Amplifier external PCIe solutions for the X51 (its only taken like five years for them to do this :teehee:), so graphics card upgrades in the future may be more accessible for the SFF machine (of course, at a price premium compared to just upgrading a PCIe card in a standard desktop system). You may give that some thought, or give some thought to building or buying a more conventional desktop system with more conventional expandability options.
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You certainly have. Your guidance has been invaluable. I know I've made some decisions you wouldn't necessarily go with yourself but with your help we've come up with a system I'm extremely happy with. You've definitely pushed me to change a lot for the better. I'm definitely going to drop the small SSD and go with an external backup drive solution.
Many thanks.
You're welcome. And just to clarify, I wasn't saying "I've spoken my piece" as some sort of passive aggressive jab - I completely respect your right to choose/buy whatever you want (after all, its your computer), and didn't want to beat something to death by repeating it over and over again. Best wishes with building the new machine (e.g. hopefully you don't receive anything DOA or missing parts, and it all goes together quick and painless).
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I'll never argue with RAID. :geek:
That case is somewhat better, but still largely has the airflow/layout problems of the AeroCool (it just looks like its "less bad"). Looks pretty from the outside, certainly.
I've spoken my piece on the rest.
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As far as I remember more people were actually crying that with WoW release Blizz gonna kill WarCraft RTS, which actually happened, and by all accounts WC3 was one of the best in terms of gameplay, story, balance and fantastic discipline for e-sport still having distinct and somewhat unique gameplay with pretty huge difference from StarCraft. At least WC evolved, SC did not. There were many rumors and leaks of Diablo 3 back then and release new SC was pretty much obvious.
Now about races, yes, Westwood did fine with 2 factions, same with older WarCraft, but then we've seen new C&C games, C&C Generals had 3 factions with specializations later (Zero Hour addon), we had C&C3 Tiberium Wars also with new and very interesting specializations in Kane's Wraith. C&C Red Alert 3 had 3 factions, and despite the fact all these games weren't Westwood, they still maintained core gameplay features, and all had VERY good oldschool gameplay for RTS games, I've played a lot multiplayer in Generals and Tiberium myself (not to mention how much I played old C&C games with friends before), games were well balanced and fun to play, and most importantly they evolved, added new features, factions got almost completely revamped and these strategies only prospered with it. Between StarCraft 1 and 2 I see almost no difference to be honest despite it becoming 3D. Still, I have a feeling that in Brood War we had somewhat more tactical variety and overall more content. That's sad really...
I'm glad too that "big name" is still afloat, but not generally happy with such minimalistic and limiting approach to SC2, I don't ask for radical changes like hero units as in WC3 (which wouldn't hurt too much really, at least as separate gamemode), but adding new faction or giving specializations to presented ones would spice things up and still would stay classic. You get funny impression like all they did was porting 2D game to 3D, which took them 12 years. Seriously...
1) I agree with it being a travesty that WC is dead as an RTS. I don't have an issue with WoW or MMOs, but it'd be nice if the original game were still available too - it's not like it didn't sell, and I can imagine there's plenty of RTS players that simply moved on to another developer's game vs following along with WoW (I always saw that "bet" along the lines of "we think our storyline is soooo good that you'll swap genres for us!").
2) I don't even consider the EA games branded as Westwood - they're a completely separate nightmare. As far as "StarCraft not evolving" - ignoring SC2 you're ultimately stuck comparing a game that came out in the late 1990s to stuff that came out afterwords. I'd honestly hold Red Alert 2 up as being "more modern" or "more advanced" than StarCraft, and it isn't *that* much newer. StarCraft as a series fits into that weird ether with Total Annihilation - they were both top of their field when new, enjoyed significant popularity well beyond many of their peers (who were either superseded by later entries (e.g. C&C) or fell short for some significant reason or another (e.g. Outpost)), but when they were "re-imagined" a few years ago (Supreme Commander came out first, but SC2 was announced around the same time) they're looking somewhat dated compared to things that'd already been done for strategy games (again I'll use Red Alert 2 is an example). I agree with the "tactical simplification" argument to a large extent - they removed the number of different units and narrowed the "field" so to speak, while other series were trying to be bigger and badder (I suspect, largely, in response to the domination of SC1 and TA back in the day). I don't think Supreme Commander or SC2 are bad games, and I think they both improved significantly over their predecessors in terms of the campaign gameplay (its much less rinse-and-repeat and far more character driven), but ultimately I'd have to agree with you that held up against something like WarCraft 3 or Emperor they come up wanting in many respects. Still, it beats no options at all...
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Curiosity answers:
1) 120GB SSD as a boot drive with all programs except games. 500GB SSD for modern open world games. 1TB HDD for general storage; older games, music, photo's, etc. The 2TB HDD is for backups and mass movement. I always keep unmodded copies of any game I edit so that I can restore a broken game without waiting for days to re-download the whole thing. I've been using a 500GB external HDD but my wife has filled it with her photo's so I need another solution. I also play games at work on breaks, but naturally my management don't want me downloading 20GB of games every other week when I feel like playing something different.
2) Fans are to replace the stock ones. Most reviews state that the stock fans for most AIO coolers and cases are quite loud. The hope was to drop some decibels out of the system as it'll be in a bedroom.
Random answers:
1) It's the only case I could find for less than £100 that would take the 280mm radiator on top with space for a 120mm radiator at the top back. Out of interest, why is the layout bad? It's not so different from most other cases; PSU at the bottom, HDD mounts coming up from the bottom. The 2.5" bays can be removed to give better airflow (something I planned doing).
2) Thanks!
3) Thanks for the tips regarding the Nyko. I've read many reviews for loads of third party kits but they always seem to fall short. I'll certainly do some more research.
Notes: I've consolidated the lists into the first six purchase orders and deleted the seventh.
1) The whole "boot SSD" fad is not worth the money imho - so what that Windows can "start up" slightly faster? It has no impact on performance. Putting your games on an SSD, however, may improve level load times (nothing here will impact frame-rates, let you run more mods/higher IQ settings, let you run more textures, etc - because none of this impacts computationally constrained tasks). An internal back-up is also a potential problem - even though you may only mean to access that disk periodically, it will be powered-on constantly, and if something were to damage the machine (e.g. fire, power surge, water leak, whatever) that hard-drive is right there on the front line too. My revision would be to dump the small SSD and move the 2TB archive into an external enclosure that is only connected and powered when you're refreshing backups, and otherwise keep it somewhere away from the machine. That isn't ofc fool-proof but its more proactive wrt the backup, and saves you money on the machine's storage.
2) Basically every reason you listed describing the case is what's wrong with it - bottom PSU with a bottom-fan PSU means the PSU is sucking on the floor/carpet/desk/etc to try and get ventilation, which will increase dust thru the PSU and increase its temps (and if it has some sort of filter that A) isn't going to catch 100% of dust and B) will further restrict airflow -> higher temps), the "solid metal wall in the front of the case" where the hard-drives go is also going to make the front fans worthless (or more or less worthless). Adding a dozen fans will increase noise (no matter how fancy they are) and cooling may still not be great. I'm not meaning to sound doom-and-gloom, this is just based on years of experience and experimentation here; Intel did a good thing with the original ATX spec and it still works well today. So basically that means a case that has a low-mounted front intake, a standard rear exhaust, a top-mounted PSU (especially if your PSU is a bottom-fan), and clear internal airflow. This may still have hard-drives in front of the intake fan, but they should be rotated 90* so there isn't a solid plate wall behind that fan, but instead the wide-open HDD bays. The Lian-Li PC-7 and Antec Titan and Solo II are examples of what this should look like internally, but there are plenty of other cases that offer a similar layout. The AIO water cooler you've selected is massive overkill for the 4690 (the TDP just isn't there to justify massive cooling); I would personally go with air cooling, but there should not be a problem going with a less bulky AIO cooler if you're set on the liquid cooler. You might also look at Silverstone and Cooler Master (they share a common lineage) - they have some more exotic designs that have improved on the ATX concept and are more accommodating of liquid cooling, like Silverstone's Stack Flow concept, or Cooler Master's HAF designs.
As far as fans go, I'm not familiar with that specific brand, but would highly suggest Silverstone's "Air Penetrator" line of fans as they offer low noise and good static pressure (it isn't just about CFMs), as well as the old standby suggestion: Vantec. Overall, you aren't proposing a build with massive TDP or massive heat output, and it is entirely possible to build it as a quiet and cool running machine with only a handful of fans in the right case and a simple layout.
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Curiosity questions:
1) Why are you buying four (different) hard-drives?
2) Why are you buying a half dozen fans?
Random thoughts:
1) That case is poorly designed/laid-out - it won't cool efficiently (and this may be the answer to #2).
2) Everything else looks good.
3) The Xbox One Play'n'Charge is a fine setup, but Nyko makes a version that comes with two batteries and (IME) works better (and I'm not sure the Play'n'Charge's LED indicators will work on Windows; not that they're very important/useful anyways). Either battery pack is perfectly fine, but having owned both, I'd go for the Nyko to save a few bucks and have the spare battery (they also support charging of the batteries external of the controller).
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Also, keep in mind, Windows XP has reached EOL (End Of Life). Receiving Windows XP patches and support is out of the question from Microsoft and most software runs better on up to date platforms.
Here is a a link directly to what Microsoft considering EOL:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/end-of-xp-support
Even though it's "Windows for Business", it also applies to Home Users.
But the question was for Oblivion - which existed when XP was out, and which will work just dandy with XP. EOL is absolutely important going forwards and for a web-connected machine, but there are folks who run off-line legacy systems to run older games and software (which, like it or not, Oblivion is quickly becoming, at ~10 years old).
So is Windows 7, they stopped upgrading patches after the they stopped offering windows 10. Not dead its the most stable of them all, the definitions keep getting updates though.
Windows 7 is not EOL. Windows 7 ended mainstream support early 2015 (well before Windows 10 came out), but will receive extended support until at least 2020 (and this may be extended further - future events are unknowable). Windows 7 still receives security and stability updates, is still actively supported for driver and application development, and is still considered "current" (along with Windows Vista, Windows 8, and Windows 10).
For more information:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle
"Windows for Business" is actually a bit different, as large-volume MSDN clients are able to purchase their own extended support contracts for more or less any Microsoft product they want (and there are still some large companies that run XP and it is still updated thru this mechanism), and the XP-based POSReady will continue to receive updates and patches until 2019 (and there are some folks who have used registry tweaks to convince Windows Update that their XP install is POSReady; whether or not this is as secure as it could be is debatable).
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I would also upgrade that power supply. You will notice a difference between a PSU running at 400w vs. a PSU at 300w.
Such as?
If the PSU can provide sufficient power it can provide sufficient power. Full stop. If it cannot provide sufficient power you may run into issues of varying types (depends on the rest of the hardware - some devices will downclock when they can't draw enough current, some PSUs will shut the machine off if they're over-drawn, some (less ideal) systems will blow their top, etc). The machine will not use more power than it needs, so surplus capacity is largely wasted (with contemporary 80+ units this usually doesn't translate into waste heat or instability, but it still isn't best practice to run a PSU at very low loads (e.g. 5-20%)).
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Instead of jumping into the argument, I would recommend looking at this site:
https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/
And choose the best anti-virus package that fits your needs.
There is no fight, from my side at least; I am not trying to champion any specific product over the next. Seriously, this is not a "MSE vs the world" or "my favorite product vs your favorite product" thread - portals to evaluate other options have been posted, and I'm genuinely pleased to see yet another source of AV comparisons (more info always being better, imho).
I posted a similar comparison (AV Comparatives), and similarly said (and I'm quoting myself here): "I suggested something that was quick'n'easy and provided two resources to evaluate a variety of other options (Windows Update and AV Comparatives), both of which fit into "let the person make up their own mind" (I've also suggested a few other products, and provided input from real-world usage experience on a few others)."
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only one comment on your build, is this: Do look at ssd drives as they are now much better then they were. I m using one for my os and try to keep it clean from any other downloads. Even mods. i m using a samsung 840 which comes with checkers as well. keep it clean and dont download stuff to it and you should not have a problem and have a very fast machine. mine takes 40 secs to boot up and into my log in screen for my users. Os only the disk is 250 gig large. But, if in the future i upgrade my system which should be next year. I ll upgrade to a 250 ssd for the os and a 500 gig for the games only i ve already got a 3 TFLop for stuff. , and 3 other 80 gig older drives with a spare. well have fun hope this has been helpful. probably late though. oh well. get fallout 4 its a blast.
The "OS drive" thing does nothing for games or otherwise performance - "boot up speed" is kind of a useless performance metric too (because it doesn't actually reflect the machine's computational performance or abilities; the fastest booting machines I've ever worked on are also usually the slowest (e.g. an Apple IIe will boot to a working state almost instantly; my dual and quad socket workstations and servers will usually take a few minutes - guess which one is faster)).
Overall SSDs are not a magic bullet - they increase read/write speed and reduce access latency, which can improve performance for tasks that are bound by those constraints, but otherwise they have no benefit (e.g. they won't improve frame-rates, they won't improve download speeds from the web, etc). And running one "just for the OS" makes even less sense imho, because none of your applications are going to benefit from it (as their data is not contained within it).
What to Upgrade?
in Hardware and software discussion
Posted · Edited by obobski
The GPU is very likely your bottleneck - GTX 750 isn't a bad card but it isn't as powerful as HD 7950 or other top-tier performers, especially nowadays. The i5 shouldn't be too much of a problem as-is, but you could replace the heatsink if you felt so inclined (the temperatures at idle aren't bad, but its probably getting quite a bit warmer under load; not that it's likely in any dangerous place, the bigger advantage to a replacement heatsink would be quieter operation).
The GTX 960 is a good bit faster, and would probably address your desires. Ditto for other similar cards, like the Radeon R9 280 or 280X, or R9 290/290X/390/390X, or GeForce GTX 770 or 970.
I'm entirely unfamiliar with "CORS" as a PSU maker - I hate to say it but it could be some no-name gutless wonder, in which case replacing it may be a good idea. You'd have to do some more research on that to find out though. Basically the problem here could be, that no-name/cheapo PSUs usually lie on their ratings, so they'll claim they can do say 1000W out, but in reality its the guts of a 400W PSU and when the system tries to load it to 1000W it may blow up, it may shut down, etc. A PSU from a reputable/quality manufacturer (like EVGA, Thermaltake, Antec, PC Power & Cooling, Zippy, Seasonic, etc) should not behave in that way, and will provide its rated power (and often at higher than normal temperatures, which is a good thing too). Use jonnyguru as a resource for PSU reviews, as they're very thorough. Don't, however, run from the monitor screaming in fear that your PSU is bad - I'm located in the US (and therefore know US brands and retailers), but I know there are different brands in Europe and Asia that are also reputable (in some cases just different trade dress of the same product), so for all I know "CORS" is tip-top stuff for your region of the world, and perfectly fine.
As far as the numbers and whatnot: I didn't actually know GTX 960s were made as 2GB variants. This isn't a bad thing though. VRAM does help with performance, but like system memory, it only becomes a problem when you have not enough (and applications don't directly access/"see" VRAM so "not enough" isn't cut and dry). 2GB should be considered appropriate, but if the 4GB cards aren't any extra money, why not? As far as the other numbers, they're different clockspeeds - faster is better. The middle one looks like its the fastest (and that may be why it has 2GB instead of 4GB; because it has faster RAM it may be they had to use lower density memory chips), elsewise the top one; the bottom one would be slightly slower. I'd probably go for the bottom one given the prices listed - it has 4GB of VRAM over 2GB (for the same exact price as the 2GB model), and the clock difference isn't worth ~$50 let alone 50 pounds.
If you want to look at some competition to Asus, give Gigabyte, PNY, and EVGA a look. If you're looking at Radeon cards as well, add Sapphire, XFX, and PowerColor (TUL Corporation) to the mix.