FMod
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All I can tell you is that I personally don't know anyone who has gone back to sit-and-stare-into-a-monitor, once they've experienced roomscale VR. It's a literal 15-foot holodeck in your house.
I do. Starting with myself around 2000, followed by everyone who abandoned VR around the same time. And really followed by everyone who owns a current-generation headset, but doesn't play exclusively VR games, which covers everyone I know who owns one.
It's not a choice of "holodeck in your house" vs "stare into a monitor". It's a choice of "special games about making controller gestures" vs "all the other games ever made".
Trying to play regular games with a headset is either extremely disappointing or just plain doesn't work, and there's nothing but a gimmick gained to offset the discomfort. I couldn't wait to get back to a real screen.
(I don't personally own one, but I have played around with the Vive. No interest in buying at the moment - there's literally just one VR-compatible game I might possibly take more over an hour to get bored with, and it's not going to be of any interest once SC drops anyway.)
BTW for those unaware, the story is that SLI was intentionally disabled on the 1060, because two or more them provided too much bang for the buck and would have undercut 1070/80 sales. So if you're looking for SLI even in the future stay away from the 1060.
The 1060 is almost exactly 1/2 of the 1080, for exactly 1/2 the price. So doubling up on them wouldn't have cut into the 1080's sales much; in all likelihood, SLI was disabled there to 1) save a couple bucks, 2) establish a stronger hierarchy of features.
Product hierarchies is what every vendor starts building the moment they feel like they have anything close to a monopoly. And for people who don't read reviews, you start also selling features, "this one adds SLI", "this one adds new memory type", etc.
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Yes, getting a 1060 is a much better choice right now. If that's too hard to get, the RX 480 is also a better choice than the 970.
That said, just because someone sometime plans to release 4K/120Hz headsets doesn't mean every PC that can't drive them is worthless. You realize that even a GTX1080 can't drive 4K/120/stereo either, right? A single 1080 can ba-a-arely scrape by in plain 4K/60Hz. For 4K/120/stereo, you'll need at a minimum 3x1080Ti.
That or games with abstract graphics, and thus no requirements whatsoever, other than the card having the right output port.
Also, a more general digression:
Also VR is already setting new standards for immersion and fun, and within a year or two nobody will be interested in much of anything that's non-VR.Have to strongly disagree.
This isn't the first time VR has come in fashion. Remember those 1990s VR goggles? I do. Before you say it's different this time - of course it is different every time, but in more fundamental ways, it isn't.
While the technical capability to produce visuals has gotten better, the ironic thing is that more than half the VR titles today use non-realistic graphics. Cartoonish, untextured, iIntentionally primitive, or outright abstract - and not for performance reasons.
The most popular titles on this site are Bethesda games, and VR Skyrim, while possible, is nothing more than Skyrim in goggles. Most of the really major titles, the kind of games you spend a hundred hours in before you decide whether to go hardcore, want nothing to do with VR.
In fact, it's in large part the very ability to abstract that makes video gaming so popular. To cross an island in 20 minutes instead of 80 hours, defeat enemies with buttons, command armies with mouse clicks, hire guild members with one line rather than a pound of paperwork.
VR, by its very nature, is about removing one or two major elements of abstraction. This definitely has its niche, but it also severely restricts what you can do with the other elements. E.g., for strategy games, where you're floating above the battlefield issuing orders and drinking coffee, VR is at best of zero benefit, at worst it makes you rest your coffee cup on your mechanical keyboard.
So it's far more likely to be the exact opposite: within a year or two the novelty will wear off and the enthusiast crowd - the only ones currently interested in VR to begin with - will get bored with flinging their controllers about in a motion that supposedly approximates something supposedly real - and look to the next fad. This iteration of VR will conquer its small niche, for everyone else it will just be one type of stereo goggles.
As to why I call it "this iteration or VR" rather than just "VR" - because the early 1990s are only one of the recent iterations, but far from the first foray into this territory...
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(Dang, forgot to send the post)
Not quite good, needs adjustments.
First of all, it won't work. The 4770 is an old CPU for Z97 etc, not H170. Get an i5-6500 or 6600K. (Or the 6700 if money is no object.)
Alternately, if you want to run Windows 7, get a LGA 1150 motherboard for the same CPU, it will use H97 or Z97.
Second, the GTX 970 is currently (albeit very recently) outdated. Both Radeon RX480 and GTX 1060 are better for ~same price.
Third, it's better to link the actual parts you plan to buy, if you're ordering online. Most people here use pcpartpicker lists.
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Just letting you know i was disappointed in the past. And the spec sheet don't stand up to my standards. gtx 970 or higher.
The spec sheet doesn't need to stand up to anyone's arbitrary "standards". The job of a graphics card is to perform FP-intensive calculations and render visuals as quickly and accurately as possible. How it achieves that goal is immaterial.
The GTX 1060 is higher than the GTX 970. Not only is 1060>970 as a number, but the card itself is much faster than a 970. Between 16% and 18% faster, depending on the resolution, to be precise.
And this gap will only grow: the 1060 comes with 6 GB of VRAM against 3.5 GB in the 970. This is a 70% advantage, of which modern games use very little, but future games will use more.
The 1060 comes with more computing power and fillrate, exactly that of a GTX 980.
Being the latest generation, it has better DX12 support.
And it consumes 30% less power doing so, letting it run cooler, quieter, and leaving more headroom for the PSU.
Not only that, but you can actually buy a GTX 1060 already: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814126113&Tpk=GTX%201060
Congratulations for your part in convincing the OP to make the suboptimal choice.
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As a general rule, you don't need to back up your games. However, it's a good practice to back up your saves and settings (especially where not backed up in the cloud) and any modded games regardless (and do so once in a while even without OS install).
An upgrade to windows 10 will more often than not work smoothly, but if you aren't sure if you can handle a failure, and if you have a retail key, a clean install is safer.
Since people prefer personal stories, for me, on 3 PCs it went smooth (but two were 8.1->10), on the last one, I had to do a system refresh. After a refresh, even the old W7 drivers were kept, and it runs about as perfectly as a MS product can; this is very close to a clean install without the reinstalling everything bit.
(But then I'd have a lot more than Steam to reinstall and I can handle the need to do a refresh.)
Vlits: I would do a couple things different from your guide:
1. Don't use C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common as your library in the first place. Create a new library like D:\Steam. That way, should your OS fail and should you have to do a clean install to access your PC at all, your games (and their mods) won't be lost.
2. Easier than saving-loading load orders, I prefer to simply rename the old game folder and reinstall the game. Then delete the newly created folder and replace it with the old. Repeat with user settings.
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The cuda cores is where you want it, 1800 to 1660 is a safe range.
According to who or what?
The "rules" you're postulating really don't make even a modicum of sense. They seem to amount to "I like one particular 6-cylinder car, therefore 6 cylinders are the best and perfect for every car ever".
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At this point I have to ask if you have any amount of knowledge on the subject, other than being an occasional user of some hardware products.
The GT 710 is a low end card. The GTX 1060, which has been officially announced, is what is called a "performance segment" card. There is "low end", then there is "midrange", then there is "performance", then there is "high-end".
It's very unlikely that the GTX 1060 will not wipe the floor with the GTX 970. More to the point, it will do so while remaining within the safe power limit for the OP's system, while the 970 will not, and will have a risk of overstressing it.
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A lot of cards come with a 4 pin to 6-pin adapter, if not, it's pretty cheap.
Still, I'd prefer to wait for the 1060 with this PC just because it wasn't designed for powerful cards like the 970. But it's doable to use a 970 in it.
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I second jim's suggestion.
Seriously, if you'll pick your card based on asking random people on the street, you should play on a MX200.
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Good for you. But the OP doesn't and replacing it takes time. Also, the CPU takes under 100w and ram and hdd under 10w combined. So it's GPU+CPU+about 50w for the rest and headroom.
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Size might be an issue, better check thoroughly. Power draw may be another issue.
All in all, your best bet might be waiting (aargh, not again!) for the GTX 1060, since it won't tax your PSU. The 460W unit installed should handle the 1070, but with less headroom than I'd like to see.
Alternately, the RX 470 should have less power draw, esp. downvolted a bit. The RX 480's draw is too high for its performance, through there's a 90% chance you can downvolt it to adequate draw. But in a power-constrained system, it's not the card to buy.
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GTX1070 I suppose, if you can find one. Get a non-reference version, one WITHOUT "founders edition".
They're next to impossible to find available, but if you spend a week or so monitoring the sites you'll find something.
Do not get the "founders edition", they run too hot.
However, the cheaper RX 480 (also almost impossible to find) or the GTX 970 (not as good a deal) will also generally be enough for your system and will play Fallout 4 fine. To get full use out of the 1070 you'd need to get some extra RAM. Still, the 1070 is worth it.
P.S.
Graphics ProcessorNVIDIA GeForce GT 730
Video Memory2 GB DDR3 VRAMOf course they just HAD to do it. Take a CPU which has a good IGPU and pair it with a video card that is actually slower than the IGPU. Why? The only practical reason is to sell it as a "gaming" PC because "it has a discrete GPU", never mind that the card is useless. Your games will run 25% faster just plugging the display into the motherboard to use the IGPU.
Don't worry, you're not the only one to have bought it. The blame's on Dell, which has entire teams of six-figure analysts and systems integrators with computer science degrees, who came up with this configuration, had three meetings about it, wrote a stack of papers justifying it, sent them to eight departments to review, held another meeting to discuss the reviews, had a dozen executives sign off on it, and broke out the champagne when the first unit shipped.
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95 degrees is not fine. While AMD cards don't have the solder cracking issues NV cards do, 85-90C should still be the target during gaming except for momentary bursts. For NV cards, anything above 80C is bad and will often lead to accelerated failure (usually still after the warranty expires). Lower your voltage a bit and make the fan ramp up to 100% above 80C.
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Overclocking doesn't void your warranty. If you kill your device by overclocking, in a way that is obvious, then it does, but only then.
RX480 have their stock voltage set too high. 99% of the cards will work at 0.04V less and 90% at 0.1V less. Downvolt the card out of the box.
Skyrim is CPU bound far more so than GPU.
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Lower your GPU voltage a little (you know how to do it, right?)
Start at -0.05V below stock. AMD consistently sets their stock voltage too high, IDK why they keep shooting themselves in the foot like that.
After you check out -0.05, if it's stable for a day or two, start lowering it by -0.01V each couple days, till you see artifacts or crashes, then get it +0.02V up from that point.
That said, 82-90C is acceptable for AMD cards, they don't suffer from the solder cracking issues at these temperatures as NV cards do. But you'll be able to get it down to 85C, which is better, and keep your fan at 100% less of the time.
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Right now with the RX480, a new 970 is no longer the good deal it used to be - while the 480 lacks in power efficiency (can be improved by downvolting, they've set it too high by default), it still beats the 970, at a marginally lower price.
However it might be difficult to find one.
PSU-wise, quality matters more than wattage.
Use Pcpartpicker to check for a compatible build and find the lowest prices in the US at the same time.
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That's a PCI-E 1x card.
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The CX600 is a 600W PSU.
I'm not aware of any PCI-E 16x sound card ever being released. There are a few PCI-E 1x ones and they generally work very well.
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Everything but the CPU and the GPU uses virtually nothing - probably 1 watt for all the LEDs combined, 10W or less for each HDD, about 2-4W for each SSD.
Most online power calculators give a considerable power headroom, due to their originally being designed by PSU makers. Even so, if you plug his PC into this calculator, you get a 500W recommended PSU.
That doesn't mean the CX600 is good for that build - it will get noisy and it won't let one overclock. But other than that, it will work. Of course people who build white box PC have the choice to go for quality parts.
I'm just not sure if the OP has that choice, although it's pretty easy nowadays.
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The 980 Ti won't tax a 1000W PSU unless you overvolt and LN2 it, and then 99% of the 980 Ti's will just die if you do to such high power draw.
That said, all store builds are built to the same min-max principle: maximize the bits that go into the description, then save as much as possible on absolutely everything else.
But unless you can build your own PC or have superstores that build arbitrary PCs for you at a fixed labor cost (most everywhere that doesn't rely on mailing everything like North America has them), you have limited choice.
Generally, a SSD is very important for Skyrim, so lacking it is a flaw.
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The added utility of those is extremely slim, and while not worthless, they deserve the last priority in any budget build.
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If 2 years from now you decide to get the exact same card, guess what's going to happen?
The 970 comes from September'14 - so it will be as old in 2 years as a Sep'12 card is now. Let's try finding a new GTX 660 today, I'll also throw the 660Ti and 670 in the search.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=114,113,101&page=1
Do any of these prices strike you as a good deal? So, if you want to get a new 970, you have till the end of the year until high-volume retailers start phasing them out of their stocks. Even if Nvidia doesn't release midrange 16nm chips, they'll just rebadge old 28nm chips to fill the range.
The board has 6x SATA3. Four of those can be turned into 2x SATA Express. But no one uses SATA Express, so at worst you have 5 slots, it's unlikely you'll ever get one SATA Express drive, much less two. M.2 SSD on the other hand are smaller and cheaper than SATA ones. There are boards with more connectivity, but they cost more as it requires extra controllers and few people need it.
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In my experience, about 9 out of 10 people who ever use multi-GPU setups buy both their cards within a month of each other. So do probably 29 out of 30 who are actually happy with it. People doing "SLI on the cheap" by buying a second-hand card years later usually end up complaining about microstutter, greatly increased noise, reduced compatibility, and additionally get shorted on features and VRAM.
The DX12's feature requires explicit game support. The only game with such now is AotS. Also, the GTX970 is a DX11 card with only nominal DX12 support, the GTX660 isn't even nominally DX12 compatible.
In any case the Asrock Z170 Extreme3 does support SLI (but your case and PSU might not). Any budget should be on a per system, not per component basis. While you can get "better" boards for more, the main way they're better is more holes to plug more stuff into. If you have extra cash, spend it on a good CPU cooler and a SSD.
1 RAM module per channel is always optimal, and there's other reasons, you can find the details online.
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You can look around the threads in this forum where people offer build advice, there's a lot of info and he end result tends to be consistently good.
Another new member recently made a decent low-cost build (considering my corrections, someone else might also throw in more) here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4506535-need-advice-on-this-build/
If you're on a budget, you'll probably never need SLI, and while there's a lot of reasons to pick the Z170 over the cheaper chipsets, there's a lot of good boards for less than $100. For $100-ish, the Z170 Extreme 3 has basically no competition.
edit: Use 2x8 GB RAM, it's optimal.
Pc Build ?
in Hardware and software discussion
Posted
I know this is quite a digression, but - can't help but point out a new case for the textbooks of geeks solving technical problems and declaring victory, when it wasn't technical problems that mattered in the first place!
( The last textbook case was the crypto geeks deprecating SHA-1 in favor of stronger keys and claiming success in the war on cybercrime - while, out of the 10 million US bank accounts stolen and emptied per year, exactly 0 involved attacks on the ciphers. )
Latency, performance, least of all SLI stutter, none of that was the issue with VR. Even today, more than half the VR games use simplistic, deliberately non-lifelike graphics, which with proper design can be rendered without any dedicated hardware at all.
The issues have all been about game design, player experience, and just plain human laziness. It's an interesting experience - but it's going to supplement regular gaming, not supplant it.
( Now, a real star trek holodeck could've been a game-changer - again with the right content, which would be much more difficult to make that the holodeck itself! But the gap between a holodeck and current headsets and joysticks is much wider than between the latter and VFX helmets. )