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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

DammitJanet posted:

Quick EVGA question. I bought a used GTX 760 a month ago and after getting it installed, noticed a lot of my games crashing repeatedly to black screen, and at least one BSOD. Tried the most recent drivers and two versions before that with the same results, so I looked up the transferrable warranty section of EVGA's site and figured I'd get an RMA started.

At least, I would be if I hadn't bought the card used in SA-Mart, and of course, the serial number sticker is missing. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known it didn't have it. So according to EVGA's website they'll just send it back to me and I'm just hosed, right? (Even if the box it came in still has its sticker?)

I'm the gal who sold it to you, and I just wanted to reply here that if the box has the serial number then yes, EVGA will take the RMA. Here's a EVGA tech support guy confirming that very thing, albeit with a different card. EVGA will honour an RMA if you have the box sticker, you just need to cut it out and send it along with the card. I'd probably take a picture of it for backup purposes though.

http://forums.evga.com/GTX-690-Just-Died-Serial-No-sticker-missing-m2066734.aspx

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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
What do I say to a dude who's advocating a 5840 over a 750 ti for budget systems?


I mean this is also the dude with a raging hateboner for Nvidia to the point where he thinks a 290 is the better card over a 970, noise and thermals don't matter at all, and bought a 700w PSU for a system pulling 200 at most. Nevertheless, is he completely insane here or am I legitimately missing something here?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Don Tacorleone posted:

I can't get my loving 2 video cards (nvidia 970 Asus strix) to connect via SLI, I've tried 5 different cables and none worked.

What the fuuuuuuck I'm going crazy, heeeeelp

Motherboard is a Maximus hero VII

I plugged in one 970 card in the red slot, then the 2nd card on the other red slot next to it(a very tight fit, btw, doesn't seem right), but that didn't work.
Detects both cards and they work fine, I can use either exclusively for PHYSX, but no SLI In sight. Turned the SLI cable around, tried both slots, etc.

I plugged the 2nd card on the other black PCI port(not red) just to try it and same thing.

The only difference I noticed was the first red port was PCI "Gen 3" and the other 2 ports show up as Gen 2.

I tried changing both to Gen 3 in the BIOS but it didn't work, then both to gen2 and it didn't work and also killed my frame rate and gave me lots of errors(Skyrim running at 1fps).

I'm at my wits end and about to take it to some computer repair store and see if they can figure it out but I'm going mad trying to figure it out.

I might just leave the 2nd card on the slower port as a PHYSX a exclusive card but it seems like a waste. Please... Hellllppp

Not sure if I'm missing something or not, but did you turn SLI on in the Nvidia control panel?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

EoRaptor posted:

I'm not bothered by used cards or whatever, save for the fact that the buy 970, return 270 (or whatever) scam is probably still going strong. It's just not worth the hassle.

Card makers should embed an RFID chip under the gpu itself or something else on the PCB that is difficult to remove, so the card can be scanned on return and it's exact details clearly matched against what was purchased.

Wait, what?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Phil Tenderpuss posted:

Speaking of, I'm thinking about picking up an MSI 970 too as well as a new monitor to go with it. I've been using a 460GTX and a 1680*1050 monitor for the past 4 years and figure its a good time for an upgrade with GTAV and Witcher 3 coming out. I just want to clarify again: people haven't experienced any real world issues with the whole 3.5GB VRAM limit thing on these cards, right? Am I correct to assume I wouldn't have any issues running the next batch of games at 60 fps on 1080p res with a 970? How soon in the future do you think people will start running up against that 3.5GB wall? I know there's no such thing as future proofing, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of my 460GTX and hope I can get the same kinda distance out of a new card that I purchase.

The 3.5 thing has effectively no impact whatsoever.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Phil Tenderpuss posted:

I'm trying to figure out if I absolutely need to upgrade my power supply in order to slap a 970GTX in my system. I've currently got a Corsair vx450w (80+, high quality Japanese capacitors) that's about 4 or 5 years old. My CPU is a i5-2500k and I don't really plan on doing much if any overclocking on it or the GPU. From the research I've done so far it looks like I should probably be OK but I'd like to hear what you guys think.

450 watts is fine but a 5 year old PSU is getting a little old in years.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Phil Tenderpuss posted:

Cool thanks. I did a little more research into the power supply and it looks like the output is underrated by around 75 watts anyway so thats good. The problem I noticed though would be in the power connectors. It has a single 12V rail (puts out 32A) and only 1 6 pin connector but it looks like the 970 needs an 8 pin plus a 6 pin connector in order to work. Could I just use a molex to 8 pin adapter?

GPU wattage requirements are over-stated since Nvidia doesn't want to have to deal with claims if a shitbox PSU blows up your fancy new graphics card. A molex to 8 pin would prolly work, but you should probably get a new PSU anyway tbh.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Don't buy a 4g 960, don't buy a 750ti if you have two hundred to spend, definitely don't buy a 660, that's fully two generations behind current and is a terrible investment.

You can get a 960 for around $200 or so and that's really your best bet for an efficient, powerful, and moderately cheap card.

You want to look at GTX 960s for a 200 dollar purchase. Look at MSI, then ASUS, then Gigabyte in that order. EVGA cards are perfectly fine but iirc they have a sub-par cooler (albeit with a great warranty service - you get the same coverage with most other brands, it's just trickier from what I hear). When the brands are within 5 dollars of one another, go for the MSI or Asus since they have the best coolers for the card. No reason to spend the same about for a sub-par cooler.


tl;dr get an MSI or Asus 960 for 200 dollars.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Chop Suey posted:

Thanks, really appreciate it. Is it worth bumping up my price point a little bit for the 4GB cards... I have a big rear end monitor that does 2560x1440, but have been running at 1920x1080 on my 560 TI just to get decent performance on most games.


Edit: Looking at this now, MSI GTX 960 GAMING 4G GeForce GTX 960 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support ATX Video Card ($240) with the Witcher 3 for free.

A 4gb 960 cannot utilize the extra VRAM efficiently. Step up to a 970 or down to a 2 gb 960. It's really, really not worth the price. A 970 is, as it's roughly, what, 30-35% stronger than a 960? Completely demolishes the performance/price curve, and will serve you very well at 1440p. A 960... won't, really.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Chop Suey posted:

The MSI 4gb 960 is only $20 more, but the 970 is $120 more... that's really a stretch for my budget unfortunately.

Then I would say that you should save the $20 and get the 2gb 960. Trust me, it's a useless addition that does almost nothing for you. If you can spend $220-240 then look for a r290 on sale, which will outperform the 960 quite respectably, but at the cost of a lot of heat and electricity.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Dr Snofeld posted:

I'm considering upgrading from my Raedon HD7770 to a 2GB card at some point in the nearish future, but I don't know much about hardware - specifically I'm concerned about accidentally blowing out my PSU by installing a card that drains too much power. Would upgrading from a 1GB card to a 2GB card offer any major performance increase in and of itself? I checked the OP but it seems to be a few years out of date.

You want the parts picking thread, but it's worth noting that VRAM is way less relevant than how powerful a graphics card actually is on its own.

Get a 970 if you can afford it, or a ~$230 AR r290 if you can't. Below that it's not a fantastic value for your money.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

HalloKitty posted:

I doubt it, there's no precedent so far - the pattern has consistently been that Titan is released, then a lower VRAM and much cheaper Geforce version hits that performs identically (bar the VRAM).


I wouldn't agree:- there are plenty of people using AMD cards in modern games without huge issues, and right now they still have the best cards in the price point between the Geforce 960 and 970.

Yeah, beyond 750ti and 970 territory lots of AMD options are far more compelling, at least in terms of price/performance. I'd grab a 280x over a 960 any day, and you can usually find the former for cheaper.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

JnnyThndrs posted:

Laptop GPU driver updates are a gigantic PITA anyway, regardless of whether or not it's Apple or AMD or Sony or whoever, since you (usually) can't just grab the newest {insert new hot game here}OPTIMISED DRIVER from the GPU manufacturer and start playing.

I don't know if some of the hi-end specific -GAMING- desktop-replacement portable machines can be updated quickly/easily, but I've always had to fight to get anything approaching a new GPU driver on mid/low range laptops.

You can grab updates from Nvidia no problem with their mobile cards? At least you could for the 750m and 860m.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

codo27 posted:

OP says "very minor" differences between x8 PCIe and x16. I'm running a 3770k and SLI 970s, thus they are 8x as that CPU only will do 16x with a single GPU. Forget the money part of it, is there a significant graphical performance gain to be had by upgrading my CPU? (and thus the board as well of course yadda yadda)

No

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
As incredibly tempting as that 980ti is, it'd still be a hefty investment. Even selling my 970 and buying a reference 980ti for 650 would put me out $400, and that's too rich for my blood.

Besides, I'm at 1080p. A 970 does wonders. I'll probably wait for Pascal with its 2nd gen HMB. reasonably smart idea or no?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
It's worth noting that you can gain like an extra 15-20% performance by overclocking a 970, even ones with factory overclocking.

The 3.5 gig thing is also almost completely irrelevant at 1080p.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Bleh Maestro posted:

I can throw the power limit to 110 and my clock to +125 and memory to +400 all day long with the same exact card. That's just being modest and setting it a little below the +140-150 and +500 that the hardocp guide does.

I get my clocks to at or around 1500mhz like this and I believe the memory nears 8ghz.

So that's weird...

That's definitely an exceptional overclock. I put my voltage and power limit all the way up on my ASUS Strix, and clock + 200 memory +50.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
There's also space for AMD to beat Nvidia on price/performance, which they've honestly done really well on with the 290/290x. If the Fury cards cost less than the 980(ti) they'll be an easy pick.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Space Racist posted:

So, for someone gaming at 1080p for at least the next couple years who wants to crank all the settings and still hit (or get near) 60 fps - is the GTX 980 the sweet spot, ignoring price/performance for the moment? The 970 seems like it isn't quite there, while the 980 Ti seems like it gives diminishing returns at 1080p (although, I wonder if that headroom would be useful in a few years as devs keep adding bling to games).

My 7950 is mostly fine at the moment, but with the Witcher 3 currently and Fallout 4 coming up (despite, I'm guessing, not being as taxing as W3), I'm starting to get the upgrade itch, but holding out for Pascal seems a better idea assuming it's coming in early/mid 2016 and not late 2016.

Hold out for Pascal and get the x70 equivalent. It's anyone's guess when the cards will come out though and I wouldn't bet lots of money on it being out within the next 8 months or so.

HBM 2 will be nice.

So is a 970 mind you, and it'll be pretty easy to resell in a year, and you'll have significantly better performance in the interim.

Not to mention you get to wait until Nvidia starts bundling games with their GPUs again next upgrade cycle. I'd say go with the 970, the 980 is notoriously poor value for the money.


E: ^^^ though $400 isn't a bad price for it at all. That's about as much as I paid for my 970 (California taxes :argh: )

The Iron Rose fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jun 25, 2015

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Jesus that'd be a great price for a 970.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Cao Ni Ma posted:

Is there a way for me to trade the junk arkham knight code newegg gave me for a witcher 3 one...you know given that WB has stated that the game is poo poo optimized and stopped selling it because of it.

You might actually be able to make some money selling it for people who don't care about the performance stuff. If you're cool with GOG you can probably find someone willing to sell W3 for $30.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Manifest posted:

I need a new card and am on a roughly $200 budget.
My GTX 760 is dying.

Is this the best buck for my bang at that price?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487133
Anyone have negative experiences with heat due to the size?

Best bang for the buck is to save another $50 and grab a r290. A 960 is barely an upgrade at all.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

1K Dollar Chair posted:

yeah well one 960 might be bad but two of them are rad, sli those thangs #frametimings

Don't SLI 960s barely beat a 970 for a good $100 more in price?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Ozz81 posted:

Check EVGA;s website for their B-Stock stuff - they frequently stock some newer generation cards and you might be able to score a 780 3GB Classified for like $250, I think even 770 2GB models in the $180-220 range. I've got it set to notify me for a couple 970 models, one being the SC for $249, since I'd like to upgrade and EVGA have been pretty great over the years.

Gotta be honest EVGA's b-stock supply is hella tempting. Trouble is I already have a 970, and SLI is a pain in the rear end. I'm pretty sure I can wait another 12 months for pascal... but drat that's a fantastic price for a 970.

At $200 it'd be a no brainer though.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

dissss posted:

Must be highly market dependent. Over here in NZ the cheapest 390X I can see is $780, 290 is $515, 970 is $540, 980 is $840

You know considering the raw deal you and the Aussies get on electronics that's actually a really good price for a 970.


Laughable for the 980/390X ofc.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Botnit posted:

I don't remember which site it was but someone listed the bundled Arkham Knight as one of the cons in their review :rimshot:

I'm dangerously close to buying a new GPU, if you want to leave your email in thread I wouldn't mind giving it to you if I end up getting it bundled (don't have PMs)

If you're serious, I'll take it.

ironrosesa@gmail.com

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Botnit posted:

I am serious but I'll have to go with him first, I'm also not 100% sure I'm ordering it and if I do I'm not sure it'll be one with it bundled in, but will let you two know if I do.


Wow I totally misread your post and assumed you were offering it to the next person who posted in thread. My bad! Feel like a bit of an rear end now.


Uh, to give some general advice, EVGA has the best warranty support, MSI and Asus are the quietest, Gigabyte and MSI have better overclocking headroom afaik.

I also do recommend you overclock, the 900 series has incredible overclocking headroom to the point where you're leaving 10-15% of your potential performance on the table if you don't.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Space Racist posted:

Just curious, what are y'alls 970 idle temps like?

46 degrees C on my Asus Strix @ 0 RPM

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Mutation posted:

Not just that. My Titan X can only get a little bit beyond 1400 core without crashing the drivers, this is on a hybrid cooler with max voltage. I lost the silicone lottery big time.


i can empathize. my 970 STRIX can't go past 1300mhz boost clock without getting artifacts and crashing even with voltage turned all the way up.


I imagine it burns more when it's a $1000 video card though.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

THE DOG HOUSE posted:

Mmmm can you return this.. I know OC isnt guaranteed but that is drat near broken in this day and age

Eh it's not the end of the world. I'll probably upgrade when Pascal comes out anyways.

The only things I really spend money on are cigarettes, my investments, and computer parts/games so I'll just grab the 1080 or whatever.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
My 970 increased my cup size, but the lack of overclocking headroom means back pain along with it

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Warrior Princess posted:

Gtx 960s seem like unlikable cards here. Is it because of the price point, or do they suck for some other reason? Do they not suck when their price is 160$?

At $160 it'd be a fine card. It's just at $200 they're hard to recommend. AMD's 280x is faster with more VRAM at $180, and the 290 at $240 is like 30% faster for only a 20% increase in cost.

It's a bad for the money is all, there's nothing inherently wrong with the card, though 2 gigs of VRAM is getting on the low side it'll probably be fine for another year or two.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Warrior Princess posted:

I was only asking because evga bstock 960s are 160$, and I haven't ordered my bstock 750ti just yet, so I'm thinking of getting the 960 instead.

Not a bad deal really. You don't have a great warranty with bstock which is why I haven't got a $240 970 for SLI, but for that price I'd go for it.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

SlayVus posted:

So MSI technical support is incompetent. I've told them three times that you just can't buy a GTX 970 and throw it in SLI with another one. I'm trying to get them to tell me what specific MSI I should buy for SLI with my Golden Edition. I bought a short board Zotac from BrownThunder that just would not work in SLI even with DifferntSLIAuto.

I believe it's specifically zotac that doesn't work in SLI with other cards.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Kazinsal posted:

New PSU did nothing. Card is dead, 8 months after purchased.

As soon as I suck enough dicks to buy a new one, I'm getting a loving 970.

Should still be in warranty then, no?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Truga posted:

The tri-x OC gets around 10% extra FPS by overclocking, so does the MSI 970 :shrug: and 40 euros is substantially cheaper.

It's closer to 15-20% really, and even then the 970 outperforms the 290x at 1080p and 1440p. At 4K it's a different story, but you're not buying either of those cards for 4K gaming.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Alereon posted:

I've actually been toying with the idea of splitting out the Parts Picking Megathread into two threads, one for Value builds and one for Performance/Enthusiast builds. The first one would be the current thread, and the second would be for people that post in this and the Overclocking thread. What do you folks think about this idea?

I'm not a huge fan personally.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

dissss posted:

The installers are under ProgramData\NVIDIA Corporation\NetService\


Each of those folders with the long identifier contains the installer exe


Sweet, thanks for this, you just saved me like 9 gigs.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

rizzen posted:

Bear in mind it's Canadian $$$.

I fully upgraded my system a year ago to more modern standards from my old Core2. I picked up an i5-4590, a new ASRock H97 motherboard, an SSD, and 620w of Antec modular PSU. My case is fine and large enough for a giant rear end card, and the airflow is much much better with a modular PSU, so I'm happy on that front.

I'd honestly like to go with Nvidia this time, since I've had all sorts of hell with some games and AMD's drivers.

Edit: Right, budget. Honestly 300$ is as much as I'd like to spend, but I was prepared to drop 350~ for a 970 if it ever dropped that low, but it seems NCIX and Newegg aren't playing ball this year.


Yeah, the problem with it though, is that it's still $300, and at that point, I might as well just drop an extra $100 for the 970, no?

The 970 was $330 CAD at Canada Computers not two days ago iirc.

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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Gestalt Intellect posted:

Ok I have a weird problem where a new card is performing worse than the old one. I upgraded from an EVGA 560 ti to a gigabyte GT 740. I don't see a possible conflict with other hardware, the power supply is more than enough, and I'm using the latest nvidia drivers. But the 740 is getting much worse FPS on the same settings as the 560, when of course it should be doing better. I wasn't sure if the old drivers cleaned up properly when I uninstalled them (because windows kept furiously trying to reinstall graphics drivers on its own) and I wanted to reformat anyway, so I went ahead and did that. But even after doing a clean install of windows 7 and installing the latest drivers, the problem is still there.

None of the other hardware changed so I have no idea what the problem is (If it matters--windows 7 64-bit, 8 GB RAM, intel i5 3.3 GHz quad core). I couldn't find anything specific about this problem online. Seems like it would normally work entirely or not at all, I wouldn't expect this weird functioning-but-bad situation.

Any ideas?

You got a card that is actually worse than your current card. Grab a 950 ti if you want an actual upgrade.


E: fb

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