$2000 Gaming PC

[loki993]

Isnt Crossfire a bit finicky anyway? You know your probably ok right now. I bet you could get away with just a video card until Haswell comes out. I doubt it will be much of a performance gain, but it will be a new socket and you will be future proofed a bit.

[Chapbass]

Originally Posted by loki993

Isnt Crossfire a bit finicky anyway? You know your probably ok right now. I bet you could get away with just a video card until Haswell comes out. I doubt it will be much of a performance gain, but it will be a new socket and you will be future proofed a bit.

Honestly I would do this. The i7-920 IMO is still plenty powerful, get a new video card and be done with it.

Granted, I haven't been as performance picky nowadays as I used to be, so it could be that talking, but dropping serious coin when you already have a 920? I dunno, that doesn't seem worth it to me.

Even if you board isn't playing nice, get a new board or a used one from the AT FS/FT forums, new video card, and be done until haswell or later.

[Siyko]

One concerning thing about getting a new video card is the power supply I currently have.

It's a Rosewill BRONZE RBR750-M at 750W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182186

The concerning thing is the amperage - it has +12V at only 18A. While I was troubleshooting my 660 TI (which turned out to be some bad compatibility between the DX58SO motherboard and the MSI brand of the card), I noticed that the card had a minimum requirement of +12V at 28A.

Looking at a couple manufacturers' pages, I can't find a 660 TI that would be happy at 18A.

[Termie]

Originally Posted by Siyko

One concerning thing about getting a new video card is the power supply I currently have.

It's a Rosewill BRONZE RBR750-M at 750W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182186

The concerning thing is the amperage - it has +12V at only 18A. While I was troubleshooting my 660 TI (which turned out to be some bad compatibility between the DX58SO motherboard and the MSI brand of the card), I noticed that the card had a minimum requirement of +12V at 28A.

Looking at a couple manufacturers' pages, I can't find a 660 TI that would be happy at 18A.

You are just looking at the #1 12V rail. That PSU has four 12v rails, with a combined rating of 54A. It shouldn't be a problem at all with your system even with a GPU upgrade.

[Siyko]

Originally Posted by Termie

You are just looking at the #1 12V rail. That PSU has four 12v rails, with a combined rating of 54A. It shouldn't be a problem at all with your system even with a GPU upgrade.

Ah, I didn't know you could add them like that. Thanks

[Termie]

Originally Posted by Siyko

Ah, I didn't know you could add them like that. Thanks

You can't add them directly, but you can figure it out by looking at the label on the PSU, which should give a combined rating, as it does in the picture on the Newegg website.

In theory, if you have a system running at very close to max, you could have an issue with load balancing on the rails, but you won't with your system.

[Siyko]

Alright, I think I'm going to just get a new video card now, and look at another upgrade in about 6 months or so. It sounds like the video card will relieve my PC of a lot of the stress I'm seeing right now.

Thanks for all the info everybody. I'm going to read some more on Haswell.

[Chapbass]

Originally Posted by Siyko

Alright, I think I'm going to just get a new video card now, and look at another upgrade in about 6 months or so. It sounds like the video card will relieve my PC of a lot of the stress I'm seeing right now.

Thanks for all the info everybody. I'm going to read some more on Haswell.

Sounds like a smart plan, Siyko. Besides, if you upgrade the video card now, its not like you can't use that video card in your new setup. I don't think your proc is hurting you enough now to justify it...do video now, everything else later.

[Insert_Nickname]

Originally Posted by Siyko

I'm using dual Radeon HD 5770s. The power is ok, but not great. I have so many issues with games that require me to disable crossfire, or ATI drivers giving me problems between multiple monitors though. I used my friend's GTX470 for a couple weeks and I didn't have any of those issues, so I want to go back to NVIDIA.

Crossfire/SLI can be quite finicky. You got that right...

Much easier to just use a single GPU.

Originally Posted by Siyko

Just upgrading the card and nothing else is something I considered - I in fact tried to upgrade to a GTX 660 TI but my motherboard wouldn't work with it (see the thread I started in the video card section).

Can't seem to find that particular thread. Bad luck I guess.

[Siyko]

Originally Posted by Insert_Nickname

Can't seem to find that particular thread. Bad luck I guess.

The thread on here is: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2293721

The thread on MSI where I spent most of hte time is here: http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=165057.0

[mfenn]

Originally Posted by Siyko

I'm using dual Radeon HD 5770s. The power is ok, but not great. I have so many issues with games that require me to disable crossfire, or ATI drivers giving me problems between multiple monitors though. I used my friend's GTX470 for a couple weeks and I didn't have any of those issues, so I want to go back to NVIDIA.

Your issues have nothing to do with AMD versus Nvidia and everything to do with trying to Crossfire two low-end cards. You'd have the same types of problems if you tried to SLI two GTS 450's.

Overall, I'd say that you have a tendency to severely under-spec your GPUs. You mentioned that you thought that buying an $800 PC and adding $1000 worth of GPUs wasn't a smart smart way to build a gaming rig. In reality, that ratio is not too far off from what you want. To illustrate, here's a system:

i5 3570K $215
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 $128
Crucial DDR3 1600 8GB $35
GTX 670 4GB SLI $800 AR
Plextor M5S 128GB $108
Samsung F3 1TB $65 AP
Lite-ON DVD Burner $18
Rosewill Capstone 650W $80 AR
Fractal Design R4 $90
Phanteks PH-TC12DX $60
Total: $1599 AR AP

This config spends $800 on the GPUs and $799 on everything else (1:1 ratio). It will completely demolish the i7 3930K + GTX 660 Ti rig that was posted earlier. "Not in the same league" doesn't even begin to describe the difference in gaming performance.

So now you not only have a good gaming config to work off of, but more importantly you understand that your thinking was going down the wrong path before.

[Insert_Nickname]

Originally Posted by Siyko

The thread on here is: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2293721

The thread on MSI where I spent most of hte time is here: http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=165057.0

Read through both threads. It does sound like your MB has an incompatibility with that particular card. I have several friends whose older P55 and x58 boards chop along just fine with 6xx's and HD7xxx's. Your best bet would properly be to avoid an MSI card...

[Siyko]

Originally Posted by mfenn

Your issues have nothing to do with AMD versus Nvidia and everything to do with trying to Crossfire two low-end cards. You'd have the same types of problems if you tried to SLI two GTS 450's.

Overall, I'd say that you have a tendency to severely under-spec your GPUs. You mentioned that you thought that buying an $800 PC and adding $1000 worth of GPUs wasn't a smart smart way to build a gaming rig. In reality, that ratio is not too far off from what you want. To illustrate, here's a system:

i5 3570K $215
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 $128
Crucial DDR3 1600 8GB $35
GTX 670 4GB SLI $800 AR
Plextor M5S 128GB $108
Samsung F3 1TB $65 AP
Lite-ON DVD Burner $18
Rosewill Capstone 650W $80 AR
Fractal Design R4 $90
Phanteks PH-TC12DX $60
Total: $1599 AR AP

This config spends $800 on the GPUs and $799 on everything else (1:1 ratio). It will completely demolish the i7 3930K + GTX 660 Ti rig that was posted earlier. "Not in the same league" doesn't even begin to describe the difference in gaming performance.

So now you not only have a good gaming config to work off of, but more importantly you understand that your thinking was going down the wrong path before.

Interesting. I didn't expect that at all - thanks for the information.

However, the problems I'm referring to with ATI vs Nvidia are not power issues - they are driver/software issues. With crossfire enabled, some games don't render some objects, or don't load some textures, or don't work, or anything. I often have to disable crossfire.

Additionally, I get some ATI issues when I drag rendered objects between monitors - I often get a flicker or some artifacts when I do so.

It's true I haven't tested this on SLI NVIDIA cards, but I don't get any of these issues on a single NVIDIA card.

Originally Posted by Insert_Nickname

Read through both threads. It does sound like your MB has an incompatibility with that particular card. I have several friends whose older P55 and x58 boards chop along just fine with 6xx's and HD7xxx's. Your best bet would properly be to avoid an MSI card...

That's exactly what I did - I bought a Gigabyte 660 TI and returned the MSI =)

[DSF]

Originally Posted by Siyko

It's true I haven't tested this on SLI NVIDIA cards, but I don't get any of these issues on a single NVIDIA card.

I've never run a dual-GPU system and I probably never will.

I have bought multiple GPUs from NVidia and AMD/ATI, done my homework beforehand, and been satisfied with every single one.

Comparing one company's dual-GPU issues to another company's single-card setup isn't really meaningful, not to mention that whatever issues you had with dual 5xxx cards, they're almost 3 generations old now.

[Sleepingforest]

Originally Posted by Siyko

Interesting. I didn't expect that at all - thanks for the information.

However, the problems I'm referring to with ATI vs Nvidia are not power issues - they are driver/software issues. With crossfire enabled, some games don't render some objects, or don't load some textures, or don't work, or anything. I often have to disable crossfire.

Additionally, I get some ATI issues when I drag rendered objects between monitors - I often get a flicker or some artifacts when I do so.

It's true I haven't tested this on SLI NVIDIA cards, but I don't get any of these issues on a single NVIDIA card.



That's exactly what I did - I bought a Gigabyte 660 TI and returned the MSI =)

That's exactly the issue mfenn is talking about: driver/software issues (and he goes on to address the more effective means of building a gaming PC, but I digress). Both Crossfire and SLI have issues in the drivers and in microstuttering--Nvidia is typically a little better for multi-GPU combos, but it's best to avoid it all together unless you are going crazy at the high end.

AMD is a much better buy right now at the higher end: the 7970 performs better than the 670, and can overclock to be on par or better than (depending on your luck) a 680, and the 7970 comes with 3GB of memory for as low as $370 USD, wheras you'd have to go over $400 to find a 4GB 670 card from Nvidia (the memory is important for things like modding game graphics like Skyrim and Crysis as well as anti-aliasing.) On the other hand, memory is generally not an issue at 1080p and even 1440p. Multi-monitor setups, on the other hand, will probably need it.

TL;DR: AMD is better at the high end (the 660ti is particularly bad due to a crippled memory buswidth).

[mfenn]

Originally Posted by DSF

I've never run a dual-GPU system and I probably never will.

I have bought multiple GPUs from NVidia and AMD/ATI, done my homework beforehand, and been satisfied with every single one.

Comparing one company's dual-GPU issues to another company's single-card setup isn't really meaningful, not to mention that whatever issues you had with dual 5xxx cards, they're almost 3 generations old now.

Originally Posted by Sleepingforest

That's exactly the issue mfenn is talking about: driver/software issues (and he goes on to address the more effective means of building a gaming PC, but I digress). Both Crossfire and SLI have issues in the drivers and in microstuttering--Nvidia is typically a little better for multi-GPU combos, but it's best to avoid it all together unless you are going crazy at the high end.

AMD is a much better buy right now at the higher end: the 7970 performs better than the 670, and can overclock to be on par or better than (depending on your luck) a 680, and the 7970 comes with 3GB of memory for as low as $370 USD, wheras you'd have to go over $400 to find a 4GB 670 card from Nvidia (the memory is important for things like modding game graphics like Skyrim and Crysis as well as anti-aliasing.) On the other hand, memory is generally not an issue at 1080p and even 1440p. Multi-monitor setups, on the other hand, will probably need it.

TL;DR: AMD is better at the high end (the 660ti is particularly bad due to a crippled memory buswidth).

Thanks for expanding on the point that I was trying to get across.