[Dick Forrest]

He's not an AMD fan, let's put it that way
Me neither, btw.  I'll never touch one again, with a pole.  Their drivers are rubbish, and what do you do with all the performance if you're plagued with problems?  Besides, even when their performance is up, sometimes it comes with the price of micro-stuttering.  And that's all driver error.  xfire problems.  Driver error.  You can't use different monitors in surround and have bezel correction; even if they're the same manufacturer and same resolution.  Driver error.   

Altho I know there are a lot of people out there who are happy with it.  Let them use it, I don't mind.

Bird has hit the nail on the head. AMD have let me down more times then NVIDIA. especially with drivers and the head-fuck of removing said drivers.. Their cards also seem to run so-so much hotter.
But really it's a personal preference thing. They both produce great stuff...... except NVIDIA's is better  and green > red
And Guybrush is a AMD fan-boi so I just cant make myself buy anything AMD


yeah my 'unlocked' 4790..   I can't find it now, could have been Tom's, I'm sure I read if there is a X in the serial number it's unlocked. But then that would kill your 4790K market. And every chip seems to have a X in it's serial number... So I'm not sure.. Not too worried. Though I've got the MB and now some tridents as RAM It's just asking to be clocked. Maybe once 5th generation comes out and is settled. I'll get a 'K' of something 4th gen...

I swear downloading games onto SSD is a lot faster than onto HDD. I didn't think it would make much difference when my download speed is around 300kbs max!

[Bird]

Dick it's easy to test if it's unlocked, change the multiplier, then check it with cpu-z.

Just be mindful that when idling, these cpu's will usually slow down.  Eg here's mine, first idle, then while running furMark burn-in test.
See the core speed at ~1600 on the first one, and ~4200 on the second.




Although, I've read that you can overclock even the locked CPU's somewhat, but it's a slight bit trickier.

[Dick Forrest]

yeah I'm pretty excited just to finally have a PC faster then my phone again!
I think the 1.0 driver for my MB sends too many volts to the CPU. so I might see something straight up.

  Won't be doing it till Sunday though. when I've got more time and my IT guru is on hand cause I'm pretty stupid at the config stuff if it goes wrong. But these days it's getting simpler. This MB has two BIOS's though... so I'm already scared.

[marty]

Nice to see your upgrades Dick, should be much better just needs a new gpu. Can your current one play far cry 1 and you already want 4. At least I remember that was always the saying but I havent played any far cry even though I got some free with computer bits in the past.

I checked the trailer for the game and it just doesnt interest me, it looks pretty but I hate war and murder so not really into murder sims as they just seem so stupid to me.

[Dick Forrest]

Nice to see your upgrades Dick, should be much better just needs a new gpu. Can your current one play far cry 1 and you already want 4. At least I remember that was always the saying but I havent played any far cry even though I got some free with computer bits in the past.

I checked the trailer for the game and it just doesnt interest me, it looks pretty but I hate war and murder so not really into murder sims as they just seem so stupid to me.

Well, that surprises me. I mistook you as man full of anger and hate.. 
Nothing wrong with a bit of mindless violence. All the kids are doing it these days.....

I like computer games full stop. But I'm super casual. Like you guys are very hard-core SIM racers and are far more into it then i'll ever be.
 I've never ever 'finished' a game of any genre. Lucky to get through 50% in most cases. I just lose interest or move onto the next thing.

I liked Farcry 1. Farcry 2 did my head in. Farcry 3 is my favorite. it's comical, great characters, open world, enemy that isn't hell bent on tracking you down if you spook them.. in fact the AI is blind if your sneaking around. Current PC build runs Fracry3 flawlessly pretty much.
Crysis on the other hand...

[Bird]

Crysis on the other hand...

...is the best game of all times ! 

I love the original crysis game, even tho it's fairly straight, it's good.   If that does not run well for you...that's a serious issue.  It used to run well on my computer 2 generations ago.  But then you might talk about crysis 2-3-4 dunno how many there are currently, they all have been watered down, compressed into smaller spaces and thus lost appeal to me.

[Dick Forrest]

Crysis on the other hand...

...is the best game of all times ! 

I love the original crysis game, even tho it's fairly straight, it's good.   If that does not run well for you...that's a serious issue.  It used to run well on my computer 2 generations ago.  But then you might talk about crysis 2-3-4 dunno how many there are currently, they all have been watered down, compressed into smaller spaces and thus lost appeal to me.

Was a few years ago now, steam is telling me i only have the original. i'm sure I've got 2... Pretty sure it was when I had a Radeon HD  space-heater of some sort. Just horrid frame rates.

I notice you've got X3 Terran Conflict. Bird. Have you played much of it? Huge learning curve, I keep going back to it now and then. but get bogged down and hopelessly lost..

[Bird]

I notice you've got X3 Terran Conflict. Bird. Have you played much of it? Huge learning curve, I keep going back to it now and then. but get bogged down and hopelessly lost..

Yeah, same.  I've tried to get into it twice but just could not dedicate enough time.  It's not so much the learning curve for me, but to get anywhere beyond the basics.  Mapping out huge spaces, amassing wealth, building stations... It's a lifestyle, not a game. 

I've played an early incarnation of it, though, and for quite a while; that maybe why the learning curve doesn't seem that steep for me.

[Wally]

Unreal Tournament 3 was the last FPS I played. Pan and scan is all my brain can handle. I used to like the non-stop action. Stand still and die. I still fire it up from time to time.

[Dick Forrest]

Unreal Tournament 3 was the last FPS I played. Pan and scan is all my brain can handle. I used to like the non-stop action. Stand still and die. I still fire it up from time to time.

Ah the nostalgia.. and Quake.. Groundbreaking stuff right there. I remember starting off with the obligatory Doom And Heretic, which was way better than Doom.

Incidentally, 8gigs of DDR3 RAM is pretty much the norm? Or are you guys filling all your slots?
And Windows 7 uses whatever you put in, but won't show it in device manager or something?

[Bird]

My computer:
ASUS p8z77-V Deluxe,
Intel i5-3570k,
Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB
2x GXT970

With the ram, speed makes little difference.  But it's cheap as, so you might as well future-proof with 2 modules of 8.
Windows shows it and uses it.

[marty]

Unreal Tournament 3 was the last FPS I played. Pan and scan is all my brain can handle. I used to like the non-stop action. Stand still and die. I still fire it up from time to time.

Ah the nostalgia.. and Quake.. Groundbreaking stuff right there. I remember starting off with the obligatory Doom And Heretic, which was way better than Doom.

Incidentally, 8gigs of DDR3 RAM is pretty much the norm? Or are you guys filling all your slots?
And Windows 7 uses whatever you put in, but won't show it in device manager or something?

If running 64 bit windows it uses whatever it has and shows it too, surely your not going to be sticking with an old version of windows 3.1 you have on floppy disks.

For General use gaming etc 8GB should be more then enough and most games are still only 32bit so limited to 4GB for the application. Still in a 64bit OS it means that it can dedicate the full 4GB to the 32 bit app and use the remaining ram for other uses, its only for heavy video editing etc where more ram is of benefit and my 32GB comes in handy in that but for AC maxed out the most I have seen used all up is around 7GB and turning off Win 7 aero is about 5.2GB total. I dont think I have any 64GB games so not sure what they would use, actually RF2 is now 64 bit but it ran like crap last time I tried still a big fail in SLI for whatever reasons.

I have just done a full OS reinstall as Ive had some issues the last couple weeks, was planning to race but had issues with the logitech drivers. Which I have now sorted but to late to race the Cobra's/

[Dick Forrest]

You mean there is a update to Windows 3.1??

*checks google
Wow..

Ok yeah windows 7.. 64bit.
 I'll just get the 8gigs of RAM to start with. better off putting the change towards a GPU atm.
But nice to know about win7 64bit using whatever the MB can take.

You guys and your stinking SLI... Run hot? Yours are only a few weeks old (Bird) I remember now.. All good? Happy with them? Have you played anything other than AC and Skyrim? (There's a game I didn't like / understand hype.. but prob should give it a better go)

Marty has water cooling. CPU and GPUs? I'm still very spooked by liquids and electronics being so close. What makes you confident it wont fail? Did it cost stupid money?* Are you convinced it is better than fans?....  I'm not sold on water cooling. So really just asking.

*stupid money, to me, is for cooling a clocked CPU I'll say starts at $100

[marty]

Water cooling is much quieter and runs way cooler then stock fans, Fully loaded and overclocked my GPU's don't get above 50c with about 40% OC on stock air the top card was getting very close to thermal throttle limits 80-90c even at stock speeds. CPU is also running much cooler then stock air cooler with a healthy OC.

Most of the Watercooling setup can be re used when you upgrade bits at most you just need a new waterblock for new GPU's and it takes much less space inside the system. Getting better air flow inside the case and keeping everything cooler even when running well above spec so you can skip a generation or 2 of upgrades with the performance boost.

[Dick Forrest]

It was expensive though wasn't it? But you make a good case Marty...

Ok, after 700 hours Farcry 4 is installed. Just talking about computer performance here.
It runs silky smooth on ultra settings at 3750x3000...... Well, that's how I imagine it would run on your guys machines.  Not so well on mine.

It's not too bad really, remember I haven't upgraded anything yet. still old system. I am dropping frames like a bastard here and there but not chugging. totally playable. maybe not so in massive scale fire fight. I have it at high settings at 1400x1050

Will be interesting to see what changing everything except the graphics card does for performance. I'm not expecting a great deal. I'm expecting it to make me shop for said graphics card sooner than later.