The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I haven't had the chance to write a response to the posts in this thread as of yet (I got halfway through responding to the first post in half an hour, then came back to find three more similarly lengthy posts!) but what I will say is that if using multiple displays, either use nvidia, or have all displayport-compatible monitors. You should always assume with multiple display setups that displayport->DVI dongles do not exist, as they have never been compatible with eyefinity and therefore do not work!

Of course the flipside of this is that AMD cards handle the higher resolution better than the Geforces, even when considering the 3GB vs. 4GB on some GTX680s.

 

Ahh, you don't wanna read all of that?

 

I will, but that saves people from wondering why I haven't responded, while I get a chance to read it all!

 

Sad to say I often skip large tracts of conversation if it doesn't immediately appeal to me. Not that I'm ignoring anyone more than looking for things I can give somewhat intelligent input on.

 

Awwww - I forgot to check before hitting reply - hey Kevin and Sam - you don't have to go back to re-read any of my posts, it's summarized here. I don't want multiple displays, the dongle is just to make the lack of a dual dvi work on the MSI R7970 Lightning - but I am not going to do that.

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Jeff, you are a connoisseur! I just want to participate in one small part of your giant world - the first person shooter segment.

You are right - a lot of elements driving my thinking regarding video cards.

I now feel that for me, the massive graphic requirement of 4 megapixel 30" gaming means I made a mistake in getting the 7950s. You were right all along of course.

I don't entirely regret it, because that purchase, based initially on less power usage and less heat buildup vs 7970 in the midtower case, forced me to finally pull that brand new spedo out of the garage "warehouse" from 4 years prior. But essentially, with sleeping dogs and far cry 3, I have found that the 7950s are holding me back for 30" gaming. This 2560x1600 isn't a sweet spot - it's not as bad for heavens sakes as eyefinity - I don't quite need to be surrounded by enemies on all sides, lol - but it is very definitely a demanding resolution that doesn't forgive too many compromises.

I have found my beloved HIS IceQ cards to be rock stable at 975 core, 1087 vddc. Never a hiccup - 8 to 12 hours at a time. Fairly cool - I don't like them to ever even hit 80. Lately in Heaven testing, letting it run and watching temps, I have gotten 1025 stable at 1137 vddc. Above that voltage, more heat, and less stable - that surprised me. I thought more voltage was more stable, but at a heat penalty. Apparently not true and it wasn't heat that suddenly turned off the display. Well, maybe it was, but it wasn't gpu core heat. Below that, less voltage, cooler, but less stable. So that seems to be a sweet spot, and unless it is really hot here in the trailer, they still run cool at that setting. But I have found that there is no sweet spot that will run Heaven at 1050 for more than an hour, no matter how cold the night was as I was bundled up here in the trailer this past winter. The lower core speed, 1025, has not been exhaustively tested, but several hours on Heaven on several different occasions, and testing in far cry 3, showed it was stable, with good temps well below 80. So in my mind, my cards max out at about 1000, a nice even number.

The 975 core clock is supposed to match the 925 on the 7970 - so I guess the 7970 is 5% faster at same clocks, with 12% more stream processors, about 250 more. I just saw one review on the gigabyte 7970 that comes clocked at 1100 where the 2560 gamer said he got it stable at 1250. If true for me - that would be 5% times 1.25% or close to a 30% performance gain, so 30 fps goes to 40 fps. But his newegg review wasn't talking cf. And I personally sent my similar multi-fan gigabyte 7950 back. But again, that was in the smaller case and all the heat put out inside the case did not help things.

The MSI Lightning R7970 comes at core 1070, and lots of people have gotten it to "only" 1300 - some of them disappointed, lol. Anyway, seems like a strong overclocker - but there are some negative reviews on the $95 active dongle, so that seems iffy. It really looks hit and miss on that adapter - one more item in the mix which might not work.

The iffy adapter, the 8000 cancellation, the console contracts, and comments in this thread about nvidia offerings, have sent me over to the gtx680 side, to the same series I was looking at, the Lightning.

There have been some interesting things I didn't know about, like TXAA, which you guys are probably familiar with - which supposedly provides 4x or 8x AA effective, but with only a 2x performance hit. If true, that could be a big help. One newegg reviewer talked about liking it.

I have the screens, quite a few in fact, which I might post one day showing 4x AA is virtually the same as 8x on Far Cry 3. Not so with 2x - the jaggies pop out at you from time to time and are distracting. So in my mind 2x is unplayable - and like I said before, being able only to support 2xAA with the 8800 gtx card, caused me to put Far Cry 2 away for two years until this past Fall with the 7950s, where I discovered the beautiful river boating.

But back on the Lightning 680, I am bothered by only 2 gigs. I have a hard time mentally embracing the idea of reducing the vram - that sounds like compromise - and I have an uncompromising screen resolution if I am unwilling to sacrifice graphic fidelity, like yourself.

That's why I seem to have reached a decision point when yesterday a lot of troubling issues appeared to be resolved by the "discovery" of multiple reasonably-priced 4 gig 680 solutions. The evga has a turbine and blows the heat out the back - probably loudly, lol. They clock at just under 1200. Their video shows 2 of them side by side - the turbine tilts in slightly so it can still draw even with another card right above it.

In my choice of card I want the ability to slip a third card in there. While scaling is not so great with the 680s, I guess, you probably get at least 40% scaling on the third card. I am pretty sure the nehalem 1366 gigabyte board that I am going to inherit supports tri cf AND tri sli. I definitely saw with my own two eyes the three large slots (if not 4) and I was pleasantly surprised, making a mental note about that. Whether it is cf only, not sli, I doubt, as there didn't seem to be that many gigabyte 1366 boards around at that time - beginning of 2010. So the one I think it is, is the GA-X58A-UD3R. I guess there are 4 16x slots in total, supporting tri cf or tri sli.

So, when I discovered 4 gigs yesterday, that calmed me down, showing me the light at the end of the research tunnel - "Ah hah, that's what will work for me" - pulling me away from the 2 gig Lightning. But MSI has a similar card, the 4 gig twin frozer, which might be just about the same card, but no "reactor."

Today is supposed to be massive research day, reading benchmarks, etc. all the stuff you guys are expert on. I am definitely out of the knowledge loop especially on what nvidia offers. As Sam points out, with the nehalem I will be several generations behind still, and with a hot energy hogging solution. For another $600-800 I could get a fresh i5 or i7, with mobo, cpu, memory. But the nehalem, fully populated at 12 gigs, is free. That savings buys me the third video card. So .... If that goes sideways then I'll do the fresh build.

Being forced to move into that spedo case, like all of you guys with your HAFs, was a good forced move for me - it's had a major impact on my viewpoint. Now I'm thinking long term VERY powerful graphics solutions. I have the foundation - the case - to support that. For the time being I'll stay on air, but who knows what tri sli will require - I see that evga provides some nice water blocks.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DDP!!!

haha - hi ddp, just pulling your chain, lol

nice to know you're around! you can't believe what I'm doing with w98 these days - still locked and loaded with my dbm2 (dos) mail system

every time I mess with it I think of that customer of yours needing to run that one game and only w98 would work - it's very streamlined - but all the beautiful graphics I used to create were all done on that O/S - xp would run most of them okay, but in a few cases the colors and/or shapes were slightly off and I had to figure out how to do it on the "original w98" - like reboot, get a fresh 98 with no memory leakage, and test word print preview to make sure part of the image wasn't missing, then print out the stock expired listing stationery with the color house picture in the upper right corner.

I have been almost exclusive xp the last 5 years, but I am now reviving the w98 and refreshing my memory on all the old procedures that worked really well before real estate entered "strange times" 7 years ago.

Rich

 

One quick note, you do know that the GTX680 is a slower card than the HD7970 1Ghz Edition, doesn't scale quite as well in multiple, and handles higher resolutions less well right?

There are still plenty of reasons why the GTX680 may be better, but the reasons that make it worse all seem quite pertinent for your usage case...

 

Well,

That's a very good point, Sam. I sure wouldn't want to get slower.

If you have some benchmarks for me, please let me know what you have, because I did read some things to the contrary in regard to the Lightning version of the 680 (and those might not be true anymore with the locked bios.) It was regarding 2560x1600 gaming, and it was a hardocp review - just the synthesis of it in a forum - and I know those guys have an nvidia bias. I didn't go into the main review at that time.

I would REALLY be interested in some benchmarks - whatever you can link me to would be super!

What do you like in a 7970 these days? Let's say you decided to pick up a couple of cards this year instead of waiting for 18 months? What have you come across that you like?

I think I'm approaching this whole thing from the standpoint of triple sli or triple cf. The motherboard is going to be a factor in the style of the graphic card cooler - turbine, or multi-fan design. I read about a user who has the 3-fan gigabyte 7970, three of them in tri cf, but his mobo offers slot 1, slot 4 and slot 7 graphics slots, so he has that one slot of gap.

Not mine. Mine, the nehalem gigabyte, will be 3, 5 and 7. The evga gtx680 is a turbine, that according to their video works ok even when plasced right next to the other card.

So, approaching this from the very beginning - do I go out and get that 1, 4, and 7 motherboard, and spend the extra $600 with mobo, cpu and memory, to free myself from the 3, 5 and 7 spacing, or instead, just "settle" for a turbine design, like the evga 680, which quite a few have over-clocked at 1300.

Will that end up a lot less powerful than 3 gigabyte 7950s also clocked about the same, or would performance be similar? Or even if not similar, would either tri system give me all I would need for the next 3 years at ultra max, barring crysis 4?

thanks,
Rich

 

Also, last I checked HardOCP do not have an nvidia bias

 

Wow, beautiful graphs, thanks Sam.

Those charts show a 15% difference between the 7970 GE and the reference gtx680, which sounds about right. I'm looking at one particular 680 that is factory overclocked, and outperforms the reference 680, probably narrowing that 15% gap down to about 5% on those two titles.

The card is the 4 gig evga classified, $599 on newegg, which comes with stock clocks at 1111, and boost at 1176. It overclocks for most reviewers to 1250 or 1300 with no voltage adjustment - nvidia has the voltage locked to 1.175. The card seems to run quite cool - the turbine does its job well and is not especially loud, which is a surprise.

The attraction of a turbine, is the feasibility of running tri sli on air cooling, with no gap between cards, which I would be forced to do on the nehalem motherboard.

There ARE zero turbines on the 7970 Ghz side. On the 680 side, the Classified seems to be the best of the turbines.

That's where I am so far. What do you think?

Rich

 

Ok,

Post 8409:

Ok a few things about this:
1. I did run two HD4870X2s for QuadCF, but for the last 2 years have been running two HD6970s, which is just two GPUs.
2. Two HD7970s would probably run on a 750W Toughpower. The two 4870X2s (rated at 286W) only saw me pull 690-710W DC out of the PSU in the most power-demanding (not the same as performance-demanding!) titles, and HD7970s use a fair bit less power than that. However, I'd have two reservations about doing this:
a) The Toughpower 750W, although a solid CWT unit almost identical to the original Corsair TX underneath, does not suggest it is really well suited to that sort of load - I had the exact same unit, and when pulling below 200W with a dual core E4300 and X1900XT, the fan would still eventually reach full speed (1900rpm at 140mm is pretty loud!). Thermals in this system at the time were not good, but that is a very low wattage for a PSU to be running at full fan speed.
b) The HD7970, like the HD6970 before it [and to a lesser extent the HD4870/X2 as well] does not use all of its electronics when running games. If you burn test it or run GPU computing, the TDP will jump to be a lot higher. Under these circumstances, you may be pushing things a bit, especially with an LGA1366 Core i7, which use far more power than any CPU I have had in my systems, stock vs stock. If you've overclocked it, the situation gets worse.
Therefore, a modern high-efficiency 850W seems a solid recommendation for two HD7970s. Probably overkill, but giving you enough of a safety zone.
For three HD7970s I'd probably say 1000W, for four? 1200W as an absolute minimum. If you were to burn test four HD7970s with an overclocked LGA1366 i7, you could potentially pull 1300W out of the unit, so 1200 might even be a bit on the thin side.
3. You are correct, mechanical disk drives, like any mechanical equipment, need to be used periodically. It's something that's causing me some concern, as the hassle of running mechanical drives until they're warm when you have so many stored in the cupboard is becoming increasingly annoying.
4. I don't see AMD going anywhere as a result of those console contracts, you're right, but that doesn't mean to say they won't eventually fill the lower-to-middle end of the market for GPUs like they have CPUs. That hasn't happened yet, but given their complacent approach to the market at the moment, I really do wonder.
5. I haven't filtered my side intakes primarily because I no longer really use them, that level of cooling just isn't necessary with the HD6970s.
6. If you are buying HD7970s, make sure they are the 1Ghz edition versions, as there's a fairly considerable performance difference between the two, as the two graphs I posted earlier illustrate.
7. With regard to upgrading lower down in the food chain, be a little more cautious with the HD7850/7870. They're great value at the moment, considering how well they compare to the HD5870/6950/6970 of old, but although AMD have stated there will be no new high-end products this year, they did say some more cards would appear lower down the scale, based on the Sea Islands architecture. How low down, they haven't said. It's not inconceivable to suggest another one or two HD77/78 series products may appear at better performance/$ or performance/W this year.
8. AMD did say they intend to finally release a reference HD7990 this year, a whole year late. Whether it'll be at the original 925mhz clocks or the full 1Ghz each yet I'm not sure, but be very cautious of the non-reference HD7990. As with previous generations, the standard of manufacture and design in those top-end elite cards is appalling at any price, let alone with the enormous price tag they carry.
9. Never try and run eyefinity properly with DVI monitors, the displayport->DVI adapters just do not work for this purpose. Either get native displayport monitors, or use nvidia cards instead. You'll regret attempting to do otherwise when all your hair falls out. (This is not personal experience, but there is ample reporting of this from professional reviewers from almost every reputable site going)
10. Yes, even with a dual-GPU card you can run three GPUs in a 2+1 setup, with the same benefits/caveats. Tri-crossfire tends to scale a bit better than quad crossfire.
With non-reference cards, you suffer similar heat issues with a 2+1 as you would with a 1+1 or 2+2, as the heat will have a hard time escaping without considerable forced ventilation coming from a side intake. However, with reference blowers, 2+1 actually works fairly well as the cards are different lengths, so the intake side of the blower is relatively unobstructed for both cards.
11. Never buy something with the intention of modifying it, unless absolutely necessary. That 'reactor' whatever it is on the back of the MSI cards will be there for a reason. If the cards don't work together out of the box, find another brand that will.

Post 8411 (Omegaman):
No, they use more power than at idle because they run at full clocks/voltages, but they aren't under load, so they will not use their full TDP. With older cards like the GTX260 you would typically see them draw 40W in windows, and perhaps 75W in the BIOS. Nothing like the 200W or so maximum.

Post 8412 (Rich):
1. NEVER hot-swap any legacy hardware connectors. This includes IDE cables and Molex power connectors (large 4-pin for disk drives, small floppy drive connectors, and 3/4-pin fan connectors). Doing this with SATA/SAS including their power connectors is safe, provided you have AHCI enabled on your motherboard. Without it, it's not dangerous, it just won't achieve anything.
2. Allied PSUs are cheap tat, like all cheap PSUs. They are just as likely to destroy your equipment as any other cheap PSU. Don't take solace in the fact that it successfully tripped the short-circuit protection, as I had that with my Qtec (Faulty molex causing a short it successfully stopped) - the same Qtec that set fire to my floppy drive and blew a 13A 230V mains fuse in the process.

Post 8418 (Rich):
Just a quick one here, you will want 3GB of video memory if you're running the best of the best at 2560x1600 in a multi-GPU setup. There are a small handful of titles that will see well over 2.5GB usage at that res now, and that's enough to flummox 2GB cards pretty badly
Also, you have to run Windows 7 or better [ignoring the existence of Vista] to run 3 or 4 GPUs. XP cannot recognise any more than 2. 32-bit XP (and you don't want the 64-bit version!) can also only see 3.5GB of system memory, which isn't really enough for some modern games either.

If it were me in your situation, I'd get a new CPU board and RAM, probably something like an i7 3770K and 16GB, then go with two HD7970GEs, maybe three. On your current Core 2, you won't have the CPU power you need to back that graphical capability up. Remember the CPU overheads of running multi-GPU!

 

Okay, well I had been considering a 1200 until a day or so ago. There was one marked down at newegg from $320 on sale at $250. But now I'm thinking about not concerning myself with the sale, but more with making sure I don't buy too small of a unit as you suggest.

So in the $320 to $360 range, there are two 1500s that might work, the Enermax 1500 6 rail, or the toughpower 1475 two rail. The enermax at 180 mm long forces me to push my bottom intake phantek 140mm aside about 1/4" - redrilling some holes. The Toughpower at 200mm long forces me to move it about an inch. I'm inclined to go with the Enermax. Any preferences?

Hmmm.

I was just about to suggest that maybe I should take a closer look at these 7970 turbines:



But none of them is the 1Ghz edition, so now I won't bother.

Ok, that settles that, no 2 gig cards will be considered.

I do have two strong 140mm phanteks blowing air into the side of the case, so that should help some.

I'm not 100% clear on "reference blower" - you must mean what I have been calling a turbine - yes, a blower type cooler.

So in that case, you are raising the idea of using a 7990 together with a 7970. That might be particularly good on that nehalem card because I think only the first slot is 16x bandwidth, so that's where the dual would go. I appreciate your idea about starting fresh, but if I get the nehalem for free with 12 gigs of ram, I'm $600 ahead.

Well, back to the graphics - yes I do want a minimum of 3 for starters, for the best of the best as you say. I had lost sight of the 7990 idea, and I had pretty much figured on using 3 discrete cards. Therefore, I was focusing on turbines, or "blowers" as you call them, as my post one up discusses, and wanting a 1200 core-clock device with more than 2 gigs ram, so that led me to the evga classified 680 4gb card.

But if you are now suggesting that I take a closer look at picking up a 7990, and pairing it with a 7970, that quite intrigues me. You also mention that there will be an official reference 7990 coming fairly soon. When will we be seeing that, do you suppose?


EDIT:

Hmmm. The reviews are not too bad.




For the price the 3 Classifieds were going to cost me, I could get two of these 7990s right now, and a 1500 watt psu, and follow in your footsteps with quad cf. Or should I wait for the reference 7990?


Rich

 

To be honest, once you cross over the 1200W barrier, there aren't really any PSU brands I'm happy with. To need more than a 1200W PSU you're putting some serious current through a unit, and neither Enermax or Thermaltake convince me that they're really up to the task. I certainly wouldn't want to run a system drawing that much for multiple years off such units.
The best PSU I can probably think of in one unit without using a rather dodgy 'bridged PSU' mode is a Seasonic X-1250. It runs a single 104A 12V rail (a pretty terrifying concept I have to admit) which should be sufficient to handle four HD7970GEs and an original i7 overclock reasonably well.
The i7 and X58 chipset at stock will draw about 12A at maximum load (around 22-25 if overclocked heavily), and the HD7970s under normal gaming load should pull about 20 each leaving you with a total draw of 92A, or 102A if overclocking the CPU heavily.
That leaves very little room to breathe. If you were to GPU-compute on the graphics cards or burn-test them, you'll be pulling 24A per GPU, totalling 96A just on the graphics alone. Add an overclocked i7 900 series chip to that (the sort of overclock needed for 4Ghz), and you're looking at about 120A all in, or 1440W just for the CPU + graphics. When considering fans and disk drives on top of that, 1500W would barely cover it. I think to have this level of hardware absurdity, you really need two PSUs - I'd probably say two 850s or two 1000s.
Of course, you could just buy a current-gen CPU like the i7 3770K and leave it stock (at which point it draws only 6A, versus the 20+ of the overclocked i7 900 series) which would allow you to get away with about 102A maximum draw when running GPU compute (assuming the CPU was under load at the time, otherwise perhaps 98-99A), which a 1250W PSU could handle on a short-term basis.
In a normal gaming environment, with a stock Ivy Bridge CPU like the 3770K and four stock HD7970 1Ghz cards, you'd be pulling a modest 86A in games, so probably less than 90A for the whole system, allowing you plenty of breathing room on a 1250W PSU.

Now let's face it, if $2000 is going on graphics cards, and nearly $300 just on a power supply, an extra $600 or so on a new CPU, motherboard and memory isn't really going to be a bank-breaker for you is it?

 

As far as an official HD7990 is concerned (or any of the other announced products for that matter) we have no sense of timescale at all, I imagine it'll probably be some time in the summer.

Just one other thought, ludicrously expensive as they are, if we're planning a big hardware binge here, have you considered three GTX Titans? I've no idea how long it'd take you to find three, and it's $3000 on graphics hardware alone, but they're solid 6GB cards and solve the problem of being able to run multiple displays without needing displayport, without the necessity of buying slower cards to do it.

 

Yeah, I'd say it's in need of re-paste LOL!

 

Yup, sure looks like it to me

 

Well they certainly didn't use the grain of rice method LOL!!! The glob I got out of it is an easy gram! Or, the size of a peanut(w/o shell).

I won't be using as much, but I'm uncertain whether to put a square gob in center, or use a card to smooth it out perfectly.

 

I put a square glob in the center. I'll see what happens LOL! It used the whole syringe by the way! Which is still less than it was before. Should be ample though.

I think it's "Dirty" because of the Coolit Eco fluid that got in there. It saturated the dust, causing it to adhere to some areas.

 

Meh, the camera simply accented/exaggerated the look

Though I did look, and couldn't find Rubbing alcohol.

I did take an air can to some of it though.