The Power PC Thread [f*ck off consoles]

[Silent_Scone]

Ah, gotcha - yes. That would be considered a little excessive for a dev kit!!! Back on the subject of home setups and home rigs, I think many people posting here would be severely disappointed if they walked into a game dev studio and saw what levels of hardware the majority of dev's have to work on. The impressive rigs you guys are posting on here are considerably more capable than those workstations used by friends of mine working on current and next-gen AAA titles! Mind you, it would get a bit expensive forking out £4-6k per developer for a top-end workstation configuration. Typically you get the core tech team and higher level engineers with the better machines and the n00bs with some baseline sh*tters.

Well wouldn't expect a whole team to have 3/4k rigs! Things are tight enough as it is these days lol.

I was reading an article about 4A Games recently who made Metro Last Light. One of the best looking titles out there. Small team in the Ukraine having to get any tech they could scrounge and smuggle it on from the States. Working on school chairs huddled up together in a small office. Not what you'd expect to see at say Activition or any big developer, yet they achieved something that looks really impressive. Dedication > Tools

 

[SharkyUK]

I was reading an article about 4A Games recently who made Metro Last Light. One of the best looking titles out there. Small team in the Ukraine having to get any tech they could scrounge and smuggle it on from the States. Working on school chairs huddled up together in a small office. Not what you'd expect to see at say Activition or any big developer, yet they achieved something that looks really impressive. Dedication > Tools

Totally agree, mate. And that's why I get annoyed when developers get accused of being lazy. Most developers are genuinely passionate about what they do (you have to be to last in the games industry!) and yet often don't have the best tools, hardware or environment to work with. Very little money from public sales make it back to root development; which is very sad. Anyways, apologies as I've taken this thread way off-topic.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Agreed, I know from keeping with the goings on and times (especially with hardware) that it's seemingly impossible to perfect everything before a game goes gold, or especially after in fact. New driver builds and updates interfere constantly, and I wouldn't envy trying to communicate with them all the time and put trust in people like Nvidia to notify them and get the latest game builds checked in time. In fact they do really well not to throw blame out a lot of the time, I'm betting it would be really easy to.



Speaking of NV, really trying to keep my hands off a 3rd Titan. It would only be if I moved up to a triple monitor solution mind, which I planned on doing eventually. 3 of these:

Using one now and they're awesome panels. Gaming at 5760x1200 demands a lot of GPU grunt and most importantly VRAM so this is where the 6GB available on the Titan's makes them shine above the rest. The one downside to having triple card setup is the fact they have to be sandwiched on top of one another. The Titan's run relatively cool but you still end up with excessive heat over a more conventional two way setup.





http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-051-AS&groupid=17&catid=510

Unfortunately though I can't see any recent benchmarks as most of the Tri SLi reviews are from launch back in February . There have been several driver updates since so would be handy to see just how well they scale now, as at the moment there's quite a few titles that don't seem to benefit from 3 cards, and in some cases slower.

As it stands there isn't much point at all having 3 cards at 1920x1200. In fact some might argue 2 is overkill for this resolution, excluding a few newer games.

BF3 as an example.

However soon as you put 5760 into the equation things get a lot more interesting:

Food for thought currently. I refuse to buy cheaper panels as I love the ASUS IPS so much. Might be a non starter, but I'm itching lol.

 

[Cookie]

Can I have some of your money please?

 

[Wilkeh]

You really need to get some 120hz monitors Scone, you have all this GPU grunt running games at 100+ fps but the monitor is holding you back and you're only seeing 60fps! The difference in gaming on 60hz compare to 120hz is like night and day!

 

[Silent_Scone]

Can I have some of your money please?

No.

You really need to get some 120hz monitors Scone, you have all this GPU grunt running games at 100+ fps but the monitor is holding you back and you're only seeing 60fps! The difference in gaming on 60hz compare to 120hz is like night and day!

It's not really night and day though, I had two 120Hz ASUS panels for 3D, but TN panels are such s**t quality. I had to RMA both of them for dead pixels. 120hz is pretty suave for 2d (as in desktop) I admit, but for gaming you don't really notice it, nor the response time.

The quality on IPS panels is just so much better. For triple monitor setups I'd be happy with a steady 60fps locked in. And in all honesty the truth of the matter is, once you put all the high settings on games you barely hit over 60fps as an average anyway.

 

[Wilkeh]

I only use mine for 2d gaming, 3d doesn't run at 120hz. I'm not sure what monitors you're looking at if you can't tell the difference between 60hz and 120 when gaming, it's butter smooth. Whenever I see people playing 60hz now it looks absolutely awful!

 

[Silent_Scone]

I meant 2D as in desktop and general use, not gaming. 3D with the 3DVision glasses uses 60hz per eye, therefore it does need to be 120hz refresh rate for it to work. I'm not denying it's an improvement, any refresh rate change is going to produce smoother results, but it's kind of moot when the panels aren't all that great. The colours are no where near as good as they are on IPS screens.


Need 120Hz IPS panels please. Certainly doesn't look awful in comparison, I honestly barely noticed it going back to 60Hz when gaming.


Also response times are pointless these days, there's no real accurate way of measuring it, but it's the length of time it takes the monitor to change from one colour to another.

the 120hz TN panel is 1ms response time, the DELL IPS is 6ms, and faster with it.

 

[Wilkeh]

Fair enough then mate, each to their own I suppose. I just don't see the benefit of running SLI Titans when your monitor only outputs 60hz. Surely a single Titan is going to run pretty much any game you throw at it higher than 60fps. Agree with the colours of IPS panels, there's nothing that can rival them in that area. Personally i'd rather have butter smooth over better colours, but that's just me.

The main reason I went to 120hz is because it gave me a competitive edge when playing CS 1.6, that's why at lot of the hardcore gamers still rocked CRT monitors before they introduced 120hz flat screens.

I knew how 3d monitors worked by the way, guess what I way saying came out wrong. I should of said you would need a 240hz monitor to run games at 120hz in 3d.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Fair enough then mate, each to their own I suppose. I just don't see the benefit of running SLI Titans when your monitor only outputs 60hz. Surely a single Titan is going to run pretty much any game you throw at it higher than 60fps. Agree with the colours of IPS panels, there's nothing that can rival them in that area. Personally i'd rather have butter smooth over better colours, but that's just me.

The main reason I went to 120hz is because it gave me a competitive edge when playing CS 1.6, that's why at lot of the hardcore gamers still rocked CRT monitors before they introduced 120hz flat screens.

I knew how 3d monitors worked by the way, guess what I way saying came out wrong. I should of said you would need a 240hz monitor to run games at 120hz in 3d.

Yes, but not consistently. I'm not saying 120hz TN panels aren't better for gaming FYI, that would be plain wrong. It is better, but the screens (or more directly panel quality) available at the moment most definitely are not. I'd take a high grade 8-10bit IPS panel over a TN panel any day of the week. You have to see a decent IPS panel along side to see what I mean. I realise it's always going to be down to personal prefs.

A lot of people I've read on forums don't particularly like the smooth 'effect' you get. Some games are just best played at 60hz. On the desktop however where you're going to see a constant 120fps, it makes everything seem really crisp. I do miss that!

 

[SharkyUK]

3 Titans? Mike. F**k off. That is all. Do it.

 

[Munson]

Would a Titan be appreciably quicker than GTX580 SLI?

 

[Silent_Scone]

Not really dude. Its faster by a margin. See the 590 results here. That is the problem having an Sli setup, it takes a while for a single card to come along to be a worthy upgrade.

Although less power consumption and heat are plus points.

http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan/15.html

 

[Munson]

Hmmm. Ok cheers. I'll probably stick with what I have then for now.

It's just that Crysis 3 is dipping into 30fps territory at times, and no way am I knocking the settings back lol.

 

[Silent_Scone]

So did mine on a single Titan, but it was an early build and it has been patched since.

 

[JaredHasNoBrain]

Looking at the FPS chart it seems that the 3x 7970's are the best bang for buck, I just looked online and found one selling for £200 so around £200-£250 per card compared to the £700+ for the Titan and the GTX 690.
Its only a couple of frames here and there and your eyes will not detect 196fps to 195fps.

If I had the money I would get three 7970's and a huge fan lol

 

[Silent_Scone]

I wouldn't. Crossfire is s**t. That's a blanket statement yes, but it's true. Your bang for buck rests purely on those cards scaling, otherwise you're left with paperweights, which is the end result more often than not. SLi isn't perfect but it's a whole lot better than Crossfire.

 

[Munson]

Any opinions on 21:9 2560x1080? Seems epic from what I've seen. Both Dell and LG have a 29" model

 

[Silent_Scone]

I know what screen you're looking at lol. I'm not sure as the pixel density is obviously like stretching a rubber band over that. Would have to see one in the flesh. Quite cheap considering though I thought, I was considering one instead of NVSurround. Not quite as good but you'd lose the annoying bezels in the middle at least.

 

[Munson]

1920x1080 16:9 27" = 82ppi

2560x1080 21:9 29" = 96ppi


I wouldn't be losing out on that score. The field of view seems awesome, and as you say, they are very cheap. IPS also.

Seriously tempted to buy one, along with 2x GTX 780

 

[Silent_Scone]

Yeah, reviews seem good. I might go down that path and save a few quid. Although I do love the PA248Q loads, it's such a nice screen. There's a new 249 with 10bit too... mmm.

 

[SharkyUK]

Looking at the FPS chart it seems that the 3x 7970's are the best bang for buck, I just looked online and found one selling for £200 so around £200-£250 per card compared to the £700+ for the Titan and the GTX 690.
Its only a couple of frames here and there and your eyes will not detect 196fps to 195fps.

If I had the money I would get three 7970's and a huge fan lol

I wouldn't. Crossfire is s**t. That's a blanket statement yes, but it's true. Your bang for buck rests purely on those cards scaling, otherwise you're left with paperweights, which is the end result more often than not. SLi isn't perfect but it's a whole lot better than Crossfire.

Aren't there quite a few issues with SLI'd 7970's and 7990's at the moment, especially when it comes to overheating and dodgy performance? I'm not knocking them... they seem great cards, but I've heard a few horror stories. Admittedly, we've had a few issues here, too, hence why we roll with SLI'd nVidia workstations.

 

[Silent_Scone]

They still suffer from Micro stuttering big time, way more than SLi does. In fact there was a recent update from AMD promising drivers to fix Crossfire issues recently. I'm not really up on it as I just gave up a few generations ago with AMD in general. Had massive issues with their powerplay feature which would keep clock speeds at 2D when playing games. They never really fixed that either, so I had a pair of bricks until Sapphire released a work around BIOS.

Again Nvidia are far from perfect, in fact the latest drivers they've released have been damaging a select few cards, and just generally the buggiest ones I've seen in a long time. But AMD fall short of the mark every time in my experience, and I've never had a card from them which has functioned the way it should in Crossfire. There are probably people who are perfectly happy with their AMD cards, and the last few models might well be far improved. I just see no real need to jump ship again at the moment, especially when running multi GPUs!

 

[Silent_Scone]

I've decided not to get a 3rd Titan, regardless if I change screens. Even though I've the cash I can't justify it, it's wasteful. Two Titans will do for now, also the hit on performance with the DELL UltraSharp U2913 at 2560x1080 won't be anywhere near as massive. It also still has a USB 3.0 hub which is what I love about the ASUS.

Another reason to avoid a 3rd Titan is that my PX79 Pro motherboard layout would mean I'd have to lose my Creative sound card which I really don't want to do. On-board audio sucks.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-066-DE

 

[Munson]

I think 2560x1080 is a good halfway house. No need for three Titans, and no black bezels between each monitor. Way cheaper than triple monitor, and IMO arguably better looking, as its just one super wide panel. However, am I really going to drop £1600 just so I can max Crysis 3 and Metro at 60fps?. Currently rolling around 40fps in both games at 1920x1080, which is very playable, but not maxing vysnc makes me feel a bit of a hobo

 

[Silent_Scone]

Would you go Titan SLi? To be fair, I'm a bit concerned as to performance with even this setup at that res, but will see. It certainly beats NVSurround as two just isn't enough to max out all settings. There's no real way to know for sure until I've got it here! Just provisionally sold my PA248Q to Sharky.

 

[Wilkeh]

I think 2560x1080 is a good halfway house. No need for three Titans, and no black bezels between each monitor. Way cheaper than triple monitor, and IMO arguably better looking, as its just one super wide panel. However, am I really going to drop £1600 just so I can max Crysis 3 and Metro at 60fps?. Currently rolling around 40fps in both games at 1920x1080, which is very playable, but not maxing vysnc makes me feel a bit of a hobo

The first thing I do on any game I play is to disable Vsync. I always find it horrendous for first person shooters, the input lag makes them unplayable IMO. The only benefit I can see is that it makes screen tearing redundant.

 

[Munson]

Titan is just too expensive to justify for me personally. From what I can see, 780 offers most of the performance for 2/3 the cost. Tian pulls out at bigger resolutions though so of course it have the advantage here, but they'll probably be old tech (lol) by the time Battlefield 4 is released.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Nothing new coming out of Nvidia's pipeline till next year really mate. Titan will be on top as far as they're concerned till then, won't be beat for sometime. But knowing what I do now, I would of had the 780s in a heart beat given the margin between them.

​Maybe. Dunno.

 

[Wilkeh]

Do they have no plans for a 790?

 

[Silent_Scone]

Barely rumoured at the moment, I always discount multi GPU cards anyway as they're a hash. Single GPUs are the way forward.

Spec comparison between 7** series

 

[Munson]

TBF 690 is very highly regarded? I've read from numerous sources that it pretty much scales as 680 SLI.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Yeh first of its kind but I still dont like the idea

 

[SharkyUK]

Just provisionally sold my PA248Q to Sharky.

MINE! Want! Thank you

 

[Silent_Scone]

MINE! Want! Thank you

Lol no worries dude just sent you pm

 

[Silent_Scone]

Just FYI I don't recommend anyone install the latest 320.18 drivers from Nvidia. I rolled back when I heard they were having problems, but have just had some weird magica glitching myself, using driver fusion to completely remove them and then rolling back to 314 drivers.


Won't be happy if they've bricked one of the Titans.

 

[l33th3tr33]

Got 2 more 23" monitors to go with my 24 in the middle and forgot to get a dp adapter! Luckily it comes today. Can't f**king wait for eyefinity on dirt 3!

 

[Silent_Scone]

Just ordered the DELL. Should be here tomorrow

 

[Munson]

Sweet! I look forward to a full review.

 

[Wilkeh]

I've decided not to get a 3rd Titan, regardless if I change screens. Even though I've the cash I can't justify it, it's wasteful. Two Titans will do for now, also the hit on performance with the DELL UltraSharp U2913 at 2560x1080 won't be anywhere near as massive. It also still has a USB 3.0 hub which is what I love about the ASUS.

Another reason to avoid a 3rd Titan is that my PX79 Pro motherboard layout would mean I'd have to lose my Creative sound card which I really don't want to do. On-board audio sucks.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-066-DE

Does that not have an IPS panel? The LG Ultrawide uses IPS, looks sweet as well

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/29-l...d-hdmi-displayport-dvi-2560x1080-300cd-m2-50m