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Geek Culture / Shiny graphics card.

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CJB
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Joined: 10th Feb 2004
Location: Essex, UK
Posted: 28th Nov 2014 16:23
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I have just installed a graphics card in my machine (3.2Ghz PhenomII quad core, 8Gb ram) having stuck with the on-board HD4250 for the last two years. Picked up a GTX 460 on e-bay for £21 (all I can afford), but O.M.G! I am blown away by the difference in performance. I can play just about anything now with details maxed out. With a Gb of dedicated DDR5 ram (256bit interface) and 336 CUDA cores, it actually means I can play with FPSCR at last! Woohoo!

Uzmadesign
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Ortu
DBPro Master
17
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Joined: 21st Nov 2007
Location: Austin, TX
Posted: 28th Nov 2014 16:54
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Nice! I love upgrades

I won a gtx 770 in a fan fiction writing contest a few months ago but haven't been able to install it until I upgrade my power supply to support it which is sadly not in the budget at the moment

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Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 28th Nov 2014 18:44
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I currently have a Radeon R9 280x which does a really nice job as well

I would love to get a GTX 980ti though

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Seppuku Arts
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20
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Joined: 18th Aug 2004
Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 28th Nov 2014 22:45
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Also running a GTX770 here, it's a damn nice card. Had a GTX650ti installed on here before that (but it went faulty).

But getting upgrades is nice. My gaming PC before this was a laptop running a GeForce 9550M, so my desktop PC was a big upgrade and the jump from a 650ti to a 770 was pretty freaking sweet too.

However, the price of my 770 could have bought me a PS4. Some of the budget lower end cards actually give a pretty staggering performance when you consider what you're paying. Which is why I loved my 650ti.

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Clonkex
Forum Vice President
14
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Joined: 20th May 2010
Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW, Australia
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 05:52 Edited at: 29th Nov 2014 06:00
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Quote: "Picked up a GTX 460 on e-bay for £21 (all I can afford), but O.M.G! I am blown away by the difference in performance. I can play just about anything now with details maxed out."


lolol clearly you don't play many modern games then! Not to say it's not a worthy upgrade... I mean your CPU would be the bottleneck if you went any higher with your GPU, and ANY dedicated GPU is going to be way way better than an integrated chip

My graphics card history is this (counting the first PC our family ever owned since my brother and I always used it for games):

- Nvidia Riva TNT 2 32MB (and once we figured out we could install PC User's tweaked Omega drivers, boy did that ever improve stability on Windows 98! We used to push that little card right to limit, playing games at 5fps because we were so young and just loved games )
- Nvidia GeForce 9400GT 512MB (first new PC I ever bought... only 2009 so not long ago)
- AMD A8 APU (forget exact model, had dedicated GPU chip, came in laptop, caused me to never want AMD ever again)
- Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 1GB (my brother's after he upgraded - I'm older than he is but he always buys PC upgrades before me)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 1GB (again, my brother's - an absolute monster of a card, it was, genuinely sounded like a jet taking off when you pushed it hard and regularly ran at 80+ degrees C)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 1GB (bought from eBay - ASUS DirectCU edition)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB (bought from eBay - pretty plain Palit edition, basically reference, but a very good card and well worth the upgrade!)

My brother currently uses a GTX 770 2GB (Gainward Phantom, very cool card!) and it's only slightly better than mine. Generally he manages to find better settings for our games before I can, and then I just copy his settings.

Next upgrade for me will either be a decent case with a side-window (still using my very plain Thermaltake WingRS 101 from 2009) or an i7 K-edition (currently got an i5 non-K) with an aftermarket cooler (possibly liquid).


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Dar13
16
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Joined: 12th May 2008
Location: Microsoft VisualStudio 2010 Professional
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 08:19
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@Clonkex
You bought a very very early APU and experienced problems so you're writing off the whole company? Seems a bit premature. The AMD R9 280 has better performance for about $30 cheaper. The main issue AMD has are its drivers and apparently they're undergoing an effort to revamp both their Linux and Windows drivers.

I'm running a Radeon HD 7870 and it's handled everything I can throw at it without complaint.

Before that I had a GeForce 550Ti and before that I had a GeForce 210. Dont bother buying anything below x60, it's just not worth it.

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wattywatts
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Joined: 25th May 2009
Location: Michigan
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 08:50
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Anybody remember the voodoo cards? I loved those
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Seppuku Arts
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Joined: 18th Aug 2004
Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 11:01
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With writing off a company, the GeForce that died on me was a Zotac, not gonna assume they're a poor manufacturer, but I decided to replace it with something I know and trust and that's ASUS. Didn't put off of Nvida though. My GTX 770 is beautiful, though very chunky lol.

With anything manufactured there's a failure rate, but if your first product with a manufacturer dies, you're less likely to go with them again, this is the case for me with Acer and Zotac. Reason being there's less of a perceived risk with me going to ASUS and Lenovo, as I've got products of the it's that haven't messed up.

And with AMD, they do good products, though in my PC, I went for their CPU, my cheaper than the Intel equivalent and still works brilliantly for I need it for, amazing how much multitasking 6 cores let's you do. :p I'm running an AMD FX 6300 3.5GHZ.

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Wolf
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Joined: 8th Nov 2007
Location: Luxemburg
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 12:58
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Quote: "the GeForce that died on me was a Zotac, not gonna assume they're a poor manufacturer,"


not at all, I run a Zotac GTX 560 for a couple years now and it performs very well, even after all I have done to it.



-Wolf

"When I contradict myself, I am telling the truth"
"absurdity has become necessity"
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Dar13
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Location: Microsoft VisualStudio 2010 Professional
Posted: 29th Nov 2014 17:45
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@Seppuku
I'm running an AMD FX-8350 @ 4.5GHz(?). Not sure yet if I'll stick with AMD or not, I may just wait for the next generation of chips to come out. Intel has some really cool stuff coming out soon though. ASUS is a good company but I hear their RMA process could be better.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 29th Nov 2014 20:53 Edited at: 29th Nov 2014 20:54
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Quote: "Anybody remember the voodoo cards? I loved those "


I had a voodoo3 3500, the one with the video pod thingy and the first card I ever had which required additional power connector.

Can't recall my first graphics card, probably some kinda 4mb S3 savage card.


"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds
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Clonkex
Forum Vice President
14
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Joined: 20th May 2010
Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW, Australia
Posted: 1st Dec 2014 12:42
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Quote: "You bought a very very early APU and experienced problems so you're writing off the whole company?"


It wasn't just that, it was a generally terrible experience. Their drivers were crappy and unreliable, their drivers installer was crappy and unreliable (it refused to even detect the GPU without hacks). There were other things, like their website not actually working a lot of the time; even minor complaints like that add up, and in the end we were very glad to be back with the straightforward and reliable Nvidia

Quote: "Anybody remember the voodoo cards? I loved those"


Not that old, sorry...


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CJB
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Joined: 10th Feb 2004
Location: Essex, UK
Posted: 2nd Dec 2014 16:12
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I had a voodoo banshee! The glide drivers were sweet!

I discovered my new bargain GTX 460 is some kind of OC version. GPU was at 800Mhz, and memory at 1800. According to Nvidia site, the stock settings are 675 and 1350. I tuned it down using afterburner as it was getting a bit warm (nudging 80 degrees!). Thinking about getting a custom cooler for it now (something like the Arctic Twin Turbo II).

Uzmadesign
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Yodaman Jer
User Banned
Posted: 2nd Dec 2014 19:24
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Clonkex:

AMD have gotten a LOT better over the years, I'm running an FX-8350 for my processor and R9 Radeon 280x for graphics. I've had no problems other than with my TV screen itself, which I use as a monitor. I know, bad decision, lol.

But other than that (which isn't even AMD's fault), there's been no issues, and the drivers work just fine. Sure, AMD are a little more power-hungry, but I only ever u se this computer for development/game playing, which is not very often. It's on for maybe 2-3 hours a day, whereas my iMac is on almost non-stop.


Sign up, why don'tcha?
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Clonkex
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Joined: 20th May 2010
Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW, Australia
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 01:02
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Quote: "AMD have gotten a LOT better over the years"


Perhaps, but they definitely don't keep up with the times as well as Nvidia does. And besides, the damage is done: I never want to risk AMD again (and why would I, when Nvidia does it so well?).


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Dar13
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Joined: 12th May 2008
Location: Microsoft VisualStudio 2010 Professional
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 04:34
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Quote: " Perhaps, but they definitely don't keep up with the times as well as Nvidia does. And besides, the damage is done: I never want to risk AMD again (and why would I, when Nvidia does it so well?)."

AMD was beating Nvidia in performance until the 900 series came out.

You never even had a discrete AMD GPU, you had an on-die GPU. Those are totally different in both architecture and maturity of drivers.

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Ortu
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Location: Austin, TX
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 17:57
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I've been running an AMD GPU for the last couple of years and have had no issues with it. I like them, though i still stick with Intel for board and cpu

Xbone and PS4 are both running AMD APUs

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TheComet
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Joined: 18th Oct 2007
Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 18:21
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Has anyone got a 4k monitor? Is it recommendable?

I like offending people. People who get offended should be offended. -- Linus Torvalds
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Seppuku Arts
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Joined: 18th Aug 2004
Location: Cambridgeshire, England
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 22:50
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I don't know how 4k monitors are, but I've looked at some of the 4k TV's and I would say the resolution is fantastic, they are pretty mental. The image is insanely crisp, however, there's not a lot of 4k content out there and it does require an even heftier internet connections to stream 4k content.

I don't know how well this translates for video games, because a part of the quality in video games relies on texture resolution and compression, so the edges might be insanely crisp, but may not benefit as much on a 4k TV as 4k video would.

However, I am tempted by one of these.

http://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-34UC97

I just need moar money.


Oh and, talking of insane, why not upgrade to one of these?

105" 5k resolution curved ultra wide Smart TV

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TheComet
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Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 4th Dec 2014 23:01
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Okay, I was thinking of upgrading my 1024x768 monitor to a 4K monitor, and so far the only negative feedback I've heard is that the icons become way too small in applications. Gaming is fine as long as you have a powerful enough GPU.

I like offending people. People who get offended should be offended. -- Linus Torvalds
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wattywatts
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Location: Michigan
Posted: 5th Dec 2014 00:15
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Quote: "Has anyone got a 4k monitor? Is it recommendable?"

My monitor only goes up to 1920 x 1080 and I can't see pixels, 4k folks must have some amazing eyes.
As for TV's though,
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Clonkex
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Location: Northern Tablelands, NSW, Australia
Posted: 5th Dec 2014 03:05
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Quote: "I don't know how 4k monitors are, but I've looked at some of the 4k TV's and I would say the resolution is fantastic, they are pretty mental. The image is insanely crisp"


+1. I've looked at 4k teles in Harvey Norman and they are just GORGEOUS! Can't comment on 4k monitors, but IMO they're a bit pointless at the moment.


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Dark Java Dude 64
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Joined: 21st Sep 2010
Location: Neither here nor there nor anywhere
Posted: 5th Dec 2014 04:00
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Quote: "4k folks must have some amazing eyes."
Buying a 4k television gives you increased vision?

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