sgloux3470

It's like a girlfriend with borderline personality disorder.
You ignore the artifacts because the performance is just so good and the first few times the display driver crashes you think nothing of it. But eventually you come to terms with it. Resetting to stock settings is always tough, but you have to be man enough to look your GPU in the eye and say it's over.

So much misinformation in one thread.
 
Ethanol is safe to use, provided that you are using concentrated ethanol (i.e rubbing alcohol) and not using vodka or whatever.  
 
Ethanol is slightly less volatile than isopropyl alcohol, but the difference between the two is trivial.  Dampen a non-fibrous cloth (coffee filters work best, paper towel works second best) and wipe it down.  By the time you finish wiping it will be evaporated completely.  If you want to be really safe, give it 2-3 minutes before putting the new heatsink on.

My room isn't insulated properly and so the cold leeches through the wall.  Previously my 8370 kept me warm like an ugly girl.  Now I fear I will lose the foot...
 
 

I've been using it to monitor temperatures since I trust it over everything else right now.
 
However for overclocking I am using the BIOS.
 
That said, Ryzen Master seems totally fine.  

Best advice is to just ignore anyone who uses the word bottleneck.
 
 

CPU bottleneck.
 
Overclock CPU and memory to get higher FPS if you really need it.  
 
For memory just enable XMP if it isn't already.  

3600 or 3700X would be faster but I don't think you'd see enough benefit to justify the cost.

Get 2080 ti black edition.
 
Don't waste money putting a water cooler on it.
 
I bought a black edition and overclocked it in the range of 1850-1950 MHz out of the box with temps sitting around 75C
 
Threw a hybrid cooler on it and while the temps sit around 55 C under full load, it's pretty much maxing out the power limit at ~1900-2000 MHz.
 
So really you have two options towards the 2080 ti
 
1. Buy black edition.  Run it at 50% fan speed, OC it to pretty good levels and spend $1000 USD
2. Buy a higher end card that can flash the highest power limit BIOS onto it and put it under water and maybe get 2100 MHz for an extra 5% performance.  This will cost you around $1400 USD.

My general recommendation for SLI or not is as follows:
 
If you're playing at a resolution higher than 1440p, SLI will be a significant boost in most games.
 
If you're trying to play at 1440p or lower at higher framerates you probably want a faster single GPU.
 
All that being said, a 1080 would be a weak upgrade.  You'll spend $400ish for one for ~25% performance when you could instead spend $600ish for double the performance with a 1080Ti/2080/Vega II.  A second 1070 would end up being significantly more cost effective than both options of course but with the caveats that come with SLI.  Some games won't support it, some will require Nvidia inspector and in other cases you'll be CPU limited anyway and won't see the benefit.
 
It does when a used 1070 is $250 and a 1080ti or equivalent is more than double that.  You could get 4 1070's for one 2080ti lol.

My general recommendation for SLI or not is as follows:
 
If you're playing at a resolution higher than 1440p, SLI will be a significant boost in most games.
 
If you're trying to play at 1440p or lower at higher framerates you probably want a faster single GPU.
 
All that being said, a 1080 would be a weak upgrade.  You'll spend $400ish for one for ~25% performance when you could instead spend $600ish for double the performance with a 1080Ti/2080/Vega II.  A second 1070 would end up being significantly more cost effective than both options of course but with the caveats that come with SLI.  Some games won't support it, some will require Nvidia inspector and in other cases you'll be CPU limited anyway and won't see the benefit.
 
It does when a used 1070 is $250 and a 1080ti or equivalent is more than double that.  You could get 4 1070's for one 2080ti lol.

Assuming you did so in 2014 when the card launched you would have 1070 level performance for nearly 2 years before the 1070 came out.  (Or just shy of a year before the 980Ti came out for the same cost as 2x 970's) Performance is close but 970 SLI does edge out the 1070 slightly, however the one caveat is that the 970 had gimped VRAM which would mean that in some titles you might not be able to use as high of texture quality settings.
 
As far as 2014/2015 era SLI support things were good.  Dragon age Inquisition, Shadow of mordor, Alien Isolation, Advanced Warfare, The Evil Within, Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Assassins Creed Unity, Thief, Titanfall, Lords of the Fallen, Witcher 3, MGSV Phantom Pain, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Evolve, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Battlefield Hardline, Just Cause 3, Rainbow Six Siege, Dying Light, Battlefront, Fallout 4 and Black Ops 3 is a quick list of AAA titles that supported SLI at the time. 

A few notable games that do not support SLI from that time period are Batman Arkham Knight and Wolfenstein New Order.   Some of those games required external tweaking to work but most of them from my memory worked out of the box just fine.
 
That is a pretty comprehensive list of AAA graphically demanding titles from 2014/2015.  At 1080p I would suspect most of those titles would run just fine on a single 970.  At the time I would have recommended 970 SLI for a 1440p target.
 
 
Many of those games would have benefitted significantly from the extra performance from SLI.  And obviously 1070 level performance is still excellent for 1080p even in games today so you could have still been using the same setup and playing most AAA games now just over 4 years later.
 
 
 
Nvidia is killing SLI because they want to jack up prices.  SLI constrained them - the 980 Ti could not be $800 because 970 SLI would get the same performance for much cheaper. When they removed SLI from the 1060 they could suddenly jack up the price of the 1080 to $699 when you could have theoretically bought 2x 1060's for $400-$500 and beaten it by ~10%.
 
And they did the same with Turing: instead of being able to spend ~$1200 for 2x 2070's to handily beat the 2080Ti your only option is spend the same money on a 2080Ti. 1080 SLI beats the 2080ti and 2070 SLI would have done better.
 
Also worth noting that SLI gains double the benefit of overclocking for obvious reasons.  

It's not dead.  People don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
 
I got 80-90% scaling on my SLI 980 rig in the vast majority of games that needed the extra GPU power for 4k/60 FPS.  Crossfire has less support and 90-95% scaling.  There are some games that either artifact heavily with SLI or won't utilize it at all and there are a few more of those every year, but you can still play most AAA titles with it.  
 
The key is running the game at higher fidelity/resolution rather than trying to push high FPS.  You will reach CPU limitations if you're using SLI at 1440p with most cards. 
 
 

It's not dead.  People don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
 
I got 80-90% scaling on my SLI 980 rig in the vast majority of games that needed the extra GPU power for 4k/60 FPS.  Crossfire has less support and 90-95% scaling.  There are some games that either artifact heavily with SLI or won't utilize it at all and there are a few more of those every year, but you can still play most AAA titles with it.  
 
The key is running the game at higher fidelity/resolution rather than trying to push high FPS.  You will reach CPU limitations if you're using SLI at 1440p with most cards. 
 
 

It's like a girlfriend with borderline personality disorder.
You ignore the artifacts because the performance is just so good and the first few times the display driver crashes you think nothing of it. But eventually you come to terms with it. Resetting to stock settings is always tough, but you have to be man enough to look your GPU in the eye and say it's over.

Set a framerate cap of 144 in Fortnight.
 
This will remove any stuttering you might notice when the framerate fluctuates between 200 to 300 to 140 FPS.
 
You won't push the card to 99% in Fortnight on any CPU.  Once you start getting into the hundreds of FPS everything becomes CPU limited.  

IIRC max display resolution refers to the individual output ports, not the max total for the card.  So if you have 4 ports you can run 4 monitors no problem, but they will be limited by the connector type. (i.e display port, HDMI, DVI-D)  980 has 3x DP so you won't have any issues.
 
 

IIRC max display resolution refers to the individual output ports, not the max total for the card.  So if you have 4 ports you can run 4 monitors no problem, but they will be limited by the connector type. (i.e display port, HDMI, DVI-D)  980 has 3x DP so you won't have any issues.
 
 

Make sure it's running in Exclusive Fullscreen.  It's also possible it is using the wrong refresh rate when you change resolutions for whatever reason.  So even if the framerate is 80 if the refresh rate is 24 it might cause problems.

Lack of SLI support is a meme. The people perpetuating it are benchmarkers who only use SLI for reviews and people who have no real experience with it at all.
 
Almost every major game supports SLI either officially or with a simple fix. Some recent examples include Black Ops 4, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy XV, Destiny 2, Battlefield V, Monster Hunter World, Far Cry 5, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Dawn of War 3, Titanfall 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands Dishonored 2, Prey, Agents of Mayhem and possibly HITMAN 2. (First game works in DX11 mode, I'd assume the second does too but that doesn't always pan out.)
 
It's a bit of a mixed bag with DX12/Vulkan.  Titles like DOOM works with SLI in OpenGL but not Vulkan.  Rise of the Tomb Raider supports SLI in DX11 and DX12.  Shadow only in DX12. 
 
In recent years the only a few notable games have lacked SLI such as the AC Origins and Odyssey titles.  Wolfenstein TNO and TNC as well.  
 
Out of the box SLI support has been a bit shitty but Nvidia Inspector can fix most AAA games. Usually it's as simple as googling "GAME NAME SLI PROFILE".
 
Nvidia phasing out SLI isn't a good thing for gamers.  I spent $1500 CAD on 980 SLI in early 2015 and it still is nipping at the heels of a 1080Ti/2080 in most situations.  Nearly 4 years out of this set up and quite frankly if I stuck to 1440p I wouldn't need an upgrade for several more years.  If I had bought the highest end card at the time I'd be sitting at 1070 level performance with a 980Ti/TitanX.  
 
 
 

R5 1600+ I would consider high end for gaming, since they generally perform somewhere between the i5 and i7 depending on title. 
 
The only situation where you really need to care about the difference between Intel or Ryzen, as far as gaming is concerned, is with high refresh rate gaming.  If you're looking to push 100+ FPS at all times then Intel is somewhat better at that.  
 
I would recommend the R5 1600 over the 1700 though. (Maybe the 1600x if you don't want to overclock)  It's quite a bit cheaper and for the most part it will offer an identical experience.  
 
 
 

My understanding with most SLI scaling benchmarks is they ignore the existence of the CPU bottleneck.  At 4K scaling is much better for dual GPU, so it's cool to see it working up to 4 GPU.

Personally I avoid texture settings that say upfront they need 6+GB to work properly.  Usually what that means is although some areas of the game will work just fine on 4GB there are still going to be scenarios where the game wants to use more vRAM and can't.
 
However otherwise 4GB VRAM limit is rarely an issue for me, even at 4K.  There have been more recent titles where I have to lower settings down a bit more to avoid stutterring completely but I generally have to do that for performance reasons anyway.

At 1440p I think 4GB is still pretty solid aside from some games where they tell you upfront not to use it if you don't have 6GB+.
 
Shadow of Mordor I think is one of the few games where it says that but it doesn't actually cause issues.  Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Mass Effect Andromeda and a few others definitely do cripple the 4GB VRAM if you have textures maxed out.
 
It amazes me how many tech reviewers don't understand this.  The sad thing is it would be amazingly useful information to know what the minimum vRAM for certain settings is at a specific resolution to avoid memory related stuttering but all they do is run the game on a Titan and say "Yup looks like 6 GB is good."  I have yet to see any games exceed around 6 GB either outside of crazy high resolutions (8K for example).

Personally I avoid texture settings that say upfront they need 6+GB to work properly.  Usually what that means is although some areas of the game will work just fine on 4GB there are still going to be scenarios where the game wants to use more vRAM and can't.
 
However otherwise 4GB VRAM limit is rarely an issue for me, even at 4K.  There have been more recent titles where I have to lower settings down a bit more to avoid stutterring completely but I generally have to do that for performance reasons anyway.

At 1440p I think 4GB is still pretty solid aside from some games where they tell you upfront not to use it if you don't have 6GB+.
 
Shadow of Mordor I think is one of the few games where it says that but it doesn't actually cause issues.  Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Mass Effect Andromeda and a few others definitely do cripple the 4GB VRAM if you have textures maxed out.
 
It amazes me how many tech reviewers don't understand this.  The sad thing is it would be amazingly useful information to know what the minimum vRAM for certain settings is at a specific resolution to avoid memory related stuttering but all they do is run the game on a Titan and say "Yup looks like 6 GB is good."  I have yet to see any games exceed around 6 GB either outside of crazy high resolutions (8K for example).

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-ab350-gaming3.pdf

Find your memory stick in question and try inputting the timings/voltages listed here.  The Module PIN should be on the box that came with the RAM or the stick itself.

Buy the GPU.

Don't waste money on a CPU upgrade unless you're running a high refresh rate monitor, and even then getting really fast RAM is more beneficial for pushing those higher frames.