Lildirt

Well, I'm going to go dig through my bin of excess power supplies and see if I can't find one that can power just the video card. Maybe I won't fry anything. I'll try a different card first. EDIT: Guess I'll be picking up a power supply sometime tomorrow then. Shame. Couldn't find anything that could actually lift the load.

The BIOS does not post at all. The "blackscreen" is the lack of output to the monitor period. No BIOS logo. No operating system logo. Nothing.

@Atmos Yes. I have disabled the on-board video and tried to boot with the card at least once. I moved it over to the onboard to check and it was indeed off. It previously had a different video card in it. It works with one of the functional 7950s but does not work with the R9 390X.

Hi there everyone. I picked up an R9 390X recently as an upgrade to my old HD 7950s in crossfire. As one of them started spitting and sputtering towards it's death, I decided to just upgrade entirely. I'm struggling with rather odd issues at this point though. I popped it in one of my systems (i5-4670k, Gigabyte Z97MX-GAMING 5, 16GB DDR3-1333, OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W PSU). Black screen. I troubleshooted for a while and decided to shove it in another machine (FX-8350, 760GMA-P34 FX, 8GB DDR3-1333, CX430 (430W) PSU) and it worked like a charm! I was able to boot up and log in with no problem. Unfortunately, the FX-8350 machine is a Linux box, so that isn't going to help me. What is going on here? I've validated that the 600W PSU has two 12V rails and it's 600W (versus the other one, the 430W, which it managed to boot to a desktop with), so I have my doubts the PSU has anything to do with the machine not posting. I have also tried to force as many Legacy and UEFI options as possible (trying my best to originally boot with legacy, then later trying with UEFI). It doesn't boot with the video card regardless of legacy or UEFI setting. I've tried other things before that, such as trying all PCIe ports My BIOS is currently at version F6, which is noted on Gigabyte's website to be the latest official version. Won't lie, I'm a little desperate at this point. I've been hacking away at this for some time now and I'd like to see the bloody thing work in a way that's beneficial to me (so, in that machine). Thanks for your time.

Surprisingly, VRAM is not the bottleneck. I'm closely monitoring resource usage and it is definitely something to do with the CPU over everything else. Even when using the nVidia card for encoding the video, I still see CPU usage pinned at 100%. Another annoying thing, the nVidia card (a GT 520 that I found!) is so old that I can't seem to get much information on it while it is running (from OHW anyway). I might have to find some cheap 1-bay (since that's all I have free and I have nowhere to mount it if I used a riser .. besides tape ) GTX-series card just for it to be able to pretend be relevant. I can't get this CPU to go over 4.7GHz without crashing and burning ("A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor" BSOD). As well, if I went any higher with voltage, I'm pretty likely to compete with the sun for heat output. So this CPU is basically going as far as it can possibly go at this point in time. Also, CrossFire 970's? It seems like I really am doomed with this, though. I'll keep going at it though. Maybe I'll hit something. Yeah. I had thought of evading gamestream entirely. However, I'm really not sure how to do it. I want to be able to use the same mouse, keyboard, and everything that I have on my main system. Any keyboard I have around here (so basically a pile of rubber-dome keyboards and a couple of Romer-G keyboards) doesn't come close to the beauty that is my IBM Model M (all the way from the early 90s ). I love the convenience of being able to alt-tab on my main machine and do something else entirely without actually having to use a Windows platform. As I mentioned before, I play my games on a Linux client. I use Linux for everything except games. The system is literally within eyeshot. It's maybe six feet away from me. I just don't like the fact of having to basically pay for two bloody setups just to play games and be able to do everything else I do with a computer. Also, I have an UpDesk for my main rig (so I can stand or sit whenever I want, duh), which I doesn't have enough room for a second setup. I'd also understand the argument of something like a KVM or just changing monitor outputs. I considered this too, but it isn't viable. Again, I like being able to just alt-tab back to whatever I was doing. This requires me to also merge the audio I/O of both machines (so I can hear my TS3 music bot and the game at the same time, or be able to participate in a call and the game at the same time), which I'm not sure I can do (USB amp which my headphones are connected to). Even if I sat down and figured ALL of this out, I would likely be limited by my Model M (and I cannot believe I'm saying this). The fact of the matter is that my Model M requires a PS/2 keyboard connection, which often freaks the hell out if it's swapped randomly (or requires a restart .. sometimes?). I could probably find a KVM that supports DVI-D from my monitor, a PS/2 keyboard, and a couple of USB devices, but it still isn't quite like running it on a normal system. I don't always play my games actively. I'm a big MMO player, so I will often sit around and just grind levels while working on a programming project or something. Having to flip a switch every twenty seconds or so just to be able to .. I dunno .. craft anything .. is kind of stupid to me. One other option I considered was something like Synergy (here's a link of basically all of my options for accomplishing this specific goal; if it's open-source and I can build it myself, it's an option; yes, I care about FOSS ), which I recall talking to Wendel (from TekSyndicate) about during one of his livestreams. I think, based on my knowledge of the application, I could turn one of my monitors into the monitor for the Windows machine and create a virtual monitor on the Linux machine to access the Windows machine (mouse inputs over LAN, yikes). I've got a couple more options, but Steam's in-home streaming REALLY makes it easy for me to do. I'm lazy, basically. .. but using the Synergy-like approach presents more issues. Then I also realized that I'd need to somehow make it so I could play games on my main monitor instead of one of the weird ones off to the right or left that are just kind of there (and not meant to be focused on forever; random note, I have three monitors).

@HPWebcamAble You've been a big help. I'm basically a giant idiot, haha. Thanks for holding my hand. It has helped me think about my setup a lot. I'm going to admit I actually was pulling an all-nighter when I posted this (I was really tired). I just woke back up from a 6-hour sleep session and basically all of this made sense to me when I did. Sorry about wasting your time here, but you've definitely helped tired-me out. Yeah. I've found basically nothing on this. I'm probably going to ask around on the Steam forum or IRC channel. I need some information. I think this is what I was originally trying to answer when I posted this thread, actually. Just the problem with the AMD cards, not if I could circumvent using them. Of course I can do it this way! I can pick the bloody graphics adapter! What am I doing! I claim to know what the hell I'm doing with a computer, good lord. I tried software encoding before. No, not a chance. The iGPU buried it; it was absolutely terrible. I didn't realize you were hinting at using software encoding (again my reply was 2 hours before I went to bed from all-nighter), but I'm just going to evade this concept at all cost (use it as a last resort). Fun fact, I apparently got brave when I was as tired as I was. I managed to get a 4.9GHz stable overclock on the i5-4670k. I don't know how I thought that was going to help me. I've apparently got the option to overclock the iGPU as well.. maybe that's worth looking into as well? I'll try that and, if it fails me, I'll just pick up a nVidia GPU in my next hardware shipment. The 7950s are VERY capable. They're about -2% of a GTX 980 when crossfired (well, sort of; they're not a huge issue right now which is what I'm saying). They are TOTALLY not the problem here. I actually checked, when using hardware encoding on the most demanding title I owned (GTA V on maximum settings, sparing a couple for VRAM concerns since 3GB cards), and found out that a single HD 7950 wasn't even going over 50% load (according to OpenHardwareMonitor) when handling the game AND the gamestream). I think it peaked at .. 65%(?) which was for a few seconds. Not enough for me to actually see it happen (OHW shows the maximum value of all of the stats). I'm intentionally stalling doing this. I'm planning to upgrade this puny system soon (within a year or two) but I'm unsure what route I want to take. Before I do anything, I'm waiting for AMD to release Zen and maybe some GPUs. Yes, you were right about the 3GB VRAM; this is a prominent issue when running GTA V at absolute maximum settings. Some of the things AMD promises, while they seem out there, are probably worth waiting for, though. Plus, Skylake was overhyped. I don't actually play demanding titles like GTA V often; they just don't interest me, so I'm probably going to skimp by with Old Faithful here for a little longer. or if I was smart I would have pieced how to do this in my peanut-sized brain without having to dig up an ancient video, bah! Thanks again. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking when I made this thread, but you definitely helped me out. Also, I never knew exactly how the iGPU worked, so that will definitely help me out. ^^

Apologies for the weird quoting. I didn't figure out how to quote a specific post multiple times until about halfway through my post. Is it? I'm not familiar with how either of their hardware-accelerated video encoding works. I was always under the impression that nVidia GPUs would perform slightly better for on-demand video encoding tasks. Never knew that about CPUs. I had always assumed it consumes just a bit more resources when the iGPU is in use (because it seems that way; my i5-4670k never pins at 100% when running GTA V alone, but it does when gamestreaming). It's playable, by all means. However, I can't peak at 60fps all the time. The gamestream will sometimes fall to 30fps (which Steam resorts to if it can't pull 60fps). Something like GTA V can drop down to 20fps which is seriously not playable for a shooter. If I switch to AMD GPU encoding, it absolute demolishes the graphical integrity of the gamestream (weird malformed black and white patterns on the roads for some reason). I just want better performance. The AMD encoding seems to be a bit better when running normally, but as shown above, the stream does deteriorate. Well, Steam DOES support using a specific GPU. But I was moreso asking if it was possible to utilize the nVidia GPU for the gamestream only (which is possible in Steam's settings; it can leave the iGPU alone, likewise for the AMD GPU) and only have the CrossFired AMD GPUs for the game (how can I force the AMD GPUs on the games specifically). I did find this video (from LTT) that touched on something like this, but it left me a little confused on how exactly to do it. Maybe I missed out somewhere, I'm not sure. It doesn't actually explain how I could choose which manufacturer to go with for a specific game session ("simple; choose who you want to go with and run your game" -Linus). Would an i7 on an LGA1150 socket REALLY do anything (plus, high-end i7 LGA1150 chips are still not cheap, unless I somehow manage second-hand)? I don't want to basically upgrade to a Skylake system to pull this off, since I'd be buying a new system entirely at that point (the 7950s would be the bottleneck then). This also introduces a likely bottleneck if I want to upgrade to 4K streaming at some point. No clue how well that'd work out, but it's something I'd need to consider. edit: I don't think so. An i5-4670k versus an i7-4790k would yield fairly similar results (both the i5 and i7 would share the same iGPU .. or relatively the same, anyway, yes?). Hah, figured out how to quote properly! Again, that's more than I wanted to throw into this. I only meant like $100 for a mid-end GPU that could pull off the encoding job. That was it. Not a card that will likely be something like $1K. Whoops. I left that in there. Thanks for answering that though. I meant to remove that bit (because duh, of course you can do that). The Linux host that runs the Windows guest that I use for games is running off of some weird GT520 (if I don't, the Linux host freaks out for some reason). or something I had on a rack, so I have no clue what I was thinking when I was typing that.

Personally, I use a freeware utility called ISO-to-USB. It's extremely simple to use. Provide the ISO file and the drive you wish to install to, check "include bootloader", then hit burn (write, or whatever it's called). Wait a few minutes and there you go, you've got a perfectly functional Windows USB drive.

While I don't expect many people to have experience with this, I'm reaching out on a limb about a purchase. In fact, this question might go unanswered.. but I figure I'd take a gamble here first (since this forum likely has a high population of "gamers"). I use Steam's in-home streaming to play my games. As of right now, my system has two Radeon HD 7950 cards and an i5-4670k (overclocked). Steam in-home streaming offers hardware encoding, where you can have the gamestream encoded by your GPUs (exciting, right?). There's an option that allows you to decide how the stream is handled. I've attached a screenshot, since I'm awful at explaining things. Forgive the weird look of the fonts; this was taken on the Linux client (but the settings and options are the same). I'm sure many of you (that know what this is) are shouting at me for not encoding with my AMD GPU, but that brings me to my question. There's a fundamental problem with encoding video on the AMD side. For some reason, under Windows (with the 7950s CrossFired on Crimson driver), the stream comes out very bad (only sometimes; it's actually perfectly okay a lot of the time, but others it completely botches the bottom half of the screen). Here's a screenshot of what I mean. Please note that I have no clue if this same issue happens with nVidia GPUs. This is why I am posting. Notice the artifacting on the sand. That's not the proper texture. It gets worse, but I couldn't actually get it to do it when not in the middle of a dungeon (which is a bad time to take a screenshot, IMO; also, I didn't want to run one because the stream is very weird when it does it). Here's what it looks like normally. Crystal clear. Makes for nice gameplay. (random side note: the game in the image is Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG. Yes, I am a cat. Yes, I am a female.) See what I mean? It looks awful (or can, anyway). While this doesn't make the game unplayable, it's annoying. It breaks immersion, so on and so forth. I don't need to explain this. So, down to the question. As you noticed, there was an option to encode using the nVidia GPU (which is probably better, because CUDA). Does Steam support this kind of behavior (using AMD GPUs for the game and the nVidia GPU to encode the gamestream)? Could I buy an nVidia GPU, shove it in the machine, and have that dedicated to streaming? I haven't mixed brands of GPUs before, so how would they interact with each other (both drivers running at the same time)? What kind of card could I throw in that would be able to handle 1080p60fps on-demand video encoding (note that the idea is to remove the iGPU from the workload entirely as to not tie-up the CPU any more than we have to)? I also ask all of this because a few other titles that are more CPU-bound are simply killing my poor Haswell 4670k (and I doubt the iGPU is actually worth a damn for doing what I want with this). Note that any titles I have mentioned are perfectly functional at 1080p60fps in a normal, non-streaming setting. I have no issues with them whatsoever. Needless to say, I haven't mixed brands of GPUs together. This is a weird solution I figured might be possible if I'm willing to invest in it, which I am. I don't know how I can possibly tell the game to not touch the nVidia GPUs but tell Steam to for the video encoding (beyond the settings page). If anyone is able to provide any information about this, I'd be grateful. I'm not submitting my next order of GPUs for a little while, but I'm eager to try and get this set straight (also, I totally didn't fry my only free nVidia card a few days ago, I swear). Cheers.

Very nice work, my friend. You've given be a bit of inspiration.. although I'm waiting to acquire a new piece of property soon, so I don't think I'm going to be able to pull that off.

Random side note: I actually do something kind of different with this. If I want internal access to my network, which is primarially composed of Linux machines, I'll SSH into my host machine and access my network through there. This involves you setting up openSSH servers on each machine (which is .. really not hard to do) and probably isn't as simple as what the OP has here, but it's what I do. To access files, I'll use SFTP, which is fairly safe. All of my data is stored on a single machine (the machine I connect to), so I don't suffer many problems. It's just a faster option if you're using Linux. It's my way of being lazy around setting up an OpenVPN server, honestly. >.> Plus, I use a VPN to elsewhere when I'm out and about.

If you're looking for simple protection, CloudFlare works wonders. However, as mentioned before by someone else, it only works for port 80 (HTTP/S traffic). As for proper DDoS protection services, I wish you the best of luck. There's a lot out there, but they're pretty expensive. If you are running things out of your home, even simple practices such as enabling DDoS protection on your router can help. I used to have some old NETGEAR router that had decent DDoS protection that managed to prevent my access from dropping entirely (it was barely usable, but usable) when someone decided to hit my home line for the sheer hell of it. It depends on the size of the "empire" you want to build. If it's a gameserver for friends, forget about it. If you're doing something like Minecraft, look into BungeeCord. Rent a super-cheap VPS for like $2/mo and run a BungeeCord instance and have it forward to your home network. You could proxy connections if you're willing to take the time into it. Proxying won't stop your service from going down, but it will stop your home network from going down. Still, I think you should look into VPS hosting before you bomb on a 75/75 line. A parallel line can cost more than hosting elsewhere. Seriously, you can get dedicated systems with a 1Gbit uplink for $100/mo if you know where to look. I don't know what your providers are like, but there's probably better options than just getting yourself a beefy pipe (not that it's a bad thing .. I too love my big bandwidth connection ).

I've been using a set of Logitech's G933 Artemis Spectrum headset. They're wireless, RGB lit, and they actually sound pretty good for what they are ("gaming" headset). 7.1 surround is a bit of a gimmick, but hey, they sound great for the price I got them at (which was a little cheaper than what most people would pick them up for). Don't get me wrong, they're not an audiophile-tier headset, but they get the job done well enough for $200. As with any equipment though, it depends on your usage for them. The bass is a little more prominent in these cans because of their "gaming" nature, but it hasn't harmed my experience with them much. They're also closed-back, so if that's a turn-off for you, stay away from them. If you don't want wireless, go with the G633. If you don't want wireless nor RGB lighting (or you like Logitech's blue for the ear pads and black for everything else), go with the G403. As far as I know, they're all the exact same driver, just what holds them together is different. Also, the Logitech Gaming Software has a built-in equalizer so you can muck around with the sound. There's a couple of profiles already with the headphones (notably "Flat" for no effects and "Drop the Bass" for slightly heavier bass). You can make your own as well. "This post was sponsored by Logitech." (it wasn't)

Thank you kindly, everyone. I'll be sweeping for some audio shops nearby (assuming there are ANY in northern Florida) and see what I can dig up. The reason I brought up the HD 800s specifically was because (beyond the recommendation I got) they've basically been painted the image of "God (in headphone form)".. and they're kinda neat in general. I'm doing my best to not have bias towards these cans, but it's really difficult from all of the God-tier words I've been hearing. ;) .. that's not to say that the HD 650s aren't making me drool either .. .. though that could be said about a lot of Sennheiser's work. @GlassBomb That's sort of what I'm looking for, actually. I want something that will pick up absolute minute details (including embarrassing tracks that are awful in quality). @SuicideAnomaly I mentioned that it's difficult to find sufficient EDM tracks, but I'm sure more are out there (basically not YouTube and Soundcloud, bahaha) and I do actually have some in my possession (just not extensively many). EDM is what I listen to mainly, but not all the time. Also, my onboard seemed to struggle a little with powering the original headphones (HD 598). The sound, even at 100%, was always a little low too, so I think I'm going to walk out with a DAC *regardless* of what I go with. @Dackzy How did you manage an hour with them? Did you find them at an audio shop, an event, or a friend? If it's the first two, which one? If it's a friend, can I have their address and social security number? ;) Anyway, as I mentioned before, I'm trying to actually find some places around here that will be carrying headphones. Not much really happens where I live, which is kind of annoying. Pfst, "reasonable". That's not the point of this! :) Again, I've got a lot more to look at, but I appreciate everyone's help thus far. :)

Nothing I couldn't do without a massive amount of CPUs. I'm kidding. I would struggle for leisure time. If I'm not programming or listening to music, then I'm probably playing a game. I don't play very many bleeding edge games, but I do like my maximum settings in MMOs. :) For getting actual work done, no not really. I'd need to find another way to drive my three monitors, but that's not hard to do.