Charezon

To the OP, I commend your honesty!  Not many good people like you left in this world.

no. where did you hear that... im running a 770 in a 2.0 slot, as well as a 650ti boost in a 1.1... 
 
the only thing nvidia artificially limits is SLI needs to be an x8 slot. but it doesnt matter what generation.
 
edit
i think you have problems with the terms.
PCIe is the interface
1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 are the generations, each big number is 2x bandwith
_0, _1, ... are the slot numbers, and have nothing to do with anything
x1, x2, x4, x8, x16, (x32) are the lanes, more lanes, more bandwiht

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I take NO credit for this article, it is a copy and paste from LazyGamer @  http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/nvidias-gtx970-has-a-rather-serious-memory-allocation-bug/ purely to bring information to the masses.
 
 
NVidia’s GTX 970 is the current price-to-performance darling, offering incredible visual for incredible value. It seems, however, that it’s harbouring a dark secret. It’s a 4GB card, but it looks like a significant chunk of that VRAM doesn’t work.
 
According to a number of rather angry people on Reddit, Overlock and the Guru3D forums who’ve noticed their shiny, powerful GTX 970’s come to a screeching halt when maxing out their cards. Clever people, using VRAM benchmarking software, have discovered that when the last 500`700MB of VRAM gets accessed, memory performance drops significantly. Some users have even found that their cards go belly up when hitting 3GB.
 

 
The issue doesn’t seem to affect the more expensive, more powerful 980 – so it’s not a Maxwell fault, but rather one specific to the 970. DRAM bandwidth drops from a peak of over 150GB/s, right down to 19.88 GB/s.
 


“Going beyond 3.5GB vram usage in games like Hitman Absolution, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare severely degrades the performance, as if the last 512mb is actually being swapped from the RAM,” says Reddit user nanogenesis in a thread on the subject.
 
The problems seems to be widespread – and Nvidia’s admitted that problem affects every single 970 (to varying degrees). They’re looking in to the issue – but unless it’s something that can be resolved via driver or firmware update, a recall may be on the cards.
 


“We are still looking into this and will have an update as soon as possible,” said NVidia community liaison ManuelG on the GeForce forums.
 
We asked our resident cabbage, Alessandro – who owns a GTX 970 – to test, and he was hit with the same results. You can download the benchmark to try it yourself, here.  If you require the extra library to run the benchmark, you can get it here.
 

 
While the card is still a performance champ, it makes it hard to recommend right now, as it’ll never reach its full potential. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you’re aching to buy a new card, you may just prefer to opt for the 980, which isn’t affected by this. Or you could, loathe as I am to say it, wait to see what AMD has up its sleeve.

I would say DCS World (Digital Combat Sim) by Eagle Dynamics - http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/world/
 
The game is absolutely incredible.  It's a simulation and not arcade, so the learning curve is steep.
 

Fuck no, I'm not moving to 8 even if someone paid me to, I'll keep using 7 for years.

Transcend 4-port USB 3.0 hub
 
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Information-SuperSpeed-USB-TS-HUB3K/dp/B005D69QD8
 

Internet download manager. It can usually grab most media playing on a webpage

SHHHHHHH... Dont fight with the MSI fanboy

To the OP, I commend your honesty!  Not many good people like you left in this world.

Seems like a good all-round system to me. I would definitely keep the SSD (Crucial M500), it makes a huge difference.
 
I'm a Western Digital fan (haven't had good luck with Seagate HDDs unfortunately), so I would replace the Seagate HDD with a Western Digital Caviar Blue - this comes down to personal preferance though

It's work, you get paid to work not have a good time. People always find some reason to bitch about things....been on the net lately?

The specs on this laptop is just absolutely nuts :blink: :wub:   (thanks @Darell3 for the link)
 
i7 4980 Quad core
GTX980M SLI (8GB VRAM)
32GB DDR3 Ram
4 x 256GB M.2 SSD in RAID 3 = 1TB
1 TB 7200RPM HDD

Happy New Year to all fellow LTT Conglomerate members and squadron wingmen

To the OP, I commend your honesty!  Not many good people like you left in this world.

If you can use HDMI instead of optical I would recommend it.
 
Optical has an issue with multichannel (>2) output.
By default windows will set the output to 2 channel stereo.
DD or DTS 5.1 will only be activated by sources that can force output 5.1. e.g. Movies
Most games use the system setting to determine how many channels to output. Since windows will report 2, most games will only output in stereo.
The work around for this is to get the unlock realtek audio drivers and then enable DD Live.
 
http://www33.zippyshare.com/v/72729438/file.html
 
In short if possible use HDMI output from your GPU because it's easier. Else you'll probably want those unlocked drivers. You won't need a sound card since the DAC will take place in the receiver. 

Have you played any of the Mass Effect (1, 2 & 3) games yet?  From the list of games you've tried I think you might really enjoy it.
 
Mass Effect 4 is in development.

Most 10,000+ scores in Firestrike are running overclocks.  
 
Here's my friends 970 run in Firestrike for example, and he actually fried the card doing this.
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3056414
 
To be honest I wouldn't get caught up in synthetic benchmarks.  3Dmark in particular is very sensitive to overclocking, moreso than any actual games would be.

Some of you people will jump at anything gun related with vitriol. It's kind of sad. Adherence to proper training could have prevented this accident; you have to know where your firearm is and the condition it's in while carrying, and attend to it and the child.
 
But what a horrible accident, really feel sorry for their family, especially that 2 year old. That's one hell of a tragedy to grow up with.

To the OP, I commend your honesty!  Not many good people like you left in this world.