DDT2005

Recently, my graphics card started having driver errors in Windows, and when I went to restart I no longer had any video coming from my Sapphire Radeon HD 7750. After some extensive troubleshooting and using more than one computer to check out the card, and a second card (a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750), I determined that I can only use the AMD card in the 2nd PCIE slot on the original motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP (which has a i5-3570k and 8 GB memory). Now, I know that the 2nd PCIE slot only runs in x4. My question is, does it affect what the Raptr client can do as far as recording gameplay on its GVR? Because the Video Capture section shows both items as disabled and the client throws an error: "Unhandled condition occurred. HWLVL=-4". That error has been reported to Raptr Support. Although the AMD card is in an x4 slot, I am able to run The Sims 4 and Cities: Skylines; I haven't really seen a performance drop. BTW, the GTX 750 also does not work in the primary slot of the Z77 board, but it works fine in the primary slot on my Z97 board with a G3258. I also have an ASRock H77M board with a Celeron installed. Maybe I can use the GTX 750 in its 1st slot and swap processors? So I can continue using my 3570k, I guess I'm just thinking out loud. Any suggestions out there? Edit: My Raptr problem went away by uninstalling and reinstalling Raptr and all AMD graphics drivers. Hardware issues, well I guess I can live with it for now.

For the $500 rig, ASUS H81M-E - Is this motherboard G3258 ready out of the box, or do I need a Haswell part to upgrade the BIOS? I went with a MSI Z97 PC Mate so I don't need to worry about that. AMD R7 260X - GTX750TI is better IMHO For the $2000 rig I would have not have chosen the Z87 motherboard for the same reason as above. Needs to be guaranteed to be ready out of the box. Get a Z97 from Asus instead. And I would spend the extra $100 and get the i7-4790K.

It was $129.99 on Christmas Day, dropped to $99.99 yesterday, and dropped again today.

Yeah, the Amazon computer picked up on Tiger Direct's deal right away and matched it

I was too slow to get a A8-6600K a couple of weeks ago @ $89.99, so I waited and got the high end Trinity APU instead: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0095VP8D4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&tag=linustechtips-20 Hurry, they will sell like hotcakes. Or if you don't want this one, keep your eyes peeled for other deals from Amazon.

An A10-6790K installed in a A55 chipset motherboard? Isn't that like putting a Cadillac engine into an Impala? Should have at least considered a A75 chipset (has USB 3.0 and SATA 6 GB/s ports). Also a non-APU part should have been considered (such as an Athlon II X4 760K) if you had planned on a discrete graphics card in the first place. And here we go again with the anti-static bag controversy. Give it a rest. Even the guy who used to do that doesn't use them anymore when building on top of the motherboard box, and he said that they were all non-conductive.

Ok, I made mistakes on the z87 side. The GA-Z87M-D3H micro-atx and the Z87N-WIFI mini-itx supports CPU Core Voltage adjustments in the UEFI. It appears I didn't do my homework very well before starting this thread. :( My z77 motherboard still disappoints, but I can live with 4.2 GHz with my 3570k until I can get Haswell.

I only bring it up because he did say "any z77" and I have one that can't get my i5 past 4.2 GHz. I was misguided when I bought it: I thought all z77 boards overclocked "K" CPUs with ease. Boy was I wrong.

I can't find the complete list on the z77 side, but here are the ones I can think of offhand: GA-Z77M-D3H GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP << I have version 1 of this board and a i5-3570k GA-Z77N-WIFI all the 1.0 versions of these boards also have only 4-pin CPU power. All the 1.1 versions of these boards have 8-pin CPU power, but the Vcore voltage is still not adjustable. z87 list: Edit: none. All z87 boards have a vcore adjustment I can't find any other z77 boards at the moment. Just stay away from those I listed above.

I'm only saying, beware of what Gigabyte board you buy whether it be LGA 1155 or LGA 1150, so you can overclock properly.

During the May 31st Live Stream, Linus mentioned to a Twitter user who asked about what motherboard to get when he had a i7-3770k to "buy any z77 motherboard and you can't go wrong". Well, I beg to differ. There are several z77 Gigabyte models (5 or 6 of them), and at least two z87 models where one cannot adjust the vCore voltage. So buying "any" z77 motherboard in that guy's case was probably not a good thing to say when Gigabyte deliberately designed these boards with limited overclocking functionality. I realize Linus was tired when he said that, forgetting about certain Gigabyte boards that don't OC well. By the way, there are several Gigabyte models that overclock very well, so I'm not trying to bad mouth Gigabyte. Now with that said, most z77 and z87 boards from other venders will probably overclock just fine. One just has to do proper research I guess. ===== Edit: Disregard my comments regarding z87 boards, they seem to be ok after further research. Topic changed from "Z77 and Z87 Gigabyte motherboards are not created equally" to "Z77 Gigabyte motherboards are not created equally"