Computer building decisions

[Jonathantje]

I am planning on building my first, new computer, and I now have this choice:

- Gtx 970 + 6700k

- Gtx 980 + 6600k

 

This computer will be used for gaming, programming, and playing source based games while hosting a gaming server for the game. (CS:GO/Gmod)

I am using 2 monitors, 1 for the game and 1 for things like tweetdeck or other simple programs. (Maybe a server window or something like that)

I could maybe go for both, but that would require me spending more money, but is it worth it? Or should I go with something completely different?

 

Second of all, which gtx 970/980 cooler should I go for?

- I don't care too much about noise, as long as my computer is not a rocket.

- I hate coil whining

- I don't plan on overclocking my gpu

- I dont care too much about heat output/power usage

 

 

[Juanse]

6600k+980

[Terrifis]

I mean you could save yourself some money and get a Core i5 4690k. They're like £100 less and they can overclock like a madman. Just a thought

[Starelementpoke]

17 minutes ago, Jonathantje said:

I am planning on building my first, new computer, and I now have this choice:

- Gtx 970 + 6700k

- Gtx 980 + 6600k

 

This computer will be used for gaming, programming, and playing source based games while hosting a gaming server for the game. (CS:GO/Gmod)

I am using 2 monitors, 1 for the game and 1 for things like tweetdeck or other simple programs. (Maybe a server window or something like that)

I could maybe go for both, but that would require me spending more money, but is it worth it? Or should I go with something completely different?

 

Second of all, which gtx 970/980 cooler should I go for?

- I don't care too much about noise, as long as my computer is not a rocket.

- I hate coil whining

- I don't plan on overclocking my gpu

- I dont care too much about heat output/power usage

 

 

If those last 4 things are true, get a nano over the 980. Unless you need cuda.

[Jonathantje]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

If those last 4 things are true, get a nano over the 980. Unless you need cuda.

I went for nvidia because I heart the nano has a lot of coil whine, and I think nvidia just has better driver support.

Does anyone have experience with the nano?

[Terrifis]

If you could wait it out Pascal is around the corner. You could probably get something from that lineup.

[Starelementpoke]

7 minutes ago, Jonathantje said:

I went for nvidia because I heart the nano has a lot of coil whine, and I think nvidia just has better driver support.

Does anyone have experience with the nano?

That was the Fury X when it was first released, and that´s been fixed. Also, driver support is pretty much equal for the 2. Nvidia has better day 1 drivers, but as can be seen by the average performance of the 200,300, and fury series cards, AMD´s drivers have been giving them quite the boost.

[Jonathantje]

25 minutes ago, Terrifis said:

I mean you could save yourself some money and get a Core i5 4690k. They're like £100 less and they can overclock like a madman. Just a thought

I want upgradibility more than price, I don't want to build a completely new computer anytime soon.

16 minutes ago, Terrifis said:

If you could wait it out Pascal is around the corner. You could probably get something from that lineup.

I totally forgot about Pascal. Do you think it will be released soon?

They said somewhere in 2016 so it could be end 2016 too

[Starelementpoke]

Just now, Jonathantje said:

I want upgradibility more than price, I don't want to build a completely new computer anytime soon.

I totally forgot about Pascal. Do you think it will be released soon?

They said somewhere in 2016 so it could be end 2016 too

If I remember correctly, I saw somewhere that they´d release the first pascal cards around June.

[Jonathantje]

1 minute ago, Starelementpoke said:

If I remember correctly, I saw somewhere that they´d release the first pascal cards around June.

I am planning on building this pc in about a month but I could wait if it is worth it.

Would the release price be a lot higher than the 970/980 series?

[Terrifis]

2 minutes ago, Jonathantje said:

I want upgradibility more than price, I don't want to build a completely new computer anytime soon.

I totally forgot about Pascal. Do you think it will be released soon?

They said somewhere in 2016 so it could be end 2016 too

That's true. Tbh if you're jonesing for some PC Parts just go for a 970/980, it'll do the job. If you CAN wait though I'd consider maybe waiting until like June, and by that point if no word has been released just buy a 970/980.

 

Also I see what you mean on the 4690k front, it's a good CPU but I don't see it lasting through the PS5 era either.

[Terrifis]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

If I remember correctly, I saw somewhere that they´d release the first pascal cards around June.

If June is correct I'd personally wait

[Terrifis]

2 minutes ago, Jonathantje said:

I am planning on building this pc in about a month but I could wait if it is worth it.

Would the release price be a lot higher than the 970/980 series?

I imagine slightly higher, as it's a new line they'll milk it for all it's worth, but you could probably pick up something that's better for the money.

[App4that]

The same people that are saying Pascal is coming in June, told us the 960ti would be out, a year ago... Do you see any 960ti's for sale?

 

For gaming you want a i7, without it you'll suffer in CPU demanding games. So my advice is the i7 and a EVGA FTW+ 970.

 

And I just went from AMD to Nvidia because the AMD drivers suck, and are slow to release.

[Jonathantje]

11 hours ago, Terrifis said:

I imagine slightly higher, as it's a new line they'll milk it for all it's worth, but you could probably pick up something that's better for the money

As soon as nvidia finally brings its gpu's, how long do companies like msi normally take to put their coolers on it?

10 hours ago, App4that said:

The same people that are saying Pascal is coming in June, told us the 960ti would be out, a year ago... Do you see any 960ti's for sale?

 

For gaming you want a i7, without it you'll suffer in CPU demanding games. So my advice is the i7 and a EVGA FTW+ 970.

 

And I just went from AMD to Nvidia because the AMD drivers suck, and are slow to release.

My fear was that the 970's vram is not enough for 2 monitors, and the last .5 gb slow vram makes that even worse. Will it be enough?

[TheGamingBarrel]

11 hours ago, Terrifis said:

That's true. Tbh if you're jonesing for some PC Parts just go for a 970/980, it'll do the job. If you CAN wait though I'd consider maybe waiting until like June, and by that point if no word has been released just buy a 970/980.

 

Also I see what you mean on the 4690k front, it's a good CPU but I don't see it lasting through the PS5 era either.

It last aslong as skylake would, if you want I could sell mine to you for £165.

[TheGamingBarrel]

11 hours ago, Jonathantje said:

I went for nvidia because I heart the nano has a lot of coil whine, and I think nvidia just has better driver support.

Does anyone have experience with the nano?

Too bad you are wrong about drivers, with my 780 Ti I used some 331 driver, it was fine, used newer drivers, 4 Driver crashes in 10 minutes.

[App4that]

7 hours ago, Jonathantje said:

As soon as nvidia finally brings its gpu's, how long do companies like msi normally take to put their coolers on it?

My fear was that the 970's vram is not enough for 2 monitors, and the last .5 gb slow vram makes that even worse. Will it be enough?

Depends on the game, but there are times you could be limited by it. Though games use the VRAM available to them, so the problem wouldn't be as bad as trying to run a i5 in a game that wants a i7 for ultra settings.

[Jonathantje]

36 minutes ago, App4that said:

Depends on the game, but there are times you could be limited by it. Though games use the VRAM available to them, so the problem wouldn't be as bad as trying to run a i5 in a game that wants a i7 for ultra settings.

I read it is even worse than having just 3.5GB vram.

Spoiler

The GTX 970 is apparently wired like frankenstein. Let me try and explain. You've no doubt seen multiple articles about how it has 4GB memory and people are considering it like a 3.5GB card. That's wrong, and you shouldn't do that, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking. See, as I mentioned earlier in the guide, when you hit the maximum vRAM on a GPU, you start to compress memory. Send some of it into virtual memory etc if you can compress no longer, etc etc. The problem is that when you hit a 3.5GB vRAM mark on the GTX 970, this does not happen. Because the card actually DOES have the extra vRAM, instead of compressing what's in the buffer, it attempts to make use of the ungodly slow last bit of vRAM. This causes the stuttering and slowdowns many people witnessed when playing. It would actually be better for everyone if nVidia were to either use drivers or a vBIOS to lock off the final 512MB forever, or to somehow tweak drivers to force all of windows' memory requirements (aero, multiple monitors, etc) into the slow 512MB portion, and give non-windows-native applications access to the fast 3.5GB outright, AND block them from accessing the final 512MB no matter what, causing the games/etc to start compressing memory at the 3584MB vRAM mark and eventually hunt for virtual memory, like it does on 3072MB with a GTX 780, for example. For some proof on what happens at the 3.5GB vRAM mark and why it differs to a 3GB card's limit, HERE is a comparison video of a GTX 780 running Dying Light next to a GTX 970 running Dying Light. In the video, if you set it to 720p60 or 1080p60, you can clearly see that the 970's footage is somewhat less smooth than the 780's, despite having more vRAM for the game to make use of. The software also shows only 3.5GB of vRAM being used because as nVidia said, normal programs can't see the last 512MB as it's in a different partition so to speak; but it's clear the game is attempting to use more and the transfer to the slow memory bus is the problem. Please note: No other maxwell card to date has this bug. The 950, 960, 980, 980Ti, Titan X, 950M, 960M, 965M, 970M and 980M ALL lack this error.

 

Also, please make note: The 970 does NOT share the same issue that the 660Ti and other mismatched memory cards do. The 28GB/s slow vRAM portion is beyond slow; even the GeForce 7800 card had higher than that. Also, the rest of the card only has access to seven total 32-bit memory controller chips (unlike the 8 blocks it should have), meaning the rest of the 3.5GB is actually on a 224-bit memory bus (notice it's falsely marketed as a 256-bit mem bus card?). I also do not know if the access bandwidth for the slow memory doubles in SLI, which would at LEAST alleviate the problem somewhat. The CUDA memory tester that was used to check the 970 does not test differently in SLI; the bandwidth does not double with SLI on/off in that test. So we have no real way of knowing (at least that I can test) to see whether or not SLI helps. At the very least, increasing the memory clock will help the slow vRAM portion of the card, but that is very little relief. In this case, I can only recommend the 970 to users who are CERTAIN of what they are going to play, and can say with 100% certainty that they will not approach that 3.5GB vRAM buffer. If you know you will, a 980 (too expensive), 980Ti, R9 290 R9 390, R9 290X R9 390X or R9 Fury would be a far better buy. If you are the kind of guy who's only gonna play BF4/BF Hardline and some older game titles, then you'll be perfectly happy with a 970 as you'll likely never hit the vRAM bottleneck issue that only applies to the 970. Also, please note: FPS counts do NOT tell the whole story in this case. As shown in the video I linked, the 970 was actually getting higher FPS most of the time even though the 780 had the smoother experience.

 

Also, according to an article I was recently linked to by PCGamer, it seems that when accessing the slow portion of vRAM, the rest of the memory on the 970 slows down as the seventh 32-bit memory controller that runs in tandem with the others to make up the 224-bit memory bus has to be a "middleman" with the slow portion, and thus memory bandwidth on the card itself is crippled. To fully quote the part of the article (which was originally quoted from PCPer):

 

“if the 7th port is fully busy, and is getting twice as many requests as the other port, then the other six must be only half busy, to match with the 2:1 ratio. So the overall bandwidth would be roughly half of peak. This would cause dramatic underutilization and would prevent optimal performance and efficiency for the GPU.”

 

You can read the full article here, and that might explain other issues with accessing the slow portion with only a few games.

 

Also, a little addendum here. Many users have been claiming to me that most games don't use near 3.5GB of vRAM etc. This is true... but as mentioned earlier in this guide, I would like to point out that running a second monitor, and/or windowed mode/borderless games, ESPECIALLY using Windows 8, 8.1, or possibly the upcoming Windows 10, will be also competing for space in the vRAM buffer. If your OS is using 600MB without you gaming and you load up a 3GB game in borderless windowed mode, you *WILL* encroach on the 3.5GB vRAM mark, potentially causing hitches and stuttering in your game without actually playing a "4GB game" or whatever. Single-monitor-only gamers need not worry as much, but multitaskers who are gamers? Their worries are different and valid. I should know, because I am one of them myself. If I can help it my game's going borderless windowed. So 970s would be a bad buy for me if I wanted to play games that used anywhere near 3GB of vRAM due to how much else windows itself takes.

 

*NB - I previously recommended the 780 6GB, but since devs seem to no longer code for current + previous gen like they usually did, Maxwell's better tessellation engine and general driver improvements have the 970 pull far enough ahead of the 780 for me to remove it from the direct recommendation, leaving me in the awkward position of requiring to recommend you only stronger (and of course, more expensive) nVidia cards or equal/stronger AMD cards; and even if you could get a 780Ti on the cheap (which would mitigate the performance gap), that card was never made with a 6GB vRAM buffer (likely because the Titan Black, which is still $1000 OR MORE at the time of this writing, was essentially a 6GB 780Ti with a double precision rendering block)

 

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