Posts by Megan Ruiz13

What on earth happened to this forum? Why has the quality dropped so much?

Here's the deal: under current policy, expressing an opinion can get you flagged for trolling.
So, if my take doesn't align with a specific moderator's view, I get a warning for trolling? Is that how this works?

I'm not here to complain about specific warnings—there's a separate thread for that. This is more of a general observation, because I think you all know exactly what I'm getting at. It seems like the moderation direction is just shutting down any dissenting voices by labeling them "trolls."

You've hit rock bottom. You're basically allowing discussions from only one side of the political spectrum. Anything else that doesn't fit your narrative gets labeled as trolling.

This used to be a great place for actual debate where people could go back and forth. Now, that's becoming impossible given the way things are being moderated.

It’s your choice how you run things, but you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. That was my comment.

I posted a few comments recently venting about Nvidia and their drivers, specifically regarding all the crashing and freezing I was hitting in games—Fallout 4 was a particular nightmare.

I finally sorted it out, and I figured I’d drop a note here in case anyone else runs into something similar.

You can call me a noob if you want, but here’s the deal.

The issue turned out to be my RAM. I'm running four 4GB sticks of Kingston DDR3 HyperX Fury at 1866MHz.

When testing them, I tried them one by one. To make a long story short, two sticks work perfectly fine on their own.

But having all four sticks running at that speed with my Core i7 just wasn't working on this motherboard. Whether it's the board or the CPU, I'm not sure.

I fixed it by going into the BIOS and dropping the memory speed down to 1600 MHz. Now the PC is rock solid, and the GPU and games are running flawlessly.

Basically, I spent all that time thinking it was a driver issue since the problems only popped up while gaming.

Luckily, once I dialed the RAM back to 1600 MHz in the BIOS, everything vanished. No need to buy new memory. 😁

Turns out it wasn't the card or the drivers after all. Everything runs great now, including Fallout 4. All the issues are gone.

I haven't messed around with older drivers; I just updated whenever a new one dropped, hoping they'd iron out those early "growing pains."

This one’s finally grown up a bit. 😁
Give it a little more time and they'll probably drop a whole new series anyway. 😵

I'm pretty sure it's just a driver issue, honestly. It’s too sporadic. Most of these problems tend to pop up or disappear whenever a new driver update rolls out.

Doesn't feel like the card is actually dying. Some games run perfectly fine—Doom is working just fine right now. Even The Witcher 3 was running without a single hiccup until these latest drivers arrived.

I don't have the energy or the patience to keep wasting my time on this. I’ll be switching back to AMD cards during my next upgrade, which is clearly happening much sooner than I planned—unless they actually get their act together and fix these drivers in the meantime.

I don't even know how I'd pitch this; I'd just tell them it doesn't work.

I’d say it’s likely a driver issue. I mean, I haven't seen these memory problems pop up during synthetic benchmarks. I tested it by leaving Heaven Benchmark running overnight—started it at 7 AM, headed to work, came home around 3:30 PM, and it was still chugging along. No crashes.

The trouble depends on the game, and it usually hits right after a driver update. Every time a new version drops, I install it, and every single time, something breaks. The only game that runs flawlessly is Doom. Everything else eventually starts acting up after an update.
Fallout 4 has been basically unplayable since the last three driver versions, even though it worked fine when I first bought it. The Witcher 3 started glitching out after the most recent update, and Far Cry 4 has been a mess from the start; I dealt with several freezes while replaying it.

I updated the motherboard BIOS and stress-tested all my other components. I even wiped Windows and swapped back to my old AMD Radeon HD 280x, and everything ran perfectly with that.
I've wasted so much time messing around with this, losing entire weekends. Now I've got a fresh Windows install—everything is clean, I only backed up my game saves—but nope, it just keeps acting up.

Synthetic benchmarks pass without a hitch, but games are where the issues start, and it's pretty random. It might run The Witcher 3 fine for two days, then on the third day, I'll hit a freeze.
Sometimes I can just go back into Windows and kill the game, other times I have to hard reboot the whole PC.

Don't even get me started on how Fallout 4 behaves. Between the freezing and the performance drops—dropping to 30 FPS on low settings... it even changes my resolution to 1024x768 after loading screens. It's a nightmare.

So, what now? A warranty claim? I could try, but I don't see how they're just going to take it back and hand me a new one.
I'm going to head over to HGspot where I bought it and see what they say. They'll probably just tell me I didn't install something correctly.

Brian Campbell36 said:My new MSI GeForce RTX 4060 works perfectly. No more cheap, overheating AMD cards for me. I made the right call sticking with Team Green.

It’s funny how everyone sees things differently. Honestly, looking back, I’d probably take the RX 480 over this 1060. The 480 is just a better card; it used to lag behind the 1060 in DX11 titles, but with the latest drivers, they're almost neck-and-neck, and it actually pulls ahead in DX12.

And the 480 was definitely $67 cheaper than this Nvidia card when I picked it up. Interestingly, the first Nvidia card I ever owned after my GTX 1050 forced me to swap out my entire motherboard because of some damn chipset issue—it wouldn't work on a board just two generations old. I had an Abit board with a 975x chipset, and it was a no-go, so I had to grab a newer one with the P45 chip. I went with an Asus, and that worked fine.

Since then, I've stuck strictly to AMD cards and been happy. I can't even remember the last time I bothered updating drivers once they stabilized. Everything just ran smooth.

Now, with this setup, games just freeze on me. Fallout 4 runs like a mess; it doesn't even fully utilize the GPU. My FPS drops to 40 while GPU usage sits at 50%, and since I'm running an i7-4790K, there's no bottlenecking happening. It’s totally random, too. One minute it's fine, the next it's dying in the exact same spots.
Don't even get me started on the freezes where the drivers just hang.

I've installed every single driver version released so far, and every time, something breaks in a game. One might run great, but then I update and a different game that worked fine starts acting up.
Lately, with these newest drivers, The Witcher 3 has been crashing constantly—three crashes in three days already. And it used to run just fine.

I never had these issues with AMD cards. They were rock solid.

I really regret not grabbing that 480. It was cheaper and faster. With these recent updates, it's basically caught up to the 1060 in DX11 and is beating it in DX12.

I told myself "no Nvidia" for ten years, and look where that got me...

Hopefully, they stabilize these drivers soon.

Is that 7850 actually decent? Because if it works fine, I don't see the point in picking up this 460. 🤔

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...460-4gb-review

According to this, it's only about 5 fps faster on average than what I'm running now. No sense swapping a functional 7850 for a 460.

I wouldn't do it. It makes way more sense to grab an RX 580 instead. If you're upgrading for better performance, you should actually feel the difference.

George Wood69 said:I've got an NVIDIA GeForce GTX equivalent. It's nothing special—was actually pretty decent about four years ago.

It’s a decent card. I had a 7870 once, and a friend is still using it today paired with an i5 and 8 gigs of RAM. It handles everything at 1080p—even runs Rise of the Tomb Raider on high settings. And that’s a demanding, modern title.

Yours is a bit weaker, but it should still hold its own. Besides, they basically recycled those architectures into the next generations—7870, 270X, 370x—there’s practically no difference.

George Wood69 said:Got it. Thanks for breaking it down. Basically, don't waste money on extra RAM unless you really need it.

If you have 8 gigs and aren't doing heavy lifting in Adobe Photoshop or editing video, there's no point in throwing money at more RAM. It won't speed up your PC. Everything you’ve been doing will stay exactly the same.

Here’s my experience. I added another 8 gigs of DDR3 x4gb last week, so I’m sitting at 4x4 now, but honestly? No real difference. Except when I play Call of Duty: Black Ops 3—that game eats about 11 gigs of RAM and devours all my VRAM at 1080p.

Now I can actually crank everything up to max settings 😁

Bottom line: there's no performance boost, which makes sense if you actually understand how RAM works.

The headache only starts if you're running memory-heavy apps without enough capacity. Everything starts stuttering, the whole system drags, and it begins using the hard drive as virtual memory instead of actual RAM. That’s when things get ugly.

You can throw more RAM at a machine and nothing will change performance-wise. For example, any game that ran fine on 8 gigs is still going to run just fine with 16.

Generally, you only upgrade past 8 gigs if you're doing video editing or other heavy lifting. Apps that need a lot of "room" to breathe.

For now, 8 gigs is plenty for gaming. You might run into an occasional title that hogs more, but it's rare and usually depends on your settings. Like that COD Black Ops 3. It ran totally fine on 8 gigs if I kept textures on High instead of Ultra; I think total usage was around 7.5 gigs between the game and the OS. On Ultra, though, it jumps over 11 gigs and wipes out your VRAM.

But like I said, that's the exception, not the rule.

wiredotter14 said:How are you even measuring FPS if Adaptive Sync is on?

Pretty simple, I use MSI Afterburner 😁. But you're asking how I see max FPS—I don't really need to know that. What's the point?

I turn on Adaptive Sync for every game I play because I can't stand screen tearing. Plus, it keeps me at a steady 60 fps.

Picked up a new card, an EVGA GeForce GTX 1060, and I’ve got a few thoughts if you don't mind 😁

Honestly, the price-to-performance ratio caught me off guard. I didn't expect this much punch from a card at this $0.83 level. It's my first NVIDIA in ages; my last one was a GTX 275.

I'm running everything at 1080p, and this thing just eats through titles. The only two games where I actually hit 99% utilization were Rise of the Tomb Raider—after I cranked every setting to max—and even then, the VRAM was pinned. It's using all 6 gigs, actually looks more like 6100 MB if you check the stats.
FPS is locked at 60 with Adaptive Sync.

Even Metro 2033 Redux on Very High settings with 2x SMAA stays a rock-solid 60 fps... my old 280x would have turned that into a slideshow.

With most other games, the fans barely even spin up.

Regarding GPU Boost: I haven't overclocked it yet because I don't really see the point, but I did play around with some settings. Most people here probably know this, but just in case someone is new to it, here's a quick tip.
The rated boost clock is 1848 MHz, but it actually climbs up to 2024 MHz. Even once it starts heating up or hits 99% load, the frequency doesn't dip below 1930 MHz. Pretty impressive.

I maxed out the power and temperature limits and tweaked the fan curve—just set it to a flat 70% 😁—but that was just for testing. I'll need to fine-tune it later.

It held a steady 2000 MHz through several consecutive Firestrike runs without any throttling.

Haven't touched the actual clocks yet... no real reason to right now... but soon.

That's about it. Highly recommend this card; it surprised me. For the money and compared to previous generations, it's a great value.

I noticed something. You said you installed the card and then went to wipe the old drivers—that might be where things went sideways.

Ideally, you should’ve cleared out the old drivers first, shut down the PC, swapped the cards, and then handled the new drivers. Usually, that works fine, at least based on my limited experience.

You know how this ends. You'll end up with a fresh Windows install anyway...😁
To save us all the headache of cleaning files, reinstalling drivers, and whatever else... it always just ends with a total format and a clean Windows setup.
Well, if it doesn't work after that, it's not going to work.😁

crimsonstag84 said:I just didn't ask what the rest of your build looks like. Hopefully everything else is beefy enough to keep up with the GPU. 😉

Asus Z97-A
I7 4790K
XFX 550W

Should be plenty. 😁

Back when I swapped platforms in late 2014, I was thinking about picking up a gtx 970, but I backed off after all that memory drama. Since I’d already ditched my old hd7870, I grabbed an R9 280 x instead. I've been running it since then, but now it's finally time to swap it out for an Nvidia GTX1060.

So, I'm leaning toward the Alienware gaming laptop. That's pretty much decided.
Personally, I think it'll be an interesting change. My last Nvidia card was a GTX 275😁 and I've been sticking strictly to Intel graphics since then, so moving back to Nvidia will be something else.

I just hope I don't run into the same headache I had last time. I bought an Nvidia card once and ended up having to replace my entire motherboard because it wouldn't work on that crappy Abit board with the 975x chipset. Had to upgrade to a P45 just to get things running.
Man... I still remember being so fed up with Nvidia that I actually sent them a hate mail. 😁

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

I've decided to pull the trigger on a new GPU. I'm going with an NVIDIA GTX 1060.
One quick question though—I can't find any actual reviews for the ASUS DUAL-GTX1060-O6G; everything I find is just for the Strix models. There are some unboxing videos on YouTube 😁
but nothing deep. If anyone has a link, I'd appreciate it.

I'm mostly eyeing the Gigabyte gaming G1, but I noticed this ASUS model $67 carries a higher price tag. I'm wondering if it's actually worth it or if I'm just paying for the brand name. Maybe better cooling or some decent overclocking potential?

Then there's the personal bias part. I've always stuck with ASUS graphics cards, and their motherboards for the last few years too... but this Strix version is just way too steep at $1000 + even if that heatsink does look killer. 😁

crimsonstag84 said:R9 390 is $967

In this link $1600.

It feels a bit weird that one shop has it for nearly $1667 while another has it for 2900, and they're the exact same card? 🤔

Timothy Kim60 said:Gary Anderson38

Those rebrands aren't even flagships. We've got the R9 Fury and Fury x coming out soon, then later the Fury Nano and the dual Fury.

Oh, wow. That sounds just wonderful. 😁 How much are those "flagship" models actually going to set me back?

I'm looking at this overpriced 390 (non-X version) and they want $1333, meanwhile the 290X—which is faster anyway—is sitting under $1000.

Fury my ass, who's actually buying this stuff?

The bottom line is they haven't built anything new for the mainstream market; they're just repackaging garbage and charging a premium for it.

Larry Murphy83 said:haha, so even with a bit more VRAM, it’s still useless. So you're saying I should just grab an old R9 290X series instead? It'd be cheaper and give me basically the same performance?

Yeah.

It’s honestly pathetic that this current 200 series is just a rebranded version of the previous generation.

They haven't moved forward since 2012.

They had plenty of time. Nvidia absolutely crushed them with the 900 series about a year ago, and now those same Nvidia cards are still faster and more efficient than these new "upgraded" AMD scraps.

To be fair, Nvidia pulled similar moves with their 700 series... at least they actually did something with the 900.

I've got an AMD Radeon RX series, so what would I even need to buy to make an upgrade worth it? Honestly, I'm running a 7970 from 2012 under a different name. Am I really supposed to drop $1333 just to gain maybe 10 fps?

And they'll probably still be trying to sell these R9 300 leftovers in 2016.

Larry Murphy83 said:Hey guys,

Is it actually worth dropping $400 on an AMD Radeon RX series 8GB card? Are they bringing anything new to the table, or are they just faster than the old R9 2xx series? Basically, I want your take.

It’s the exact same crap in different packaging. Literally.

If they were rebranding, I expected the 380 to equal the 290, and for the 390 to actually be something fresh. Instead, they just renamed last gen's cards. They even bumped up the VRAM just to say they did... lol.

It sucks. They aren't new tech, they aren't even faster—it's just overpriced, repackaged garbage.

Nobody has actually explained to me how you managed to save your country. How would you have even avoided all those negative trends that hit other transition states?

How exactly would America have handled its shift from communism to capitalism differently?