Posts by electricharbor30

Timothy Kim60 said:Man, you're wasting your breath. The GPU chip is everything. It doesn't matter how much you talk about texture rates, fill rates, memory bandwidth, or VRAM capacity—those are just tiny little specs that make up the whole thing. And obviously, drivers matter too, because if the software is trash, the hardware is gonna underperform regardless.

What you're doing here is kind of like trying to figure out which car is faster by looking at the windshield wipers, checking how much glue is on the tires, looking at the seats, the bodywork, or even seeing if there's some random brand of detergent in the trunk, while totally ignoring the actual engine, which is clearly the most important part.

Like, take this link you posted, for example (just the first thing that popped into my head, and I'm sure there are way more extreme examples out there)

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/AFOX_A...P/2DI/1GD5/V2/

Which one do you honestly think has the stronger GPU? This is exactly why we're always telling people not to rely on sites like HWCompare and stuff like that.

I mean, based on everything, they seem pretty close, except the 750 pulls way less power... but why is that? Have you seen any tests that say otherwise? If I'm just looking at GFLOPS, I'd guess the GTX 750 is maybe 5% faster at 1080p...

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/ASUS_E...GTX750TI-2GD5/

Judging by the GFLOPS, that version is 30% faster.

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/AMD_Ra...XTITANX-12GD5/

Based on this, the Fury x vs Titan x comparison shows the Fury x is way faster; the only advantage the Titan x has is handling higher resolutions... assuming you have a beast of a CPU, maybe even 4K... at lower resolutions, it can't even compete with the Fury x.

wiredotter14 said:This might sound like a pretty dumb question, but how does it work that the NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 used to be based on Fermi architecture and now it's Kepler? Like, isn't that a totally different chip altogether?

Well, I guess the Fermi version was just the 128-bit one.

Chris Robinson25 said:I mean, I guess you could say the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 740 is basically the absolute bare minimum if you even want to think about gaming these days.

So, like, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 with a 64-bit bus might scrape by at 720p on medium settings, I suppose... but then again, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 740 has a better pixel fillrate, so maybe it could actually handle 1680*1050 on medium, though you'd probably need a pretty decent CPU to keep up with it...

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/ZOTAC_...I-P-6G-GAMING/

I’m sitting here looking at this and honestly, I don't even know where to start. After wading through all those descriptions, it’s like they’re telling me pixel fillrate doesn't matter because you've got a solid CPU, then texture fillrate is just for "visual flair," and memory bandwidth is supposedly only there for extra stuff like anti-aliasing... so I guess that leaves us with nothing but GFLOPS, which the site claims actually impacts gaming performance. But what they totally gloss over—which is kind of wild if you think about it—is how much VRAM is actually on the card. Apparently, having more memory is only useful for storing textures and has zero impact on actual performance, or so they want us to believe...

fadedorca66 said:You’re basically getting an introduction to numbers that don't really mean anything specific.

I mean, I don't know, maybe it can't be any more precise than this... it gives you a pretty direct look at the hardware you're buying, its capabilities, and what you might actually expect from it.

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/ASUS_G...US_GT730-2GD3/

So, this is a comparison between the 128-bit and 64-bit NVIDIA GeForce GT 730... and I guess this is probably why review sites don't usually recommend the 128-bit version. If someone went with the DDR5 version instead, they'd likely see some benefit from the memory bandwidth, which might let them actually turn on anti-aliasing and stuff like that...

Joshua Patel68 said:So look, this seems like $167 a better deal than what we usually see over here in the States... And if I recall correctly, this one is actually on Nvidia's list of recommended retailers... It'll probably be worth the money. From what I can tell, can you just order it online and pay the delivery guy when he shows up at your door?

Yeah, you can...

Anyway, www.gpuzoo.com

http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/ASUS_G...0-SL-2GD3-BRK/

It's a great site, honestly, gives you a pretty solid idea of the pros and cons of what you're buying...

Joshua Patel68 said:Well, I guess I didn't really account for the 😁
factor.
Are they actually reliable enough, though?

So, I ended up grabbing an SSD from this other shop over in Canada—Extreme Digital—and honestly, it showed up factory-sealed within like seven days, complete with a full five-year warranty. Just to put that in perspective, some local stores here might give you a shorter warranty on the exact same drive, sure, but you get it in two days or even tomorrow, except the box is already ripped open and covered in some random store sticker... so yeah. Right now, I'm sticking with Micro Center because they have that rewards program where you rack up points, and eventually, you can probably swap those points for something decent, which feels pretty useful, I guess. Once I sell off my current rig, I’ll probably just grab my motherboard, CPU, and GPU from them, and then I'll let everyone know if everything went smoothly... personally, if something breaks, I'd much rather deal with a shop in Canada than try to chase down someone in China, and from what I can tell, nobody really cares about buying stuff off eBay anyway. This place seems totally legit to me...

Joshua Patel68 said:Exactly, and brands like NVIDIA, ASUS, or Palit... they usually only give you a 2-year warranty and they end up being cheaper on average by about 250 bucks $100 ( GTX970 )

Where on earth did you find that? Is it actually cheaper than this one?

Joshua Patel68 said:Is it actually worth dropping an extra $250$100 just to get an extra year of warranty on a GPU?

Nah, honestly, you shouldn't even have to consider that... companies like ASUS, MSI, or EVGA usually give you a solid 3-year warranty anyway... if the shop you're looking at is trying to offer you less than that, I'd say just skip them... there are plenty of other budget-friendly retailers out there that won't rip you off like that...

http://store.steampowered.com/stats

So I was just looking over those Steam stats...

haha, so I actually stumbled upon a GT 720 with DDR5 memory sitting there at Micro Center... looks like it might be the last one they have left... honestly, if you're trying to build a fanless PC, this could be a pretty solid pick...$160....it’s got half the CUDA cores compared to a GT 730, but I guess it doesn't really matter that much when you're just gaming....I mean, most people buying cards with a massive amount of CUDA cores are probably just Bitcoin miners anyway, not actual gamers...

So, I was just browsing around online yesterday and stumbled upon this blog post where some guy was breaking down what he thinks are the best GPUs to grab in 2016... I won't bore you by copying the whole thing since I actually lost the link, but basically, he’s saying if you're looking to spend under $70, the best bet is the GT 730 with 64-bit GDDR5... He mentions that the DDR3 versions or the 128-bit ones are way slower, so while this specific one is okay, it's really like the absolute bare minimum of the bare minimum... You might get medium settings at 720p, maybe. For comparison, he recommends the GTX 750 Ti if you can swing about $110-$120... The cheapest GT 730 I could find is around $160 over at Best Buy via Micro Center
.
Edit: turns out that wasn't the exact link I meant, but this one here is actually pretty well organized too:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html

Robert Rodriguez2 said:and it isn't even $33 that, it’s practically $133 the difference if you're looking at a 950 series...

plus, this is all through some online store that doesn't even have a physical location here in the States, everything just ships in from overseas...

and man, look, I'm out here in a small town...if anything of mine breaks, the repair center is all the way in Chicago, and once I send something off, it won't be back for at least two weeks...so I might as well just ship it straight to an international warehouse. And all these big retailers that keep everything in stock, they have to bake in extra costs just to cover their massive warehouses and staff, like Best Buy, and then they still try to screw you over wherever they can just to save a buck...I used to buy everything from them, but nowadays, I wouldn't step foot in one unless my life actually depended on it. Thanks, but no thanks—just give me some bottom-tier online shop that runs on a tiny margin per item...it's easy for them to run ads when things don't work, and then they use those savings to offer fast shipping without any hassle...

James Johnson5 said:Is it even worth picking up a Sapphire R9 270 with just a month of warranty left for $283? ...

I mean, honestly, you might as well just shell out a few extra bucks to get a brand new card for 370, or if you really want to go all out, grab a brand new one for 950 which would be $33more
.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dmv/5393122

just finished running this one...



View on imgur

Larry Ortiz5 said:Next time you see him, you should just settle this face to face so there isn't any more of this bullshit 🙂

Man, I’d love to, but most of these sellers are based out in NYC and I’m stuck way out here in rural Montana... back in the day, a 16GB flash drive was like $83 at the local CVS... I mean, okay, it wasn't a huge deal, $33 my neighbor blew through his cash, but nowadays people are dropping $2,000 on stuff like this without blinking... I honestly have no clue why they even passed laws like this in the first place?

Timothy Kim60 said:Yeah. I mean, if we’re just talking common sense here, the way the CPU and GPU communicate in DirectX 11 is totally different from how they handle things in DirectX 12, which I guess gives AMD a bit of a leg up given how current hardware is set up.

So basically, it doesn't even matter for all those old, beat-up rigs? Fine by me... because I just went ahead and picked up an AMD processor and an Nvidia card anyway...

Timothy Kim60 said:Honestly, it’s mostly just empty hype or stuff you rarely see in the real world. People have been testing all sorts of setups on US tech forums—you know, pairing various AMD and Intel CPUs with Nvidia or AMD cards in the same performance bracket—and nothing weird ever really pops up. Everything just runs normally, so I guess there isn't any actual proof that an AMD CPU somehow works better with an Nvidia card or anything like that.

Wait, hold on, we're talking about DirectX 12 here... maybe there's actually some kind of change happening with that?

Timothy Kim60 said:That’s not quite it, though I think I get what you're getting at. Basically, you've got this right down at the bottom.

It's mostly just some theory, honestly, probably wouldn't even happen much in the real world.

You can find an explanation over here about how AMD and Nvidia GPUs handle things differently when it comes to DirectX 11 versus DirectX 12.

Goddammit, I'd probably pass out before I finished reading all that... just tell me which one is better already, man.

I honestly have no clue, man... I stay far away from Craigslist like the plague. A buddy of mine ordered a 16GB USB stick for like twenty bucks, sent the money straight to the guy's account, and then nothing—the dude just ghosted him. This happened back before criminal complaints were even an option until $167, but now that the laws have shifted, you can't even file them until $667... so basically, if everything stays under $667, some jerk can just screw you over and walk away without any consequences at all. It’s a joke. Honestly, your best bet is probably meeting up in person, I guess... or maybe sticking to those specialized enthusiast forums where they actually maintain lists of vetted sellers, though you usually need a premium membership just to even see the listings. If something costs more than $667, then maybe it's worth the risk on a site like Craigslist, but if it's cheap?

So, I was reading some stuff about how AMD and Nvidia handle multi-threading versus single-threading differently... I don't fully wrap my head around the technical nitty-gritty of it all, but apparently, if you're looking at single-threaded performance, an Intel CPU paired with an AMD GPU seems to hit the sweet spot for best results. Meanwhile, if you go the multi-threaded route—like using an AMD CPU with an Nvidia GPU—the numbers seem to tank a bit. I guess it’s just how things work, but could someone maybe break this down for me and explain what's actually going on?