Posts by David Sanders4

I personally stick to FHD using DSR. It isn't true native 4K since the total pixel count remains the same; rather, the number of samples used is what matches a 4K output.

To put it simply, 4K uses 8,294,400 samples for 8,294,400 pixels.
Standard 1080p relies on 2,073,600 samples for 2,073,600 pixels.
When you run 4K DSR down to 1080p, you're looking at 8,294,400 samples being squeezed into 2,073,600 pixels. Essentially, each individual pixel becomes the average color of four different samples. This allows for much smoother and more accurate color transitions than standard 1080p could ever manage. For instance, instead of getting a muddy mix from just two blue and two yellow samples for a 2:2 green, you might get a cleaner 3:1 blue-green blend.

If you're wondering how this actually works, here is a link that breaks it down.
Dynamic super Resolution Improves Your Games with 4 K-Quality Graphics on hd Monitors DSR VS other Antialiasing settings

Dynamic super Resolution Improves Your Games with 4 K-Quality Graphics on hd Monitors DSR VS other Antialiasing settings

If you're looking at Nvidia, the GTX 970 is really the smart buy here since it isn't much slower than the 980. That said, both struggle significantly if you're aiming for 4K. Nvidia holds the edge because of their proprietary features that AMD just doesn't offer, but speaking from my own experience with demanding titles, using DSR provides much better visual quality than any fHD x4 Supersampling AA or even 8x MSAA (which tends to eat your frame rates alive). Personally, I usually just run everything at 1440p without any AA enabled at all...
Now that we've set aside those minor advantages held by Nvidia, the R9 290 stands out as the best value option.
P. with Zotac includes a 2-year warranty, plus the manufacturer offers an additional 3 years on top of that—which is actually quite impressive, provided you remember to register the card...

Timothy Kim60 said:No way, keep in mind they built an entire PC for just $300 over there.😬
At that price, I could probably just pick up a used 280X and maybe one other component.

Well, $300 is out of the question, but for around $380, prices over there are actually quite a bit lower...

Well, obviously. I have no idea what kind of pricing models they used to build this budget, but in the US, an Intel Core i7-920 sits in the same price bracket as a Q8400 or even some of the 9xxx series. Given that reality, I’d imagine the high-end tier for us would look more like an AMD Radeon R9 280x.

Timothy Kim60 said:if that’s what you mean, then you definitely don't want to run that on a GPU like, say, 😬

😵 I was laughing my head off, though I honestly couldn't believe this one actually had worse results. I fully expected them to at least be even...😁

David Sanders4 said:Hello there.

Back in 2006, I was charged with a criminal offense. A final judgment was handed down in 2009, which included a prison sentence as well as the forfeiture of assets—a fairly significant amount, actually. It wasn't until late 2014 that they finally moved to garnish my wages and freeze my bank accounts...

Is there any chance this could be considered past the statute of limitations?

Just bumping this thread since I haven't heard anything yet... hopefully this document provides some clarity.

It’s all a bit confusing. The Vinkovci Municipal Court originally ruled on the amount, but that decision wasn't actually final at the time; it was part of a retrial. The case was then moved to El Paso Elementary School, where they somehow "overlooked" the forfeiture of the proceeds from the crime (if you can believe that), only for the judgment to become final in 2009 following an appeal...
I still haven't received a response from the Supreme Court regarding my petition....

500-$200 and it's just the HDD driving up the price tag...

Building a PC can easily spiral into an addiction or even a full-blown obsession.🕺
If you ever took him to see a therapist, they’d probably just convince him that his only real solution is to build another rig.🤣

So, which GTX 970 are you running?

Hello there.

Back in 2006, I was charged with a criminal offense. A final judgment was handed down in 2009, which included a prison sentence as well as the forfeiture of assets—a fairly significant amount, actually. It wasn't until late 2014 that they finally moved to garnish my wages and freeze my bank accounts...

Is there any chance this could be considered past the statute of limitations?

I honestly wish all the GTX 970 owners would take the hint regarding that infamous 3.5GB issue and just drop their used prices down to something reasonable, say $750, so I could finally justify picking one up for myself. 🙂

Timothy Kim60 said:They have two models that could potentially be the GTX 960 Ti, but they've only decided to release one so far (they haven't made the final call yet).

I suspect the weaker version will hit the market first. If this thing actually ends up being slightly better than a GTX 780 on average—or even just equal to it—then there’s hardly any point in having a GTX 970. It would be way too close for comfort.

It’ll likely feature those 1280 CUDA cores, but over the last few years, we haven't seen the price-to-performance ratio between ATI and Nvidia get this closely aligned. That said, Nvidia definitely still holds the edge when it comes to power efficiency...
From what I've observed, Nvidia has always commanded a 20-30% premium. Back then, their main selling point was PhysX, which unfortunately never really took off, even if it did hold its own in hybrid setups. Honestly, if I recall correctly, the ATI cards actually seemed faster when playing Borderlands....

If they only release the TI versions, we’re likely looking at a much higher price tag and increased power draw... At that point, it really boils down to how much of a discount we're getting compared to a GTX 970. Ultimately, the value will have to justify the cost; the lower power consumption is probably their only real selling point here.

Based on that page David Sanders4 posted yesterday, it looked like it was about 40% more powerful than a GTX 660...

It looks like I'm seeing the same thing... this is barely pulling any more power than a GTX 760 😢

From what I can gather, it’ll probably perform about 20° weaker than the GTX 970, but it’s roughly 30% cheaper and offers decent overclocking potential

Well, $567 it’s a decent price point—up to about $1850$633—given its power draw and performance. If it actually hits the projected benchmarks, it might end up being a better value than the GTX 970. The GTX 970 is really the sweet spot for anyone aiming for 1440p, whereas this looks like it’ll be a total winner for 1080p enthusiasts. Personally, I’m just counting down the days until the release.

I don't want to clutter things up by starting a brand-new thread, but I was wondering how you all handle your side fans? Should they be pulling air in or exhausting it out? I haven't spent a huge amount of time digging through forums, but it seems like both approaches are pretty common. That said, when looking at official specs from brands like Corsair, they usually suggest front and bottom intake, while the rear and top act as exhaust...

Timothy Kim60 said:Here is the "procedure"

Look, there's a much simpler way to look at this. I’ll try to find the sweet spot tomorrow...

Timothy Kim60 said:I think you might have misread that. There's no CnQ while you're overclocking. They only mention the possibility of enabling CnQ once you've actually found a stable OC.

That’s exactly what I meant—once a stable voltage is established. I noticed that when I enable CnQ, it sits at a 7 multiplier (1.4 GHz) while idling, but under load, it stays at 7 as well without any real reason. I don't really see the point if it behaves the same way during gaming, which it likely will...
It seems to me that AMD has these features that mostly just confuse the average user or gamer. It all feels a bit unbalanced; everything is set up to be automatic, but it only really becomes useful once you step in and configure it yourself...

Timothy Kim60 said:What kind of scheme? A discount or through a company?

Through the company, essentially part of a trade-in deal... so I just picked whatever they had available at my local shop. I actually wanted to grab the FX-8320E since it's even cheaper and I suspect it has the same potential, but I ended up just grabbing the most expensive parts they had on hand. I’d never pay half the price of a CPU for a cooler; I would have just gone with an i5-4690K instead.

I'm going to go run the Crysis 3 benchmark for a bit. It's running beautifully now, compared to that old Q6600—it's night and day.

Timothy Kim60 said:Using an LLC setting stabilizes the processor voltage—you can see the difference by comparing your BIOS settings against what CPU-Z reports during a heavy stress test. The trade-off, however, is that it tends to bump up your temperatures slightly. It’s definitely something you need to play around with; I’ve found it’s worth running a few tests to hunt down that perfect sweet spot, especially on those high-end boards that offer multiple stages like high or medium settings.

It generally helps, but if you aren't seeing any voltage drops, then LLC isn't really doing much for you. Here is a rare instance where I found LLC to be pretty much useless:
I’ve been looking over the benchmarks again, and I have to admit, I might have been a little too optimistic about how much headroom we actually had. It turns out that even with an upgrade, some of these older components just can't keep pace with modern demands. Regarding what Timothy Kim60 mentioned earlier, I think there's a valid point there about thermal throttling. It's easy to forget how much heat builds up when you're pushing hardware like this through a heavy Crysis 3 benchmark. Even with a decent setup, if the cooling isn't perfectly dialed in, you're going to see those numbers dip. I also noticed David Sanders4 brought up the power draw. It’s a fair observation. When you're running a GTX 680 alongside more modern parts, you really start to feel the strain on the PSU. It’s one of those things you don't realize is an issue until you're staring at a system crash during a stress test. Anyway, I'll keep tweaking the settings and see if I can find a more stable middle ground. It’s a bit of a balancing act, isn't it?

The real issue is that if you actually want reliable data, you need to run every single test for at least 45 minutes. That requires a level of patience I just don't seem to possess. Personally, I’ve been capping my runs at about 15 minutes before I start yawning while waiting for the results to pop up.

Timothy Kim60 said:You might actually see some real benefits in those heavy single-threaded titles that don't play particularly nice with AMD hardware—even when you're running a card like the GTX 660—think stuff like World of Tanks or Rome: Total War. Given the CPU, motherboard, and the Coolermaster Nepton 280 l Quote setup you picked up, it feels like a missed opportunity not to push it past 4GHz. Even a modest bump of a few hundred MHz would be worth the effort. It looks like those newer Vishera chips (the 8320e, 8370, and 8370e) are much more aggressive overclockers; they seem to require less voltage to hit higher clock speeds, which keeps temperatures much more manageable.

I think I'll stick with 4500 MHz. I’m going to try nudging the voltage down just a hair more, though. During my last round of testing, I dropped it by 50mV, so I plan to take it slow this time. Honestly, my heart skips a beat every time I see a Blue Screen of Death.

Timothy Kim60 said:Check out these results from Hawker:
I’ve been following this thread for a while now, and I have to say, seeing how much things change over time is pretty fascinating. It feels like just yesterday we were all arguing about whether a specific GPU could even handle basic tasks, and now we’re looking at benchmarks that seem almost impossible. Regarding the points made by David Sanders4, I think there’s some merit to his skepticism, though perhaps he's being a bit too cautious. We've seen hardware perform significantly better than the initial projections suggested in the past. Still, I can see why one might hesitate to jump in without more data. As for what Timothy Kim60 mentioned earlier, I find myself agreeing with the general sentiment. It's easy to get caught up in the hype, but if you look at the actual performance metrics, the reality is often a bit more grounded—sometimes a little too grounded, if you ask me. It’s an interesting time to be keeping an eye on these developments. There's always someone convinced we've hit a plateau, only for a new release to completely shift the goalposts. I'll be curious to see how the community reacts once the next round of official testing is out.
Sure, the cooling setup and motherboard are top-tier, but honestly, those results and temperatures are just unreal.

I’ve been reading through this thread, and I honestly can't find any mention of which cooler is actually being used here. One thing that did catch my eye, though—did anyone else notice that once everything was set up, they turned on CnQ?

Timothy Kim60 said:Regarding coolers—honestly, forget about liquid cooling. Air coolers are just much better value for your money. That’s my second point about the one you picked: it isn't really worth the investment. It actually costs more than a Noctua NH-D14, yet it performs worse.

I ended up grabbing everything they had listed in the link since the bundle was such a steal. It included an FX370e, a Ga-990xa-ud3, 2x4GB HyperX Black Fury DDR3 at 1866MHz, a 120GB Samsung EVO 840 SSD, an LCPOWER 975Gaming B-Wing (which is definitely the weak link here), and a V8GTS. I have to admit, the V8GTS caught my eye mostly because of its looks, though on paper it boasts 160,000 operating hours and self-lubricating bearings.🤣 I also took a look at this review which made it seem like a pretty decent option. All in all, the total came to $1333, so I’m feeling pretty good about snagging this deal from a budget online retailer!

If I were picking based purely on ease of installation and better space management, I'd probably go with the AIO...