Posts by fadedorca66

It’s a whole process, but you’ll end up with a killer new rig. It’s basically like trading in a beat-up old clunker for a brand new Tesla 🙂

Matthew Anderson said:Checking out this mining rig I'm working on.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7t7g1as5cm...miner.JPG?dl=0

😬

Mining rigs are everywhere now. 😁 This one's a bit hardcore since it's running a 1080Ti.

nimbleowl94 said:How much of a difference would there actually be between that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 3GB versus the 6GB VRAM? Like, in GTA V or Battlefield 1?

Just search "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3gb vs 6gb" on YouTube and you'll find tons of benchmarks. It varies by game, but I guess if you want to keep that card for a while, aiming for the 6GB version makes sense; 3GB might feel a bit tight eventually.

Also, keep in mind it’s not just about having an extra 3GB of memory—the chip itself is actually beefier in the 6GB model.

Where are you guys based, and which card can I use for installment plans? We're trying to figure out which store to go with...

Your only real move is the GTX 1060 6GB. You might actually be able to track one down somewhere. The thing is, crypto miners basically vacuumed up everything in that budget range—you know, the RX 470/570, RX 480/580, and the 3GB version of the GTX 1060. But maybe you'll get lucky with a 6GB model.

If you want something cheaper, there's the 1050 Ti, but I guess that’s such a tiny upgrade from what you're running now that it’s probably not even worth the money.

Kyle Robinson41 said:So what should I actually buy at this point... ugh... an SSD, this GPU, or just both to upgrade my current rig or whatever...

It's a bit of a messy situation since the motherboard is pretty entry-level, so it won't support much in terms of CPUs. This one on eBay is probably the best you can do, maybe for about $17 you could get a slight bump:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-2...sAAOSwFNZWtpDy

The power supply isn't great either, so that'll probably need replacing eventually—if it isn't already ancient.

I guess it depends on what's actually bothering you about the PC. Is it just slow, or can you not play games? If it's both, maybe just grab an SSD and some used GPU.

Jamie Jones58 said:What do you guys think I could get for these parts?

CPU: Intel Pentium E5200, 1800 MHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L v2
RAM: 2 GB DDR2
HDD: Samsung Hard Drive (320 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)

CPU: $50-$33
GPU: $100-$50
Motherboard: $150-$67
RAM: $33
HDD: $100-$50

Either you patch this thing up and call it a day, or maybe just start looking at something a bit more modern, because buying the same old setup again doesn't really make sense.

Let me lay it out for you, maybe you'll change your mind:

Right now, you're rocking a CPU that's ten years old on a socket that's also a decade old—basically, your whole setup is ancient.
The standard right now is DDR4; DDR3 is starting to feel pretty dated, and DDR2 is basically museum pieces at this point.

So, you've got a ten-year-old platform and you're thinking about tossing $333 just to buy the exact SAME ten-year-old platform again.

Whatever you pick up for that kind of money, it's going to be slow, mostly because of the hard drive. Plus, there's almost zero room to upgrade later...

If you really want to breathe some life into this PC without breaking the bank, tell me what motherboard you have and we can see what else fits. You could probably grab 2GB of RAM for $33, or maybe find a slightly better processor on eBay for about $33. It would also be a good idea to pop the side panel off and check which power supply you're running. But honestly, the biggest boost you'd get is buying an SSD—new 120GB ones go for around $133, and you can definitely find used ones cheaper. Just install Windows and your basic apps on it, and everything will feel way faster than it does on that old drive. Even if you do buy a new SSD, it's not a waste of money since you can always use it in a future PC or laptop.

Maybe I'll pass this along to someone who wants to play MS-DOS games on Windows XP, though honestly, even Windows XP probably won't work...

At that price point, I guess it’s worth it. It definitely holds its own against the 1060—you get more VRAM, FreeSync support, better DX12 performance, and stuff like that.

It’s pretty much on par with the 1060 6GB, so that should work fine. I guess the real question is what the price tag looks like and if they can actually get their hands on one. There's a bit of a shortage on RX 580 cards right now, maybe.

Wait, what store is that? I need to go grab one right now!

Honestly, just get the 6GB version since the price gap is basically nothing. It's not even just about the extra memory; the chip on the 1060 6GB is actually better, so you're getting a much stronger card overall.

Miners were picking them up 😁 I guess things are getting so desperate they're even grabbing the 1060s...

Unused RAM is just wasted space, so if you've got about 50% breathing room, you probably don't need more.

Maybe spend that money on an SSD instead if you haven't upgraded yet.

It's not about dealing with a sore shoulder, the real issue is getting LOL installed 😁

Maybe give it a shot. I'll try testing how it runs on my other PC with 4GB of RAM and single channel in the meantime, lol. But only if it isn't such a massive pain in the ass to set up 😁

I was almost about to post saying I’ve got an A8-6600K running on a similarly crappy board, but then I remembered I actually moved it over to another rig that uses this exact MSI motherboard 😁 It should run fine, though the cooler might be cutting it a bit close... You definitely want more RAM, too; when I popped in a second stick for dual channel, my FPS basically doubled...

Which OS are we talking about? You've got them listed right here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

NVIDIA GeForce R5 equivalent, R5 230, R5 220, HD 8470, HD 8350, HD 8000 (D/G variants), HD 7000 – HD 7600, GeForce 600 series, and HD 5000 Series

There were three different versions of that Corsair unit; the first one was kind of meh, the second was better, and the third is actually decent. But honestly, whichever one you've got, it should handle an RX 580 with that CPU just fine.

Wait, what benchmark are we even talking about here? I guess you shouldn't really sweat the RAM speed all that much anyway.

You read those foreign forums right—DDR stands for Double Data Rate, where "Double" just means twice as fast.

What do you mean by bad benchmark results?