#4015912 - 09/29/14 05:42 PM
Help! I Can't Decide!!
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Plainsman
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I look two different configurations for my new PC. Both are from my favorite builder, Digital Storm. And please don't say "build it yourself for less money." I don't have time to build it myself, and I don't want to build it myself because then I can only call myself if I need tech support, and I'm not techie. I've owned a DS mid-tower PC (i7 920) for almost five years and nothing ever goes wrong with it. I've called them mostly with questions on how to do stuff rather than how to fix stuff, and I've upgraded my vid card once (they talked me through the installation) to a GTX 580 3GB. I'm in the market for new, faster technology, I have the dough, so the idea of a new faster PC has me very excited.
Choice #A:
DS Bolt II: The Battle Box version (mini-case and mini ITX)
i7 4790K 4.0 (overclocked to 4.5) ASUS Maximus VI Impact mobo (Z87 chipset) w/Supreme FX impact, Sonic Radar (have no idea what this is) 16 GB DDR3 2400Mhz Corsair Vengeance Pro 700 watt DS Power Supply Blue Ray/DVD Writer/Player Samsung EVO 840 Pro 250 GB SSD 1TB WD Black Edition HD Nvidia GTX Titan Z 12GB DS Custom Cooling Tubing System DS Thermal Management Control Board and Software Windows 7 (Win 8.1 is a free option but I don't want it) Onboard sound with mobo PRICE = $5,104
Choice #B:
Digital Storm Apollo full tower i7 5820K 3.3Ghz (six-core) ASUS X99 Rampage V (x99 chipset) 16 GB DDR4 2800MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX DVD/CD writer player (no Blue Ray) Samsung EVO 840 Pro 250 GB SSD 1TB WD Black Edition HD 2xSLI Titan Black 6GB 750 watt Corsair Windows 7 (preferred) Creative Sound Blaster Z Price = $5,082 or Price with 3xSLI GTX 980 4GB = $4,753
I don't always go with cheapest acceptable configuration. I really like the small footprint of the Bolt II BattleBox. It's a like the size of an Xbox 360, can set up horizontally or vertically, and is easily portable back and forth from home office to living room where the monster TV is located. But I've never had onboard sound and I'm a little bit scared of it, despite the fact DS said this one is outstanding. I don't know if I want another big azz tower, but it's cheaper and might be as fast as the Battle Box. Then again the 5820 is 3.3mhz out of the box and the 4790 is 4.0 out of the box. I read that SLI is a lot of trouble for non-techies like me. 3 x SLI might be worse. I don't know cause I've never had SLI but I've heard about microstutters, so I kind of prefer one card solution like the Titan Z. I think. Geez, I have to decide this week. I'm going crazy to trying to figure it out. Help!
Any advice to help me decide would be appreciated.
Last edited by Plainsman; 09/29/14 05:48 PM.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4015922 - 09/29/14 06:02 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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Raw Kryptonite
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Beat the Kobayashi Maru
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Looking up the graphics cards, am I reading that right that the GTX Titan is a $3000 card? No offense, but why? I get future-proofing, but you can get a high end card for a fraction of that and just upgrade in 3-4 years. There's nothing that will make use of that 12GB, and probably won't be until that card is left in the dust. Swapping out a card is easy. You need to be opening up the case periodically to clean anyhow, which means pulling cards to blow them out. I like Kludgers suggestion.
That said. I agree, I'd rather go with a single card solution. Even if you aren't coming anywhere near maxing the card out, at least you'll be using it. In many applications, they won't support SLI and a second card in the other setup will just be sitting there unused, taking up space, building up heat. I'd go option 1. CPU, graphics, cooling is featured...odd there's no sound card at that level of performance, but if you're using usb headphones, you wouldn't be using the card anyway. Cheap to add on your own. No reason not to have bluray these days. Memory is fine, you wouldn't notice a difference with the slightly faster 2800MHz. Price is evidently not an issue, so shoot the moon. If you do want it closer to option B, swap that card out, add a nice sound card (if applicable) and sound system if needed and still save money.
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#4015941 - 09/29/14 06:58 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Raw Kryptonite]
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Plainsman
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Looking up the graphics cards, am I reading that right that the GTX Titan is a $3000 card? No offense, but why? I get future-proofing, but you can get a high end card for a fraction of that and just upgrade in 3-4 years. There's nothing that will make use of that 12GB, and probably won't be until that card is left in the dust. Swapping out a card is easy. You need to be opening up the case periodically to clean anyhow, which means pulling cards to blow them out. I like Kludgers suggestion.
That said. I agree, I'd rather go with a single card solution. Even if you aren't coming anywhere near maxing the card out, at least you'll be using it. In many applications, they won't support SLI and a second card in the other setup will just be sitting there unused, taking up space, building up heat. I'd go option 1. CPU, graphics, cooling is featured...odd there's no sound card at that level of performance, but if you're using usb headphones, you wouldn't be using the card anyway. Cheap to add on your own. No reason not to have bluray these days. Memory is fine, you wouldn't notice a difference with the slightly faster 2800MHz. Price is evidently not an issue, so shoot the moon. If you do want it closer to option B, swap that card out, add a nice sound card (if applicable) and sound system if needed and still save money. No, Titan is not a 3,000 dollar card. There is a Titan, a Titan Black, and a Titan Z. The Titan Z might be a two and a half K if you buy it separately from this package. Regular Titan is more than a 780 Ti but less than a thousand.
Last edited by Plainsman; 09/29/14 07:00 PM.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4015942 - 09/29/14 07:01 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Remon]
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Plainsman
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But isn't 6GB video ram better than 4GB? Isn't SLI a lot of problems like microstutters? I'm mostly looking to max out FSX graphics with a ton of add-ons. I want smooth frames. My almost 5 year old PC runs everything else (most of my games are old) really well, but not FSX with add-ons. I just don't know which is better for the CPU. FSX is CPU dependent. Some say 5820 and some say 4790. I don't know what to believe.
Last edited by Plainsman; 09/29/14 07:05 PM.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4015945 - 09/29/14 07:15 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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kludger
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Not sure if the newer GTX cards will use that additional video RAM, but I bought the GTX670 4GB version instead of the default 2GB version to get better performance in 3 monitor mode, but I have not really noticed any benefits from the additional GPU RAM even when turning up the visual quality settings, and actually when using EVGA precision to track GPU mem usage, the only game/sim that uses more than 2GB was XPlane10 when I checked the "uncompress textures" button. So at least for the 6XX GTX versions, the additional GPU RAM didn't seem to be needed, I can't speak for the 7XX or new 9XX ones, but there's a good chance that the additional RAM version might provide only very limited benefits over the normal version so you should look for benchmarks/reviews that specifically test the larger GPU RAM version. There's a good chance I will upgrade to the GTX 970 in the next year, if I do so, I will stick with the default GPU ram version. BTW some good early GTX980 + FSX discussion over on AVSIM here (as usual FSX performance increase is lower than in other games since FSX is so CPU bound): http://forum.avsim.net/topic/451724-gtx-980-970-review
Last edited by kludger; 09/29/14 07:22 PM. Reason: added linky
i7-7700k@4.5ghz, GTX1080Ti,BenQ XL2420G-g-sync,Oculus Rift
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#4015948 - 09/29/14 07:22 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: kludger]
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Plainsman
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Not sure if the newer GTX cards will use that additional video RAM, but I bought the GTX670 4GB version instead of the default 2GB version to get better performance in 3 monitor mode, but I have not really noticed any benefits from the additional GPU RAM even when turning up the visual quality settings, and actually when using EVGA precision to track GPU mem usage, the only game/sim that uses more than 2GB was XPlane10 when I checked the "uncompress textures" button.
So at least for the 6XX GTX versions, the additional GPU RAM didn't seem to be needed, I can't speak for the 7XX or new 9XX ones, but there's a good chance that the additional RAM version might provide only very limited benefits over the normal version.
There's a good chance I will upgrade to the GTX 970 in the next year, if I do so, I will stick with the default GPU ram version. Well, I have a 580 with 3GB now and I think it is struggling. I can't push the sliders all the way to extremely dense in FSX. I have third party traffic add-on, and a ton of ORBX stuff including FTX Global, Global Vector, OpenLC Europe, every scenery addon they make, and Real Environment Extreme. I need a more powerful CPU and GPU. I just don't know which one to get. I found this on the 'net. I don't think I'm going to touch SLI, because I'm not a hardware tweaker: http://lifehacker.com/5994276/is-it-worth-it-to-run-two-graphics-cards-in-my-gaming-pcIs X99 the next generation mobo, so maybe I should go for it for future upgrading?
Last edited by Plainsman; 09/29/14 07:27 PM.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4015950 - 09/29/14 07:25 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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kludger
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Yeah that mirrors my past experience with Crossfire/SLI you only get benefits from games that support it well, for the ones that don't you either get no benefit, or sometimes worse you get microstutters and other issues.
I've since found it better to just take the money I would have spent in the SLI card and instead use it toward an upgrade to the newer version GPU earlier.
i7-7700k@4.5ghz, GTX1080Ti,BenQ XL2420G-g-sync,Oculus Rift
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#4015951 - 09/29/14 07:30 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: kludger]
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Plainsman
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Yeah that mirrors my past experience with Crossfire/SLI you only get benefits from games that support it well, for the ones that don't you either get no benefit, or sometimes worse you get microstutters and other issues.
I've since found it better to just take the money I would have spent in the SLI card and instead use it toward an upgrade to the newer version GPU earlier. Thanks Kludger. Then you think I should go for the Bolt II with the Titan Z? The Z is basically two Titans on a single card. Any comment about the onboard sound?
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4016055 - 09/29/14 11:21 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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kludger
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Thanks Kludger. Then you think I should go for the Bolt II with the Titan Z? The Z is basically two Titans on a single card. Any comment about the onboard sound?
Personally I am even less a fan of cards with two GPUs on a single board than I am of SLI. You still get all the drawbacks of SLI since the OS still interacts with each of the GPUs on that board in SLI mode, but you usually also get more heat than SLI because the single card is trying to cool two GPUs. So dual-GPU cards are really only a benefit if you have motherboard or case limitations that restrict you from doing SLI (i.e. if you are making a LANparty compact portable case build). Personally I would check out the 980 or SLI 980s if you want to SLI, at this point buying the Titan is no longer the latest/greatest and you are probably still paying the price premium for the name, and there's already rumors of an upcoming 980Ti and Titan X Black model. Just my $.02 worth Also as far as sound cards, onboard sound does a decent job if you have basic sound needs, I use a SB X-Fi Titanium HD mainly because I use headphones all the time and wanted the builtin headphone amp and I also plug my XB360 and PS4 into the audio in on my PC so the extra sound inputs from the separate soundcard were needed. You can always try the onboard sound first and then get a soundcard if not happy.
Last edited by kludger; 09/29/14 11:27 PM.
i7-7700k@4.5ghz, GTX1080Ti,BenQ XL2420G-g-sync,Oculus Rift
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#4016112 - 09/30/14 01:55 AM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: kludger]
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Plainsman
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Thanks Kludger. Then you think I should go for the Bolt II with the Titan Z? The Z is basically two Titans on a single card. Any comment about the onboard sound?
Personally I am even less a fan of cards with two GPUs on a single board than I am of SLI. You still get all the drawbacks of SLI since the OS still interacts with each of the GPUs on that board in SLI mode, but you usually also get more heat than SLI because the single card is trying to cool two GPUs. So dual-GPU cards are really only a benefit if you have motherboard or case limitations that restrict you from doing SLI (i.e. if you are making a LANparty compact portable case build). Personally I would check out the 980 or SLI 980s if you want to SLI, at this point buying the Titan is no longer the latest/greatest and you are probably still paying the price premium for the name, and there's already rumors of an upcoming 980Ti and Titan X Black model. Just my $.02 worth Also as far as sound cards, onboard sound does a decent job if you have basic sound needs, I use a SB X-Fi Titanium HD mainly because I use headphones all the time and wanted the builtin headphone amp and I also plug my XB360 and PS4 into the audio in on my PC so the extra sound inputs from the separate soundcard were needed. You can always try the onboard sound first and then get a soundcard if not happy. Mini mobo and case won't allow for a sound card other than what comes with the mobo which is supposed to be very special. it's hard to wait because faster cards are always going to come out. Right now, there is nothing in the Nvidia line faster than a Titan Z. Not even close, but it's ungodly expensive.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4016234 - 09/30/14 01:02 PM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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Remon
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Again, don't bother with the Titan cards.
Do you really need the small form factor case? Do you have room space problems? Or planning to use the play in your living room?
The other build, with one or two 980s, is much better.
Last edited by Remon; 09/30/14 01:02 PM.
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#4016993 - 10/02/14 01:32 AM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Remon]
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Plainsman
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Again, don't bother with the Titan cards.
Do you really need the small form factor case? Do you have room space problems? Or planning to use the play in your living room?
The other build, with one or two 980s, is much better. I'm just tired of big-azz towers, especially the ones that lack carry handles. I don't lack for space. I just prefer to do something different this time, something more portable. I would like the option of hooking it up to my big screen LED in the living room. Something that small but so powerful --more powerful than most people's full towers-- is awesome.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4017448 - 10/03/14 02:50 AM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Brun]
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Plainsman
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Since the Titan Z is dual GPU, doesn't that mean it will suffer from any SLI issues in the way that two separate cards will? I'm pretty sure that's the case.
I don't think you're likely to run up against VRAM issues with 4GB 980s unless you're running triple 4k. I'm doing 7680x1440 (30% more pixels than one 4k monitor) with dual 6GB 780s but haven't seen it use more than about 3.5GB.
You guys have ruined my dreams! You've soured me on the Titan Z. Big Azz tower (again) it is, then, and with a 980.
Acer: XB 280HK 28" 3840 X 2160, 1ms, w/Nvidia GSync Corsair: White Graphite 760T Full Tower Corsair: 16GB Vengeance LPX 2800MHz RAM Corsair: SP2500 2.1 Gaming Speaker System INTEL: Six-Core, i7 5820K CPU @4.2Hz ASUS RTX OC 2080 Logitech 920 Wheel and Pedal System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek Pro Flight Control System with Wheel Stand Pro Saitek X55 HOTAS XBOX One S Track IR5
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#4018622 - 10/06/14 06:16 AM
Re: Help! I Can't Decide!!
[Re: Plainsman]
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theKhan
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Just wait for the 980Ti, its around the corner it seems.
I used to work for a living, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
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