grymsoul Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 Hey guys, I'm currently in the process of upgrading my PC. If you're willing, I could use some needed advise on what parts I need to upgrade in order to accommodate a GTX 970 SLI build. My Spec: -I7-4771 3.5GHZ (3.9GHz Turbo) -Corsair H60 Cooling Hydro, Extra Quiet Liquid Cooling (Music Production Purposes) -Ram 8GBs -PSU Corsair 750W Ultra Quiet ATX, SLI Ready. -Windows 7 Those are pretty much the essentials. I do have 4TBs worth of HDs and 250GBs of SSD. I want to be able to play most games maxed out comfortably at 60FPS. If you have any question please feel free to ask.
sila Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 You didn't include a graphics card in your specs? Or was that because your pc does not have one yet? Anyway with those specs just pop a gtx 970 or r9 390 in and you will be rockin.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 grymsoul did mention a GTX 970 SLI. The 750w PSU is more than enough to power that card. 250GB SSD seems okay. I would go for a 1TB if you plan to install a ton of games. Even more if you heavily mod them. your 8GB Ram is good, I would go with 16GB. No higher since it's not necessary. As far as OS, Win7 is good. I don't use Win8/8.1 and read too many horrors with it and gaming. Win10 uncertain. Best to wait on that and find out more reviews on it. I may consider jumping to win10 in the future (if I ever in my life get around to having the budget to build a new rig). You are fine with Win7, though. I'm assuming you already bought the 970 SLI. If not, I would get the 980 ti instead.
sila Posted July 11, 2015 Posted July 11, 2015 Oooh, I missed that bit... like endgame said it would be better to get the strongest single gpu you can now and then sli it a few years down the road when it is showing its age (and considerably cheaper). Other than that and the ram you should be fine with that build.
grymsoul Posted July 12, 2015 Author Posted July 12, 2015 Thank you for your advise. No I have not bought the 970s yet, just researching for the moment. I did think of getting a single powerful card at around the same price range but when I looked up videos of the 980 ti on skyrim, there seemed to be a lot of stuttering in all of the footage. Why would that be? Here are two videos as an example. Also, it seems that the 970 SLI outputs more FPS that the 980 ti. Is the 980 ti still recommended over the SLI set-up?
Guest endgameaddiction Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 I just read the comments there and the user said they fixed it with a fresh reinstall. It could be the user isn't using many hires textures now. One of things I know is that people tend to compress their hires textures wrong and hires textures hog up performance let alone if compressed wrong. I'm running a GTX 260 (i know ;/) and my framerate and microstutter is just about the same in the first and second video (depending the ENB I use though). Current ENB I'm using (AIR ENB) drops me down to 16-17 fps. And it's not heavily on shadows, cinematic, and even DOF disabled. But I am running a lot of 2-4k hires textures, which I'm considering removing many of them to see if I can manage to play this game above 30 frames with ENB off and no performance drop mods like weather mods, grass foliage overhauls etc... The only actual performance drop I do get in towns is using Towns and Villages Enhanced by aplestormy, which really drops my frames in Whiterun the most so I'm thinking of removing those and finding an alternative mod. The 970 SLI seems like a great card. More bang for your buck. Though the 980 ti I've read good reviews and I just think the user didn't properly set up ENB right. I just can't imagine someone with a 980 ti getting the same performance drop rate as me with my dinosaur GPU. I'm not familiar with AMD cards
spoonsinger Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 I was under the impression that SLI on Skyrim isn't a good idea, (either for vanilla or ENB'd). Never had the funds to test the theory, but there are posts out there. Also you still get stutter/jitter with a bog standard, (but OC'd), 970. I suspect basically because the underlying engine is a bit pants.
grymsoul Posted July 12, 2015 Author Posted July 12, 2015 I was under the impression that SLI on Skyrim isn't a good idea, (either for vanilla or ENB'd). Never had the funds to test the theory, but there are posts out there. Also you still get stutter/jitter with a bog standard, (but OC'd), 970. I suspect basically because the underlying engine is a bit pants. This is pretty much the video that sold me on the 970 SLI setup. I want my game to look as gorgeous as this one. I do want to get a single card set-up but the stuttering kind of put me off a little bit. What do you mean by the engine is the underlying problem? I just read the comments there and the user said they fixed it with a fresh reinstall. It could be the user isn't using many hires textures now. One of things I know is that people tend to compress their hires textures wrong and hires textures hog up performance let alone if compressed wrong. I'm running a GTX 260 (i know ;/) and my framerate and microstutter is just about the same in the first and second video (depending the ENB I use though). Current ENB I'm using (AIR ENB) drops me down to 16-17 fps. And it's not heavily on shadows, cinematic, and even DOF disabled. But I am running a lot of 2-4k hires textures, which I'm considering removing many of them to see if I can manage to play this game above 30 frames with ENB off and no performance drop mods like weather mods, grass foliage overhauls etc... The only actual performance drop I do get in towns is using Towns and Villages Enhanced by aplestormy, which really drops my frames in Whiterun the most so I'm thinking of removing those and finding an alternative mod. The 970 SLI seems like a great card. More bang for your buck. Though the 980 ti I've read good reviews and I just think the user didn't properly set up ENB right. I just can't imagine someone with a 980 ti getting the same performance drop rate as me with my dinosaur GPU. I'm not familiar with AMD cards Hmm, hopefully the 980 ti perform better than in the video. A single card set-up would be much more ideal than a dual one. From what I hear, the 980 ti is the way to go if you plan on doing 1440p gaming and up.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 This is his specs: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=380057912158459&id=104532719710981 You can get an idea. Heck I might even look into this, but I'm still trying to push 7-9 months from now building a pretty nice machine for next gen. There will be new hardware by then.
spoonsinger Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 What do you mean by the engine is the underlying problem? Not really sure I can give any better description of the underlying engine than:-
sila Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 I was under the impression that SLI on Skyrim isn't a good idea, (either for vanilla or ENB'd). Never had the funds to test the theory, but there are posts out there. Also you still get stutter/jitter with a bog standard, (but OC'd), 970. I suspect basically because the underlying engine is a bit pants. This is pretty much the video that sold me on the 970 SLI setup. I want my game to look as gorgeous as this one. I do want to get a single card set-up but the stuttering kind of put me off a little bit. What do you mean by the engine is the underlying problem? I just read the comments there and the user said they fixed it with a fresh reinstall. It could be the user isn't using many hires textures now. One of things I know is that people tend to compress their hires textures wrong and hires textures hog up performance let alone if compressed wrong. I'm running a GTX 260 (i know ;/) and my framerate and microstutter is just about the same in the first and second video (depending the ENB I use though). Current ENB I'm using (AIR ENB) drops me down to 16-17 fps. And it's not heavily on shadows, cinematic, and even DOF disabled. But I am running a lot of 2-4k hires textures, which I'm considering removing many of them to see if I can manage to play this game above 30 frames with ENB off and no performance drop mods like weather mods, grass foliage overhauls etc... The only actual performance drop I do get in towns is using Towns and Villages Enhanced by aplestormy, which really drops my frames in Whiterun the most so I'm thinking of removing those and finding an alternative mod. The 970 SLI seems like a great card. More bang for your buck. Though the 980 ti I've read good reviews and I just think the user didn't properly set up ENB right. I just can't imagine someone with a 980 ti getting the same performance drop rate as me with my dinosaur GPU. I'm not familiar with AMD cards Hmm, hopefully the 980 ti perform better than in the video. A single card set-up would be much more ideal than a dual one. From what I hear, the 980 ti is the way to go if you plan on doing 1440p gaming and up. One of the reasons it is better to use the strongest single gpu than to go sli currently is the vram. When you SLI two gpus, you can only use the vram on one of the cards, so for the 970 you would be getting 3.5gb of vram and no more. Apparently dx12 may change that though... so maybe sli will be better in the future?
spoonsinger Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 I was under the impression that SLI on Skyrim isn't a good idea, (either for vanilla or ENB'd). Never had the funds to test the theory, but there are posts out there. Also you still get stutter/jitter with a bog standard, (but OC'd), 970. I suspect basically because the underlying engine is a bit pants. This is pretty much the video that sold me on the 970 SLI setup. I want my game to look as gorgeous as this one. I do want to get a single card set-up but the stuttering kind of put me off a little bit. What do you mean by the engine is the underlying problem? I just read the comments there and the user said they fixed it with a fresh reinstall. It could be the user isn't using many hires textures now. One of things I know is that people tend to compress their hires textures wrong and hires textures hog up performance let alone if compressed wrong. I'm running a GTX 260 (i know ;/) and my framerate and microstutter is just about the same in the first and second video (depending the ENB I use though). Current ENB I'm using (AIR ENB) drops me down to 16-17 fps. And it's not heavily on shadows, cinematic, and even DOF disabled. But I am running a lot of 2-4k hires textures, which I'm considering removing many of them to see if I can manage to play this game above 30 frames with ENB off and no performance drop mods like weather mods, grass foliage overhauls etc... The only actual performance drop I do get in towns is using Towns and Villages Enhanced by aplestormy, which really drops my frames in Whiterun the most so I'm thinking of removing those and finding an alternative mod. The 970 SLI seems like a great card. More bang for your buck. Though the 980 ti I've read good reviews and I just think the user didn't properly set up ENB right. I just can't imagine someone with a 980 ti getting the same performance drop rate as me with my dinosaur GPU. I'm not familiar with AMD cards Hmm, hopefully the 980 ti perform better than in the video. A single card set-up would be much more ideal than a dual one. From what I hear, the 980 ti is the way to go if you plan on doing 1440p gaming and up. One of the reasons it is better to use the strongest single gpu than to go sli currently is the vram. When you SLI two gpus, you can only use the vram on one of the cards, so for the 970 you would be getting 3.5gb of vram and no more. Apparently dx12 may change that though... so maybe sli will be better in the future? If I had the dosh, I would probably just go for the best I could afford at the time - and knowing that two years down the line it's just going to be average. However unless FO4/or anything else brings something out of the bag which is awe inspiring in the near future, (unlikely because most AAA stuff is being targeted to console), SLI'd 970's would probably be a good option. (However it isn't going to improve Skyrim that much over a single card option - and you'll still get jitter/stuttering). The underlying problems with Skyrim arn't going to change.
Morra Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 NVIDIA AIB partners just dropped the price on all Maxwell based Video Cards, so a GTX 980 Ti should be around 630$. Just go for an Evga GTX 980 Ti with 6 GB of Vram and you will be fine. With Windows 10 around the corner and a new WDDM 2.0 the card will perform even better. SLI is not bad, but the scaling is not 1.0 and sometimes it's not even working, you need to wait for new drivers. Knowing NVIDIA they can drop the optimization next year and you will be stuck with a single 3.5 GB Vram card. DirectX 12 has a feature that can use Vram from both cards, but developers will actually need to implement this feature for their games for you to benefit from it.
sila Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 NVIDIA AIB partners just dropped the price on all Maxwell based Video Cards, so a GTX 980 Ti should be around 630$. Just go for an Evga GTX 980 Ti with 6 GB of Vram and you will be fine. With Windows 10 around the corner and a new WDDM 2.0 the card will perform even better. SLI is not bad, but the scaling is not 1.0 and sometimes it's not even working, you need to wait for new drivers. Knowing NVIDIA they can drop the optimization next year and you will be stuck with a single 3.5 GB Vram card. DirectX 12 has a feature that can use Vram from both cards, but developers will actually need to implement this feature for their games for you to benefit from it. Really? that sucks.... hopefully most devs will actually implement it then (most meaning not ubisoft... because I have no faith in Ubisoft games anymore... or ea for that matter...)
sila Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 snip snip If I had the dosh, I would probably just go for the best I could afford at the time - and knowing that two years down the line it's just going to be average. However unless FO4/or anything else brings something out of the bag which is awe inspiring in the near future, (unlikely because most AAA stuff is being targeted to console), SLI'd 970's would probably be a good option. (However it isn't going to improve Skyrim that much over a single card option - and you'll still get jitter/stuttering). The underlying problems with Skyrim arn't going to change. The thing is, if you go for the strongest single gpu you can get now while it is still high end, you can go for sli on that card 2-3 years down the road for much cheaper than current gen, and get a gpu that is as strong as the new ones. Whereas if you go for a dual setup now 2-3 years down the road it wont be as good, you would have to go 3 way sli which causes more problems, or buy one of the newer gpus. If you don't plan on going the first route sli isn't really even necessary (unless you go high end like 980ti sli for 4k gaming or something of course) since you would have nearly the same power from a single 980ti as you would from 2 970s.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted July 12, 2015 Posted July 12, 2015 Well it would be nice if Bethesda takes this into consideration because Skryim (and I presume FO4) is a really heavy graphical game that eats up a lot of memory. Having the benefit of SLI could really be useful, but I don't think Fallout 4 is going to be on DX12. Shame really. Would love for it to be 64bit, but considering they are catering to console systems more with providing mod tools, They are basically making their games more console friendly so I doubt it.
grymsoul Posted July 13, 2015 Author Posted July 13, 2015 Well, you guys have convinced me to invest into the 980ti. My only concern is the slight hitching when it comes to the Skyrim video. I'm a huge Skyrim addict. 200+ hours on consoles then bought a PC and spent another 300+ hours experimenting with mods. I want to get a GPU that can take the visuals to the next level. Don't mind spending the $700 for the GPU card if it means it will last a couple years. Also, back to my original post, if I were to get a 980ti instead would there be anything else in my system that I had to upgrade to maintain stability?
sila Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Well, you guys have convinced me to invest into the 980ti. My only concern is the slight hitching when it comes to the Skyrim video. I'm a huge Skyrim addict. 200+ hours on consoles then bought a PC and spent another 300+ hours experimenting with mods. I want to get a GPU that can take the visuals to the next level. Don't mind spending the $700 for the GPU card if it means it will last a couple years. Also, back to my original post, if I were to get a 980ti instead would there be anything else in my system that I had to upgrade to maintain stability? Not really, that i7 is quite a beast, and the only other thing that might be a problem would be the ram, but 8gb is enough for games. Edit: tbh I am a little jealous... I am stuck with a single 970
Morra Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Your system is fine as it is. Sure you can upgrade many things, but I don't see the point. As about hitching you shouldn't have any, related to your GPU or your PC in general.
grymsoul Posted July 13, 2015 Author Posted July 13, 2015 Well, you guys have convinced me to invest into the 980ti. My only concern is the slight hitching when it comes to the Skyrim video. I'm a huge Skyrim addict. 200+ hours on consoles then bought a PC and spent another 300+ hours experimenting with mods. I want to get a GPU that can take the visuals to the next level. Don't mind spending the $700 for the GPU card if it means it will last a couple years. Also, back to my original post, if I were to get a 980ti instead would there be anything else in my system that I had to upgrade to maintain stability? Not really, that i7 is quite a beast, and the only other thing that might be a problem would be the ram, but 8gb is enough for games. Edit: tbh I am a little jealous... I am stuck with a single 970 Thanks for the compliment. I'm sure you'll work your way up to another GPU eventually. I hear that the 970 is quite the beast itself. I'm only getting a 980ti to ensure that I won't have to upgrade for a while. Your system is fine as it is. Sure you can upgrade many things, but I don't see the point. As about hitching you shouldn't have any, related to your GPU or your PC in general. What about my PSU? is that enough for the 980ti setup?
Guest endgameaddiction Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980-ti/specifications (bottom) You have the power to run the card.
Morra Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 Your system is fine as it is. Sure you can upgrade many things, but I don't see the point. As about hitching you shouldn't have any, related to your GPU or your PC in general. What about my PSU? is that enough for the 980ti setup? Yes it's in range of 600 W, so your PSU has enough power to support it. Good news, EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified ACX 2.0+ will be just for 700$, very good price for an High End card.
sila Posted July 13, 2015 Posted July 13, 2015 For one 980ti its more than enough, probably enough for sli 980 too.
grymsoul Posted July 14, 2015 Author Posted July 14, 2015 Thank you guys for all of your help. I believe I'm going to be quite satisfied with my purchase now. Have a good day to all of you
sila Posted July 14, 2015 Posted July 14, 2015 Thank you guys for all of your help. I believe I'm going to be quite satisfied with my purchase now. Have a good day to all of you To be honest I would like to thank you for that video, I had been looking for a grass mod that looked very good, that video helped me find one
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