Hardware Discussion Thread

[KHg8m3r]

Getting a Chrombook and then installing Ubuntu is a viable option

[Xtreme2damax]

Well looks like it's time to start saving up for my upgrade..

Haswell i7
At least 12GB ram (new DDR3 kit)
GTX 980

My current i7 and GTX 460's are starting to lag behind. A Haswell would be much better for Dolphin, all these recent improvement would yield far greater results than my outdated i7. I would be able to use accuracy options such as LLE audio, EFB to Ram and high IR while being able to maintain full speed or greater 99% of the time. My 460's are lagging behind for recent games and even sli'd GTX 460's can't maintain 60fps constant or achieve at least 60fps in games like Skyrim, Sleeping dogs, Saints Row IV, Crysis/Warhead and other games.

I need to upgrade sooner or later because the Sabertooth X58's are very poor quality. Reading online it appears this board has a very high failure rate and fail in most cases. Judging by the issues I had installing my ram and getting the board to detect it this board I fully expect this board to fail. There's only a five year warranty on the board and next year will mark the third or fourth year for the warranty. I need to eventually get new hdd's as these Hitachi's weren't good from the start and are showing their age, I experience issues with system responsiveness every so often and the bios occasionally chokes detecting them delaying the boot process. With a GTX 980's and later if I add a second in sli it should not only breeze through any game I throw at it but allow me to record with fraps or shadowplay without slowdowns.

Any idea how long until the next gen Intel socket and processors debuts and if I should wait or just get a Haswell?

Edit: If my system holds up for a while I could sell off my hardware to make back most of what I spent for the upgrade. I also have two older mini tower OEM systems I could sell off and the Core2Duo + motherboard combo.

[Anti-Ultimate]

And maybe, just maybe you'll stop posting into every performance-issue thread that someone should merge galop1n's changes into master.

Broadwell will use Z97.
12GB is pretty useless though. If you really want more RAM, 16GB is recommended.

[Xtreme2damax]

What no, never did that, not like you're claiming. Except maybe a couple or few threads.. DX11 performance is just really bad and I was responding it would be possible to get far better performance i.e. full speed even if galop1n shared his code, it was reviewed by devs and merged to master. For all those claiming full speed Hyrule Field isn't possible even with Haswell without the speed hack even though I can achieve up to 25fps in slowest Hyrule field with an OC'd first gen i7 using a build with galop1n's DX11 improvements or OpenGL. For naysayers saying full speed is impossible in other games with Haswell when they might be with galop1n's DX11 changes and OpenGL.

I stopped caring about DX11 after Fiora's JIT optimizations and switching to OpenGL. So now I get like 1.5x to 2x the speed I got with DX11, is much smoother and less issues. Only issue I have with OpenGL is screen tearing which is such a minor issue not worth complaining about.

On topic..

So 16GB or 32GB it is I guess. Might need to bump up to a higher wattage psu but I'll worry about it when I get money together for components. Is Broadwell the next gen Intel processor, if so what socket will it use because with every new gen Intel processor there is always a new socket requiring a new motherboard. Not that it matters to me since I will need a new motherboard to upgrade anyway but it would be nice to know what socket board I'll need.

[Garteal]

Well that didn't take long... right ear of my headset is dying. Volume is about 50% lower than the left ear. Going to try to return it tomorrow and get something else if possible.

Edit: Ugh, ignore that. For some reason my right ear works fine now after a reboot. Yes I should've rebooted earlier but couldn't due to installing stuff.

[AnyOldName3]

My dad has finally been fully convinced he needs to buy something in order to have an under-the-TV PC that can do stuff. It doesn't need to do much, but I'm not great at low end hardware expect to say that it's not good enough for things. All this system needs to do is:

Boot some form of Linux.
Be able to play HD video without stuttering or the video running slower than the audio, or any of the horrific issues we've had when trying to watch H.264 videos on pre-2001 hardware.
Run XBMC fairly responsively (it'll only be accessing a local networked DLNA server so doesn't need much local storage).
Be small (A really cheap NUC would be preferable to micro-ITX, but micro ITX won't be complained about).

What's the cheapest system that will do all this that can be built from components from Scan (http://www.scan.co.uk) which basically has all the hardware we might need except pre-built systems and laptops, which they only do in mid to high end, or another provider if they're much cheaper?

[NaturalViolence]

Do you need an entire system or are there any parts that you can reuse? Would you prefer AMD or Intel? Keeping in mind AMD usually offers better GPU performance while Intel usually offers better cpu performance in this price range. Any specific considerations or preferences I should be aware of? Why is scans site layout so terrible? Why haven't you moved to the USA yet?

[NaturalViolence]

Scratch most of that. Scans embedded/NUC AMD selection is virtually non existent. So that leaves you with three options:

1. Use an embedded board: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-j1800n-d2h-integrated-intel-celeron-j1800-dual-core-241ghz-ddr3-so-dimm-sata-ii-3gb-s

and add HDD, psu, chassis, and ram.

2. Use a barebones NUC: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc-celeron-n2820-dual-core-213ghz-ddr3l-so-dimm-sata-ii-3gb-s-1-x-25-bay-intel-hd-313mhz-gpu-

and add HDD and RAM

3. Use a complete NUC: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-n5-pre-built-nuc-pc-system-intel-celeron-hd-graphics-4gb-ddr3-128gb-ssd

Configure some builds and compare options. See which of those three options ends up being the cheapest once configured. I'm not going to take the time to navigate this site and compare prices of adding HDD, chassis, ram, and psu vs getting it with a kit.

[teh_speleegn_polease]

To all those who responded to my question about low-end laptops: thanks for the suggestions, I'll give it some thought. Probably will end up not buying anything and spending those 3 weeks a year I'm away being bored to death, but whatever.

Also, I'm now torn between upgrading to a GTX 970 sometime soon or waiting till next gen. (Currently I have a 680.) So far, there haven't been too many situations where I felt like I really needed an upgrade... Except when playing Skyrim with an ENB and about a total of 50 graphics mods, and never being bothered to optimise anything at all, resulting in about 30-50 FPS depending on location... But I'm sure that would be easily avoidable.
At the same time, getting a 970 would almost completely eliminate me having to bother with graphics at all. Which would be especially helpful now that I have a 120Hz monitor: sometimes, I need to find a trade-off between quality and FPS; if I upgrade, I don't expect to have to worry about it except in some really demanding games/situations.
The low price of the 970 is also an argument in favour of an upgrade: even though it is almost at the top of the current CPU high-end ladder, topped only by the 980, perhaps Titan Black/780Ti (if that), and maybe a couple AMD cards I know little about, it still only costs just over $300. Compare that with the Titan's launching price of $1000, and even the 780's and 780Ti's - both of which retailed at over $600 at launch.


I wish Broadwell were here. Or better still, Skylake. I feel like I'm often bottlenecked by my CPU, but upgrading now seems rather stupid, especially since the per-core performance of the extreme models is not very far above that of my current CPU - I'd just be paying for 12 extra cores, which I don't really need.


Tl;dr: me ranting about whether to upgrade from my 680 to a 970 or not. Then me ranting about how I want to upgrade my CPU but don't need extra cores, so I have to wait for Broadwell at the very least, and perhaps Skylake. Then me using the tldr as an opportunity to rant some more.

[DatKid20]

(09-23-2014, 06:18 AM)teh_speleegn_polease Wrote: To all those who responded to my question about low-end laptops: thanks for the suggestions, I'll give it some thought. Probably will end up not buying anything and spending those 3 weeks a year I'm away being bored to death, but whatever.

Also, I'm now torn between upgrading to a GTX 970 sometime soon or waiting till next gen. (Currently I have a 680.) So far, there haven't been too many situations where I felt like I really needed an upgrade... Except when playing Skyrim with an ENB and about a total of 50 graphics mods, and never being bothered to optimise anything at all, resulting in about 30-50 FPS depending on location... But I'm sure that would be easily avoidable.
At the same time, getting a 970 would almost completely eliminate me having to bother with graphics at all. Which would be especially helpful now that I have a 120Hz monitor: sometimes, I need to find a trade-off between quality and FPS; if I upgrade, I don't expect to have to worry about it except in some really demanding games/situations.
The low price of the 970 is also an argument in favour of an upgrade: even though it is almost at the top of the current CPU high-end ladder, topped only by the 980, perhaps Titan Black/780Ti (if that), and maybe a couple AMD cards I know little about, it still only costs just over $300. Compare that with the Titan's launching price of $1000, and even the 780's and 780Ti's - both of which retailed at over $600 at launch.


I wish Broadwell were here. Or better still, Skylake. I feel like I'm often bottlenecked by my CPU, but upgrading now seems rather stupid, especially since the per-core performance of the extreme models is not very far above that of my current CPU - I'd just be paying for 12 extra cores, which I don't really need.


Tl;dr: me ranting about whether to upgrade from my 680 to a 970 or not. Then me ranting about how I want to upgrade my CPU but don't need extra cores, so I have to wait for Broadwell at the very least, and perhaps Skylake. Then me using the tldr as an opportunity to rant some more.

Skylake and Broad well are coming next year. Broadwell will mostly be for mobile devices like laptops and tablets.