PC Buying Guide - July 2011

[Cilus]

i5 is really fast in daily to daily task, unbeatable performance

BTW which PSU will be more suitable for HD 6950 CF ? Corsair TX 850v2? My friend is gonna buy another HD 6950, but the prob is that he has HX 650. So, can it handle HD 6950 CF or should he change the PSU & get a new one ?

HX650 can handle HD 6950 CF, provided you are not doing much overclocking. HX series can be considered as modular TX series. Asingh is using his TX650 along with 2 HD 4890 in CF which draw significant more power than today's GPUs. He is also using it with quad core Q9550.

Extreme Gamer, I think I don't need to answer regarding your HD 6850 CF benchmark as a lot of forum members already answered that.
And one thing, GTX 580 is available around $500 is US, it is far cheaper than India, but so do the other graphics cards like HD 6870 or HD 6950.
A standard HD 6870 will cost you around $185 and the seriously factory overclocked versions are within $210-$220. Consider the HIS ICEQ X turbo HD 6870 @ $214 offers performance similar to the HD 6950 or GTX 560 stock. Check the review in gurur3d. So even in USA, at a sub $400 budget you can again beat a $500 card. Actually the CF/SLi scenario is valid everywhere, irrespective of pricing.

 

[Extreme Gamer]

Yeah.my point is that the cards are worth it the performance they give.Though the price is inflated.
It is more affordable outside.Us having same budget then crib that 580 isnt worth it and 570/560 Ti is fine...
It depends on how you play.
I know I can utilize the full power at even 1680x1050 so I know its justified for me.

How many of you actually read my post completely?

what we need is a fix to those:

1)Poor tax structure
2)Ultra high marked price (i.e. MRP)
3)Customs morons
4)Companies looking for equal or higher profit margin

EDIT: RF: Guerilla has horrible SLI(sub 10%) scaling atm, lets see what happens in future.

 

[Sarath]

@Extreme gamer thanks for your extreme article. So what is the conclusion?

Does CF/SLI show improvements in all the games against a solo card?

@Jas I think a 100k system needs a better visual experience (better monitor)
i myself have a Dell U2311H an IPS panel @14323 INR. It complements the rest of the system well.

When it comes to US they simply have a better market for high end cards than us.
Demand Supply economics. I dont understand it comletely but enough to say that when a lot of people want a GTX580 the price will come down. Here you (extreme gamer) are the only person who has this gfx

 

[Extreme Gamer]

@sarath: in most games, yes.

many people here own GTX 580 but no one (almost) has them in SLI

Also, your market idea is wrong because 500$ is the launch price for the 580 in USA.

they have bigger market because it is cheaper and thus more affordable there.

 

[Sarath]

Even if it is cheaper here the US market will still be better. They just have more demand.

 

[Cilus]

Thanks to Shayem, I've just found out the cheapest Z68 mobos from Gigabyte in ebay.in. One is sub 10K and another one is just 10.5K

Here is the link for
1. Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 Intel Z68 LGA1155 MB @ 9.8K

2. Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 @ 11.5K

These motherboards are having everything we want desperately from a Z68 mobo, HDMI support, Lucid Virtue support, SLI and Crossfire support etc.

Gigabyte-Z68MA-D2H-B3 is having 2 PCI Express X16 slot @ X8 mode and another X16 slot @ X4....Multi-GPU + PhysX is possible now.
The link for the mobos are hereand here.

believe me guys, you are gonna get surprised to see the offering of these two motherboards compared to their price.

 

[Extreme Gamer]

@sarath: perhaps.but you should know we do not have that demand because it has always been more expensive here due to successive govts in the first place.

 

[vickybat]

@ Extreme gamer

A single card is hassle free & that's all. An advanced user will definitely opt for multigpu setup which beats any single gpu setup in the market. If i had 30k, it would be spent for a 6950 2gb cf rather than a single 580 or maybe a 560 sli. Such a setup will completely decimate a single 580 setup with ease and allow you to play at higher resolutions.

580 should be purchased if the user can spend another 30k for a 2nd card ( like you) to enable more performance from the start. No point in living with a single 580 without planning sli in future. A 6870 CF will beat a 580 fair and square and will save you around 10k. In us, you save more than $100.

But 580's usp lies in its 3d performance. It is said that 580 produces more depth in 3d than a 560-ti sli. Amd is out of contention here. So putting 3d in picture, i would say the user planning to spent 30k on a gpu to go for gtx 580 handsdown.

An average user can take benefit of the excellent sli and cf scaling and opt for cheaper multigpu setups to get more performance.

In the end, 580 makes sense but has some priorities which needs to be satisfied to make it a viable option.

@ cilus

Excellent boards buddy & nice find. At 9.8k, the gigabyte d2h board is a steal and is ideal to be used with a i5 2500k or i7 2600k and any other future iterations. Definitely recommended without any doubt. The lucid virtue support is an icing to the cake. But one thing that we can't do on this board is that adding a physx card to a multigpu setup. That's because the third slot will be completely covered by any any dual slot 2nd card. The ist slot is placed pretty far away. So physx or triple gpu setup is not possible on this board. But its not needed actually and this board gets a double thumbs up from my side. I think others will agree too cvonsidering the sheer value for money the board brings. Nice find .

 

[Cilus]

vicky is right here, in 3D gaming GTX 580 is recommended over a 560Ti SLI setting. Although you will get more FPS in case of SLI, but not as much as in the normal gaming, the 3D depth is better in GTX580. I've found a nice video link regarding it and will post it.

Vicky, ya, since today's most cards are dual slot design, probably adding a PhysX card is not possible. But don't worry, Power color and Galaxy are preparing their single slot based HD 6850 and GTX 460 1 GB respectively. Here is the link for HD 6850. Also check the tomshardware single slot design GPU round up.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

Why do you keep pushing for the Dell ST2220L? For 8.2k, the Benq G2222HDL is hands down a superior monitor by far. I have already mentioned it in another thread that I did a side by side comparison of the two monitor at a local shop and the Benq's picture quality and color saturation simply blows away the Dell ST2220L. No comparison at all if you ask me.

no offence but first of all i dont have that much time to see every other thread in forum. if you want to suggest, then mention the thing and that thread here.

 

[nginx]

my point was that more people outside can afford what we get lower end stuff for...

Yeah.my point is that the cards are worth it the performance they give.Though the price is inflated.
It is more affordable outside.Us having same budget then crib that 580 isnt worth it and 570/560 Ti is fine...
It depends on how you play.
I know I can utilize the full power at even 1680x1050 so I know its justified for me.

How many of you actually read my post completely?

what we need is a fix to those:



EDIT: RF: Guerilla has horrible SLI(sub 10%) scaling atm, lets see what happens in future.

Even in the US, a $510 price tag for a graphics card is considered extremely high. You are talking as if a $500 graphics card is something any average Joe over in the US can afford. Not true at all. Anything over $350 is considered not worthy of purchase. $250 is considered the sweet spot.

So in the end $510 or 30k is a moot point. The point is cards like 580 are not worth the price for the performance they give whether in USD or INR. As I said earlier, you are basically paying 10-15k extra just to get 4-8 fps more and the bragging rights. But since you already admitted that you like burning your parent's cash, there is not much point in arguing hehe

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

@cilus
excellent find.
but thing is that using a dual gpu will block sata ports in Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

@cilus
UD3H is good for its price.

and cilus post the am3+ mobo you wanted in 40k.

 

[Cilus]

@nginx: I said i dont like to burn cash.I have bought it and will run it for 5 years.

Isnt that good enough an investment?

By price inflation I mean price increase from US to india.

EDIT: those who think I wasted money, a) dont own these products (i.e. similar config) themselves b) are plain jealous c) disregard many, if not most statements i have posted about them d) dont play in the settings I do

They may belong to either one, some or all of those options and maybe a few others that i havent thought of.

Listen, nobody said that you have wasted money or anything like that. They have just pointed out by spending less amount of money a good sytem can be build up.
And the other thing is at 1080P setting, really GTX 580 SLI a super kill. I can play every game, even the most demanding Metro 2033 with everything maxed out along with 4X AA and still get above 40 FPS. your 580 SLI will give you say 100 FPS, but you cannot distinguish anything above 60-70 FPS.

But yes, your system is a super system and you can throw any thing over it for coming 5-6 years. In my 1st post regarding the multi-gpu setup, I have clearly stated that it is personal choice but in general we are going for a multi-gpu setup for lower performance cost.

But while posting your points about what you think of us is very crude buddy and I'm requesting you not to use these kind of language or direct blaming. Most of the persons over here may not have the money to go for such expensive solutions but still they are hard core gamers...And you have just insulted them very badly...don't know intentionally or not.

And I can't remember anyone to post against you stating you have wasted money and also whatever is posted, posted with proper reason. They just pointed out better builds are possible. I asked to to share your experience with single and multi-gpu setup as you have multiple setups. So next time stop this blaming game.

Jas, the motherboard I'm talking about is Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H, @ 5.45K in theitwares. It has SATA3, USB 3.0, and offcial AM3+ support.

 

[tkin]

When DX12 hits it will outdate the 580 SLI(and my lightning) like an old pentium chip, I feel so sad.

 

[Skud]

@Cilus: Thanks for taking the trouble to state the obvious. Nobody here talks about wasting money and all AFAIR. But yes better VFM options are there and they are quite a few from both nVIDIA and AMD camps.

@tkin: DX12 won't out-date your 580 so quickly as next generation consoles are supposed to support only DX11. So your 580 should last for sometime to come. And you can always SLI it if you feel the need for additional power.

 

[Cilus]

nginx posted I like to burn cash. I had posted otherwise in my long thread.

thing is, I like to keep the framerates consistent.if there is a difference in timings between frames I notice the jump/drop almost immediately.

I can even notice jumps from 60 to 80 fps.

For some reason I can even notice 200fps (200Hz BS in TVs). But that doesnt mean I like it, just so you know
I even find 18fps in some games to be smooth (mainly GTA 4 on my old 8800GT)

I always posted that those setups at their tags are very good. I just dont like it when people attack me because I spent more although I have posted everything I can to justify it

Extreme Gamer, its time to go back to the study table. Lets start with the basic of the human vision. unless you are watching a very fast moving object, over 60 FPS is going to be blurry to your eye. Remember, the Newton's color wheel, where all the 7 colors are present and if you rotate it very quickly, you will see grayish white as human brain can't process the changes that fast and all the colors mixed up to produce a grayish image.

Now come to the 200 FPS in a LCD or any kind of display. The latest one is the 3D displays are having 120 Hz refresh rate and for 99% of us it is 60 Hz and some case may be 75 Hz. Now when you switch of the Vsync in games then FRAPS sometimes show you more than 60 FPS, say 75 FPS to your so called 200 FPS. The thing is the results displayed by fraps are purely benchmark specific results, it is not what is getting displayed in the Monitor, A monitor can't show you anything over its specified refresh rate, no matter how much FPS is getting processed internally by the hardware.

Here is some lines from Wikipedia

A culture of competition has arisen among game enthusiasts with regard to frame rates, with players striving to obtain the highest FPS possible, due to their utility in demonstrating a system's power and efficiency. Indeed, many benchmarks (such as 3DMark) released by the marketing departments of hardware manufacturers and published in hardware reviews focus on the FPS measurement. Even though the typical LCD monitors of today are locked at 60 FPS, making extremely high frame rates impossible to see in realtime, playthroughs of game “timedemos” at hundreds or thousands of FPS for benchmarking purposes are still common.

So unless you are some super human or mutant, it is not possible to see a 200 FPS change and unless you are using an alien technology based LCD, ( I know some sony and LG LCD TVs are having 200 Hz refresh rate, but I don't think your monitor has it)it cannot show 200 FPS video.

 

[vickybat]

@ cilus

Here's the gigabyte z68ma-d2h-b3 review that you asked for.

@ Extreme Gamer - from one of your deleted posts :

EDIT: those who think I wasted money, a) dont own these products (i.e. similar config) themselves b) are plain jealous c) disregard many, if not most statements i have posted about them d) dont play in the settings I do

They may belong to either one, some or all of those options and maybe a few others that i havent thought of.

While posting avoid personal insults - you have been warned !

@ all - ignore offtopic discussions

 

[Extreme Gamer]

I actually do notice that 200hz gimmick, but it doesnt feel right to me-feels like something is wrong with the video.Perhaps no mo-blur.
I like to keep my minimum framerates above 45 so there the GTX 580 SLI has its advantage in demanding titles.

 

[rajan1311]

some monitors claim 600Hz refresh rate....but I think all that is utter nonsense...

anyways, back to topic guys..