Desktop Computers

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,486
22,396
By the time optimized DX12 games and drivers are out, Pascal is probably going to shit all over most of our existing cards.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
The DX12 benchmarks that are starting to appear are just weird as hell. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there is only a single DX12 game to benchmark, Ashes of the Singularity, and it appears to be an RTS? A genre not exactly known as the pinnacle of graphical achievements

DirectX 12 tested: An early win for AMD, and disappointment for Nvidia | Ars Technica UK

Example benchmark:
Review-chart-template-final-full-width-3.0011-980x720.png


WTF is going on here? I'm not quite so convinced that DX12 increases the performance of AMD cards by 50-75%, as I am that this particular game is horribly, horribly optimized for AMD under DX11, so the jump to DX12 is night and day. And theres no reason that the Nvidia cards should actually get worse under DX12. It seems like all of these benchmarks are just wildly all over the place with either unoptomized drivers, an unoptimized game, or both.
 

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
Isn't that just a synthetic benchmark anyway? Both companies have a long, storied history of fucking with their code to allow benchmarks to score well. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if those results were atypical, but isn't it too early to tell?

Edit: Never mind, apparently I can't read, it's a real game. Still wouldn't be surprised if there is some cheating going on here.
 

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
44,831
93,712
The DX12 benchmarks that are starting to appear are just weird as hell. A lot of it has to do with the fact that there is only a single DX12 game to benchmark, Ashes of the Singularity, and it appears to be an RTS? A genre not exactly known as the pinnacle of graphical achievements

DirectX 12 tested: An early win for AMD, and disappointment for Nvidia | Ars Technica UK

Example benchmark:
Review-chart-template-final-full-width-3.0011-980x720.png


WTF is going on here? I'm not quite so convinced that DX12 increases the performance of AMD cards by 50-75%, as I am that this particular game is horribly, horribly optimized for AMD under DX11, so the jump to DX12 is night and day. And theres no reason that the Nvidia cards should actually get worse under DX12. It seems like all of these benchmarks are just wildly all over the place with either unoptomized drivers, an unoptimized game, or both.
I wouldn't put it past being unoptimized drivers.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
Got an email the other day that my Google Fiber install should happen sometime this fall. Can't get here quick enough. Time Warner recently upgraded me for free to 300mbps down, but still limited to 5mbps up, which is total ass.
 

Denamian

Night Janitor
<Nazi Janitors>
7,204
19,004
So I finally got a SSD for my desktop, a 500GB 850 EVO. I'm doing a clean install of windows 10 on it and was just curious if there's anything I should do beyond not filling it with crap as I usually do with HDDs. I know SSDs get slower as they fill up, but in real world use is it noticeable? My Surface Pro 2 doesn't seem any slower if I let it fill up, but that's a much less powerful machine to begin with.

Also: Fuck you Joeboo and your fancypants fiber.
 

Sterling

El Presidente
13,002
7,904
So I finally got a SSD for my desktop, a 500GB 850 EVO. I'm doing a clean install of windows 10 on it and was just curious if there's anything I should do beyond not filling it with crap as I usually do with HDDs. I know SSDs get slower as they fill up, but in real world use is it noticeable? My Surface Pro 2 doesn't seem any slower if I let it fill up, but that's a much less powerful machine to begin with.

Also: Fuck you Joboo and your fancypants fiber.
Apparently it doesn't matter that much with these particular drives, but I'd still not put media and shit on it.
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,486
22,396
An 500GB 850 EVO won't slow down until its very near full, its overprovisioned quite a lot by default.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
While a SSD technically starts slowing down once it's half full, it's honestly not going to be noticeable to a normal user until it's really full, like 90%+

I try not to push mine anywhere near 90%, but I definitely go over half. I think my 250gb drive has about 180gig on it, and my 128gb drive is around 100 gig, and they're still both incredibly fast. I'd have no issues with filling a 500GB drive up to a little over 400GB or so
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
True, but that isn't a drastically different amount. My 250GB SSD is like 233 formatted, so you're talking about a 50% mark of 116.5 vs 125. And regardless, no one is going to notice the speed difference in practical, every day use between a drive being 50% full or 55% full.
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
<Gold Donor>
30,486
22,396
True, but that isn't a drastically different amount. My 250GB SSD is like 233 formatted
That's not what I'm talking about. They have internal overprovisioning past that. Well, good ones do, anyway.

Also 'fullness' only effects write performance, it shouldn't impact read performance at all on drives made in the past 1-2 years.
 

Chancellor Alkorin

Part-Time Sith
<Granularity Engineer>
6,029
5,915
God I used to hate Bell Canada. Now I love them. Woooot!
Fuck. We've lost another one.

I wouldn't go back to Bell if they paid me, not even for those kinds of speeds. Forget it. It isn't worth spending the rest of my life bent over.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
I picked this system up for $800 shipped from a guy on r/hardwareswap. He ships it tomorrow, hope I didn't get scammed, he has 11 positive feedback and I went through his previous stuff and seems like a legit guy.

I think those prices look a little high but feel the system is worth about $1k potentially.

PCPartPicker part list/Price breakdown by merchant

CPU:Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor($252.98 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler:Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler($25.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard:ASRock Z87E-ITX Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard($149.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory:Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory($87.39 @ Newegg)
Storage:Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive($343.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card:EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked Video Card($578.99 @ Amazon)
Case:Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply:Corsair Builder 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply($43.00 @ Newegg)
Total:$1547.21
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-21 17:08 EDT-0400