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1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

Mikemo Tyson posted:

I recently built a new computer and bought a heatsink that takes up a ton of space. I can't put my graphics card into the x16 slot so I put it in x8. Will this hamstring my gpus performance? I have a gtx970.

Traditionally the answer has been "no", like 1-2%



Stuff changes though, but even then I can't imagine if its much.


DarthBlingBling posted:

Well I'm assuming an old router doesn't have a 5GHz wireless mode. 2.4GHz will not cut it whatsoever

Correct me if I'm wrong but theres no practical speed difference (I thought) between those two frequencies. A 2.4ghz only router might be indicative of a slower standard but not because its operating at 2.4ghz. Also the 2.4ghz can be crowded and affect performance but little to do with the frequency itself. While this might seem moot, I'd be wary of assuming a 5.0 ghz router is fast because its 5.0 ghz

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kuddles
Jul 16, 2006

Like a fist wrapped in blood...

Mikemo Tyson posted:

I recently built a new computer and bought a heatsink that takes up a ton of space. I can't put my graphics card into the x16 slot so I put it in x8. Will this hamstring my gpus performance? I have a gtx970.
Nope. Most of the time video cards don't even need the bandwidth for X8, so it won't be an issue, especially if you're just running one video card at a 1080p screen or whatever.

EDIT: Beaten, but here is a an even more recent article that shows the difference is non-existent.

kuddles fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Dec 4, 2014

DarthBlingBling
Apr 19, 2004

These were also dark times for gamers as we were shunned by others for being geeky or nerdy and computer games were seen as Childs play things, during these dark ages the whispers began circulating about a 3D space combat game called Elite

- CMDR Bald Man In A Box

1gnoirents posted:

Traditionally the answer has been "no", like 1-2%



Stuff changes though, but even then I can't imagine if its much.


Correct me if I'm wrong but theres no practical speed difference (I thought) between those two frequencies. A 2.4ghz only router might be indicative of a slower standard but not because its operating at 2.4ghz. Also the 2.4ghz can be crowded and affect performance but little to do with the frequency itself. While this might seem moot, I'd be wary of assuming a 5.0 ghz router is fast because its 5.0 ghz

As I said, it's not faster, but it will have lower latency which is vital when streaming live video.

DarthBlingBling fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 4, 2014

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.
5ghz connections do allow more bandwidth.

DaNzA
Sep 11, 2001

:D
Grimey Drawer
It has slightly better encoding.

Generic Monk posted:

Isn't 2.4GHZ actually less affected by walls and other obstacles than 5GHZ? Sure I heard that somewhere

It's probably that 2.4Ghz is just way more crowded where he is and since you only have 3 generally non-overlapping 20Mhz channels for 2.4Ghz vs a ton more open channels in 5Ghz. You end up with faster speed if you used 5Ghz.

A moderate/weak but clear 5Ghz signal is much much better and faster than a strong 2.4Ghz in a crowded environment with tons of interference.

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

DarthBlingBling posted:

As I said, it's not faster, but it will have lower latency which is vital when streaming live video.

Ahh I figured the bandwidth had little to do with latency here.

Lowen SoDium
Jun 5, 2003

Highen Fiber
Clapping Larry

Generic Monk posted:

Isn't 2.4GHZ actually less affected by walls and other obstacles than 5GHZ? Sure I heard that somewhere

Yes but there is usual more interference in that band because it carrys father. You are more likely to get some signal from your neighbors Wi-Fi and other wireless device.

Octopode
Sep 2, 2009

No. I work here. I manage operations for this and integration for this, while making sure that their stuff keeps working in here.
Basic radio signal rule of thumb:

Higher frequency signals have higher potential bandwidth (more waveforms to modulate and encode information), but less ability to penetrate (shorter wavelength/more readily absorbed and interfered with). Modulation techniques, interference, and signal strength all affect this, but those things being reasonably equal, it holds true.

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy
Thought this was neat, Asus Mini-ITX 970 uses a different fan design than anything I've seen before and they compare it to another fan of the same size and RPM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=totFkHQftaI

I guess the fin design mixes up the air better to be more effective overall? Or it could all be marketing fluff, but seems legit from the video.

Edit: Oh, huh, I see Asus has the identical cooler on the GTX 670. Maybe they patented the fan design? If it's so much better I wonder who no one else has done anything that fancy with their fans.

Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Dec 4, 2014

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

Zero VGS posted:

Thought this was neat, Asus Mini-ITX 970 uses a different fan design than anything I've seen before and they compare it to another fan of the same size and RPM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=totFkHQftaI

I guess the fin design mixes up the air better to be more effective overall? Or it could all be marketing fluff, but seems legit from the video.

Edit: Oh, huh, I see Asus has the identical cooler on the GTX 670. Maybe they patented the fan design? If it's so much better I wonder who no one else has done anything that fancy with their fans.

Generally what always is the case is that its like 1% better at the end of the day, or worse. Sometimes thats good enough for some applications (think military rotors, submarine propellers, turbine blades) but for something like a GPU nobody else is going to spend the R&D to even copy it when the real numbers come through

edit: lmao my cancer is gone

1gnoirents fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Dec 4, 2014

Sidesaddle Cavalry
Mar 15, 2013

Oh Boy Desert Map
Yeah, it was kind of interesting a year and a half ago, ASUS ended up using that hybrid traditional/blower frankenfan in several of their cards, sometimes just with one CoolTech fan and one traditional fan on the silicon itself.

The other part about ASUS's mini-ITX 670/760/970 cooler is that you'll notice it doesn't have heat pipes like the Gigabyte 970. It uses one o' them newfangled vapor chamber deals, and probably the smallest one ever made OEM on a GPU. It was originally designed for the 670, however, which I suppose isn't too different from the 970 since it was also a mid-range part with a similiar sized 28nm process, but fitment and its correlation with overall cooling effectiveness is what I'm still concerned about.

craig588
Nov 19, 2005

by Nyc_Tattoo
A 970 has a lower TDP than a 670 so performance shouldn't be an issue.

life is killing me
Oct 28, 2007

IDK if this has been said, but 5ghz is really useful if you have a land line phone that is on 2.4, for instance. There are other electronic items in the household that are wireless and on 2.4ghz, but a wireless phone on a land line would be chief among them as a candidate to interfere with the signal. Other computers might be taking up some of that bandwidth, as well as your cell phone even, if you keep it connected to wireless while you're home (which you should). That said, if you're on 2.4 and worried about speed, you can always turn off wifi on your phone, and you can disconnect your land line if you even have one. Other peoples' land line wireless phone might even be interfering, but I don't know the range of those phones.

DarthBlingBling
Apr 19, 2004

These were also dark times for gamers as we were shunned by others for being geeky or nerdy and computer games were seen as Childs play things, during these dark ages the whispers began circulating about a 3D space combat game called Elite

- CMDR Bald Man In A Box
Just wire that poo poo up. If it involves gaming shove an ethernet cable in it. If others in the house whine about a 30 metre ethernet cable looking ugly, tell them it's for the greater good.

Radio Talmudist
Sep 29, 2008
Any recommendations for quiet case fans (120mm) that aren't at noctua-prices?

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.

Radio Talmudist posted:

Any recommendations for quiet case fans (120mm) that aren't at noctua-prices?

The cheaper noctuas? For something you buy once and rarely replace its OK to splurge

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Radio Talmudist posted:

Any recommendations for quiet case fans (120mm) that aren't at noctua-prices?

Phanteks fans are cheaper and better than Noctuas. More super silent focused fans are Nanoxia Deep Silence fans. Don't buy Noctua's unless you absolutely have to, they are stupidly overpriced.

Edit: wait why is this in the graphics card thread?

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Dec 5, 2014

Radio Talmudist
Sep 29, 2008

BurritoJustice posted:

Phanteks fans are cheaper and better than Noctuas. More super silent focused fans are Nanoxia Deep Silence fans. Don't buy Noctua's unless you absolutely have to, they are stupidly overpriced.

Edit: wait why is this in the graphics card thread?

Well they're to cool my R9 290 which has been ramping up its fans to ungodly levels, but I should have mentioned that

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Radio Talmudist posted:

Well they're to cool my R9 290 which has been ramping up its fans to ungodly levels, but I should have mentioned that

I'd sooner say to put an aftermarket cooler on it, like grabbing a NZXT G10 and a cheap closed loop liquid cooler.

Or sell your card and use the money you would've spent on expensive fans to get a 970 which is a whack faster, but more importantly draws half the power and is hence super quiet and cool.

Taco Duck
Feb 18, 2011


Looks like Nvidia is going 16nm in Q2 2015.

http://wccftech.com/tsmc-produce-16nm-finfet-nvidia-gpus/

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

BurritoJustice posted:

I'd sooner say to put an aftermarket cooler on it, like grabbing a NZXT G10 and a cheap closed loop liquid cooler.

Or sell your card and use the money you would've spent on expensive fans to get a 970 which is a whack faster, but more importantly draws half the power and is hence super quiet and cool.

I agree whole heartily. Case fans add up quick, especially the kind that really help with a heat issue. The cost of the G10 and budget AIO totally rumps case fans when you see what you get out of it.

Buuut selling the 290 and using that aio money for a 970 is simply better. The 970 is really hard to beat.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

1gnoirents posted:

edit: lmao my cancer is gone
You're welcome.

beejay
Apr 7, 2002


quote:

Since mass production is scheduled for mid 2015, we should see 16nm FinFET GPUs by Q3 2015 at the earliest.

:shrug:

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars



Guess I'll be riding this 560 Ti into the gr-oh it's WCCFtech.

I wait much longer I'll be replacing this card with integrated video, and for performance reasons.

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.
1080ti on a 300w psu here i come

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

Don Lapre posted:

1080ti on a 300w psu here i come

Soon we'll just be plugging in with a 12v wall wart

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
It'll be running off one of those usb battery packs! :byodood:

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

1gnoirents posted:

Case fans add up quick, especially the kind that really help with a heat issue.
Huh? A single 120mm fan helps lots and you can get a decent one for around $10-15 that will be reliable, quiet, and push a good amount of air.

Recommending firesaling his GPU + using that money and spending around ~$100 to buy a 970 or watercooling instead of just a well positioned 120mm fan doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he just needs to keep his GPU cool enough not to ramp the fans so much.

Seems to me lately lots of people in this thread have totally lost their rationality lately when it comes to the 970. Its a good card but its not THAT good.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

Huh? A single 120mm fan helps lots and you can get a decent one for around $10-15 that will be reliable, quiet, and push a good amount of air.

Recommending firesaling his GPU + using that money and spending around ~$100 to buy a 970 or watercooling instead of just a well positioned 120mm fan doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he just needs to keep his GPU cool enough not to ramp the fans so much.

Seems to me lately lots of people in this thread have totally lost their rationality lately when it comes to the 970. Its a good card but its not THAT good.

No matter how many case fans you put in front of it, the 290 reference cooler will still be a loud piece of poo poo. I did first suggest fans to him, but in my mind getting proper cooling on the card is a far better choice. A twenty dollar bracket and a forty dollar water cooling unit will make the card completely inaudible. The hundred dollar difference to a 970 will get him an inaudible card as well as half the TDP and %20+ more performance.

Just three different tiers of options as far as expenditure goes.

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

BurritoJustice posted:

No matter how many case fans you put in front of it, the 290 reference cooler will still be a loud piece of poo poo.
Unless of course pointing a 120mm fan at the card fixes his noise problem, which admittedly is not guaranteed since people have different tolerance for noise, in which case its suddenly not great but perfectly adequate. Which is all he might need or want.

BurritoJustice posted:

I did first suggest fans to him, but in my mind getting proper cooling on the card is a far better choice. A twenty dollar bracket and a forty dollar water cooling unit will make the card completely inaudible. The hundred dollar difference to a 970 will get him an inaudible card as well as half the TDP and %20+ more performance.
You did but the guy I was actually replying to wasn't exactly presenting the same options as you. 'Proper cooling' is pretty subjective. I mean yeah if you think silent is 'proper' then watercooling is the way to go. If you're fine with some noise on the other hand, which most are, watercooling is going overboard. He didn't seem to be looking to go the silent route in his post though.

Personally I'm fairly noise tolerant. About the only fan noise that ever bothered me were those 40mm Delta Black Label 10,000rpm fans from back in the day. It was less the noise and more the high pitch SCREEEEEEEEEEECH they put out that was irritating about them. But that is just me.

The 970 certainly does run cooler but its not going to give 20% extra performance, at least not at stock clocks, where it often trades blows with the R9 290 at 1440p. If you want to compare overclocked 970 vs overclocked 290 then yes the 970 does tend to overclock higher and more consistently than the 290. You still can't count on that extra 20% performance being there though. GPU's are just plain more of a crapshoot than CPU's like Sandy Bridge to overclock.

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

Huh? A single 120mm fan helps lots and you can get a decent one for around $10-15 that will be reliable, quiet, and push a good amount of air.

Recommending firesaling his GPU + using that money and spending around ~$100 to buy a 970 or watercooling instead of just a well positioned 120mm fan doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he just needs to keep his GPU cool enough not to ramp the fans so much.

Seems to me lately lots of people in this thread have totally lost their rationality lately when it comes to the 970. Its a good card but its not THAT good.

Between trying to stop a 290 from being loud with case fans and 970, its entirely rational. I've only ever seen a maximum 5 degree drop with case fans (and that was however many fans an Antec 300 case could take). If you think a single case fan will make any difference for a reference 290 in whatever case or sitauation you might have, then definitely go for it, since like you said that's $15. But when its two, three...

I think there has been a little overselling of the 970, but really it cut the cost of every high end AMD card MSRP almost in half in one week and doubled nvidias performance per dollar the day it was released. It's pretty good.

edit: and just read your next post, all fine except if you can't get your nvidia card within 50 mhz of what every other person can overclock it too - return it. Its way less of a crapshoot than cpus. People get pissed off when they can't get within 13 mhz of whatever the "standard" is for nvidia cards. I've had 13 nvidia cards this year and every single one got to 1228 mhz - because that's what they all got to really. Now its ~1450 or something. I truly believe the only reason AMD cards aren't the same way is because of the heat they generate placing way more overclocking bottlenecks on the cooling they come with

edit2: well you did say sandy bridge but , still

edit3:


Thanks :) Ponyta was getting pretty annoying

1gnoirents fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Dec 5, 2014

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer

1gnoirents posted:

I agree whole heartily. Case fans add up quick, especially the kind that really help with a heat issue. The cost of the G10 and budget AIO totally rumps case fans when you see what you get out of it.

You're telling me... I bought two Cougar 120mm fans, an H110, and a NZXT Sentry Mix 2 controller for $188. I had a CM Nepton 280L, but it doesn't fit the C70. The c70 uses 20mm spacing on the top rad space, the 280L users 15mm...

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

1gnoirents posted:

I've only ever seen a maximum 5 degree drop with case fans
Short of going full retard with those 120mm 4-6k rpm Delta fans that push 200+cfm you have to point the fans directly at the GPU, either the back of the card or at the blower inlet, instead of putting them on the case to get a big enough improvement. Creative use of zip ties is usually required to pull this off properly. Think something like this if you want to try to make it look relatively nice and neat. That guy got a 10C cooling difference doing that.

1gnoirents posted:

but really it cut the cost of every high end AMD card MSRP almost in half in one week and doubled nvidias performance per dollar the day it was released. It's pretty good.
No doubt its selling like gangbusters but so did the R9 290/X not all that long ago. Its a great card to upgrade to if you've got a older GPU but if you've already got a modern-ish or recent card (ie. 7970, 780/Ti, R9 290/X, etc.) its not all that impressive of a upgrade and really its more of a sidegrade. The hype is definitely a big part of why these cards are selling so well despite offering little to nothing of a performance improvement. If you were getting 30%+ more performance stock over the R9 290/X then yea I could see the hype as being at least somewhat sensible. You can actually easily notice those sorts of performance gains in game.

1gnoirents posted:

People get pissed off when they can't get within 13 mhz of whatever the "standard" is for nvidia cards.
And that is a pretty good sign of people having lost their minds. 13Mhz isn't even a noticeable OC on these cards.

1gnoirents posted:

I've had 13 nvidia cards this year and every single one got to 1228 mhz - because that's what they all got to really. Now its ~1450 or something. I truly believe the only reason AMD cards aren't the same way is because of the heat they generate placing way more overclocking bottlenecks on the cooling they come with
I've been OC'ing for years, since at least the late 90's, and have only ever had 1 GPU overclock well. A GeForce2 MX of all things that I ended up using a Slot A HSF, the VOS32, attached with thermal adhesive and zip ties to cool. I think I got around a mid 20%-ish overclock which was quite good for the time. Wish I still had the pictures drat thing barely fit in the motherboard with the soundcard installed. Even with cards that were supposedly a 'sure thing' like the 7970 to OC I've most always had poor luck. Plenty of other people were in the same boat too. Its great you've had a good experience with doing it but I've become quite cynical about even bothering to try to OC GPU's without serious cooling (ie. water or phase change).

I don't think the current GCN implementation OC's well no matter the cooling short of liquid nitrogen where I think the best most get is around 1.5Ghz so around a 50% OC. I'm sure Maxwell would beat that with liquid nitrogen cooling too.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Pretty much every 970 under the sun will run at 1500mhz+. There are even cards released that run 1420mhz stock clocks (Galax HOF). That is a 35%~ increase over the stock 1100mhz clock, and leads to a pretty hefty advantage over the 290 considering that the 970 is faster than a 290x at stock.

What 1gnorient was saying about 13mhz is if peoples cards are clocking 13mhz (one boost bin) less than what are expected from 900 series cards (1500~), then it is a fairly anomalous disappointment, not 13mhz from stock.

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

BurritoJustice posted:

Pretty much every 970 under the sun will run at 1500mhz+.
And pretty much every 7970 was supposed to get 1Ghz+, pretty much every 4890 was supposed to get to 950Mhz, pretty much every 8800GTX was supposed to get to 620Mhz-ish, etc etc etc. Like I said I'm quite cynical about overclocking GPU's, my personal experience has been largely abysmal.

BurritoJustice posted:

What 1gnorient was saying about 13mhz is if peoples cards are clocking 13mhz (one boost bin) less than what are expected from 900 series cards (1500~), then it is a fairly anomalous disappointment, not 13mhz from stock.
I understood him. Still ridiculous. You will not notice any performance difference if your GPU has 1413Mhz instead of 1400Mhz. You'd only see a difference in synthetic benches and even then it would be tiny, probably nearly within margin of error.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Sidesaddle Cavalry posted:

Yeah, it was kind of interesting a year and a half ago, ASUS ended up using that hybrid traditional/blower frankenfan in several of their cards, sometimes just with one CoolTech fan and one traditional fan on the silicon itself.

The other part about ASUS's mini-ITX 670/760/970 cooler is that you'll notice it doesn't have heat pipes like the Gigabyte 970. It uses one o' them newfangled vapor chamber deals, and probably the smallest one ever made OEM on a GPU. It was originally designed for the 670, however, which I suppose isn't too different from the 970 since it was also a mid-range part with a similiar sized 28nm process, but fitment and its correlation with overall cooling effectiveness is what I'm still concerned about.

Except that hybrid cooler was terrible. It was significantly louder and hotter than any other non reference design - it barely managed to outperform a reference cooler.

Sidesaddle Cavalry
Mar 15, 2013

Oh Boy Desert Map
At the time, I was too busy being happy with my 7970 from eBay so :shrug: the fact that that cooler disappeared off the market slipped my mind

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast
New AMD driver is coming soon. (Link using Internet Archive, original page down).

Handful of new features and fixes. Anyone jealous at DSR in NVIDIA cards now gets the same on AMD cards, for example.

The name Catalyst Omega is vaguely nostalgic to anyone who tried custom drivers back in the day (Omega drivers).

vv I'm pretty sure they were just some drivers that had modified config files and installer, to add some tweaks. I don't recall exactly what, but probably things like triple buffering in DX mode, overclocking limits raised, etc. I might have stumbled across them looking for drivers that would work on a mobile chipset not supported by the official drivers (usually just some inf file edits fixes that).

Triple Edit: fixed link with wayback machine

Quadruple edit: have a nice slide showing a summary of the new features

HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Dec 5, 2014

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe

HalloKitty posted:


The name Catalyst Omega is vaguely nostalgic to anyone who tried custom drivers back in the day (Omega drivers).

I literally said "ohhh yeah", out loud after reading this sentence. Before I bing it myself, do you wish to describe what the Omega drivers were?

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The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

HalloKitty posted:

New AMD driver is coming soon.

Handful of new features and fixes. Anyone jealous at DSR in NVIDIA cards now gets the same on AMD cards, for example.

EDIT: Ah, nevermind. Some news sites made it sound like the actual drivers were posted early and then taken down.

The_Franz fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Dec 5, 2014

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