GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

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PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Is this a good time to buy a GPU, or is there something better (and/or price drops) right around the corner?

My gtx 660 isn't quite cutting it anymore, but it still runs most games so I could possibly wait 2-4 months. I'm not quite convinced by the value of upgrading to gtx 960/r9 280.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2015 21:14

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 03:29

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Paul MaudDib posted:

Refurb 280 or 290 is a great value. New 960 or 380 not so much, you're better off saving a bit more and buying a new 390 or a new/refurb 970 instead.

What do you mean by refurb? Buying it used from someone?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 01:31

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Paul MaudDib posted:

Refurbished - cards that get returned or come in on warranty. The manufacturers swap out whatever component is broken and sell the fixed card. Mostly it's just the fan at this point. They come in via normal retail channels - just keep an eye on TigerDirect or Newegg or whatnot.

The BuildAPcSales reddit is good for this stuff. View Jet with a little bit of skepticism - they have had some customer service issues but seem to have been better recently. GPU Shack is a private store that's also pretty good, they used to run 7950s (i.e. R9 280) for $130.

Most of what's coming in refurb for 290s at this point is reference, but I've seen them as low as $185 recently. EVGA B-stock is the same thing for EVGA cards and you can pick up refurb 780 Tis for like $180 or 970s for $250-275 or 980s for $360 (all of these go very quick). Alternately you can step up to brand new 390s for about $250-275 or 970s for $300-325 and get a non-reference cooler.

Most of them come with at least a minimal warranty, EVGA B-stock is 1 year in particular. If it's going to fail it'll usually fail fast, or it'll die of pure wear years down the road.

All reference cards tend to be louder, for sure, but they run fine if you can tolerate the noise. Just bump the fan curve a bit because they tend to throttle a bit by default. - my ref 780 Ti did too.

Thanks but I don't think any of that is an option for someone outside North America.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 23:17

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

GTX 970 looks like it could be better value and a more futureproof choice compared to the GTX 660 (according to some, the 660 4GB version won't really improve it), but what's this about possible VRAM issues on the 970?

# ¿ Dec 25, 2015 15:31

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

framebuffer shits itself and causes hilarious framerate drops at high textures and resolution settings ie 2560x1440 with ultra settings

basically only worry about it if you've got one of those monitors

Uh, I am planning on upgrading to a 1440p or 1600p monitor because my current 1200p is starting to develop yellow spots. When I upgrade my GPU now I'd like to have it last for at least 2-3 years. What card should I be looking at instead?

xthetenth posted:

Going above 3.5 GB of memory used is bad because then the card has to split its time between the first 3.5 and the last .5.

You're talking about an issue specific to the GTX 970 (and 960 4gb?) ?

Panty Saluter posted:

I'm in that weird space where I can't even imagine upgrading from my 970 for a very long time, unless maybe I go way higher res or framerate (also probably not any time soon).

How do you like it? What's the most demanding game that you play and do you have to compromise on any settings?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Dec 25, 2015

# ¿ Dec 25, 2015 15:50

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

What's the cheapest GTX 970 with better (less noisy) than stock cooling?

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 15:08

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Is there a cheap GTX 970 model without much fan noise and without the "coil whine" he;lp

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 22:18

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Don Lapre posted:

Coil whine is a lottery thing.

Huh. Thanks for clearing that up.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 23:12

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

THE DOG HOUSE posted:

Unfortunately there will be reports for every single model having coil whine. Some are certainly more common than others, but its difficult to tell since most people only ever have a sample size of 1.

Cheap and low fan noise generally don't mix (at the end of the day that's really what differentiates the models and what the extra 20 dollars gets you). Although in general, avoid blower coolers, and frankly EVGA hasn't won a lot of noise sympathy this last year whether its the poor design versions or not. To be fair under load the common open air coolers are fairly similar though. MSI twin force cooler is a good all around answer to the question.

http://www.ncixus.com/products/?usaffiliateid=1000031504&sku=102345&vpn=STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5&manufacture=ASUS&promoid=1428

probably the cheapest and quietest one right now, if you dont mind a rebate

Pardon, but what's a blower cooler?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 23:45

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

repiv posted:

Blower cards (top) pull air in through one fan and blow it out of the back of the case, open air cards (bottom) just spew hot air everywhere.

Open air cards are quieter and cooler provided your case can get rid of the heat they put out.

Right, so the reference models for R9 280 (and GTX 970) are blower coolers, while this is an open air card?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 00:00

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Will a GTX 970 be held back by an old i5-2500K @ 3.8 ghz CPU in the most demanding games?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 16:19

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Captain Yossarian posted:

No

Also OC that CPU

Cool. I'm pretty sure it is OC'ed by at least 10%. Stock clock is 3.3 ghz unless I remember incorrectly.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 16:39

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Fauxtool posted:

did anyone see that amazon supposedly leaked the morpheus price as $800. LOL at VR

Yes definitely OC that cpu. Mine is at 4.7 and it could go more, im not just not willing to have that heat

But if it doesn't bottleneck the GPU or anything, what's the point in a high overclock?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 17:03

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

xthetenth posted:

Bottlenecking isn't a binary thing. If your GPU is waiting on the CPU 10% of the time, that gets reflected in performance.

Gotcha. I'll put it at 4.0 ghz for now. I've had it running at 3.8 ghz for 5 years already, I'm planning to keep it for another 1-2 years and I don't want to reduce its lifetime by going too high.

LiquidRain posted:

If you have a 2500k you're going to benefit more with sinking extra cash into a better graphics card than a new platform.

That's what I'm doing by going from GTX 660 to 970! :classiclol:

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 18:50

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

What games/benchmarks should I get to test out my new GTX 970 and its OC potential?

I already have GTA V, Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 22:15

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Dogen posted:

If you jack up all the settings the tomb raider reboot will crash poo poo that little else will, it's my final stability test usually.

From what I've heard, that game is crash prone full stop, regardless of OCing...?

edit: when you say the Benchmarks, which ones? Is it still 3DMark 11 and Unigine?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 13, 2016

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 22:31

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Don Lapre posted:

Just use heaven. Watch it closely to look for visual artifacts.

I tried Unigine Heaven. One artifact seemed to be there all the time: a tile/brick going transparent near the dragon statue towards the end of the bench. :confused:

Overclocked from stock speeds of 1076/1752 mhz to 1300/1900 and got a hard freeze at the "shiny glass looking vial thing on the ship" that THE DOG HOUSE mentioned.

Took it down to 1280/1850 mhz and got 59 fps avg, 25 minimum on 1080p/ultra settings/extreme tesselation/8x AA. (i5 2500K). Pretty decent? :shobon:

I think I'll 'set it and forget it' at a permanent 1200/1840 mhz though, to avoid shortening the lifespan of the card and to avoid having to turn clock profiles on and off. 11% oc on the core, 5% oc on the mem - is that reasonable? Should I increase the power target for that modest OC?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jan 14, 2016

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 01:01

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

When playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate my PC suddenly restarted (or tried to, it reached BIOS then reset again). That's not a GPU issue, right? Or could it be a lack of power to the GPU? I was running a moderate OC with only +105% power.

edit: What's the best OC util for a 970? I'm using Zotac Firestorm because I got a Zotac, but I should be able to use any other, right?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Jan 14, 2016

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 11:54

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Malloc Voidstar posted:

You should run some monitoring programs that log to disk while you play, check if CPU/GPU looked weird if it happens again.
I had a semi-similar issue when my PSU was failing.

gently caress, I can't play anything without a sudden reset after a short time now. I disabled "automatically reset on system failure" in the control panel now. I never had this problem before replacing my 660 with a 970. My PSU is a 600 watt, 80+ cert beQuiet, and I don't have much connected to it. 2 SSDs, 1 HDD, sound card, GPU, that's about it.

The only other change I've made is install Nvidia's hotfix 361.60 driver. Anyone had trouble with that one?

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 18:56

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Stanley Pain posted:

I have the same issue with my 970s on a known good PSU. I can mitigate it a fair bit by changing the Fan profile to be more aggressive in MSI afterburner, but one game will always cause this for me and that's Alien Isolation.

Your 970 isn't a Zotac is it?

Yes it is a Zotac. Regular model with 2 fans, not one of the AMP models. Why? I never saw any trouble mentioned in reviews.

What is the problem, overheating? I thought that caused artifacting, not sudden resets if the whole computer. And if you turn up the fan speed it's less likely to happen?

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 14, 2016

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 19:41

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Stanley Pain posted:

This issue is somewhat common with some games and 970s. Alien Isolation and Grim Dawn (of all things) are the two I remember recently. I took a look at both of my cards (Zotacs) and I noticed that one of them has some pretty serious scorching around the back of the GPU. My guess, at least for me, is that one of my cards over heated in a bad way and caused some damage which is why I get the occasional power off or black screen issue.

I think it's a heat issue, but more to do with the cards power control circuitry and not the GPU itself. I've had good luck running the fans on the default MSI fan profile and forcing adaptive vsync globally. I have the same card.

What made you think of the Zotac's power control circuitry? Is there somewhere I can read more about this? I'm wondering whether this is enough of a problem with Zotac especially that I should seek to swap it for a different model, or will I just run into the same with other 970s :confused:

Dogen posted:

How old is your PSU? They start failing after a while (depending on quality of build)

It's almost 6.5 years old.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 20:24

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Dogen posted:

Definitely replace. The rec in PC building thread is when your warranty is out, which for something nice like a seasonic gold is 7 years. Although maybe your problem is a known issue with Zotac 970s? But I would still replace the PSU.

Yeah, good idea.

But if it were merely a power supply problem, wouldn't the computer reset immediately when the GPU needed max load? It happens after 5-15 minutes, even in lighter games.

Edit: still happens after setting temperature target to 70 C (down from 79) and adjusting the fan speed to start spinning harder, earlier.

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jan 14, 2016

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 20:57

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Seamonster posted:

I have the same problem with FO4 even though I can run loops of firestrike, valley and furmark without problems. No other games cause restarts either. It is very strange.

With what card?

edit:
Ordered a new top of the line EVGA gold standard 750W PSU. Let's see if that helps this piece of poo poo, coil whine havin rear end Zotac 970.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 22:28

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

My 970 (waiting for new PSU) doesn't seem to restart my computer if I run it at adaptive half-refresh vsync, i.e. locked to 30 fps. It's like I never upgraded :waycool:

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 19:03

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

GrizzlyCow posted:

According to Wikipedia, it looks like their is a FarCry game coming this March with D3D12 support, and a Hitman game will be released the same week. Not too long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_12_support

Is DirectX 12 actually a big thing? Is there a good video somewhere that sums up the differences vs 11?

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 10:53

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

SwissArmyDruid posted:

Eh, as a casual overview, you can't really go wrong with a techquickie video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsxn93Wb7vk

In short:

* DX12 is going to be a thinner API, which means that the onus will be upon the developers to more clearly define exactly what they want done, which allows for much more fine grained optimization.
* It will also be much better at parallelization of workloads, allowing applications to spread out more evenly across available cores, instead of mostly on one core, and a little bit on all the other ones
* Reduction in the number of draw calls. This one is ties into the previous point, as issuing too many draw calls (the CPU telling the GPU to draw a thing on the scree) can be a bottleneck.

(Editorial mode: The onus being upon the developer to optimize their game makes me feel that we will see a lot fewer "game ready" patches, which may undercut Nvidia's driver team leaving them little or at least less to do, which is a big swing in AMD's favor.)

Thank you. So very tl;dr, DX12 is mostly about increased performance and not any groundbreaking new effects, you don't need a new next-gen card to take advantage of it, and AMD cards will benefit more than Nvidia.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 17:31

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Is it possible to enable DSR for only some games? It seems to disappear from the options in Nvidia CP when I pick a specific app.

Also, what's the consensus on MFAA? Always enable it when you can use MSAA in a game? Or not?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 21:22

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Update on my Zotac GTX 970 (regular 2 fan edition): A new PSU fixed the computer resetting in games problem and even the coil whine problem.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 13:43

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

B-Mac posted:

Did it reset in all games or just a select one?

It reset in all games unless I ran adaptive half-refresh vsync (30 fps).

And yeah, what Seamonster said. These 970's can be finicky bitches and there are many bad PSUs out there, despite impressive wattage numbers.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 22:37

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Panty Saluter posted:

Old man yelling at cloud moment: I really hate that people talk about resolutions as "****K" or "****p" now. Mostly because stupid people throw it around like they have any idea what it means. H x V 4 lyfe

Same. It's some kind of monitor manufacturer and console producer conspiracy. :tinfoil:

We should be using 16:10 as the standard PC widescreen ratio and talking about W*H. But 16:9 was cheaper to manufacture using leftover LCD sheets from TVs or something, I forget why but there was a reason why everyone started making 16:9 monitors.

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 24, 2016

# ¿ Jan 24, 2016 21:39

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Sometimes when I'm playing video or a stream - I get weird disruptions to the picture. Almost like a bad signal to an old analog TV. Snow, black bars, etc, picture collapsing for half a second. I've only seen it appear during HDMI to TV use, but yesterday it continued after switching to my monitor.

Does this sound like a GPU problem?

I have an Asus TUF 3060 Ti.

I ran the furmark gpu stress test for a while, and 3dmark, and didn't see anything abnormal. Normal score, normal temps.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 21:27

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Nfcknblvbl posted:

Do you have a spare PSU lying around to test with? Some games tend to spike power usage beyond synthetic tests.

Why? Playing 4K video uses max 20-30% of the GPU. It happens during 1080p playback too. I can't imagine it's a power issue.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 21:37

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

PirateBob posted:

Sometimes when I'm playing video or a stream - I get weird disruptions to the picture. Almost like a bad signal to an old analog TV. Snow, black bars, etc, picture collapsing for half a second. I've only seen it appear during HDMI to TV use, but yesterday it continued after switching to my monitor.

Does this sound like a GPU problem?

I have an Asus TUF 3060 Ti.

I ran the furmark gpu stress test for a while, and 3dmark, and didn't see anything abnormal. Normal score, normal temps.

Forgot to specify that the disruptions happen not only within the video picture, but also on the rest of the screen if I play a video windowed.

Might this have to do with Gsync or something?

I'm using a beta BIOS for my MSI B550 gaming carbon wifi motherboard, btw. It had some problems with PCI-E lane settings on previous BIOSes.

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Dec 28, 2021

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 21:50

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

BOOTY-ADE posted:

Bad HDMI cable maybe? I try to look at the simplest possibilities first & didn't see any mention of trying a new cable. It sounds like either that or possibly an issue with the HDMI out on the card itself.

That would make a lot of sense, except some of the artifacts continued happening on my monitor (DisplayPort).

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 23:15

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

Modern video signals are digital, so either the signal transmits the full uncorrupted signal, or you get no signal at all. A bad HDMI cable should never lead to those symptoms. The presence of video corruption indicates another problem elsewhere, and it sounds like it could be an issue with the GPU itself.

But why would it only show up sometimes during video playback and never under heavier gaming use? What does that point towards?

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 23:55

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

K8.0 posted:

You can definitely still get weird visual errors due to transmission problems. Given the specific symptoms in this case it seems most likely to be a software issue. I would try turning G-Sync windowed mode support off and seeing if that helps. Try a different video player. Try different videos. Try to capture it in screenshots or screen recordings.

Could this be a system RAM issue? I've also had some kernel-power sudden shutdowns about once a month.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2021 11:05

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

I'm not entirely sure, tbh. A defect in the video decoding part of the core? If you have another GPU you can test with, you can give that a shot. And do the standard procedure of reseating everything in your computer, ensuring everything is plugged in correctly, doing a clean driver reinstall and/or rollback. Though it sounds like an RMA could be in your future, unfortunately.

Setting PCI-E to 3.0 instead of 4.0 seems to have resolved the problem :shrug:

# ¿ Dec 31, 2021 12:21

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

What have these idiots at nvidia done with the driver/CP now

In 497.29, you can't enable sharpening anymore without also enabling some loving gpu scaling that cuts off 10% of the width on each side of the screen.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2021 16:51

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

So is the 3080 12gb decent value for money if you can get it from a store? Is the 3080 Ti 12gb less good value?

vvv
aight, thx. I'll stick with my 3060 Ti. It's pretty drat good.

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Jan 11, 2022

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 12:10

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 03:29

PirateBob: Jun 14, 2003

What would cause the display to freeze completely while audio was still playing?

I was watching something on my TV through HDMI from the PC and the picture suddenly froze. The PC monitor's backlight started, as if connection to the TV was lost, but the monitor didn't show anything either. Audio kept playing. I'm not sure if keyboard input was received. I tried hitting esc and ctrl-alt-del and nothing happened. Should have pressed space to see if the playback would get paused, but didn't think of it. Had to hit the power button. Windows Event log doesn't show anything except the unexpected shutdown.

PirateBob fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Mar 13, 2022

# ¿ Mar 13, 2022 18:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

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