Building a whole new rig

spirit said:
I'm not suggesting you get a larger screen I'm just pointing out that the 6950 should still be OK for 1680x1050 (settings depending on the game) especially given yours is a 2GB one. 2GB of VRAM should be enough for 1680x1050 for older games but yeah maybe the newer titles might struggle a bit given that JC3 maxed out on my GTX 760 4GB at 1080p consumes about 3-3.5GB VRAM and 3 or 4 years ago we always thought that 2GB was enough for 1080p and even 1GB was fine at the time, but I guess newer games consume more RAM regardless of the resolution really. Could you download GPU-Z, run it, click on the 'Sensors' tab then play a newer game (eg Fallout 4) and let me know how much VRAM it's using? I'd be interested to see.

If the performance in the GPU department does turn into a problem and you find that you absolutely must upgrade then maybe think about buying a new GPU but make sure it's a high-end one like a GTX 980 so that you don't lose out on performance in the future.
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I'm doing an R9 390, I don't like nvidea
 
The VCR King said:
I'm doing an R9 390, I don't like nvidea
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Yeah that's cool, I was just using the 980 as an example of a high-end GPU.

If you're going to buy a GPU now it needs to be a high-end one. A 970 or a 390 at minimum really. That's just so that when you build new system your card still performs very well and hasn't become slow and outdated like a mid-range GPU might.
 
spirit said:
Yeah that's cool, I was just using the 980 as an example of a high-end GPU.

If you're going to buy a GPU now it needs to be a high-end one. A 970 or a 390 at minimum really. That's just so that when you build new system your card still performs very well and hasn't become slow and outdated like a mid-range GPU might.
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I'm going to be buying just 1 390 right now but I know in my future rig I'll want two in Crossfire and I'll buy the second one later. So when I buy my 390 ill also get a beefy PSU.

Also is it OK to Crossfire mixed brands of GPUs? Like say now I get an ASUS STRIX, and when it's time to get the second 390 I get an XFX. I think it would work, because when I got my current PC it had a Sapphire 6950 and a HIS 6950 in crossfire. I now just have the Sapphire.
 
The VCR King said:
I'm going to be buying just 1 390 right now but I know in my future rig I'll want two in Crossfire and I'll buy the second one later. So when I buy my 390 ill also get a beefy PSU.

Also is it OK to Crossfire mixed brands of GPUs? Like say now I get an ASUS STRIX, and when it's time to get the second 390 I get an XFX. I think it would work, because when I got my current PC it had a Sapphire 6950 and a HIS 6950 in crossfire. I now just have the Sapphire.
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Sounds like a plan! Yeah you can use different brands so long as it's another R9 390. They can have different VRAM sizes and clockspeeds too.
 
The VCR King said:
Today I noticed also that my HDD is 5400 RPM. Should I get a 7200?
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For your boot drive get a SATAIII SSD (Like a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo), and for a data drive 7200 would give you better performance, but 5400 would be fine.

Why don't you like nVidia?
 
The VCR King said:
Today I noticed also that my HDD is 5400 RPM. Should I get a 7200?
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If you're going to have the OS and programs installed on it then yes you want a 7200 RPM disk, but for storage then 5400 RPM is fine.

By the way, WD Black drives are always 7200 RPM because they are performance drives, so CrystalDisk is wrong. Only the Green, Red and Purple drives are 5400 RPM.

As others have said what you want is a 250GB or 500GB SSD for Windows and programs and a large capacity HDD for files. 250GB drives are affordable at the moment but in a year 500GB will be. A year ago a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo cost about £130. Now thy're £120 so in a year they'll be about £110 or maybe even £100. 250GB is well under £100.
 
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voyagerfan99 said:
And your reason for not liking nVidia is because....?

180-250gb SSD for your boot drive and a 1-2TB HDD for storage.
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I don't like nVidia because I read that you can't SLI two nVidia cards if you have an AMD processor.

Geoff said:
For your boot drive get a SATAIII SSD (Like a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo), and for a data drive 7200 would give you better performance, but 5400 would be fine.

Why don't you like nVidia?
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I don't like nVidia because I read that you can't SLI two nVidia cards if you have an AMD processor.

spirit said:
If you're going to have the OS and programs installed on it then yes you want a 7200 RPM disk, but for storage then 5400 RPM is fine.

By the way, WD Black drives are always 7200 RPM because they are performance drives, so CrystalDisk is wrong. Only the Green, Red and Purple drives are 5400 RPM.

As others have said what you want is a 250GB or 500GB SSD for Windows and programs and a large capacity HDD for files. 250GB drives are affordable at the moment but in a year 500GB will be. A year ago a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo cost about £130. Now thy're £120 so in a year they'll be about £110 or maybe even £100. 250GB is well under £100.
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Oh, I didn't know that WD Blacks were always 7200rpm. And I'll probably reuse my 120GB OCZ SDD for Windows and programs in my next built and I'll probably buy a 4TB HDD for everything else.

Also, quick question, but if you connected, for example, 4 5TB disks to a RAID card, wouldn't they show up as one 20TB drive in Windows? I'm curious on how RAID works because I've been thinking about trying it on my other PC using my spare disks I got laying around.
 
The VCR King said:
if you connected, for example, 4 5TB disks to a RAID card, wouldn't they show up as one 20TB drive in Windows?
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Assuming you did RAID0, then yes, minus any conversion losses (so you'd probably see something like ~18.1 TiB).

You really don't want to RAID0 20 TB worth of data though. Here's a reasonable read on RAID levels, what they do and how they impact how much free space you end up with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
 
The VCR King said:
I don't like nVidia because I read that you can't SLI two nVidia cards if you have an AMD processor.
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That's not true. You just need a motherboard that supports SLI which all gaming boards do these days if they have at least two PCI Express slots.

A long time ago (like 8 or 9 years ago when SLI was getting popular) you could only use SLI on boards with NVIDIA chipsets but since NVIDIA stopped making motherboard chipsets about 7 years ago you can do SLI and CrossFire on boards with both Intel and AMD chipsets (it used to be SLI for NVIDIA chipsets and CrossFire for Intel chipsets but not anymore and it hasn't been that way for years). That might be why you're confused about that.
 
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spirit said:
if they have at least two PCI Express slots.
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Provided they can supply at least PCIE 2.0 8x or higher ;)

Crossfire can work with PCIE 2.0 4x buses or lower (where SLi disables automagically) but it really 'shouldn't' since the performance becomes pretty unbearable with decent cards.
 
beers said:
Provided they can supply at least PCIE 2.0 8x or higher ;)

Crossfire can work with PCIE 2.0 4x buses or lower (where SLi disables automagically) but it really 'shouldn't' since the performance becomes pretty unbearable with decent cards.
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Yeah. Unless you are buying a really, really cheap board then you'll be fine. :)
 
spirit said:
Yeah. Unless you are buying a really, really cheap board then you'll be fine. :)
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Ok. Thank you for clearing that up. I'm currently working on making a BUY NEW and REUSE list for parts and I'll be re-using my case, SSD, hotswap bay, TV tuner, bdrom, and CPU cooler.
 
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