With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to invest in a new video card. Hell, i've gotten about 4 years out of this card, and it got USED. With 4k around the corner and me wanting to try VR at some point, now seems like a good time.

nvidia 1080 looked neat, but $700 for a reference card? Nvidia can suck my fat hairy ass. again. Ati since 2002, except for that once with the 8800, that card was a fucking beast. The logical side of my brain says it is a coincidence, but this just popped up on one of my news feeds: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/amd-rx … te-price-specs/

I hope the people over at nvidia have a lot of aloe. Sure the 480 isnt going to wow the 1% of people that circle jerk over fps, but a card that will satisfy the 99%, at 150w, and TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?

I'm buying two.

p.s. also i've had a few drinks tonight, so if I misspelled a few words i apologize.

Yes, thanks. There are various reports on the internet on what will and will not work in this machine. I will stick with the Celeron for now. I want to use it as a NAS, using a NAS OS on ESXi. I also want some really small Linux VM's on it (simple webserver etc). I had planned on running XPenology on it, but now that I have looked into it the project is a bit unreliable. Maybe OpenMediaVault or FreeNAS?

I will enjoy setting it up 😀

ps. I agree dual-core support only is a bit crappy, but the thing was only 200 euro and has low power consumption. And iLO is nice! And it has Matrox G200 graphics which I think is quite cool and a bit retro 😁

y2k se wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Got me this HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 G1610T to replace my Synology NAS (and to play around with 😀). Now looking for a Xeon CPU to upgrade it with (but hard to find a Socket 1155 Xeon). The Celeron in it now is also quite fast actually!

Be careful with the CPU you put in it. The G1610T is a 35W TDP model. Here's HP's spec sheet for the Gen8's.

I've got an X3370 on the way (3GHz s775 Xeon), as an upgrade from my Q6700. Wasn't that expensive, and I caved to the idea of a little more speed and SSE4.1..

Also currently trying to resist buying 4GB DDR2 ECC, after finding out they exist, and work. 16GB in many 775 era chipsets..

luckybob wrote:

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to inv […]
Show full quote

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to invest in a new video card. Hell, i've gotten about 4 years out of this card, and it got USED. With 4k around the corner and me wanting to try VR at some point, now seems like a good time.

nvidia 1080 looked neat, but $700 for a reference card? Nvidia can suck my fat hairy ass. again. Ati since 2002, except for that once with the 8800, that card was a fucking beast. The logical side of my brain says it is a coincidence, but this just popped up on one of my news feeds: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/amd-rx … te-price-specs/

I hope the people over at nvidia have a lot of aloe. Sure the 480 isnt going to wow the 1% of people that circle jerk over fps, but a card that will satisfy the 99%, at 150w, and TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?

I'm buying two.

p.s. also i've had a few drinks tonight, so if I misspelled a few words i apologize.

I'll stick to my 7970 for now. It does everything I need, and see no reason to replace it with any of the current or announced cards. VR would be a reason to upgrade, but IMHO the VR in its current incarnation is not good enough. I've been watching the development of VR for the past 20 years, ever since I saw a demonstration at a computer show in 1996 with a flight simulator running on Windows95 on a P200, dunno what the video card was but it couldn't have been more than an ATI Rage something, and a custom headset. TBH, the current state of the VR is not that much more advanced compared to 20 years ago. I've watched a lot of VR games being played on youtube, and my reaction to all is "meh"

luckybob wrote:

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to invest in a new video card. Hell, i've gotten about 4 years out of this card, and it got USED. With 4k around the corner and me wanting to try VR at some point, now seems like a good time.

nvidia 1080 looked neat, but $700 for a reference card? Nvidia can suck my fat hairy ass. again. Ati since 2002, except for that once with the 8800, that card was a fucking beast. The logical side of my brain says it is a coincidence, but this just popped up on one of my news feeds: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/amd-rx … te-price-specs/

I hope the people over at nvidia have a lot of aloe. Sure the 480 isnt going to wow the 1% of people that circle jerk over fps, but a card that will satisfy the 99%, at 150w, and TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?

An RX 480 might make a good upgrade for my son's gaming PC. He's currently got 750Ti which I wouldn't mind putting into my XP gaming PC. It would certainly be faster and less power hungry than my 8800GTX.

I'm on a GTX 660 and I'm also considering the 480 😀

I think that AMD press event was an absolute disaster, but the card should be good. Still want to see what the 1060 will be like.

My Main rig is a R9 390 8GB. Not sure if RX 480 would be an upgrade or not. Probably not worth it. My CPU is still a 2nd Gen I7 so i'd probably upgrade that before I get a new video card. I am really hoping that AMD Zen lives up to the hype.

Oh current pc discussion,my main still at 2700k with r9 290,so far so good not seen purpose to OC it in current games,except curious how far it can go with air cooling 4.8ghz with Zalman CNPS10X Flex 😈

Hope RX 4xx together with Zen bring more people onto AMD,myself keep upgrading friends with Rx 300 series >_>

clueless1 wrote:

luckybob wrote:

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to invest in a new video card. Hell, i've gotten about 4 years out of this card, and it got USED. With 4k around the corner and me wanting to try VR at some point, now seems like a good time.

nvidia 1080 looked neat, but $700 for a reference card? Nvidia can suck my fat hairy ass. again. Ati since 2002, except for that once with the 8800, that card was a fucking beast. The logical side of my brain says it is a coincidence, but this just popped up on one of my news feeds: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/amd-rx … te-price-specs/

I hope the people over at nvidia have a lot of aloe. Sure the 480 isnt going to wow the 1% of people that circle jerk over fps, but a card that will satisfy the 99%, at 150w, and TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?

An RX 480 might make a good upgrade for my son's gaming PC. He's currently got 750Ti which I wouldn't mind putting into my XP gaming PC. It would certainly be faster and less power hungry than my 8800GTX.

As an alternative you could always consider a used GTX 770 card.. you can register used EVGA ones bought off ebay with EVGA support (I think for another 6 months of this year, but I'm not 100% sure on that) and activate +3 years warranty from purchase date. They're down to $130 used now for the 2GB models and $160 for the 4GB ones.

Also see http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-G … 0-Ti/2174vs2187

Rhuwyn wrote:

I am really hoping that AMD Zen lives up to the hype.

I don't think it will be any better than skylake personaly (performance wise), however if they can just not waste precious die/wafer space for the useless integrated graphics like Intel and pass those savings onto customers, I'd be a happy camper.

Rhuwyn wrote:

My Main rig is a R9 390 8GB. Not sure if RX 480 would be an upgrade or not. Probably not worth it. My CPU is still a 2nd Gen I7 so i'd probably upgrade that before I get a new video card. I am really hoping that AMD Zen lives up to the hype.

It won't be much of an upgrade. Word on the street is it's sort of in the middle of the R9 390 and 390X, so unless you can sell off your 390 for $250+ then the 480 won't be worth the bother.

But there's still cards on the horizon, no doubt AMD have some more high-end stuff up their sleeve with Polaris.

Today i unintentionally purchased a new motherboard. I have never had a dual GPU setup and there was a race between Voodoo II SLI and Radeon HD 4850 Crossfire. The latter requires a motherboard upgrade while the former obviously doesn't. Picked up the second 4850 last month for a bargain and the final nail in the coffin of retro SLI happened last week when a V2 slipped through my fingers in an ambiguous batch lot.

So the ongoing motherboard search has been looking for an Intel board for Crossfire so i can continue using my Q9550 but decent P45s or X48s are hard to come by for a good price (< £30) and would not advance my 'current' machine anyway. After considering an X58 board i also couldn't find anything cheap enough add they seem scarce. So i finally relented and pursued the AM3 route which makes much more sense considering my apparent loyalty to Radeon chipsets (since the 8500 in 2001). Found a suitable board immediately: the Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P placed a purely speculative £20 bid and won it. I can even get a top of the line Phenom II for £20. Ridiculous. Only potential issue is the 790X chipset, which only has one 16 lane slot:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/311617761002

brassicGamer wrote:

Today i unintentionally purchased a new motherboard. I have never had a dual GPU setup and there was a race between Voodoo II SL […]
Show full quote

Today i unintentionally purchased a new motherboard. I have never had a dual GPU setup and there was a race between Voodoo II SLI and Radeon HD 4850 CrossfireX. The latter requires a motherboard upgrade while the former obviously doesn't. Picked up the second 4850 last month for a bargain and the final nail in the coffin of retro SLI happened last week when a V2 slipped through my fingers in an ambiguous batch lot.

So the ongoing motherboard search has been looking for an Intel board for CrossfireX so i can continue using my Q9550 but decent P45s are hard to come by for a good price (< £30) and would not advance my 'current' machine anyway. After considering an X58 board i also couldn't find anything cheap enough add they seem scarce. So i finally relented and pursued the AM3 route which makes much more sense considering my apparent loyalty to Radeon chipsets (since the 8500 in 2001). Found a suitable board immediately, placed a purely speculative £20 bid and won it. I can even get a top of the line Phenom II for £20. Ridiculous.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/311617761002

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Prices really have "fallen through the floor" for a lot of decent tech just recently. I don't know why either. And a lot of obscure rare things are showing up on ebay USA side lately too. 2GB GTX 285's .. water blocks new for old AMD cards from 2000 series.. found a Geforce3 Ti500 last week.. been hunting for a good one of those cheap for years.. I've seen a lot of low-latency DDR-400/450/500 era ram the past few months cheap.. ETC. I don't know what's going on but it's like all the obscure crap is coming up recently.. and the newer used stuff is bottoming out.

One Playstation3 version 2/slim from a consoles collector. 75.20 Us Dollars. It has the usual cables and a single controller. I got Gran Turismo 6 with it too.

Just going to sit and wait rather than just rush in only to end up with RMA ect with the new cards, at least the prices on last gen cards are going to go down like Lehman Brothers 🤑

Picked up a CIB Nintendo Wii yesterday in black. Already softmodded it for playing Wii/GC ISOs and emulators, now I just have to wait until that Wavebird I ordered yesterday gets here!

Might have to get some RGB cables for it too - can't have a "modern" system having worse screen quality than my Super Famicom!

Now, finally after 4Gb (Samsung) are not used long time, i've upgraded to 16GB. To realize this, i've bought on ebay, this 'Low-profile' RAM.

This Kingston 4Gb Ram is really nice, and avoid the clash to my big cooler.

Tall RAM is a real issue with many coolers. The low profile RAM is great in such cases.

luckybob wrote:

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to inv […]
Show full quote

With Civilization 6 on the horizon, and my trustworthy 7970 starting to show its age, I felt like it might be a good time to invest in a new video card. Hell, i've gotten about 4 years out of this card, and it got USED. With 4k around the corner and me wanting to try VR at some point, now seems like a good time.

nvidia 1080 looked neat, but $700 for a reference card? Nvidia can suck my fat hairy ass. again. Ati since 2002, except for that once with the 8800, that card was a fucking beast. The logical side of my brain says it is a coincidence, but this just popped up on one of my news feeds: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/amd-rx … te-price-specs/

I hope the people over at nvidia have a lot of aloe. Sure the 480 isnt going to wow the 1% of people that circle jerk over fps, but a card that will satisfy the 99%, at 150w, and TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS?

I'm buying two.

p.s. also i've had a few drinks tonight, so if I misspelled a few words i apologize.

I've been following Polaris closely for a while. After the ridiculous paper launch of the *magical* 61 degrees, 2700Mhz+ GTX1080 and the subsequent beating of the reality club, I figured the 1070 was the better card of the semi-DX12 capable Pascal series. Still I wanted to see more before I took the plunge. Then AMD told us exactly what I wanted to hear. A card around 390/970 performance (but better in DX12 situations), with a 4GB and 8GB version, and a lot less power requirements than the 970 even ... for $200. Although I would expect after taxes of ROB (rip-off Britain) I'll probably be able to pick them up for £170 each (around $240-$250). Still an amazing deal.

SO I called my friend who was struggling to play Doom on low settings with 20-25fps on his GTX570 and offered him my GTX980 for £250 (they currently sit around £360 new and £300 on eBay here in England). It's a Palit Jetstream model with pretty awesome factory overclocks and a tacky silver / gold cooler which I never liked. He took it. Now I'm using a backup X1950XTX (WOOOOOO!) for the next few weeks before dual R9 480's get slapped into my PC. That's gonna be around GTX1080 performance (lower in DX11 / higher in DX12) for £340, compared to Nvidias moron friendly £622 for their GTX1080. Which runs at 81 degrees and throttles itself back to stock clocks after 2 minutes of gaming.

Probably don't need 2 480's for a 1920x1200 screen but they can't hurt. I've never gone with top end before. I usually always go mid range. But at this price it's not a thing at all.

No, thankyou Nvidia.

Still I'm sure Civilization 6 isn't gonna require that kind of power. Even at 4K (considering 30fps is fine for Civ games, you would probably run it in 4K with anything R9 290 / GTX970 and upwards). It's the CPU that comes into play in Civ games with end-game turn times and whatnot. And VR isn't my thing either. Just excited about knowing I can play anything, at any settings ... for a long time. And happy my friend can play Doom without taking a tea break in between frame updates.

I'm keen to get a single RX 480. Still on a GTX 660, a card I really like and served me well.

Not sure about 4 GB vs 8 GB. I think with the consoles having 8 GB of unified memory, the upgrade to 8 GB might be worth it.

Very eager to see what versions they will actually release. For example there will be the RX, but maybe also a standard 480, or a higher clocked (2 6 pin connectors) version?

Either way, Polaris is very interesting and with all the consoles having AMD chips things will only get better for AMD.