PC Owners Thread

Wait.. you've mentioned having 60+ fps on various games. Are you just using FRAPS to see what you COULD be achieving?

Nvidia's GeForce Experience software and Steam both have in game FPS counters you can turn on if you want. I usually turn one of these on the first time I play a new game or if I am doing things like messing with my overclocks or in game settings to get an exact framerate number instead of just taking a shot in the dark. I don't play with this active on a daily basis but I do like being able to see exact performance when I want to.

For most games I turn VSYNC on to eliminate screen tearing. I can't stand the horizontal lines in the middle of the screen that come from tearing and they occasionally make me motion sick. This happens when your monitor refreshes while the GPU is part way through drawing a frame. This means that for the majority of games I'm locked at an exact 60 FPS because it is synced up to my monitor's 60Hz refresh rate. In these cases there is no reason to bother checking with a FPS counter.

The problem with VSYNC is input lag. Consoles have had VSYNC locked on in most games for the last several years so I don't notice the input lag in most games. In some shooter games with very fast mouse movement (Doom, CS:GO, Overwatch) quickly whipping your mouse around the screen is noticeably slower with VSYNC active. This is because the GPU is waiting until the monitor is ready to refresh before drawing each frame. The games I mentioned where I turn VSYNC off all run fast enough that tearing is not noticeable even with VSYNC disabled.

When I am talking about getting 75 FPS in games like Doom my GPU really is putting out more than 60 FPS. Since my monitor only has a 60Hz refresh rate I can't actually see those extra frames and there is no real advantage to anything over 60 FPS but my GPU really is drawing 75 FPS. My monitor is just capable of displaying 60 of them.

That's why the GSYNC monitors are so attractive. They are capable of completely eliminating screen tearing even while VSYNC (and the associated input lag) is disabled. Most monitors always refresh at a set refresh rate, either 60Hz or 144Hz. A 144Hz GSYNC monitor is able to change it's refresh rate to stay in sync with an Nvidia GPU instead of the GPU having to try to stay in sync with the monitor. If I was getting 75 FPS in Doom a GSYNC monitor would change it's refresh rate to 75 to stay perfectly in sync.

I would love a 1440p/144Hz Gsync monitor. Unfortunately last time I looked they were about $800.
 
Friendly reminder that the GTX 1070 releases tomorrow. Since I am going to have to give up my 2nd 970 soon and don't want to end up with no GPU for a few weeks I'll probably check out Amazon before I come in to work tomorrow and see if I can snag a EVGA SC 1070 before they sell out. My guess is that they will be long gone before I'm awake.

If the GTX 1080 is any indication they are going to be tough to find for a while. The 1080 came out May 27th and Amazon still only has the Asus brand $700 Founders Edition in stock. Newegg is completely out of stock of GTX 1080s of any type.

The thing that miffs me about this is that Newegg somehow has basically every brand in stock if you are willing to buy one of their $800-$1400 bundles that includes a motherboard, power supply, or some other component you may or may not want. Really Newegg? The $1400 2 pack of EVGA GTX 1080s for SLI is in stock but it's not in stock if you just wanted to buy one of them for $700? At least make it some kind of discount if you are going to force a bundle.
 
The thing that miffs me about this is that Newegg somehow has basically every brand in stock if you are willing to buy one of their $800-$1400 bundles that includes a motherboard, power supply, or some other component you may or may not want. Really Newegg? The $1400 2 pack of EVGA GTX 1080s for SLI is in stock but it's not in stock if you just wanted to buy one of them for $700? At least make it some kind of discount if you are going to force a bundle.
Gamestop did the same thing when the Wii first came out. That's how I was able to get one the first year. You had to agree to buy like 6 games with it (to be fair the games were pretty good or at least seemed like they would be) along with a memory card. I did that and kept the games I wanted and gave away the extras to my dad's girlfriend's kids. They didn't get the Wii until later but that wasn't my problem.
 
According to the EVGA Twitter account the SC model 1070 will only be available for purchase directly from EVGA's website today. I wouldn't have a problem with this except for the fact that purchases went live at 9:00ET this morning and 45 minutes later I still couldn't get past adding it to my cart without getting a server error message. I just tried again and now every version of the 1070 besides the Founders Edition is sold out. Looks like I'll be waiting a little while to get my new card.

Oh well, now I guess I have time to read reviews comparing all the custom cards before making my final purchase. Who knows, I could even find my impatient self grabbing a EVGA SC GTX 1080 if Amazon gets them in stock before the 1070 models.
 
According to the EVGA Twitter account the SC model 1070 will only be available for purchase directly from EVGA's website today. I wouldn't have a problem with this except for the fact that purchases went live at 9:00ET this morning and 45 minutes later I still couldn't get past adding it to my cart without getting a server error message. I just tried again and now every version of the 1070 besides the Founders Edition is sold out. Looks like I'll be waiting a little while to get my new card.

Oh well, now I guess I have time to read reviews comparing all the custom cards before making my final purchase. Who knows, I could even find my impatient self grabbing a EVGA SC GTX 1080 if Amazon gets them in stock before the 1070 models.

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I'm actually kind of glad I wasn't able to get the superclocked model I was trying to buy now. EVGA was asking $440 for them which is a pretty close to the $450 Founders Edition price. Two of the reviews I read today mentioned that Nvidia has limiters in place to cap the highest overclocks and even the reference model cards are capable of reaching those same overclock limits. They throttle down more often because the Founders Edition cooler isn't capable of holding those clock speeds without the temps getting too high but the cards themselves are capable of it.

The EVGA superclocked and FTW cards still come with factory overclocks that make them faster out of the box but they also sell a model with the same fancy ACX 3.0 cooler and no factory overclock for $400. Since I am comfortable with overclocking myself there is no advantage to paying $40 more for the SC model or even more than that for the FTW model. I will be able to overclock it myself to higher speeds than they come with by default and the maximum custom overclock speeds will be the same.

The $440 price point of the SC model turned me off when MSRP of basic models was supposed to be $380 before I even read this. I expected to pay more for the SC model but not $60 more. That price point had me strongly considering the EVGA ACX 3.0 GTX 1080 for $620.
 
I ordered a 1070 earlier this morning. It's still back ordered so I have no idea when I will get it but It's the first time I have seen a non-Founders Edition card for either the 1070 or 1080 available to order at regular price. All the other 1070 cards, including Founders Edition are currently only available on Amazon through third party sellers who are trying to charge more than what a 1080 would cost.

Since my 970 will be gone Friday it feels good to have something ordered even if it is currently back ordered. I will continue to check Amazon a couple times a day until it ships to see if another model I like will be available to ship sooner.
 
Friendly reminder that the Steam Summer Sale starts this Thursday

I'm looking forward to it even if there aren't really any games I have been desperate to find on sale right now. I'm sure that won't stop me from spending from finding plenty of games to spend my money on. It never has during past Steam Summer Sales.

I would like to see nice discounts on Superhot, Stardew Valley, and XCOM 2 but I'm not getting my hopes up. I don't think I've seen more than 20% off on any of those games yet and you can get that kind of discount any time you want on GMG with their voucher codes.

Edit: I suppose it doesn't help that I currently have no GPU and no idea when I will have one again so that tempers excitement for buying new PC games a little bit.
 
I ordered another back-ordered GTX 1070 from Amazon today. I now have a Gigabyte G1 Gaming 1070 and a MSI Gaming X 1070 waiting for stock to be filled. If I ever see the EVGA SC 1070 available to order I will jump in on one of those too.

Unfortunately I haven't seen a single EVGA card available to order from anywhere except direct ordering from EVGA's website. Every time they have stock available their website crashes from too much server load and they sell out before I can place an order.

I have passed on lower tier custom models from MSI and Zotac and Founders Edition but the better models from EVGA, MSI, and Gigabyte are still very tough to get right now. Hopefully I will get an email update about when I can expect one of these cards to ship soon so I can cancel my other orders and not end up with 3 1070s on their way to my house.
 
The dark days are almost over. I finally got an email from Amazon confirming a delivery date for my 1070. My Gigabyte G1 GTX 1070 will be delivered on Friday. The only problem is that I will be leaving Thursday for a fishing trip in Canada until the 9th. I had to change my shipping address to the office so it won't be sitting on my porch for over a week.
 
The dark days are almost over. I finally got an email from Amazon confirming a delivery date for my 1070. My Gigabyte G1 GTX 1070 will be delivered on Friday. The only problem is that I will be leaving Thursday for a fishing trip in Canada until the 9th. I had to change my shipping address to the office so it won't be sitting on my porch for over a week.
Knowing your luck this means you'll get 1 1070 at your house and another at your office.
 
So recently I was playing Overwatch when all of a sudden the game started running like crap. The frame rate was AWFUL. I tried restarting the game. No help. I tried restarting the OS. Nothing. Tried hard resetting the CPU. Nothing. Finally I broke down and went to display settings. Somehow my refresh rate was set to this:

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I mean... seriously? Who plays an FPS and thinks, "Man, if this had the same FPS as a movie I'd REALLY be into it!" ? I don't know what's worse: The fact that they have this as a setting or that it seemed to switch to this in between matches..
 

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