HDD required? Dual GPU?

[Ineko]

With these gaming results on 1920x1080 paying 60% extra for GTX770 over 760 looks like epic waste of money. But since the OP has money to burn, sure 770 is better for getting the last 2-3 fps possible out of it.

By looking at benchmarks the 7970GHz edition is a better option, $50 cheaper and you get a few free games.

[slasher0161]

Given the OP is in Australia, 760 is pretty well a shit option all around. When for the same price you can get a 7950. You can't make recommendations based on American prices to Australians. If we could pick up 500w psu's for $30 and 760's for $260 we would be all over it trust me. Either go a 7970ghz or a 780 and be happy. 2gb vram is imo a terrible option at the moment (if your itching to spend more than the 780 go onto ebay and pick up a korean made 1440p panel).

[Deleted]

Given the OP is in Australia, 760 is pretty well a shit option all around. When for the same price you can get a 7950. You can't make recommendations based on American prices to Australians. If we could pick up 500w psu's for $30 and 760's for $260 we would be all over it trust me. Either go a 7970ghz or a 780 and be happy. 2gb vram is imo a terrible option at the moment (if your itching to spend more than the 780 go onto ebay and pick up a korean made 1440p panel).

Lets see how shitty this 760 option is... I'm just gonna venture as far as saying you're quite wrong. The similar price also seems perfect. Prices are also similar in the US, with a few cheaper 7950 options.

Review/comparison 760 vs 7950/boost

Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Radeon HD 7950 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 perform at the same level and are also in the same price segment. It all comes down to brand preference and software features!

I thought of linking the various benchmarks but it was too much work but go ahead and look at them all, they are neck and neck in pretty much all the titles, even at 1600p. Besides a few exceptions you're not going to run out of vRAM at 1080p or even for 1440p, so I can't really see why you think 2GB is a terrible option.

[slasher0161]

Lets see how shitty this 760 option is... I'm just gonna venture as far as saying you're quite wrong. The similar price also seems perfect. Prices are also similar in the US, with a few cheaper 7950 options.

Review/comparison 760 vs 7950/boost



I thought of linking the various benchmarks but it was too much work but go ahead and look at them all, they are neck and neck in pretty much all the titles, even at 1600p. Besides a few exceptions you're not going to run out of vRAM at 1080p or even for 1440p, so I can't really see why you think 2GB is a terrible option.

Because it is possible to chew up 2gb of vram (I currently do it) if you enjoy high res textures and use image down sampling it isn't hard to hit a 2gb vram limit. People have made skyrim chew 2gb @ 1080p with only a handful of mods, if you aren't a power user yea 2gb will cut the mustard I guess but its disappointing to be hitting vram limits when the card is still keen for more.

[Deleted]

Because it is possible to chew up 2gb of vram (I currently do it) if you enjoy high res textures and use image down sampling it isn't hard to hit a 2gb vram limit. People have made skyrim chew 2gb @ 1080p with only a handful of mods, if you aren't a power user yea 2gb will cut the mustard I guess but its disappointing to be hitting vram limits when the card is still keen for more.

Besides a few exceptions you're not going to run out of vRAM at 1080p

High res texture packs are part of those exceptions. Side Note, you can have Skyrim modded and look really good and still not exceed 2GB vRAM (not saying it's not possible to break 2GB, if definitely is). Not exceeding 2GB vRAM in a few select games doesn't mean you're not a "power user". I still fail to see how this makes the 760 a terrible option overall though.

Sorta off-topic and I don't know if it still works or there is some replacement but there is/was a mod for Skyrim that would help lower memory usage:

- Compress BMP, TGA, DDS (unoptimized) to DXT5 and DXT1
- Remove unused mask in DXT5/DXT3 to DXT1c without losing quality, reducing 50%
- Make mipmaps to improve performance
- Delete unnecessary files (identical BMP=TGA=DDS, thumbs.db, pspbrwse.jbf, ...)
- Resize fills to 4x4 or 16x16
- Fix Wrong Size - Example: 100x30 => 128x32
- Fix when the alpha channel is hiding an image
- Optionally resize textures
- Optimizer BSA (Compress, Merge internal files)
- Backup changed files

The mod

[Veroku Chan]

I would advise against linking 2 SSDs together in a 0 raid, being that SSDs are more prone to failure than standard HDDs, and linking 2 together won't provide a massive boost to an already fast SSD. So if one fails in a linked 0 raid, you would lose everything on both drives. I personally like getting 1 small SSD for the OS installation alone, a 2nd SSD for all my other software to be installed on, and a 3rd HDD for primary data storage and backup.

With said setup, if my Primary SSD fails, I just lose my OS install. If the secondary fails, I only have to reinstall software, and my OS remains intact. Then lastly if my HDD fails(which isn't prone to happen as it won't be heavily used, but if it does), my OS and software will remain, and I will only lose some backed up files(this being a worst case scenario, but isn't entirely avoidable unless you do further file backups)

I've found this 3 Drive storage setup though not the fastest performance, to be the most reliable.

[Deleted]

SSDs are not prone to fail... and they don't really fail more (or less) than a mechanical drive. That said I agree with using one bigger SSD or two separate ones if you already have one smaller.

[teddytous]

The performance gains of raid SSds are only measurable in high use environments where a heavy amount of reads and writes get queued up, you won't see much in regular desktop and gaming.

Not a performance issue persay, but really second guess that 1440p monitor - honestly they're amazing - my brother picked up a 27 inch... the things gorgeous, makes me wish I had the cash. It makes such a huge difference to the experience quality, if you have money to play with spend it there.

An amazing monitor, and for that matter truly good audio equipment, will make you a lot happier then a completely ineffectual raid setup or marginal increase of a titan.