Building a gaming PC

[tahirahmed]

After declaring a year wait before playing TW3...my desktop fried itself. Synchronicity at work.

Goals: Non-manually overclocking, reliable (quality components), SLI possible if TW3 is too much for one GPU.

Asus Z97 Maximus VII
Intel i7-4790 (stock air-cooled)
MSI GTX 970 4G (stock cooling)
SeaSonic X-1050 1,050W (newest version)
G.Skill Sniper 2x4gb 1866
Appropriate Case

Is there anything I can save money on? Place I should spend more on? Better alternatives? Thank You!

Looks good to me, get a 240 GB or above SSD for possible better experience but that's optional and we don't know how much benefit TW3 will get from SSD. After market air or water cooler (which ever fits your budget) for CPU if you plan to OC it. Personal experience with Cooler Master and Zalman (For Air) and Corsair (For Water), all are good, choice depends on the case you're getting and how much space it offers. Some huge cpu coolers make it difficult/impossible to install ram with large heat spreaders so keep that in mind as well.

Single 970 is probably enough for 1080p and ultra settings at 50 fps (Assumption) but if you're going for 1440p or above with ultra settings and absolutely desire 60 fps then SLI two of them.

NOTE: GameStar mentioned that a single GTX 980 can achieve ultra/1080p at almost 60 fps and that's how I am assuming that 970 will be close on similar settings.

 

[Eruvadhor]

I do already have a SSD and HDD for it. The cooling I will keep in mind, even though I don't plan on that route, it's good to know options.

What is even better to hear is the info on the 970. If I get 30+ I am happy with ultra @ 2560x1080, which should only be about 25% less FPS than 1080p...if the game support ultrawide. This is all good to hear! Thank you for the advice!

 

[oOParaOo]

Getting the most graphically out of the game.

*Admins wasnt sure where to post this, and it's not a 'will my rig run this game topic'

I have a fairly decent rig, and can play most most* games at max, but for the Witcher 3 I want to go all out, as I know I will be playing this game for a long time. I wanted to ask about that we would need to really crank up those settings to the Uber Witcher richness. So here is the rig I currently have, would upgrading the card and processor increase the tick boxes and framerate for this materpiece, or is it pointless me doing so>?

Current set up:

i5 at 3.5ghz
Gtx 780ti
32 gig ram memory
windows 8.1
USB 3. external HD (I have all my games on this)

Anypoint in upgrading? and what would i upgrade too?

Thanks in advance.

 

[hamilcarBarca.196]

try to run your rig on assassin's creed unity...if you find it playable,you will find the witcher 3 at least playable too.

 

[dragonbird]

*Admins wasnt sure where to post this, and it's not a 'will my rig run this game topic'

It probably fits here best, as it's where the experts hang out

I'm going to leave this to those more expert to give detailed answers, but at first glance, the weaknesses would be the GPU and the fact that you're running from an external USB HD. What you have will definitely play the game, probably well, but not "go all out".

Can you give more info on your specs? Mobo? Power Supply? If you're looking for options, that would be useful to know.

 

[CostinRaz]

So here is the rig I currently have, would upgrading the card and processor increase the tick boxes and framerate for this materpiece, or is it pointless me doing so>?

Seems rather pointless on a 780 ti unless you really want a 980 but even then the performance increase would be about 10%. That said you may consider a 980, or a 980ti when that comes out due to DirectX 12...if CDPR implements it later down the line.

With regards to your CPU, what line is it? Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge or Haswell, if you have any of those ( including Haswell refresh ) then you should be quite fine.

I would strongly urge you to get an internal HDD, preferably an SSD.

 

[eskiMoe]

@GuyNwah

Which one would you personally recommend? The Samsung 850 EVO 1TB or the Crucial BX100 1TB SSD?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9144/crucial-bx100-120gb-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

They both seem like great value but frankly I'm a bit wary of Samsung after the 840 EVO fiasco. But at the same time the 850 EVO has 5 year warranty vs BX100's 3 years. But at the same time the BX100 is a bit cheaper..

 

[XSon]

Seems rather pointless on a 780 ti unless you really want a 980 but even then the performance increase would be about 10%. That said you may consider a 980, or a 980ti when that comes out due to DirectX 12...if CDPR implements it later down the line.

With regards to your CPU, what line is it? Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge or Haswell, if you have any of those ( including Haswell refresh ) then you should be quite fine.

I would strongly urge you to get an internal HDD, preferably an SSD.

780 TI will have DX12 supports so it's pointless to upggrade to 9xx series.
I will upgrade when they announce the newer GPU with 16nm.

 

[hamilcarBarca.196]

Seems rather pointless on a 780 ti unless you really want a 980 but even then the performance increase would be about 10%. That said you may consider a 980, or a 980ti when that comes out due to DirectX 12...if CDPR implements it later down the line.

With regards to your CPU, what line is it? Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge or Haswell, if you have any of those ( including Haswell refresh ) then you should be quite fine.

I would strongly urge you to get an internal HDD, preferably an SSD.

directx 12 goes with every dx11 compatible cards

 

[tahirahmed]

2nd gen Maxwell is the first architecture to have full (hardware) Dx12 support otherwise they shouldn't have announced Dx11.3 but you can always wait for a more potent card, that's up to you.

I have a fairly decent rig, and can play most most* games at max, but for the Witcher 3 I want to go all out, as I know I will be playing this game for a long time. I wanted to ask about that we would need to really crank up those settings to the Uber Witcher richness. So here is the rig I currently have, would upgrading the card and processor increase the tick boxes and framerate for this materpiece, or is it pointless me doing so>?

Current set up:

i5 at 3.5ghz
Gtx 780ti
32 gig ram memory
windows 8.1
USB 3. external HD (I have all my games on this)

Anypoint in upgrading? and what would i upgrade too?

Thanks in advance.

With that graphic card I say just wait for 980ti instead of getting a 980, put your games on a normal hard drive (non-usb) and if possible buy an SSD for games like TW3.

 

[GuyNwah]

@GuyNwah

Which one would you personally recommend? The Samsung 850 EVO 1TB or the Crucial BX100 1TB SSD?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8747/samsung-ssd-850-evo-review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9144/crucial-bx100-120gb-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

They both seem like great value but frankly I'm a bit wary of Samsung after the 840 EVO fiasco. But at the same time the 850 EVO has 5 year warranty vs BX100's 3 years. But at the same time the BX100 is a bit cheaper..

You won't go far wrong with either. If you use it in a write-often capacity such as a system disk, write endurance (reflected in the warranty) is on the side of the Samsung in 500GB and 1TB sizes. For a smaller or read-mostly disk, go by price.

 

[eskiMoe]

You won't go far wrong with either. If you use it in a write-often capacity such as a system disk, write endurance (reflected in the warranty) is on the side of the Samsung in 500GB and 1TB sizes. For a smaller or read-mostly disk, go by price.

I'm definitely going with a 1TB model, and I'll be dedicating it for my game installations.

I think I might go with the 850 after all. It's only roughly 30€ more expensive but has a better warranty.

Thanks.

 

[CostinRaz]

directx 12 goes with every dx11 compatible cards

Not all the features however. The 980 will supposedly work with all the features of DX12.

 

[trondjac]

Hi everyone, I've saved some hard earned money and have a trifire AMD setup.. But I understand that it was a waste of money, since Nivida gets specal features on witcher 3?

Or am I mistaken?

 

[Riven-Twain]

Hi everyone, I've saved some hard earned money and have a trifire AMD setup.. But I understand that it was a waste of money, since Nivida gets specal features on witcher 3?

Or am I mistaken?

Nvidia will indeed have some exclusively supported features in the game, such as Hairworks.

 

[trondjac]

Damn! I thought I was a smart man, but I did not think of exclusively supported features that Nivida might have. What you guys think I should do? Should I crazy save for nVidia card? Or just keep those I have?

 

[Kinley]

AFAIK Hairworks will work on AMD cards. Just don't know how well.

 

[trondjac]

AFAIK Hairworks will work on AMD cards. Just don't know how well.

I see, I'll keep my cards and I'll try them, I hope they will pay good. Dont like to spend so much money, and now this. oh well

 

[Riven-Twain]

AFAIK Hairworks will work on AMD cards. Just don't know how well.

I can't say I've seen anything about that before. I'm not doubting your word. I just honestly thought Hairworks was only on Nvidia cards.

 

[Lieste]

http://physxinfo.com/news/12197/introducing-nvidia-hairworks-fur-and-hair-simulation-solution/

Direct Compute "opens dynamic fur up for AMD too". Not that this necessarily means it is currently running with hardware acceleration, but then with a single card, it can be beneficial to run NVIDIA derived Physx on CPU on both NVIDIA and AMD cards unless there is ample spare headroom. CPU implementations are not always significantly inferior when the CPU is not the bottleneck.

As it is slated for future deployment on PS4 and XB1 (according the the Physx development roadmap, it therefore will be available for AMD cards eventually regardless of current state). I assume that it will continue to be known as NVIDIA Hairworks even when running on AMD hardware, in the same way the Adobe Photoshop is so known, regardless of mac or windows environment.