sell it to me for $150 so you can buy a 1080, haha.

my wife's hackintosh needs a graphics card and i'm hoping to either get a 960 for $100 or a 970 for $150-175 eventually.

I ended up ordering a ASUS 970 today from newegg. it will be around $170 after coupon code and rebate. cant wait to play Overwatch on it. Probably start up WoW again too

built my first gaming pc last week

got a fx 6350 and a sapphire rx 480

went cheap on the processor should of gotten the i5 6600k that i was wanting, someone gave me a new amd motherboard so thats why i went with that

6350 seems to do ok

i got the 480 undervolted at 1050 on the last two states in wattman and it stays at 1266mhz when under load, also undervolted the memory at 950 and have it at 2100mhz

getting a 8074 firestrike benchmark with that

Starbound just left Early Access today. I haven't played it in probably 2 years, but even back then it was pretty awesome. Basically Terraria on steroids and sci-fi.

they need this on xbox one

Thinking about buying a new monitor. This is what I've got now (and the rest of my specs are above).

HP 25bw Monitor (1920 x 1080 60Hz)

This is the new one I'm considering. I've read a lot of good things about it and this is apparently a decent price for a monitor like this.

http://http://www.bestbuy.com/site/d...&skuId=5293502

My question is, aside from size, how much, if any difference will I actually notice with this upgrade display?

It is coming at some point. They basically have to redesign the entire interface for it though. I hope that also translates over to the PC side, because the interface is not very good as it is. Super fun game though. I think I put like 30 hours into it in the last week, and I'm not even into these sort of sandbox building games.

I really like my ASUS G-Sync monitor, but I guess a lot of it depends on how sensitive you are to screen tearing and frame rate drops. It's definitely made my gaming a much smoother experience overall.

The only thing that might suck is your 770 might not be powerful enough to run everything at native 2560x1440 without dropping down some of the graphics settings or bumping down the resolution.

Also, it looks like your current monitor is IPS, versus the TN panel in the Dell. As someone that also went from IPS to TN, I definitely noticed the worse viewing angles although since I'm pretty stationary at my computer desk I got over it fairly quickly.

High refresh rate displays are awesome. Even stuff like moving the mouse around on the desktop will feel more responsive compared to 60Hz. GTX 770 is getting long in the tooth and modern games won't be able to run at 25x14 with great frame rates, but lowering the settings should get a lot of stuff playable. G-SYNC is great for eliminating tearing and input lag and proving a smooth gaming experience, even if your frame rate hovers in the 40's.

Great information. Thanks!

I was afraid my 770 might hold things back but I was planning on upgrading that before the end of the year, so I think that'll be ok.

And I'm pretty stationary at my desk as well. I wouldn't anticipate the viewing angle being a problem.

I'll probably sleep on it and see how I feel tomorrow. I wasn't really ready to drop $500 on a monitor this week, so I may hold off for a little while. Maybe see if this goes on sale again, or if Dell gets some refurbs in.

Thanks again.

Be sure to think about your video card purchase when picking an adaptive sync monitor. If you think you might switch to AMD for your video card, you'd want FreeSync instead of G-Sync.

FreeSync monitors are usually a lot cheaper than G-Sync, so if you don't care whether your next card is Nvidia or AMD, you can save money by going FreeSync + AMD.

Is there a real difference between NVIDIA and AMD? Is one measurably better than the other?

Here's some more:

- I have a 600 W power supply. When should I upgrade that? And how do I find out what to upgrade that to?

- If I want to add RAM, do I just buy a couple more sticks and put them in the two remaining slots on my mother board? Anything special to look out for (make sure they're compatible w/motherboard, same type as existing RAM, etc.)

- And should I ever have to swap out the motherboard itself? At what point does one become obsolete?

They're pretty similar, but diehard fans of each will argue to the death that their brand is better.

Whichever you pick, just be sure to get one of the latest generation cards that have come out in the last few months. Try to avoid reference cards and Founders Edition cards, and instead get an aftermarket card.

There aren't enough Vulkan and DirectX 12 benchmarks to compare, but most levelheaded people think that the newest Nvidia cards get better performance in DirectX 11 games and the newest AMD cards get better performance in DX12 and Vulkan games. We won't know for sure for a while, until the drivers mature and more games use DX12 and Vulkan.

Like I said before, though, just make sure the adaptive sync on your expensive monitor matches the card you buy.

Probably plenty.

If you have more slots, yes. You'll have to make sure that the RAM is the right pin count for your motherboard and runs at a speed that your motherboard supports. If you replace an old motherboard with a new one, your RAM probably won't be compatible.

If you upgrade processors, you'll probably need a new motherboard. Make sure that your processor socket type matches your new motherboard, and that your motherboard supports your processor's chipset.

https://pcpartpicker.com/ is a good reference. You can choose various parts and it will tell you if you have incompatibilities.

Is Kaby Lake on Intel's schedule to be released this year?

If so I'll wait to upgrade my CPU and Mobo, if it isn't going to debut until next year I'll go with a 6700K now. Not sure if Kaby is a die shrink over Skylake, or if it will be that much of an upgrade over it.

Looks like Fall?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10503/...core-kaby-lake

I have an AMD card. It's fine. People always complain about the software, Catalyst or whatever is called now. It works fine for me.

I've been wanting to move back to NVIDIA for a long time. I haven't had one, for gaming, in more than 10 years. Always got great deals on AMD cards.

Lately, 5 years or so, NVIDIA has been aggressive in courting game developers to use NVIDIA technology. AMD has complained about that. So there's that sense that some games play better in NVIDIA cards. Most mainstream/popular games, of course.

Not sure what's the latest in SLI vs Crossfire.

Really appreciate all the info, guys. Thanks a lot.

I think I'll pick up a monitor first, just not right now. I really like that Dell, but it's just too much right now. We'll see what the budget looks like in a couple weeks and go from there. I'm really excited to update my GPU. That will be the most do-it-yourself thing I've done with a computer next to plugging in a mouse and keyboard.

My son just finished a new build. He went with an i7-6700, 1080, 16gb of ddr4, a pny ssd 480gb, and an asus 27" 2k.

Fast? yep. We are amazed. Next will be a vr unit.

970 owners can get $30 back for the 3.5 GB memory fiasco. Although I don't think I see any info on how to actually make a claim right now.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/28/123...uit-settlement

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/8GJNqk

Ok, so these are all my current components with the new GPU and Monitor added. PCPartPicker says no incompatibilities were found, and it should come in a ~358W.

So, I should be good to go?

Also, my the ASUS website for my motherboard says it supports both the i5 and i7 chips. Does that mean I could swap one of those in without replacing the motherboard? And is there much of a step up from an i5 to an i7?

Sorry for all the questions - I just don't want to screw anything up. Thanks!

I assume you already own everything other than the GPU and Monitor?

You can swap in another CPU as long as it is also socket LGA1150.

Your RAM is pretty slow. If you are keeping that motherboard long term, I'd upgrade that. If you go with a newer motherboard, you'd upgrade to DDR4.

Yup. Everything but the gpu and monitor are identical to what's in my PC right now.

For gaming you should be fine with an i5.