Video Cards

[Santilli]

What video cards work to power 120mhz monitors?

 

[LunarMist]

The RTX 40 series cards do 240Hz at 4K if that helps. I'm pretty sure most modern cards will do 120Hz at some resolutions. Which monitor are you using, and are you expecting the FreeSync?

 

[Santilli]

https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-48gq900-b-gaming-monitor?gad_source=1
I have to look up FreeSync...

 

[Mercutio]

If you want high refresh to work, you need to make sure everything in the signal chain supports it. It's a real dummy moment when you find someone with a $1000 Samsung G9 and an RTX 4080 who can't be megafancy because they're using a 10 year old HDMI cable.

Freesync is an AMD technology that was released as an open spec. You can use it on GTX 10x0 hardware and newer on nVidia, at LEAST Radeon 300-series and I know that it works with Arc cards as well.

 

[Santilli]

If you want high refresh to work, you need to make sure everything in the signal chain supports it. It's a real dummy moment when you find someone with a $1000 Samsung G9 and an RTX 4080 who can't be megafancy because they're using a 10 year old HDMI cable.

Freesync is an AMD technology that was released as an open spec. You can use it on GTX 10x0 hardware and newer on nVidia, at LEAST Radeon 300-series and I know that it works with Arc cards as well.

My setup was near that. I had an 8k HDMI cable, but, plugging into the back of the computer, it wasn't seated properly. This created intermitent black screens, even though I could hear the computer working on the speakers.
I rechecked everything that could cause this, since this monitors complaints are auto sleep putting it to sleep, when people aren't using it.
Thank God It wasn't a bad monitor. Putting the monitor up was not easy, and getting it back in the box would be near impossible.
I don't see any games on the FreeSync list that I play, nor do I see this monitor.
Though I do see some games I would like to try again...

 

[Santilli]

If you want high refresh to work, you need to make sure everything in the signal chain supports it. It's a real dummy moment when you find someone with a $1000 Samsung G9 and an RTX 4080 who can't be megafancy because they're using a 10 year old HDMI cable.

Freesync is an AMD technology that was released as an open spec. You can use it on GTX 10x0 hardware and newer on nVidia, at LEAST Radeon 300-series and I know that it works with Arc cards as well.

Just ordered a 2.1 cable, Snowkids?
What do you use.?

 

[Mercutio]

I just have a box of cables. For a while, every time I bought a specific model of Lenovo Ideapad, it would come with a brand new HDMI cable and also a generic 32GB USB 3 thumb drive. I wound up buying dozens of that one model of Ideapad, so for the time being I just have dozens of new HDMI cables.

Somebody posted a comparison between current Intel Iris Xe and current AMD Radeon 760/780 iGPUs on MakeUseOf. TLDR is that AMD is still faster but Intel is not as pathetic as it used to be; the better Iris XE setup is more or less on par with the lesser AMD one for gamer-y purposes. I think I said something about that a week or two ago, but there somebody has handy charts in that link if anyone wants to go look at them.

 

[Santilli]

Turns out the pricing on Passmark wasn't accurate.
Best card around 500 turned out to be a 4070.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQJKJZBK?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
comes in tonight.
It's OCED to 2495 MHZ IIRC, putting it ahead of any other 4070.
Hope it doesn't blow up...

 

[ddrueding]

Blowing up isn't a concern anymore, as GPUs and CPUs underclock and undervolt themselves automatically if thermals are an issue. Even though my CPU has the best performing AIO cooler on the market, it thermal throttles after about 5 minutes of synthetic load. Fortunately it is fast enough that most real world tasks complete far faster than that.

 

[sedrosken]

@Santilli, If you're still running that i7-940, you may want to make sure you have UEFI support in your board and have it enabled -- it's uncommon but not unheard of for Nehalem boards to get it, usually as an update -- most new graphics cards will not give a display on BIOS-only boards. I'm not sure if nVidia is among that number, but I know my Arc wouldn't.

 

[Santilli]

Thanks.
Won't be running it for long with the i7.
Tenative upgrade:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FGPVK...6hzWPEVyw_BS10LohLU_o-1717117904-0.0.1.1-6185

 

[LunarMist]

I would not buy the 980 Pro now and I have a couple of them from years ago. Samsung has dropped the ball with SSDs the past few years.
In the smaller SSDs I really like the Hynix nowadays for high performance and not the firmware screwups of Smasung. It's currently $155 at Amazon with a coupon. https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Platinum-Internal-Compact/dp/B09QVD9V7R?th=1

 

[Santilli]

Thanks.
I haven't used over 300 gb on my Samsung 860.
I was thinking of a 2 gb SSD 980 Pro.
They both are near 90% on good reviews.
Seems like Samsung service is lacking so far.

 

[Santilli]

From amazon reviews:
"It comes to find out that a few months ago Puget Systems, a Washington-Based tech firm, using analytical data discovered that there are a significant amount of drive failures reported on the Samsung 980 Pro specifically with the 2TB model which when investigated comes from a fatal error in the firmware that is prepackaged with the unit. Samsung has even recommended on their Samsung Magician software that the firmware on the unit be updated immediately because of this known issue. I was unaware of this issue with the unit and have never updated the firmware on the SSD unfortunately. Allegedly, if you update the firmware before the drive goes into a failure state then it is essentially fixed and there is no imminent threat of drive failure however if it does happen the drive goes into an inaccessible Read-Only state and becomes undetectable and unusable with the data on the drive becoming unretrievable. My drive was unfortunately my OS partition and my primary storage with no other drives in the PC so all of my personal data is now lost."
GREAT Thats the drive I was going to purchase.

 

[Santilli]

"
1.0 out of 5 stars ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT FOR FAILED DRIVE - WORTHLESS 5-year warranty
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2024
Capacity: 2TBVerified Purchase
Drive failed with errors after less than 7 months. Attempts to contact SK Hynix were fruitless. Sent request for assistance at skhynix.com and received a reply days later indicating that they: 1. Do not have infrastructure to support end users as the department listed only supports B2B ( business to business ). They also do not have ability to exchange for replacement drive. They told me to go back to the retailer for support. I reminded them that this item was sold by them and fulfilled by amazon. Didn't help. Looking at my order on amazon, there was an option to get support. That support was basically a lot of self help for drive installation. Nothing for failed drive replacement. There was a button to click for the manufacturer; when clicked brings you to a page that no longer exists. There is an SK HYNIX phone number listed, but nobody answers (tried at least 10 times). The drive seemed to work fine initially, until it didn't. Don't risk it. I replaced with a CRUCIAL SSD. I know that they have great warranty support."
This for the SK Hynix.,

 

[Santilli]

I just have a box of cables. For a while, every time I bought a specific model of Lenovo Ideapad, it would come with a brand new HDMI cable and also a generic 32GB USB 3 thumb drive. I wound up buying dozens of that one model of Ideapad, so for the time being I just have dozens of new HDMI cables.

Somebody posted a comparison between current Intel Iris Xe and current AMD Radeon 760/780 iGPUs on MakeUseOf. TLDR is that AMD is still faster but Intel is not as pathetic as it used to be; the better Iris XE setup is more or less on par with the lesser AMD one for gamer-y purposes. I think I said something about that a week or two ago, but there somebody has handy charts in that link if anyone wants to go look at them.

I have a bunch of Chinese POS 8k cables. Out of three of them, none would plug into the card.
I'm using a really old one, in slot one, and it does 3840 at 120mhz, but, it cuts out.
If I drop the frame rate to 60mhz, it runs fine, and doesn't cut out.

 

[Santilli]

Posted the wrong link:
Parts are ordered:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dtkjVW

 

[Mercutio]

The USA was about to impose a 25% tariff on certain high tech parts, most notably GPUs, starting in a couple weeks. They decided to wait a year.
Hopefully we all have our 5090s by then.

Also hopefully nvidia will finally implement hardware codecs for HEVC 10-bit like every ARM SoC and Intel iGPU since like 8th gen have.

 

[LunarMist]

I cannot find any real info about the 50 series models and wattages yet compared to the 40 series, but won't the 5090 be another oversized power hog that clogs up the adjacent slots and strains the UPS?

 

[jtr1962]

The USA was about to impose a 25% tariff on certain high tech parts, most notably GPUs, starting in a couple weeks. They decided to wait a year.

They should wait forever. Tariffs just hurt the common person. Lots of these products subject to tariffs are mostly made in China and won't be made in the US in the foreseeable future. The tariffs on EVs especially irk me. I want BYD to flood the US market with sub-$10K EVs to light a fire under the automakers. Protectionism didn't work pre-WWI, and it's not going to work now.

 

[sedrosken]

Don't those sub-$10K EVs not pass NHTSA safety standards anyway? I agree, tariffs don't boost local industry, they just make the economic situation look even worse than it is, but the EVs in particular I don't really see selling stateside as it is.

I've started mulling over the possibility of selling my Arc and getting a used 6700XT or some such. Maybe a 3060Ti to check out those shiny new Nvidia open source drivers. While I'm happy with the performance level, I've let Intel play around with drivers for a year and a half and they're still not where they need to be. Trouble is, while I know I wouldn't ever get close to my money back nor do I expect it, from what I can tell used Arc is just... worthless. It basically just doesn't sell. The listings I see are mostly unmolested practically new in-box, while I've had the back off mine a couple times now to clean/repaste it. The thing is, I'd probably still be plenty satisfied with 1070-class performance, but I want more than 8GB of VRAM and Pascal doesn't get integer scaling in its drivers. You need at minimum Turing.

 

[LunarMist]

I have a 3060Ti, purchased during the shortages of summer 2021 at an extra price. The main thing I liked is that it has only two fans so fit easily into a complicated case. There are only 8GB of RAM in it. I only used the Win 10, but I would think that all the drivers are quite mature for a late 2020 technology product. I never had any problems whatsoever.

 

[sedrosken]

Ended up grabbing an EVGA 3060 12GB for about two hundred bucks used. I figure I'll sell the A770 to cover the cost and maybe, just maybe, pay the eBay fees too -- if I price it low enough, it'll sell, hopefully. I'm mostly just hoping to break even.

 

[ddrueding]

A friend lost his PC this morning, and with no money to spend, I pulled a machine from storage that had a 8700k and RX570. I was surprised how much faster his 1080 was to the RX570. 1080 was a great card.

 

[sedrosken]

The name of the game I think is to put power limits in place for every day computing -- lets say I disable a couple cores on my 5700X and set the power target to 40W, and as long as those 6 cores that are still enabled boost to about 4GHz, I call it good. Pair that with power limiting the 3060 to ~120W when it gets here and that should have plenty left over in the budget for my displays and peripherals. That'd let me actually use my main PC hopefully without making my AC too awful mad at me. And I still have the ability to make it say "I am not left handed" and release the power limits when the load calls for it or circumstances allow, and I go back to more or less just using the laptop when I feel like being at the couch or when I'm travelling.

I've pulled and prepped the A770 for sale as well as taken pictures, but I'm not listing it until I confirm the 3060 is working.

 

[LunarMist]

What difference does it make to computing if you are left or right handed?
Have you had the A/C serviced recently to ensure best performance and efficiency?

 

[Santilli]

What difference does it make to computing if you are left or right handed?
Have you had the A/C serviced recently to ensure best performance and efficiency?

It cuts a tremendous amount of mouse options out.
I needed a CTS friendly mouse.
NOT many options.
Have to reprogam all games unless you just want to move your keyboard over, and you have room.

 

[sedrosken]

It's... it's a reference to the Princess Bride. That movie is 11 years older than I am. I figured you would have seen it. Here it is.

I rent. It's the landlady's responsibility to have the AC serviced, but it only sees service when something's gone horribly wrong. The guy said he'd look at recharging it but mysteriously never came back. My bet is she refuses to pay for it. It does nominally work but it is horrifically inefficient and massively upticks my electric bill with every second it remains on. No exaggeration -- my bill this time last year with my use of my main desktop was double what it was last month because I'd swapped to using the laptop primarily.

 

[LunarMist]

Now I get it.
I saw it like 30+ years ago. Of course I recall the infamous lines "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
And I liked the part where Wally Shawn was such a smart ass and poisoned himself.

 

[Santilli]

It's... it's a reference to the Princess Bride. That movie is 11 years older than I am. I figured you would have seen it. Here it is.

I rent. It's the landlady's responsibility to have the AC serviced, but it only sees service when something's gone horribly wrong. The guy said he'd look at recharging it but mysteriously never came back. My bet is she refuses to pay for it. It does nominally work but it is horrifically inefficient and massively upticks my electric bill with every second it remains on. No exaggeration -- my bill this time last year with my use of my main desktop was double what it was last month because I'd swapped to using the laptop primarily.

Thinking of moving to Florida.
Where are you?

 

[Santilli]

I LOVED THAT CLIP!!! I have to find the movie now.!!!

 

[Newtun]

I rent. It's the landlady's responsibility to have the AC serviced, but it only sees service when something's gone horribly wrong. The guy said he'd look at recharging it but mysteriously never came back. My bet is she refuses to pay for it. It does nominally work but it is horrifically inefficient and massively upticks my electric bill with every second it remains on. No exaggeration -- my bill this time last year with my use of my main desktop was double what it was last month because I'd swapped to using the laptop primarily.

Would it be feasible to contact the serviceman directly and see if he'd "cut you a deal" on recharging the AC?

 

[Santilli]

It's... it's a reference to the Princess Bride. That movie is 11 years older than I am. I figured you would have seen it. Here it is.

I rent. It's the landlady's responsibility to have the AC serviced, but it only sees service when something's gone horribly wrong. The guy said he'd look at recharging it but mysteriously never came back. My bet is she refuses to pay for it. It does nominally work but it is horrifically inefficient and massively upticks my electric bill with every second it remains on. No exaggeration -- my bill this time last year with my use of my main desktop was double what it was last month because I'd swapped to using the laptop primarily.

Just watched the movie! Fantastic! Thank you!!
Needed something cheerful!

 

[Mercutio]

I've pulled and prepped the A770 for sale as well as taken pictures, but I'm not listing it until I confirm the 3060 is working.

The A770 has been a great bargain IMO, but I got one cheap as well. I think you have to have at least some interest in it outside gaming needs to see it as worthwhile hardware. $200something is a crazy good deal for one.

 

[sedrosken]

The A770 has been a great bargain IMO, but I got one cheap as well. I think you have to have at least some interest in it outside gaming needs to see it as worthwhile hardware. $200something is a crazy good deal for one.

See, I got mine before all the price cuts, in January of '23. I got taken for a ride to the tune of almost $400 after taxes and shipping. The entire time I've had it I've been huffing weapons-grade copium and saying the drivers just needed a bit more time in the oven. I hear they're a lot better on Linux, but I'm not gaming on Linux, I'm playing games that don't work on Windows. NFS Heat just shows flat-shaded polygons for the ground texture, for example. Xenia, though not a game itself but rather an Xbox 360 emulator, does nothing but artifact the entire time it's trying to render 3D. These have been issues I've been dealing with since I bought the stupid thing.

I don't even have the bargain angle endearing me to it. It was merely a half-decent deal at the time should it hold up under pressure. It has not. So I'm going to a slower card that'll actually run all my stuff.

Intel has the same problem ATi used to. They make really good hardware, but the drivers let it down so hard that people think it's aging well when in fact Fine Wine just means the launch drivers sucked forty seven different kinds of ass.

Thinking of moving to Florida.
Where are you?

I'm about four hours west of Tallahassee, an hour east of Pensacola. All I can say is, don't move down here unless you agree with the politics. I didn't have much in the way of choice, myself, it was either this or keep spinning my wheels for another five years in a retail hellhole. I was never going to break into IT in Kentucky.

Would it be feasible to contact the serviceman directly and see if he'd "cut you a deal" on recharging the AC?

Likely, but this is a 30+ year old unit that never got converted. The R12 would be astronomically expensive and that's if he actually had any left. If I had to guess, that's probably why my landlady has dragged her feet on getting anything done to it. In the meantime, I have to form what I do at home around it, not the other way around.

 

[jtr1962]

Likely, but this is a 30+ year old unit that never got converted. The R12 would be astronomically expensive and that's if he actually had any left. If I had to guess, that's probably why my landlady has dragged her feet on getting anything done to it. In the meantime, I have to form what I do at home around it, not the other way around.

Tell the repairman about RS-24. It's a drop-in replacement for R-12, which is getting ever harder to find, and more expensive, as they haven't made it in many years.

 

[Santilli]

Anyone using Matrox cards?

 

[Handruin]

Not since the late 1990s

 

[Mercutio]

Anyone using Matrox cards?

Matrox still makes video cards. I bought a couple during the pandemic when they were some of the cheapest options to get a graphics card, but their main use is video wall setups now. They're pathetic for gaming/3D needs. The easiest way to get them is on eBay, second hand.

 

[sedrosken]

Anyone using Matrox cards?

In my vintage builds, sure. The Millennium II PCI is my favorite 2D option for builds around the 1996-1998 era. Blindingly quick, razor sharp output on VGA, very compatible, and vivid colors too. I had a G450 DualHead in my PIII build for a while. It was similarly sharp and vivid, which I'd hope for, but it definitely was much slower than the GeForce2 MX I replaced it with, though that was through no fault of its own, really.