CoolerMaster Based LAN Party / Bedside Computer Endeavor Project - FINALLY

Finally I'm getting somewhere with my baby ITX Bedside / LAN Party Build with that Pentium G3258! I just need a storage drive then I'm good to go!

CPU: Pentium G3258,

I thought the Pentium K was something of a bit of a goof but for a LAN Party build, this is the perfect CPU to have as your heart. Overclocking will be the name of the game though for it's essential for an "acceptable or even a good gaming experience - LinusTechTips" on the freaking cheap. Once you crank speeds beyond 4.5 Ghz, most of the bottlenecks posed by the dual core processor will not be obvious anymore. And at that speed in terms of gaming, it can edge remarkably close to the even bigger Quad-Core / 8 Threaded Intel CPUs and the 8-core AMD CPUs.

Cooling: Intel Stock cooler.

This will be enough to cool it down but I may intend to replace with a good low profile CPU cooling since I plan to get it up to 4.5-4.6 GHz on this thing.

Case: CoolerMaster Elite 120

Nice CoolerMaster Case that I'm getting from a friend. Now I've been a big fan of the Elite 120 rather than the 130 because of its plain and IMO Flashier design for the front side of the case then the mesh grills on the 130. The only functional difference is the front USB Layout (1 x 3.0 and 2 x 2.0 on the 120, and 2 x 3.0 and 1 x 2.0 on the 130) which wouldn't mean too much jack. And of course the case being longer than the 110, I can fit a longer GPU should I wish to upgrade.

Motherboard: MSI Z87I LGA 1150 ITX

Overclocking ready motherboard, just needs a new BIOS, this I have ordered new from eBay. ITX LGA 1150 motherboard is what I need in this build. It has WiFi, which is nice which means I don't need to sacrifice a USB Port for a WiFi Adapter. It doesn't have eSATA compared to other competing Z87 ITX boards but that's one of the things which I never use at all.

It has been voted by TomsHardware as a Smart Choice for Z87I Board Options. So the link here is the article of the MSI Z87I.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z87-motherboard-roundup,3656-14.html

The entire board is black mostly, so it'll complement the external color of the case well and most of the stuff which I stuff in will also be black.

RAM: 8GB GSkill Ripjaws RAM DDR3 1600 PC 12800

I decided not to go with Corsair Vengeance as my primary RAM after so many failures with it. Of a grand total of 6 Sticks or 24GBs that I have, Half of the entire batch failed. 1 of the RAMs though did last for 3+ years so that RAM was decidedly lucky. So I ordered a pack of 16GB of GSkill Ripjaws RED RAM, and half of it will be reserved for this build. I won't require anything faster than 1600 since the Pentium G3258 is limiting bandwidth to 1333 anyways. It should be fine however either way since I've been switching between 1333 and 1600 in my Sandy Bridge build and performance difference seems negligible if any.

GPU: PENDING: ATI Radeon 5850 / Palit GTX 970

Now I'm in a bit of a dilemma on what should I use lol. I do have an ATI Radeon 5850 in store that was supposedly dead but it works while I was diagnosing my computer for that dead RAM last month. So that could be an option. Also, I thought that having 2 GTX 970s was a little on an overkill side so I thought of using the Palit GTX 970 to match the black build internally. However, the resolution that had been planned is for a 19" Inch Monitor at 1440 x 900 as a bedside computer so even a single GTX 970 will still be overkill for this build. But, the option's there should I feel like it.

POWER SUPPLY: 650W CoolerMaster PSU

This was the old Cooler Master Power Supply that I was using in one point, made quite a bit of a grinding sound which was why I swapped that to the Corsair RM1000 in my main machine. However, this PSU for a bedside rig should work regardless.

Peripherals: CM Storm Devastator Mouse and KB Combo bought from Lazada

Budget Combo of Keyboard and Mouse. And personally I didn't care whether it was mechanical keyboard or what. And since this is a bedside computer, and I'm gonna use it when it's pitch black, I need some lighting. The mouse that will come with it will replace the Battlefield 3 Mouse from Razer since it was spassing out double clicks whenever I try to click once which is ultra annoying. This will complement the general theme of Red and Black pretty well in the system.

GTX 970 SLI Review (Follow Up): Scores and Overclocking Journey

Now, I didn't post up scores in my last post. I had to redo it after an unfortunate thing happened to my RAM. One of my Corsair Vengeance Sticks Died so I'm down to 8 Gigs. In the process I swapped the card positions around and instead of MSI being the Top Card, the Palit returned its position as the top card for Temperature Control, as I found that with the MSI at the top, the temps become quite unbearable. As soon as I took it to the bottom, the Idle Temperatures of the MSI 4GD5T Armor Edition GTX 970 dropped Drastically by 25-30 Degrees C to around 31-34 Idle. I was able to get a much more thermal consistency which lead to more consistent overclocks and increased headroom.

Now I did quite a bit of overclocking tweaking and some of the legends you see are GTX 970 OC, GTX 970 SLI OC 1 and OC2

So how I tweaked them as follows:

GTX 970 OC: +222 Core Clock, 100 Memory.
GTX 970 SLI OC 1: 180 Core Clock, 294 MHz Memory, GDDR5 is at 7.6 GHz
GTX 970 SLI OC 2: 180 Core Clock, 394 MHz Memory, GDDR5 is at 7.8 GHz. - Final Stable Overclock

7.8GHz on the GDDR5! Fully Stable. That's very nice on SLI Cards!
I did have a GTX 780 in occasional scores, just to compare how much of a performance difference I get since that card.

Configuration of my Test System:

Core i7 2600K at 4432MHz
8GB RAM at 1648 MHz
128GB OCZ Vertex 4
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green
500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue
Corsair P8P67M-Pro
Corsair H70
1000W Corsair RM1000
Fractal Design Define R3
GPU 1: Palit GTX 970 "Vanilla"
GPU 2: MSI GTX 970 4GD5T "Armor Edition"

Swapped my GPU Positions around. Now Palit is the Top Card, and MSI is the Bottom Card

SOFTWARE BENCHMARK SCORES
3D Mark Firestrike: Standard, Extreme, Ultra
Catzilla ALL Benchmark

Seeing about 50-65% increase scaling all around. Not a good proportion but you can't get everything. It does however respond extremely well once I start tweaking. I am real chuffed to get 16,000 on FS Standard after overclocking to its current speeds.  I only had tested Ultra on SLI GTX 970s as prior to installing the SLI Config, the Ultra Benchmark mode hasn't been released yet. Still the scores would suck if I were to test FireStrike Ultra on a single card so I didn't bother. The 4788 score which I did post previously came as a surprise, after the first overclock I hit, but since then even with all the tweaks I can't get to beat that score.

*Update! I hit a stable 4896 after dialling my OC Memory back a bit! It was a good score nonetheless, thought you should know!

METRO LAST LIGHT

1080 HD Maxed, No SSAA

1080 HD Maxed with SSAA

A Very demanding benchmark indeed. I was initially having problems benching Super Sampling a single Palit Card, it crashed if I applied an OC. When I did OC the SLI setup, I could launch this without a hitch, so yeah no OC Single Card results. The score gap widens as I tune my GPUs. Notice at stock, the GTX 970 already beats the already OC-ed Zotac 780 I used to have. There wasn't good scaling from stock GTX 970 to GTX 970 SLI,  Very likely due to drivers. But tweaking to OC 2 Clocks nets some noticeable performance gains, especially Minimum Framerates.

BIOSHOCK INFINITE:
Ultra DX11, DOF

I didn't have stock GTX 970 SLIs as I completely forgot about them. However, that said, adding a second card really bumps Maximum framerates through the roof. It does respond well to the hefty overclocks I added in any case.

VALLEY BENCHMARK

I did show scores on 5760 x 1080 on Valley and I did say that having that on 3 screens looks absolutely stunning. However I didn't have scores for a single card config. On 1920 x 1080p, the GTX 970 OC had been benchmarked way before. So for a more apples to apples comparison. Apologies, no stock scores!

CONCLUSION

Now Overclocking was an absolute dream, a score of 16,143 on Firestrike Standard and 22,211 on Catzilla 1080p is the sort of results that I really should have! Again, 2 GTX 970s really is a sweet configuration for its price. So if you have the time, spend 2-3 days tweaking here and there. Now the scores will be better if I had a better CPU as it's currently the bottleneck atm. 1080p overkill? Depending on the game, no. Not so much, I thought this will be overkill, but I pulled my statement.

I did try 8GHz on the Memory but it started to artifact by then. So for now I dialled my clocks a bit back to 7.6GHZ on Memory and +175MHz on the Core just to get more stability.

We're talking in total 3328 Maxwell CUDA Cores, whose shader performance is equivalent to 5293 Cuda Cores according to Game-Debate, and near 500GB/s of Memory bandwidth. The bandwidth though is not optimal, seeing that this is on a PCI-E 2.0 based board. That said, hopefully I don't have to upgrade my Video Cards for at least another 3-4 years down the road, when that happens I won't sell it but I'll delegate it to something else once the future architectures are worth diving into.

That said, one 970 is good. Two is even better for the price. A quick update when the GTX 960 was released, I made a point why the 970s are so successful at LinusTechTip's Facebook post of the GTX 960 SLI video. The 970 has been an ideal value for 1440p gaming thanks to double bus width and double memory buffer and 2 970s in SLI are the cheapest gate to playable 4K gaming at near Maximum settings. Gaming currently at 1080p is overkill but that's all I got for now.

GTX 970 SLI Build! DESKTOP UPDATES DONE! MSI GTX 970 4GD5T / 'Armor Edition' First Look, SLI Testing.

Well, Earlier this week, I have bought this card here.

MSI GTX 970 4GD5T Armor Edition

Very Simple Unboxing, but comes with the following stuff:

- GTX 970 MSI Armor 4GD5T

- DVI / VGA Adapter - Usual stuff

- Instruction Manual - A LOT of languages.

- Driver Disc with MSI Afterburner

Now again the bad thing is the lack of Molex Power adapters. Frankly speaking though, if you're powering such a rig, then you should have a decent power supply for this. 

The Good: MSI encourages you to download the latest stuff, as printed on the CD. There's MSI Afterburner, but I use EVGA Precision X16.

Now taking a look at the card, the fan propeller designs remind me a lot of the MSI GTX 680 Lightning Edition card and some of the older Twin Frozr III Edition Cards. It'll still be better than a reference blower style cooler and since the Maxwell Architecture is heavily concentrated on Efficiency and power more than Kepler GK 104 and 110, this will be fine for what it's needed.

The Good: The GPU can take the heat better than the Palit Card can, and it's pretty quiet.

The Bad: It takes a LONG while to cool down itself on SLI, so airflow is needed.

But once it cools down, the MSI Armor Edition Card idles itself at as low as 28 Degrees Celsius, impressive still.

Inputs and Outputs: 

Now from the picture below, THIS is the IDEAL I/O that should remain standard for foreseeable years to come. It has two DVI (DVI-D and DVI-I), HDMI and Display Port. These same four ports were present on my last card the Zotac GTX 780 AMP! Edition GPU. Many people still are not using mini Display Ports as their main ports for their monitor. However if you're going 4K, then you'll utilize the Display Port later.

Below the MSI Card is the I/O for the Palit Card which has a mini HDMI Port, another DVI Port that supports Analog, and 3 mini Display Ports. They left completely the bottom slot blank as a way to ventilate air.

The MSI GTX 970 MSI Armor Edition's DVIs being populated.

GTX 970 SLI TESTING:

Palit and MSI GTX 970s in SLI. Quite a weird combination.

Core i7 2600K @ 4.5 GHZ
Corsair H70
Corsair Vengeance 12 GB RAM
Corsair RM1000
ASUS P8P67M-PRO
Fractal Design Define R3
GTX 970 #1: MSI GTX 970 4GD5T Armor Edition
GTX 970 #2: Palit GTX 970 Blower Card
128 GB SSD OCZ Vertex 4, 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue, 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green

Now this rig is powered by this. Now I have to tell you right off the bat, I didn't experience too ideal the scaling. Now the biggest possibility is that I'm being held back by the PCI-E 2.0 Based Sandy Bridge System and motherboard, and maybe using Windows 7 rather than 8.1 which will limit the memory bandwidth. And of course the board being micro ATX, I'm cramping both cards in that limits the amount of air flow that I can get to the top card. Ideally the bottom card should be at the bottom. However, there was a reason why I put the top card as my primary driver.

Now initially, with the Palit Card, after fitting in my new power supply, I found I was facing some glitches in some applications, such as Metro Last Light Benchmark (especially in Super Sampling added benchmarks) while I try to benchmark, as well as freezing after idling for 20 minutes. Now as soon as I put my MSI card in as my primary card, all these problems disappear, Could be a card problem for all I know. After SLI, the Palit could still be utilized.

In the system, the MSI Card does sag quite a fair bit at the Power connector side, so if you look closely, I place a large trouser button at the bottom right edge between the two GPUs to increase a bit of air flow since it's installed so close together with the ASUS P8P67M-Pro slot layout posing a problem to allow fresh air on the top card.

That said, the performance rates has dramatically improved nonetheless. But I definitely need a Christmas gift of an Core i7 5820K and a full ATX X99 platform after spending 950 SGD on a pair of Graphics cards. Because I am really gonna need it for ProTools which is FINALLY supported on Windows.

Scores to follow later......

CALL OF DUTY: Advance Warfare

The game has received a few patches, and it does seem to work well with SLI now. With it, I was actually able to turn everything to the Maximum, and added a serious 4 times Super Sampling, it's a bit choppy, probably because the 2 cards doesn't have enough memory to utilize it. However it was still able to maintain 50-60 average.

OVERCLOCKING AND TUNING

Playing around with clocks is as always quite a bit of fun to mess with as an experienced Overclocker. EVGA PrecisionX 16 is my tool of choice. You can tweak the cards individually to get the optimal setting you want; simply by unlinking their tweaks on EVGA's precision. It's also allows to get both cards to the same clocks but I don't need that. Here's what I come up with.

 

Every Card was given a +180 to the Core and +100 to the GDDR5, 100% stable.

Before and After Adding Overclocks. Initially the Overclock was set at each card + 163 MHz on Core and 50 at clock, And
after some tweaks, this new 180 MHz Core and 100 on Memory was what it took to consistently give me this.

That said, even with 10+% on additional overclock, net me a whopping 21% score increase, which was considered incredible.

5760 x 1080 TESTING:
Heaven Benchmark 4.0

This was a heavy, I mean a VERY Heavy stress test for the GPUs even when overclocked. It was basically Extreme HD Preset at 5760 x 1080 rather than 1600 x 900 (which those GPUs can sweep this resolution without breaking a sweat). As the frame rate tanks VERY heavily, the 2nd change was turning down Anti Aliasing to 4x from 8x. The result was:

Average FPS: 42.6
Minimum FPS: 7.6
Maximum FPS: 119.7
Score: 1072

Valley Benchmark

I have to say, Valley Benchmark really does look beautiful on 5760 x 1080. The Benchmark was run at the maximum settings possible. Nothing was turned down in any way. Still, we still get pretty playable frame rates

FPS: 33.8
Score 1415
Minimum: 11.1
Maximum: 86.3

EFFICIENCY: 

May I also like to point out, despite this heavy stress test, if you can look closely at the Heaven Benchmark Photograph, that even with the increased load, it was STILL not enough to turn the PSU fan on! I tried with FurMark, Same story. Bear in mind, it takes the PSU 40% load to turn on its fan, with that said, I could safely deduce that OC 970s and an OC Core i7 2600K are pulling less than 400 Watts from the wall, which is crazy! In all honesty, I wasn't even expecting that low of a consumption on these Maxwells. Some reviews I checked, the Power Consumption calculated, match the power consumption of a SINGLE R9 290X/290. I know I said this before so many times, but I always loved to re-iterate this fact as AMD better do something with this!

PRICE to PERFORMANCE:

I know I did spend almost 950 SGD (Almost a Grand) on Graphics Cards, (Actually 600 after deducting from the sale of GTX 780). Having said that though, safe to say, the cost of a single card is very nice; the price and what you get for two is even sweeter. It's only about 100 bucks more than a standard GTX 980 and with many of the higher end models, even including the higher tiered of GTX 780 Tis and the R9 290Xes (Especially those from ASUS and Gigabyte) costing more than the 2 GTX 970s I spent for. The GTX 980 is still priced fairly, at least still better than the GTX 780 Ti, taking into consideration power and heat efficiency. And for the performance matching the Titan Z, and beats handily a 295 X2, those cost considerably more. Gotta applaud nVidia's Maxwell for this one!

CONCLUSION:

This configuration is 4K ready, even at least in surround 5760 x 1080. 1920 x 1080p is overkill unless you're running on extreme super sampling tweaks on it. I didn't really get the ideal scaling that I wanted but this will have to do and it works otherwise pretty well. The only thing that will give me the best memory bandwidth utilization is going to a more updated platform and on a full size ATX Board.

My Christmas wish - a Core i7 5820K with a good ATX X-99 based motherboard and a better cooling rad! My two cards are really cramped especially the MSI Armor GTX 970 like a can of sardines in em'!

DESKTOP UPGRADES TIME! QUICKIE!

Couple of Quick Images! Then I'll elaborate more in the near future!

You may notice a different GPU and an clunky old CPU that has been in my system for a while.

Then I bought this baby. Man I was lugging this around after class to St. Ignatius
Church. If you wanna lose weight, haul these bad boys all day, they're heavy lol.

After Tonight's Upgrades.

SLI Endeavor / Main Computer: Palit GeForce GTX 970 (No Reference) Unboxing and Overview

Now this week I placed an order for the new GTX 970 which arrived at my doorstep. This is the base reference model of the card. This card is currently being sold at 329 USD which is converted 420 Singaporean Dollars. However, mark up and shipping costs will bump the cheapest model available at 509 SGD, 410 USD also from Palit. I did manage to get one at 459 (Including 7% Goods and Service Tax, so without it was 420SGD). This is the start of an SLI endeavor. This will require a bit more money and it will require me to sell my GTX 780. I was hoping that I didn't need to do this as with 2 new cards I could potentially setup a 2nd machine as a bedside computer.

I'm needing some divine intervention to win parts from Various Giveaways that I've been participating over and over and over. And this is an important project!

REASON

The reason I bought this as you might have guessed to replace the 780 I have. However, why replace such a good card already at this point? Well, as I said, I want to go SLI setup. And this will be the first time in 2 and a half years where I use 2 Graphics Cards in the system, the last being 2 Radeon 6970s that was really really hot and use more power. However the GTX 780 OC was consuming a tonne of power. And if I use an SLI Setup of stock GTX 970s, there's a chance that the Power Draw can be less than a heavily OCed GTX 780. And once I replace my Crappy Coolermaster 650W RS-650 PCAR PSU with something finally having a 80+ Medal (Bronze, Silver or Gold) PSU, the power savings will be a lot evident. What's more I just found out today that the CM RS-650 PSU is only 70% Efficient (OUCH!!!!!!), so actually I'm pulling off a lot more watts off the wall than I should!

And knowing GK 110 Kepler Overclock + 70% Efficient PSU: It's not an ideal combi.
80%+ Bronze/Silver/Gold...etc Certification + Maxwell is the way to go!

Also, the bigger 1GB GDDR5 Buffer will help in higher resolutions in the long run, at least have some head room when I run my Triple screen setups.

THE CARD

Well, enough talk, this topic is well an unboxing and overview of the card. It's just a simple one, without fuss.

The package that arrived from Convergent Systems: It's a plain white box.

The back of the box.

Well here's the back of the box that contains the general info about the card.

The Maxwell architecture has been well received throughout for its Power to Wattage ratio and it meant nightmare for AMD, This card after several reviews could already battle the R9 290X head-on. This is causing AMD to lower pricing of their cards to compete with the GTX 970 and 980.

Very simple unboxing

For now it's a very Simple unboxing:

It contains the:
- Palit GTX 970
- A Driver Disc, This is a starting point to get your card running but I strongly recommend downloading the latest definitions from GeForce.com
- Manual
- DVI to VGA Adapter: As always very nice to have on hand as it does work for Surround. These cards do call for stuff like display port monitors and all this, but hey. Include an adapter, why not.

The Bad which is very unfortunate:
- No mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and Mini Display to (DVI / HDMI or whatever) adapter
- No included Dual Molex to PCI-E 6 Pin connector

IO at the back: DVI (support Analog) 3 mini Display
in its typical backside view.

This is how it looks like in a typical orientation.
No Flashing LED. But that's not a bother for me.
Included is 2 6-pin PCI-E. TDP is about 145-150 Watts.

This card does support nVidia Surround plus an additional Auxiliary monitor. But the I/O isn't something that I like. It just requires me to go through the trouble of getting adapters for mini HDMI to HDMI and mini Display to DVI. However, there's a huge PC DIY complex next to LaSalle College of the Arts where I study so I'm able to stock up what I need. I was able to get an SLI Bridge which was actually an even bigger problem because major shops didn't have them as the bridges should come with your motherboard but I don't have one. No worries, easy remedy.

Tipping the card to its typical orientation, you could see the Palit logo. The card does measure just under 10 inches long, 245mm to be exact. Like most cards though, it's advisable to leave some extra length in your chassis for extra airflow.

The Typical stock GTX 970s normally have the Silver reference cooler with the LEDs. This one doesn't have it. Looks are subjective. And in this case of the Palit's base card, I'm not fussy with appearance. This is just fine. This card meant to be a cost saving. And 2nd my case doesn't have a window on it. Also seen are the 2 six-pin PCI-E Connector which is the same as most Maxwell GTX 900 series cards.

The specs are the same as the reference GTX 970 so you can look this up yourself in nVidia's GeForce website or finding Palit's website that has the spec sheet of the base card.

The Base Palit GTX 970 measures in about 24.5cm or 245mm
which is just under 10 inches from its bracket to the end of the card.
It's not that large compared to stuff like ASUS Matrix, Sapphire TOXIC.

BOTTOMLINE

This card is meant to be a simple cost effective way to get a  GTX 970 in your system. No frills just the lack of the ideal IO put me off somewhat.

In the near future, once exams are over, I'll start giving this card a whirl. Apart from the lack of stuff in this unboxing, the GTX 970 looks to be an exciting value card that nVidia finally cranked into the High-End Tier.

So you can expect some benchmarks to compare single and Dual GPUs at the end of November! So stay tuned! But first I need more money or somebody to give me a free GPU and a larger Power Supply!

Continued Discussion over the GTX 970 and 980 / Leaked GTX 980M / 970M Specs

Some Experiences so far by users:

Now one of my friends happened to get the Gigabyte G1 Windforce Edition of the GTX 970 and fortunately for him, it was the final piece.

So big thanks to fellow Diablo III Kaki; Visco (who heads the Local Synarchy Team for Battlefield 4 Competitive matches) who shared his experience with Darryl who shared that with me. Darryl has and is selling a R9 290X to make way for either 2 of these in SLI or the Big Maxwell.

Mark "Visco" Lee shared his overclocking experience and man were Darryl and I impressed. Now I said before in a previous post that the Maxwell 900s overclock like a beast. But Mark got a really impressive overclock out from this one.

Now I'd be happy to get to Boost 1.45GHz, but Mark managed to get well beyond the 1.5 Ceiling, at 1552 MHz, that's a full Half a Gigahertz above the Reference Base Clock and 374 MHz above the base Boost. He's still finding the maximum Overclock that he can stretch to this graphics card.

Mobile Power: GTX 980M and GTX 970 Specs Leaked.

Now as to confirm that this is the true specs of the GPU, I'm gonna rule out absolute. However, judging from the leaked benchmarks we've seen, it does look legit to some extent. But having said that, this is not by any means confirmed.

So let's go over these pretty quick:

GTX 980M

Now the GTX 980M and the Desktop 970 share very similar core configuration, and similar Core Speeds but with obviously lower memory clocks. It has 1664 Cores which operates faster in proportion to the 1538 Cores based off the GK-104 from the GTX 880M, 780M, 680MX and the Desktop 770 and GTX 680. So the performance of this GPU should sit somewhere in between the GTX 680 and but closer to the GTX 780.

Now like the previous generations, the GTX 970M follows the #70's notion of having a 192-bit memory bus interface. And with some  shader blocks disabled, there should be fewer cores than the GTX 980M which makes obvious sense since they shouldn't perform too close in league with each other. Obviously it should fall behind the GTX 980M but I was impressed at how already capable even the GTX 970 is / will be.

As for power consumption of these cards, I'm expecting a lot more power efficiency even if they perform a lot better than the GK 104 based Mobile GPUs. Already proven with their Desktop GTX 970, so I guess the efficiency shouldn't be far off either.

This information is based off Notebookcheck's German section. This I translated off from there. 

#Update 05-October: It seems that MSI has dropped a leak in here!

For all I know, this could very well be the GTX 980M, As the 8192 Megs of GDDR5 RAM gave it away. Nobody can confirm this, but I'm sure this could be the GTX 980M. The scores are pretty good. I scored a 13200 on my GTX 780, which is heavily overclocked. The boost clock tops up to a max of exactly 1.2 GHz.

I also checked the typical median for a GTX 780 and it averages to a P-Score of around 12500. I said that the GTX 980M is close to the GK110 GTX 780, but I didn't expect it to be this close.

NVidia GM204 Maxwell GTX 980 and GTX 970 Launches! First Thoughts!

OKAY! Let's do a little follow up discussion with the Desktop GTX 980 and GTX 970 released yesterday.

Now I digress on some of the specs that I originally post the last time. So let's go through these quick.

-------------------------------------------------------
GTX 980
Core Config: 2048:128:64
Core Clock: 1126, 1216 Boost
Mem Clock: 7000 MHz
Memory: 4GB GDDR5
Bus Width: 256
TDP: 165

Launch Price: 549 USD

------------------------------------------------------

GTX 970
Core Config: 1664: 104: 64
Core Clock: 1050, 1178 Boost
Mem Clock: 7000 MHz
Memory: 4GB GDDR5
Bus Width: 256
TDP 145

Launch Price: 329 USD

------------------------------------------------------

QUICK SUMMARY

We know that these cards perform really good, and overclock really good, power consumes really good, overall excellent cards from both board partners and even just the reference card.

I'm not gonna post any benchmarks because you can just find a whole chunk at Guru3D and Tom's Hardware. Those are where I source my info everytime new tech launches out. Moreover I don't have the cards and neither do I have the money till at least someone can sponsor me a build! But definitely I can say are the following:

- Power Consumption totally blows the competition. Even SLI Configs of Both GTX 970 and 980s (which I'll quickly touch later) does match or trade blows with a single R9 290X which is pretty sad for AMD. Yup, that's right, I checked. This can save potentially a lot of money off the power bill if you leave your rigs on 24/7 compared to any of the flagship cards before it.

- Impressive enough is the performance at 4K  despite running at a narrower 256 Bit Bus-width. The larger Maxwell L2 Cache and the additional 1GB GDDR5 Memory over the GK110 does well to compensate it.

- Direct X 12 Ready, that much is certain. As to how Direct X 12 works yet remains to be seen.

BUYERS GUIDE!

Why GTX 980? As I found after various reviews, a single GTX 980 is more than good enough for 1080p, 1440p and decent 4K gaming. Though it is cheaper than the 780 Ti at Launch and still currently cheaper now, it's still slightly high a bit. The efficiency however more than makes up for it especially in the long run over the Kepler Based 600 and 700 Series. You pay a slight premium now but you pay less on power later. Even if you overclock which the card can take happily and gain some pretty nice gains, that shouldn't be any problem. Speaking of overclocks, Maxwell happily takes it no issues, with many board partner GTX 980s coming impressively close to the Titan Z. Should you want something a little cheaper, there are also alternatives.

Why GTX 970?
The GTX 970 is also a good card, and a very palatable and very nice price tag to boot at 329 USD which is currently cheaper than the R9 290X by a considerable amount while trading blows and beating R9 290X in terms of performance. Whack a hefty overclock in, and the GTX 970 comes surprisingly on par with the more expensive GTX 980. Cooling from just the reference cooler still can handle this though IMHO requires abit of bling update. :)

All around, still beats the R9 290X while being cheaper and factor in power savings.

But then comes SLI which IMO brings the GTX 970, (in all honesty, Not the GTX 980 but still makes an admirable combination) into its own. With a total price tag of 660 USD (only 110 more than a standard 980), it blows the R9 290s / 290Xs in Crossfire, R9 295X2, Titan Blacks in SLI, and the Titan Z. All these competing cards (except the 290 but bearing in mind power, cooling and noise) all cost a lot more. Some of the highest end 780 Tis and the R9 290Xs still cost the same as 2 GTX 970s. Factor that and it's probably no brainer there.

BOTTOMLINE! 

As of now, it's more of the GTX 970 than the 980 that will spell nightmares and headaches for AMD because it is the perfect counter for the R9 290 And the 290X in almost every possible aspect; performance, power efficiency, heat and acoustics, all for 329 USD. The GTX 980 isn't bad too, don't get me wrong, it's a great card indeed too! But it's more the GTX 970 shining for its sweet spot value for money. And I quote Darryl, a friend who owns a R9 290X I made in my Top 5 GPUs:

970 hits the sweet spot at 329usd...thats how much my 290X is worth now *cries*

Yup, AMD, you guys just got your ass kicked. However personally, it's no fault of AMD because nVidia did play their cards well. AMD had their dominance for a while for performance per dollar value. Also the Bitcoin and litcoin Mining craze are still the main reasons why AMD GPUs are still good for what they are. I loved the R9 290Xs for its initial value-for-money option till this came by!

Generally again guys, you don't need the cards from board partners to do the graphics work for you. Well to each his own, you can use those dual fan/tri-fan cooling cards if you want. Even so the base Reference GTX 980 and 970s are still good in their own right if you want to cut down cost a tiny bit more for these cards really overclock well, well over 1.4 GHz and some tip beyond 1.5 Ghz on Core and 8GHz on Memory which is really nice. So give these cards a shot. But my full recommendation for value is the GTX 970 in Single or SLI configurations.

Maswell GM204 in Full Force: GTX 980, GTX 970 and the GTX 980M Unconfirmed Benchmarks pop up

Now nVidia shockingly decided to skip the GTX 800 line of GPUs and went a generation further to the GeForce 900 Series, I understand that is probably to make it more inline with the newest Architecture that primarily takes the form of the Maxwell Core that we've first seen in the GTX 750 Ti, GTX 750, the GTX 860M, GTX 850M and the GeForce 840M. The next couple of months we will see the full force of the GeForce 980 and the 970 and the 980M and the 970M.

In the meantime, leaked benchmarks have surfaced: And here they are. We'll go through the GPUs in detail.

GTX 980 and GTX 970

Now after looking at the benchmarks, now say if you're using a GTX 780 or a GTX 780 Ti, I would recommend you stick to what you're using because the upgrades don't produce a big FPS change. Overclocking your current cards which should be highly doable, would still net most of these scores that you can see across the board. Moreover, if memory serves, the GTX 980 operates on a weaker bus-width at 256-bit. However, it's interesting to note the Maxwell's massive upgraded 2MB Cache that we've seen in the 750 Ti and the GTX 860M means Memory speeds won't take that large of a hit. So it'll be intriguing to find how it runs in high-resolution displays like 4K 3840 x 2160 or Surround.

But summarily, the GTX 980 would be the card to replace the 780 Ti, and the GTX 970 for the GTX 780.

Quick Specs of Each Card:

GTX 980

Arrangement Core: 2560:160:64 (Rumors CUDA Count is 1920)

Core Clock: 1050 MHz Boost

Memory Clock: 7.01 GHz

Memory: 4GB GDDR5

Bus Width: 256

Memory Bandwidth: 224 GB/s

GTX 970
Arrangement Core: 2304:128:64 (Rumors that CUDA Core is 1664)

Core Clock: 1050 MHz Boost

Memory Clock: 7.01 GHz

Memory: 4GB GDDR5

Bus Width: 256

Memory Bandwidth: 224 GB/S

MOBILE GTX 980M AND GTX 970M

Now these two GPUs are IMHO my stars in this one as you can tell by the benchmarks, The GTX 980M at stock performs just a thousand points under the GK-110 Core Based GTX 780 that I have. Now that's actually a crazily impressive score because it's quite close to the more power hungry DESKTOP card. It's leaps and bounds beyond the GTX 880M, even the GTX 970M still surpasses the 880M by a respectable margin. It's already impressive that a single GTX 980M is just a small fraction away from the Dual GTX 780Ms and will probably beat the 870Ms in SLI. And the SLI Config whoops SLI-ed GTX 770's butt big time, and is placed not far behind to the R9 295X2.

Now we've already known Maxwell to be already much more power efficient than the Kepler which was the designed to power optimize the Fermi Generation.

Specs are hard to come by at this point but we'll see as time goes on.

BOTTOM LINE

With that hype coming in, I hope the true benchmarks would be about within 10% of the scores when the actual stuff comes out. We'll know as soon as the GTX 980 (M) and GTX 970 (M) launches,

Bedside Endeavor: Pentium-K 20th Anniversary Edition G3258 Unboxing~!

I did talked a tiny bit about the Pentium K and I just received mine in the mail today, 1 week ahead of schedule. And this will kick start the Bedside PC Endeavor. It'll have to drag for sometime because I still don't have any parts to go with.

So it came in the usual small brown box from Amazon with the packing bubble bags cushioning the package. It arrived safely so here it is.

The package in the box, the usual blue color that is associated
with Intel's Boxed products

Intel Pentium Dual Core G3258 Inside

You'll get the following contents:

- The Pentium G3258 Chip

- 82mm Delta-Manufactured Fan

- Installation Manual with the Pentium Case Badge at the back page

- A McAfee AntiVirus Offer Brochure bundled

The Instruction Manual, G3258 Chip, Delta 82mm fan, McAfee Brochure

The cooler is a bit different compared to the one I had with my Core i7 2600K, but the design of the fin array is the same as my Core i5 2500K, only with the fan blades updated. It should prove sufficient to get some overclock out of this but as I said earlier in a previous post to try get an aftermarket cooling solution instead. Slick from LinusTechTips has advised though not to spend more than your processor for a Cooler.

The 82mm Delta Fan that came with the G3258 (Left)
and the Foxconn (right) fan from my Core i7 2600K

So Just a refresher for the G3258:
- Clock Speed: 3.2 GHz, Dual Core
- 3MB Cache
- 1333MHz Memory
- LGA 1150
- Intel HD Graphics
- Haswell Architecture

This arrival has kick started the project but the build will be shown later.

Apple's Move to Cheapen Products? Not Good Enough.

Well, this morning I received my documents from LaSalle College of the Arts that concerned my Orientation Programme and administrative matters. Also came with it is the Order Forms of all the MacBooks offered by LaSalle.

OK, let's stop there. Now I was instantly baffled by the pricing of the Apple Products. This comes after a recent move by Apple to crank out cheaper products which I still think it's nonsensical regardless.

Now here's an example:

You could say that the pricing seemed a bit reasonable but here's a thing. If I compare the Base vs my Desktop, that's the amount of money I spent to build my Gaming Rig with a Single 21.5 1080p Screen, complete with the thickest 120mm Corsair AIO Liquid Cooling that I can shove in there, SSD and 3TBs of Space, a GTX 780 which was the bulk of the cost, OC Core i7 2600K.... actually slightly less than that!

On the Laptop side:

LaSalle's Order Forms, but the MacBooks are still costly and don't have that price to performance ratio all other laptops except Razer has.

Although this has discounts across the board, it's still a freaking hefty price to pay. For example the Base MacBook Pro 13 Inch which cost 1588, I could buy Laptops much more powerful than that which cost that much. E.g. Aftershock XG13 costs the same but with a Gaming Grade GTX 860M which is tonnes better than the most powerful GPU powering the MacBook 15 Inch at a wimpy GT 750M which cost 3588 before discounts. And even a more far cry than the Base MacBook Pro's HD4000 by a whopping 84%.

Although Apple Products are very good and all, they should at the very least offer a wider customization scope and redesign their internals, at least starting with the storage. Because, who will in the right mind pay so much for 512GB PCI-E storage for their laptops! It's insane!

If you want to see the full magnitude here, if Apple can redesign the Bays to accommodate a more traditional 2.5" bays, it's easier to do a closer apples to apples comparison. Let the Aftershock X15S-V2 be the more competitive comparison, the Recommended Config is 600 bucks less. And it offers a Core i7, 8GB of RAM with the option to double that, an optical bay, a traditional sweet spot storage of SSD and HDD molded together, and the flagship GTX 880M GPU. Now look at this! You're paying less for a top end 15-Inch, more customization for storage. More ridiculous is the base config for the Aftershock Titan. Though it only has a Mechanical HDD as storage, you can always swap it out. And for the price of the MacBook Pro 15-Inch with a GT 750M GPU, you get SLI Flagship GPUs! Big difference there, Big difference.

To be reasonable, the 15 Inch MBPr should have a bare minimum of a GTX 850M with GDDR5 RAM for the price you pay for.

Apple, seriously, after looking at the order form this morning, please for the love of God, make your products cheaper and increase customization options, PLEASE! I don't want to spend a bomb right away at this point.

Haswell Unlocked Pentium Dual Core G3258 / Pentium-K: A Budget Gamer's Dream?

Well, some of you may be aware of the Devil's Canyon based Haswells that hit the market. But Intel also came with what could be a CPU aimed at Budget gamers.

The new Pentium Dual Core G3258
But you can call it a Pentium K

It was initially dubbed as the Pentium Anniversary Edition but the SKU has been given a designation as the G3258. Now basically, the G3258 is a G3240 and the 3420, same specs being a 3.2GHz Dual-Core CPU, having 3 Megs of Cache, and a HD Graphics running on a 350MHz - 1150MHz. But here is where things get a little different.

Now although the G3258 doesn't have the K Designation on its SKU, treat it like it has one because it is fully unlocked and unleashed. Slick from LinusTechTips dubbed it the "Pentium K" which is apt due to that reason. Only thing about it that does put some users off is that it requires a Z97-based Motherboard in order to overclock it. And Z97 boards are not cheap, depending where you look and what motherboards that are offered. However, cumulatively, the price compared to the i3 4330 and a H87/97 boards will be slightly lower. And word has gotten from Board Partners that they are creating BIOS-es that allow the H87/H97 Boards to overclock it, so keep your eyes open for any updates.

It is designed to be overclockable even on a stock cooler to keep costs down even further. Now when overclocked, it can still compete with an i3 4330 in Synthetic benches. However in terms of CPU Coolers concerned, I absolutely will not, and will never endorse using the stock wimpy coolers supplied by Intel. A Bigger Down Draft firing cooler, (Not even a tower is really needed) will fit the bill just fine. Something like a MassCool 8W553B1M3 will be fine.

Gaming however, is where Pentium G3258 is practically geared towards. When heavily overclocked, though it will still generally fall behind the bigger brothers like the Core i5 4670/4690, but not too much. It'll still put up a show.

At the price of around USD 75 give or take, this will be the sweet spot and will directly compete with the AMD APU (minus the GPU) based Athlon X4 750K. Games that are also CPU bound will enjoy the performance boost as you overclock it heavily.

Some reviews have appeared with regards to the CPU. This link (Polish One that was translated to English) pits the G3258 with other CPUs that were generally affordable, including an outrageous comparison with the 8-Core AMD FX-8000 Flagship 8350. Of course in heavily threaded loads it's not gonna match up but In terms of just pure gaming alone, a baby Pentium Overclocked to 4.7GHz handily beats the 8350 in a large majority of the benchmarks thrown by the reviwers that it's not even funny.

http://pclab.pl/art57691.html

Hexus even pit it against a Core i7 4770K:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70977-intel-pentium-anniversary-edition-g3258/?page=7

Of course Integrated Graphics is not gonna obviously do any good but scroll all the way to the bottom where Hexus slams a GTX 750 Ti in, there's barely any difference in FPS count in certain games between the G3258, Core i5 4690 and Core i7 4770K.

So yeah. Go figure.

BOTTOMLINE

So if you're on a budget, and you want something that can perform very well in games as CPU hooked to a dedicated GPU, this should fit most budget builds. I've actually Ditched my AMD Build for this CPU which I pre-ordered from Amazon, cause' this seems to be a fun chip to play around a bit. Although it may be 2 cores, but overclocking this thing will bring itself closer to the 4 cores in gaming. Moreover, the CPU's TDP as such will not be so high anyways compared to the AMD CPUs I'm initially planning to get. I'm just like getting a CPU, Motherboard, Storage, PSU and Case, that's it. I've already have a couple of GPUs with me, but it'll be nice if Kitguru sends me one of their 2 R9 280s. With that I can have better data whether this CPU will hold the GPU back in performance as I now have a Radeon 6850, Radeon 5850 and a GTX 780, so I need something in between the 5850 and the GTX 780.

Singapore Internet Freedom is absolutely Jack Fucking Shit.

Well, I've been increasingly EXTREMELY pissed on how restricted our internet accessibility here in Singapore. There are some websites and forums to be specific that I wished to be in a community in. But all the time I've been getting Errors from all of them:


Sorry, you don't have permission for that!


[#1001]

You are not allowed to visit this community.


Or


Your IP Address is known and blocked to be suspicious of Spammers, you are not allowed to register.


Now tell me, What the fuck is this?


Here are some forums I tried to sign up for that resulted me getting this stupid error code that is a result of some government crank down on internet accessibility from sectors like the Media Development Authority (MDA) that really cut the crap on all this.


Here are 3 of the Websites that I couldn't get in. 2 of the 3 have YouTube Channels that I absolutely tune in everytime.


Tech Of Tomorrow Official: http://techoftomorrow.invisionzone.com/

OC3D: http://forum.overclock3d.net/

Dota Cinema: http://www.dotacinema.com/news


Now I'm EXTREMELY Pissed. Our Internet Freedom is absolute JACK FUCKING SON-OF-A-BITCHING Heap of Shit that is blocked and regulated by a group of Government beasts.


Please whatever you can, Help get me out of this vicious cycle fast! It absolutely annoys me where I cannot be part of some Tech Communities in the Bigger Side of things. Singapore's Tech Community is though very active but not big.

2 Agendas: Getting Rid of Excess PC Parts and AMD Bedside Endeavor. (08-June-2014 LOG)

Now I've a tonne of things have arrived but some have to go and some I might keep. Now there are 2 Agendas there I hopefully could address ASAP.  Hopefully I can trade for some parts for a Bedside Endeavor. Well, this is all the excess stuff I got:

PART I: GETTING RID?

Parts that I have on hand. Plus an OCZ Vertex 2 that's not in the picture.
TOP: P8P67 Pro, P8P67 Deluxe which I might contemplate of switching out.

Parts I'm trying to get rid:

P8P67 Pro Motherboard
P8P67 Deluxe / P8P67M-Pro
Radeon 6850

With regards to the 6850, if you can see the images, you can see that it is quite filthy as I'm in a middle of cleaning it, but when it arrived this morning, it was a lot worse, as seen in this photograph when the seller released it. To the seller who sold it to me, I don't know how the heck this card was alive for who knows how long, but this was disgusting and I couldn't stand the amount of dust that was in it.

When it first arrived from the USA: Look how fucking filthy it is!!

And after spending a couple hours, check it out.

After cleaning, what a difference, really what a difference!

Parts I'm keeping in hand for the upcoming build:

OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 128GB
XFX Radeon 6950

PART II: Potential AMD Bedside Build

The reason why I'm keeping these parts as part of my agenda is that I want to build an AMD system intended to be used as a bedside computer. The current configuration is hooked up like so in the photograph:

Believe it or not, it's quite a bedside rig. And it's powered up by a single Laptop, that's none other than my Clevo W110ER / Aftershock X11 with a Core i7 3630QM, 8GB of RAM and a GT 650M Graphics. Now just in case you aren't caught up yet, I will be starting my Semester at LaSalle College of the Arts and chances are that the Laptop will be used as part of my school stuff so I won't probably use this further as a Bedside computer.

Now what I do need is a more permanent system to be used as a Bedside Rig, and needs to fit under my bed with a case that's no more than 8 Inches Tall with the case on its side. And meant to play games.

At this point, I really would love to have a  rig that's powered by AMD Specifically. And I have 2 of the parts here; the Radeon 6950 (1 GB Version ) and the SSD. Now I have used Sandy Bridges and Ivy Bridges, and actually Intel CPUs as a whole. AMD CPUs and Motherboards, I... never really got a chance to play with it. So now what I need are:

CPU: Specifically Phenom II X4 / X6 
Motherboard: Socket AM3 Motherboards that support Phenom IIs
RAM: I might salvage 4 or 8 Gigs from my Main Machine. See how it goes
Case: Nothing Wider or taller than 8 Inches when case is on its side.
PSU: Enough Juice to support a Radeon 6950, the CPU and a couple of drives.
Storage: Another Mechanical Drive.

So yeah, for now I need funds. If you guys have any thing you could contribute Money / Parts to my build, would appreciate if you just let me know.

Tech stuff that I've been Proud of Owning.

1. Corsair HX-1000W Power Supply:
Reliable and paid a small price.

My Zotac GTX 780 and the Corsair HX1000 1KW PSU

One of the biggest components in my computer. The size of the PSU only gets bested by the Newer AX1500i 1.5KW PSU also from Corsair. I got this 2nd hand, for just 110 SGD (About US 87 Bucks) from somebody on VR-Zone. I've been using this since August 2012. It came from another owner who used it for a further 3 years. It had a 5 year Warranty, and we didn't have to use it. It has outlived its warranty and I just checked the Voltages, it's still doing very well, alive and happy and not once has it failed me. This was like worth 320 bucks but I got it for 110 and it's trucking along nicely. It's bigger than an average Power Supply Unit which made me remove a bracket inside my Fractal Design Define R3 in order to accommodate its length. I didn't have to make any mods when I first used it in my ThermalTake SpaceCraft VF-I. Honestly speaking, for the configuration of a heavy overclocked i7 2600K with a Single GTX 780, this PSU I'm using, Overkill MUCH! I know the Corsair HX1000W has enough juice for 3 GTX 780s but my Motherboard only has room for two.

2. ZOTAC / NVidia GeForce GTX 780 AMP! Edition GPU 
Cheaper than a 780 Ti but performs like one

This is the current graphics card in my system. And out of the components of my computer, apart from peripherals and the 2 4GB Black Corsair Vengeance RAM Modules which came from my old build, the GPU is the only thing that I got new. Performed much better and cooler than the Reference GTX 680 that I used to own. I'm gonna go all out on that GPU till I could buy a 2nd GTX 780. What's good about this GPU is the immense factory overclock that's already on it. With those clocks, and after testing, the GPU can already compete with a Reference GTX 780 Ti and downright defeats the Titan. Such as the 780 Ti isn't really worth the upgrade for 300 dollars more or even the Titan at 770-780 dollars more (That difference is already more than my 780!). The VRAM however may be low, 3GB of GDDR5, as I run a triple screen setup.

3. CLEVO W110ER / AFTERSHOCK X11 - Smallest Gaming Laptop in the World in 2012.

Clevo W110ER: A Small but very portable gaming laptop.

This is the Laptop that I'm currently using to replace the ASUS X42J that I used 3 years ago till it broke. Apart from my first Custom build (the I5 2500K Rig), I didn't have any portable system left when that happened. That time I was recovering from my Post Audition Trauma from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, then a lot of crap happened. Fate Intervened, I took part in a Lucky Draw and Aftershock was giving away a Laptop; the Aftershock X11. So I won it, then spent a bit of money on upgrades. I got an Core i7 3630QM over the i5 3210, I added an OS and swapped a 500GB Hard Drive for a 250GB Samsung 840 which was the first SSD that I had.

It's not the most powerful laptop, but the on-board nVidia GT 650M graphics and the upgrades I put in gave it practically the highest performance per square inch at the time of receiving it. It does have heating issues despite using IC Diamond Thermal Compound, but so far it operates like a champ. Ever since Elric Phares from Tech Of Tomorrow unboxed the AVA Direct's branding of that laptop, that laptop was in my mind till I finally won it. Since then, that Laptop has been a Godsend. Light and small, and it's currently in use as a Bedside Rig and a LAN party machine. It will be like this for the next couple months till I start school. From there it will be used actively as my school rig. Now if there was a replacement, I would go for the Aorus X3 that is more than twice the power with its GTX 870M Graphics but having the same portability.

Flagship Indeed, ready for today's needs

4. Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition)
Samsung's Flagship tablet this year

 This is truly my very first tablet that I got as a gift. Although I have used tablets in the past like the Apple IPad, they were never mine for me to own. We did have 2 Retina Apple IPads and Mum was supposed to give me one. However my brother bugged to keep it so I was the only one without a tablet. So when everybody else in the family except me got a tablet for far too long, come Christmas 2014, just before Midnight Mass, I received this as a gift. I've played quite a bunch of games and you've seen me doing some videos with it that I put up on YouTube as MusicHaven2012. And with the tablet, because I don't normally use my Laptop to game outside, when it comes to meetings, I favor the tablet to take down notes because for one, it's so light to carry around, and a tonne more portable. This is also just the right size to be used to read documents. It also had an insane battery life, with a capacity that's ironically larger than my laptop even. On idle, the tablet can last for many days at a time.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Expansion Review

Now it's been almost 2 years since Diablo III came out and the highly anticipated Reaper Of Souls Expansion has been officially launched.

LAUNCH DAY EXPERIENCE

Starting Act V. Just three Minutes after Launch hour.
That's how seamless the transition was.

Now unlike Diablo 3 Launch Day 2 years ago, there was a lot less hiccups in server-loads as soon as it went live. Also, the best part is, I was in-game when the announcement of the RoS Content finally went live. There was no downtime which is very nice though it'll be safer to logout and then log back in again IMO. Although re-logging back in was no way perfect with occasional error 3005s and 3006s, it was WAY (I mean way WAY) smoother and a less painful process as it took me about 4 minutes instead of like 2 freaking hours in Diablo III Launch to successfully get myself back in, transition to RoS and commence Act V pretty much right away. I actually expected a lot worse, but I guessed Blizzard has anticipated this and installed enough servers to accommodate with Launch Day. So Good one from your part Blizzard! So I join my regular group to conquer Act V.

PLAYERS: DarkNemesis - Myself (G2),  CruXed (G2), Rocket (G2 and Synarchy - Singapore's Local Competitive Clan), Visco (Synarchy)

A Screenshot in 5760 x 1080 while receiving a Banner Award.
Using my Barbarian as usual.

FIRST LOOK - CAUTION SPOILERS!!!!

Act V takes place at the Fall of Westmarch after Tyrael seals all the Prime Evils within the Black Soulstone.
It was then taken by the corrupted Lord Malthael. Malthael was a former Archangel who disappeared after the destruction of the Worldstone during events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. As one of the Nephalem, your task is to trace the whereabouts of Malthael and his allies, destroy them, and reclaim the Black Soulstone from his grasp.

Diablo III Reaper of Souls adds some new content while trading that for the departure of the Auction House. This is a great point as it promotes farming the way it meant the game should be. And it boils down to luck. The most obvious is Act V. The game also unlocks the Level Cap to 70. Reaching that level will unlock the 4th Skill Point which you can use and only then will your characters start regaining Paragon Levels. And upon reaching a certain part of Act V unlocks a new NPC; the Mystic which is FREAKING useful. For a cost of Crafting Material, you can change one of that stat you don't want. Upon beating the Act V, the Adventure mode is unlocked where you can just pretty much go anywhere without changing acts to take on random bounties and rifts for random loot. These can be done at your own leisure and is a great way for earning Legendary Items and Experience. In fact in the post-game, Rifts are your primary means of levelling.

A Portrait of my Very First Crusader: GuardianZ

And of course the big one is the introduction of the Crusaders. This new hero class really resembles the Paladin from Diablo II in terms of appearance and his role in the game. He's a hybrid of a melee fighter, tank and a Holy Spellcaster who can don heavy armor and specialize in Sword and Board combat, or rather, Greatsword and Board Combat with a certain passive ability. At least now we have use for the 2-handers now!

A Cutscene Prologue of the Crusader.
Taken via my Aftershock X11

Other additions intended for Reaper of Souls have already been implemented in the Pre-RoS Patch. So if you've been playing throughout the last couple of weeks and this week, you'll know all this. But just a summary:

- New Paragon System - Limit is practically removed and the levels are spanned throughout all characters account wide. Every Paragon Level-up gives a point to spend on certain attributes available in your Paragon Layout. Any Character you have who has reached 70 (or 60 without RoS) can level Paragon Levels for all Characters.

- Item Quantity Drops reduced but proportionately boosted in quality. Yellow Rares need not be identified. Set and Legendaries you pick are account bound but most carry abilities that can potentially boost your builds. Legacy Items (Legendaries that you picked prior to this patch) are not account bound, but can't benefit from the new Mystic NPC.

- Cursed Chest and Shrine Events - Primary Objective mostly is to kill as much as you can within the time frame. Most of them however have a timed bonus event which rewards a Radiant Chest upon successful Bonus Objective met like killing 5 waves or a specific number of monsters.

- Difficulty Overhauls. Torment Difficulty (with Torment VI being the hardest difficulty currently in the game)

- Pools of Reflection - These Pools will boost the rate that you gain experience by 25% till you reach a certain amount. These promote more defensive play.

All these changes make the game having a large replay value. So you've always have something to do all the time.

MY IMPRESSIONS

The fact that I literally whacked through the game throughout the night last night and for 12 hours the day before with little sleep is a big testament on how much work that has been planned out by Blizzard to get it done the right way.

The difficulty of the monsters as you level from 60 to 70 gets harder dramatically with most of my level 60 gear pretty much become obsolete as you creep the levels in. But it's been loads of fun.

As for Crusaders, the class uses a combination of holy magic and Melee Combat. He carries a sword and shield. With a certain passive, he can wield two-handed weapons on his main hand and shield on the other. It makes him quite tanky. But a few complaints is that he is painfully slow in attack and damage isn't really promising. Although 2 handed-weapons are high damage, their slow attack speed severely hits.

However, that said, a new patch is upcoming, which practically increases damage of most abilities all across the board for all classes, most heavy is on the Crusader with the exception of Heaven's Fury Fires of Heaven Rune.

GAME REQUIREMENTS

The game requirements in general aren't high; as what you might expect when the game launched 2 years ago. For low details and resolutions, the game can run happy on just the HD 3000 graphics from Sandy Bridge line, but should have at least a Core i5 CPU to run at playable frame rates. Dual cores and below unless with Hyper Threading, won't be enough. HD 4000 Series and up will run it no problem. The higher up HD 4XXX series graphics can even crank it to Medium High Details at 1366 x 768. So as of now; most Integrated Intel Graphics Solutions from the Sandy Bridge line till now can at least run it without a problem in Low Settings.

Maxing out the game will require a bit more at 1920 x 1080. But as far as Dedicated Graphics Go, then the CPU requirement is less of an issue, even a Pentium Dual Core with a GTX 580 can pump 120+ Fps excess Maxed out. But as a desktop guideline, if you have a decent CPU, your minimum GPU requirement is at least a Radeon 6450.

The Iris Pro 5200 will simply breeze this through maxed at that resolution. However it is still playable on a DDR3 Radeon 6670 or even the older GeForce 8800 GT. So you can expect at least a GT 540 and above no worries. At 2560 x 1600, even the old GTX 550 Ti with its 192-bit bus and limited 1GB RAM, is still playable at max but recommend you just turn the settings down just a little bit. Anything higher than a Radeon 6770 and a 7770 is pretty much overkill unless running 3 Monitors surround via Windowed Fullscreen mode. For me I run my games in a 3 Monitor Setup; and even that resolution of 5760 x 1080 is merely calling for more in my GTX 780. And here's a video of someone actually running this at a whopping 7680 x 1440 in Eyefinity, that's a full 11-Megapixels compared to my 6.22, that's like nearly 78% more pixels to fill!

BOTTOMLINE:

Diablo III Reaper of Souls offers a Hugely expanded amount of playtime. But be prepared of some mechanics that may put you off slightly. Game requirements are nice and easy, even an entry level gaming system or a high end gaming system that's over 6 years old can still run it.