EVGA FTW vs Gigabyte Xtreme - Which 1080?

[Chilling_Silence]

Hi all,

Presuming there's not going to be a major difference between the two but I note that the Gigabyte Xtreme has a decently higher clock speed than the EVGA FTW (1607 vs 1759).

Gigabyte: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGAGBV11088/
EVGA: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGAEVG6284/

Thoughts on if it's worth spending a few extra bucks on the Gigabyte?

Cheers


Chill.

[Chilling_Silence]

Aaaaactually turns out those EVGA 1080 FTW's are some of the ones that were catching fire. **** that I'm going the Gigabyte, that makes that decision REAL easy

[Driftwood]

I would be looking hard at reviews on each, before parting with that much.

[Chilling_Silence]

Yeah, which was how I found it was the EVGA's catching fire.

The general consensus was that the EVGA was the one to go for because EVGA have better customers support, even though it had a slightly slower clock speed, nobody seemed to have any comparison benchmarks / reviews etc

Sale today for Cyber Monday, so thinking the Gigabyte one is probably the way to go.

[dugimodo]

If you are gaming at 4K or across multiple screens you want every scrap of performance you can get, if not it probably doesn't matter. I have a slight preference for gigabyte myself but both are respected brands.

I'm sticking with my Gigabyte reference design 980 and 1080P/60 hz until either it struggles with a game or better monitors get more affordable. more than 18 months so far without a single game failing to be playable at it's highest settings

[Chilling_Silence]

Yeah well I've been playing on my R9 290X now since Feb 2014, and I'm getting good overall performance across the board at 1080p, but now I have a 144Hz monitor I'm bouncing between 100-110 most of the time in DotA2, getting down to around 90fps during big fights etc, so really hoping this will improve things enough and that I'm not being CPU-bound currently...

[dugimodo]

I don't play DOTA2 and I only have a 60 hz monitor so maybe I just don't get it, but what is the point of more FPS when you already are getting a minimum of 90? If you turn off the software telling you the framerate can you honestly tell the difference? I struggle to believe that. It's an ancient game now but I still play a lot of WoW and the frame rate varies from the low 40s to 200+ and I never notice it in actual gameplay.

30 fps is smooth but marginal and prone to occasional frame drops and stutter but by the time you reach 60 fps games appear perfectly smooth. I know higher refresh rates can help to reduce things like motion blur in fast paced games but I don't find that particularly noticeable, maybe it's just me.

I do want a higher refresh rate Gsync monitor one of these days, but mainly so I don't have to choose between Vsync for image quality or no Vsync for more FPS etc at the cost of visual quality. Mainly I leave it off but some games look terrible without Vsync.
Gsync and Freesync though seem most useful when you can't maintain a minimum of 60 fps for Vsync to work properly, I don't really care about frame rates in the hundreds. The human eye just does not respond that fast.

[wratterus]

I personally only get Asus or Gigabyte cards/boards now.

[wratterus]

I don't really care about frame rates in the hundreds. The human eye just does not respond that fast.

Have you ever used a 144Hz monitor?

[Chilling_Silence]

So let me tell you a bit of a funny story, coz I'm a muppet and didn't know any better

It was a few months back now, I saw the Asus 144hz 1080p monitor on sale for a real good price, and I'd seen 144hz previously and liked how it looked, plus I'd been reading some stuff about certain Pros insisting that 144hz is the "baseline" for all the PC's that they do their tournaments on and whatnot, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Unplug my old 1080p monitor from the HDMI cable and took it off my desk (Left my 4K monitor where it was, plugged in via DisplayPort), then plugged the new 144hz monitor in!
Fired it up, comes up no issues, load up DotA2... aaaand my first reaction was "Ummm this looks exactly the same as before?"
I was sitting around 90fps minimum during big team-fights with lots of action happening, so it's not perfect but still should have been ~50% better... Nup, nothing!
I was mad!

So I did some searching, apparently HDMI isn't the best for that, and I should use DVI. Grabbed a spare DVI cable, plugged it in and put the HDMI to one side, booted up, fired up DotA2... Still looked the same as before.
Got really pissed off for a few days, stopped playing for almost a week I was so annoyed I'd spent like $500 on a monitor that was no different from my old one.

Talking with a friend who came over and he suggested I have another crack at it, so I do a bit more hunting around and it turns out I hadn't changed the monitor refresh rate in the Display Adapter settings, so it was still stuck at 60hz.
FAIL!

As soon as I changed it to 144hz, even the mouse movement on my desktop was "crisper", smoother. Fired up the game, IMMEDIATELY noticed a massive difference!
What a muppet I was, feeling so disappointed in it, turns out it was my own damn fault all along.

I will say though there's a fair bit less of a difference going from 90fps to 120fps... But, that said, that's kinda why I've gone for the GTX1080, so that I can get those higher framerates steadily.

Plus, playing DOOM on the 4K monitor has gone from ~25 -> 30fps to 75 -> 90fps!! (60hz monitor @ 4K)
It looks absolutely incredible now!!

So yeah, a really really nice, and pretty much completely unnecessary upgrade, but whatever