Remember when Crysis was THE benchmark..

Hi guys,

Been out of touch with PC tech for a while, been a lot more focused on writing apps and the like.. Anyways I currently have a GTX460 which I bought about 2 years back when I built my current itx rig. Now this is a fairly power hungry beast by today's standards (450w psu) and I've had no end of issues with the drivers - TDR issues - which after a clean install, trying a bunch of different drivers, updating chipset etc drivers.. I'm lost for ideas. The issue is essentially my screen will turn black and maybe after 10 seconds come back on with a 'driver recovered' message, OR it will just stay black. The pc is unresponsive (num lock keys etc are hung).. After about 30 mins it'll BSOD and restart.

I know my GPU isn't overheating, my CPU is rock solid (I used to have to run intelburntest to keep my pc on coz I was using one of those power saving adapters lol) and I've run memtest for 12 hours without error.

So not having the patience I used to with these things I thought I'd have one last try and ask you guys if you have any ideas to resolve this. (I'm 99.9% sure its related to TDR, and it only started after I updated my NVidia driver after about a year)

But if not, and this is where the title comes in.. What can I buy to replace this that can play Crysis on a 1080p screen maxed out? :D
At the lowest possible price but with high efficiency (450w psu remember).. And yes, I'm deadly serious lol.. :D

The 7850 and GTX 660 can max out Crysis 2 in full hd with over 40fps avg. Both are affordable and have low power consumption.

If that is a cheap 450W psu then that may be causing your stability problems.

Its a Silverstone 450W PSU found in the SG05 and SG06 cases.

Yeah its the SG05 stock one.. I would of said the same except it does it just using Word for example, everything idle. I can get through a couple of hours of something like Arkham City no problem and then I could open a web browser and it'll go black. 660 looks like a good spot I'll look into it thanks :-)

The SG05/06 comes in 300W and 450W flavours, identifiable by the galvanised or black painted chassis of the PSU respectively.

I had a discussion on possible upgrades here about a month ago and figured a GTX670 would be the ideal card to cram in the SG06/05 with its 450W PSU.

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Originally Posted by DDY

The SG05/06 comes in 300W and 450W flavours, identifiable by the galvanised or black painted chassis of the PSU respectively.

I had a discussion on possible upgrades here about a month ago and figured a GTX670 would be the ideal card to cram in the SG06/05 with its 450W PSU.

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HC noticed this when testing the GTX660TI:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...xy-msi-21.html

That is using an open test bench AFAIK.

Since you are in a more TDP limited situation,you need to be careful what GTX670 you are choosing. The blower cooler is not the best cooler in a normal case but in a SFF PC probably works out better, as it avoids less heat build-ups unlike in an open test bench or a larger case.

I'd rather have a bit more spare power with my psu then just thinking its enough! You never know whats over the hill, what might you want to add at a later date?

Thanks for the replies guys.. If it can handle a 670 then a 660 should be plenty with a bit of headroom.. Just as mentioned before need to check which one would be best for cooling in a tiny case like that..

AMD has recently dropped their prices and released the 12.11 driver this week.
I'm really happy with my 7870.
In your price range, the 7850 should compete well with the 660 with the 12.11 drivers. But some people have been reporting crashes with the 7 series, so Nvidia might be a safer bet.