Quick Questions - Display, power and GPU

[Professor Frink]

Hi everyone.

Would love some quick good answers which I'm sure the members of this forum can supply (didn't want to use the sub-forums on this section as I already trawled them and they seem a little dead)

Firstly my 24" Dell 2408WFP (1920x1200) has died after years of excellent service, so I'm in line for a new monitor because using my old 17" makes me sad

I'm looking for a 27-28" monitor (might as well get a few more inches). What I loved about my old monitor is good desktop space, no ghosting & good build quality. So I was looking and found various 2560x1440 and some 4k displays but there were so many choices and companies and reviews I got a bit lost. Finally after a bit of research the Asus PB287Q (£449.88), the Acer XB280HK (£499.54) and BenQ XL2420TE (can't find stockist) caught my eye. Am I missing any glaring obvious choices?

I currently running MSI N560GTX-Ti which I'm guessing will not cut it. So I was thinking of getting a 970. I know my mobo/CPU is getting old but that will probably be a 2015 project. Will the I7 950 bottleneck the 970 too much (enough to notice as it will be gone in at most 12 months)?

Also will my 620W Enermax Liberty ELT620AW be enough to run the 970? Planning on getting Corsair HX1000i 1000W next year.

What are the best Graphic card manufactures now? My 560 is MSI which I quite like but is Asus okay?

Sorry for the long post. I think that covers most of my issues/ questions. Cheers

Edit - monitor budget about £400-500. If justification of more expensive it will be considered.
my favoured online vendor is Scan but will consider other depending on price/ stock as I would like to have it sorted soon.

[Pob255]

On the gpu, a 560ti will probably start to struggle with games at that res, outside of games no need to upgrade, heck you could downgrade.
on the i7 850 bottle neck, probably not, might slightly will depend on the game and if you're overclocking
the motherboard is pci-e 2.0 so no real issue there
psu should be fine, aging might be the only issue, no point in a 1000w psu unless you're looking at sli even then it's a bit overkill.
AFAIK gpu's manufactures haven't changed much, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte still have decent cards with good non-stock coolers
EVGA still do long warranties but only on a few of their cards, you need a model that ends is -XR, -X1, -X2, -X3 or -X4 for their 10year warranty see here http://eu.evga.com/support/warranty/ and finding those cards is getting tricky these days.

scan have a ASUS PB287Q and 970 CUII bundle for £660 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-graphics-card

[Professor Frink]

Cheers Pob255.

The Scan offer did look good as about £70 saving.

I was thinking the same thing about aging PSU and I know the Corsair HX1000i is Platinum efficiency, very quite (fan doesn't spin below loads of 400W) and gives me future wiggle room.

[Ttaskmaster]

Perhaps a 1000W PSU if you're after SLI and have a load of extra 12v styling acessories that are powered... like mine, really. I have banks and banks of LEDs and meters and fans and stuff.

Give you an example, my 650W handles it all well enough with a single GPU, but my occasional foray into overclocking would benefit from more power while running all this crap and I can't even get an older GTX two hundred and something GPU powered enough to run as a dedicated PhysX unit.
I believe an 800W would be about right, but it depends how much you want to spend and what you might want to do in the future. Every time you compare 650W to 750W to 850W etc, right up to 1800W, the step up is only a few extra quid and SOOOOO tempting.... Just need to figure out how much you'll really need and stick with that!

[Professor Frink]

Perhaps a 1000W PSU if you're after SLI and have a load of extra 12v styling acessories that are powered... like mine, really. I have banks and banks of LEDs and meters and fans and stuff.

Give you an example, my 650W handles it all well enough with a single GPU, but my occasional foray into overclocking would benefit from more power while running all this crap and I can't even get an older GTX two hundred and something GPU powered enough to run as a dedicated PhysX unit.
I believe an 800W would be about right, but it depends how much you want to spend and what you might want to do in the future. Every time you compare 650W to 750W to 850W etc, right up to 1800W, the step up is only a few extra quid and SOOOOO tempting.... Just need to figure out how much you'll really need and stick with that!

I like you comparison of PSUs to old school McDonalds drink/fries tactics =)

[MrJim]

scan have a ASUS PB287Q and 970 CUII bundle for £660 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-graphics-card

That's a bit of a strange bundle really - if you want to run any of those Ubisoft games at 4K & decent quality settings, you're probably going to need two 970s not just one...

[Professor Frink]

That's a bit of a strange bundle really - if you want to run any of those Ubisoft games at 4K & decent quality settings, you're probably going to need two 970s not just one...

I would expect high settings at 2560x1440?

[Ttaskmaster]

I like you comparison of PSUs to old school McDonalds drink/fries tactics =)

It's true though, especially with things like PSUs, RAM, and all that. It's always those few extra quids.

Figure out what you'll need, both for now and the forseeable future, then stick with it. Use the saved money for other components.

[Professor Frink]

I got the Scan deal for the Asus 970 and Asus PB287Q from Scan.

I'vegot a slight pproblem. My old 560ti used two six pin power connections but the new graphics card has one eight pin power connection.

[Professor Frink]

Damn you Internet. There seems about a 50/50 split on using a six to eight pin adapters being okay or dangerous.

Thought I would simply use my 560ti until I get a new PSU. Problem is new monitor has Dualpoint or HDMI but my MSI only has two DVIs and a mini-HDMI. Not seen my mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter.

So annoying.

[kalniel]

Damn you Internet. There seems about a 50/50 split on using a six to eight pin adapters being okay or dangerous.

Depends on the gauge of the wire coming from the PSU and the type of adaptor. If the adaptor is of the 2x6 into 1x8 then you're always fine, as long as you power from different 6 pin cables.

If the 1x6 pin to 1x8 pin type then you're probably still fine - check likely power draw from the cable for your GPU against the rating of the cable.

[Pob255]

That's a bit of a strange bundle really - if you want to run any of those Ubisoft games at 4K & decent quality settings, you're probably going to need two 970s not just one...

well given that ac unity doesn't run on two 980ti sli at 1080p @ max settings or high with AA on, but a half decent game with some competent optimization shouldn't really have an issue at 4k.

I'vegot a slight pproblem. My old 560ti used two six pin power connections but the new graphics card has one eight pin power connection.

ahh
You could try it with just 2x 6pin and see if it works, it should the 970 is only around 200w max
or get an adaptor be careful it's a 6pin pci-e to 8pin pci-e not to 8pin motherboard, the two additional pins should be ground (black)

[Professor Frink]

Not sure if I want to risk 6pin to 8pin stuff so I'm going to sort out a PSU upgrade for Christmas.

One question left. I went to Maplin and bought a DVI to HDMI adaptor so I could carry on using my 560ti and new monitor but I'm stuck at 1080p. I'm pretty sure the 560ti is HDMI 1.3a and thought it would be able to ouput up to 2560×1600 (I was a least hoping 2560x1440@60Hz)?

[scaryjim]

Is the adapter single link or dual link? If it's single link it'll only support max 1920x1200 @ 60hz....

Also ISTR that some dual DVI GPUs have a single link port and a dual link port, so even if your adapter is dual link the port might be single link (although that seems less likely to me than the adapter just being single link)

EDIT: you can easily work out whether the adapter is single or dual link my comparing this chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...ctor_Types.svg

[Professor Frink]

Is the adapter single link or dual link? If it's single link it'll only support max 1920x1200 @ 60hz....

Also ISTR that some dual DVI GPUs have a single link port and a dual link port, so even if your adapter is dual link the port might be single link (although that seems less likely to me than the adapter just being single link)

EDIT: you can easily work out whether the adapter is single or dual link my comparing this chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...ctor_Types.svg

The adapter is DVI-D.