How many PCs is too many? lol

InfinitusEquitas · Jun 24, 2016

I am pretty much committed to the 1080 for my home computer due to wanting to reasonably future proof it for the next generation of VR coming in 2017/18, but in the more immediate future because I want to upgrade to a 4k monitor, and the 1080, is the only card that can keep up on high settings with newer games. I thought about doing a 3x monitor setup, but the truth is I just don't need it, and barely use the dual monitor setup at home as it is.

The Note 5 is awesome, except for 2 things. I was satisfied with the S5, but I have a family shared plan, and ended up being able to upgrade, and lower my bill at the same time. After special at Sams club I the note 5 ended up costing me -$300, as compared to my bill previously. The two problems? It has no expandable storage, and I am CONSTANTLY forced to delete stuff, since the only option I could get due to the special pricing was the 32gb. The second, it's not even water resistant, much less somewhat waterproof. Performance wise though, I love it. Extremely fast, fluid, apps install, and uninstall quickly. I don't think I'll be able to easily to go a smaller form factor either, that extra real estate... I got very used to it, and I like it. Spen I don't really use, but it's cool. The Note 7 is coming soon, August probably, and you can buy a refurb Note 5 now for about $300-330 btw.

Now the Surface Pro... you know it has actually been on my mind A LOT

I have been kind of the on the hunt for a laptop replacement, that has full windows for a while. The surface pro is the current front runner, but I'm not sure I will get it. the Tab S2, is that good, that I'm now considering trying it out as a laptop replacement. The two programs I need most are excel, and word. Both of those work ok, on android, for the type of work I'd need to do remotely. VLC lets me play pretty much whatever I want on it, and that only leaves the issue of typing to be addressed, which a bluetooth keyboard can hopefully take care of.

A 9.7 screen is admittedly not ideal, stepping back from dual 27" monitors, but with the higher resolution, it is workable, if somewhat of a strain on the eyes. Microsoft RDP app works very well, so long as I have a reasonable connection.

After 24 years, I am for the first time a bit tempted to step away from windows.

Bionic-Badger · Jun 24, 2016

I dunno, an OC'ed 1070 is comparable to a stock 1080 and ~$250 less. Sure, the 1080 can then be OC'ed, but it kind of shows that the 1080 doesn't provide such a huge jump in performance. I can't help but think that the 1080 just isn't worth its performance improvement for that premium. I'd even consider SLI instead with that differential.

We'll see in the coming months though.

diachi · Jun 24, 2016

InfinitusEquitas said:
I am pretty much committed to the 1080 for my home computer due to wanting to reasonably future proof it for the next generation of VR coming in 2017/18, but in the more immediate future because I want to upgrade to a 4k monitor, and the 1080, is the only card that can keep up on high settings with newer games. I thought about doing a 3x monitor setup, but the truth is I just don't need it, and barely use the dual monitor setup at home as it is.

The Note 5 is awesome, except for 2 things. I was satisfied with the S5, but I have a family shared plan, and ended up being able to upgrade, and lower my bill at the same time. After special at Sams club I the note 5 ended up costing me -$300, as compared to my bill previously. The two problems? It has no expandable storage, and I am CONSTANTLY forced to delete stuff, since the only option I could get due to the special pricing was the 32gb. The second, it's not even water resistant, much less somewhat waterproof. Performance wise though, I love it. Extremely fast, fluid, apps install, and uninstall quickly. I don't think I'll be able to easily to go a smaller form factor either, that extra real estate... I got very used to it, and I like it. Spen I don't really use, but it's cool. The Note 7 is coming soon, August probably, and you can buy a refurb Note 5 now for about $300-330 btw.

Now the Surface Pro... you know it has actually been on my mind A LOT

I have been kind of the on the hunt for a laptop replacement, that has full windows for a while. The surface pro is the current front runner, but I'm not sure I will get it. the Tab S2, is that good, that I'm now considering trying it out as a laptop replacement. The two programs I need most are excel, and word. Both of those work ok, on android, for the type of work I'd need to do remotely. VLC lets me play pretty much whatever I want on it, and that only leaves the issue of typing to be addressed, which a bluetooth keyboard can hopefully take care of.

A 9.7 screen is admittedly not ideal, stepping back from dual 27" monitors, but with the higher resolution, it is workable, if somewhat of a strain on the eyes. Microsoft RDP app works very well, so long as I have a reasonable connection.

After 24 years, I am for the first time a bit tempted to step away from windows.

Yeah, I can totally see the use for a 1080 or 1070 especially if you have some nice monitors - I just don't do much gaming or anything else that's graphically intensive. For the most part all I play is KSP/Minecraft/Half-Life (1, 2 and all the episodes) - that sort of thing.

Sounds like you got a good deal - I imagine the Note 5 blows my S5 out of the water - it's a damn powerful phone. Not sure why they decided to kill the SD slot on the S6/Note 5 - that was always a major selling point for me and one of the reasons I hate the iPhone. Guess I'll skip that generation and go straight to the S7/Note 7. I like the idea of the S pen having used it - but I don't think I'd ever get in the habit of frequently using it. Wouldn't trust that the S5 is even slightly water resistant either...

I picked up a Pro 4 for the CEO at work here last month - what a nice piece of kit that is. Seems expensive at first, but for what you get it's really not terrible. Performance is really quite impressive (I picked up the i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD). Screen is great - real impressive resolution. Plus with the option of a docking station it can compete just fine with with enterprise ultrabooks - you can still have your dual monitors, gigabit ethernet and USB 3. Other option is the Surface Book - but that's a little big for a tablet, at least for my taste. The surface type cover or whatever it's called is also pretty nice to type on, all things considered. Overall I'd highly recommend it - even more so if you do a lot of travelling.

I use RDP most of the time - works fine over my internet connection as long as I don't try and watch video. May be that the video capabilities of the VM I remote to cause issues too. Ever try RDP over satellite? That could drive you to murder.

I feel you on the Windows thing - I get annoyed at it and flip to Ubuntu every now and then - which I then also get annoyed at after a while and flip back...

Bionic-Badger said:
I dunno, an OC'ed 1070 is comparable to a stock 1080 and ~$250 less. Sure, the 1080 can then be OC'ed, but it kind of shows that the 1080 doesn't provide such a huge jump in performance. I can't help but think that the 1080 just isn't worth its performance improvement for that premium. I'd even consider SLI instead with that differential.

We'll see in the coming months though.

Prices should be cheaper once the 3rd party cards come out, no?

Bionic-Badger · Jun 24, 2016

diachi said:
Prices should be cheaper once the 3rd party cards come out, no?

They should, as the current prices are pretty outrageous right now. I'm basing it on the suggested mainstream prices: $600 for the GTX 1080, and $380 for the GTX 1070.

So about a $220 price differential, not $250 as I said before (that was based on the Founders Edition). It's still a sizeable chunk though. The 1080 should have better memory, so maybe it'll be a bit more future-proofed, but from what HardOCP reviewed, the performance difference isn't huge given the price and the 1070 is pretty darn good.

I'll be definitely upgrading to a 1070 myself later this year after things settle down. This ol' GTX 760 is showing its age and I tend to upgrade my card every 2-3 years. It sure beats upgrading the whole computer all the time.

InfinitusEquitas · Jun 24, 2016

I really don't do all that much travel, but when I do, I like to travel light. The running joke around the office, and usually campground, is that if there is some gadget in existence, I probably have it. The SurfacePro, also has very mixed reviews, in terms of quality control. Seems to be hit or miss, and mostly great, but some not so good. I think that's piss poor for a premium product.

The 1070, can be OCed to approach 1080 levels, but BB, as you said the 1080 can also be OCed. Right now, the prices are nothing to go by, newegg for example shows $430 and $680, which is exactly $250.

The 1080 does produce better results at 4k, sometimes noticeably so. Games at 20fps, are not fun, at 30fps, not perfect either, but really much better. The problem with all the benchmarks is they focus mostly on averages, and that means there are slow downs that you will run into, in graphically busy areas.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_SLI/4.html

SLI is something I don't feel is required, for most users. I'll wait for the 1080ti if anything.

The area where the 1080 will definitely pull ahead is in VR, due to the faster ram. I'm not dead set on the 1080, but I think it will serve me better without worrying about motherboard, psu, and case upgrade, without needing to deal with SLI. Adopting a bit of a wait and see approach, until we see benchmarks from secondary vendors, msi, asus, zotab, ect,.

Bionic-Badger · Jun 25, 2016

Yeah, you're right. SLI is a pain, and it uses a lot of power too. On my end, I think I'd probably have to upgrade my motherboard and other crap to do that, and that's not something I'll probably do for another few years (10 year build man!)

I kind of lament that 4k games are still skirting 30fps. Both cards seem geared to play 2.5k games pretty well, but I'm not a huge fan of that resolution. I am glad that nVidia's drivers can do hardware upscaling to 4k pretty well though.

Still, that'll be enough for the VR headsets which are doing 2.5k kind of stuff for each eye, which is still substantially less than 4k, albeit that they should run at 60hz or more.

I'm really looking forward to these new cards though. I was holding off last year until Pascal came out, and it seems like it'll be a good purchase once prices settle down to normal levels.

gif · Jul 6, 2016

I thought I had too many, glad there are other hoarders out there

4 - HTPC
1 - Main PC
1 - ESX Server PC
2 - Lab PCs
1 - PC (Wife's)
1 - PC (Dad's)
1 - Work Laptop (HP Revolve 810)
1 - Personal Laptop (Hp Elite Book)
1 - Wife's Personal Laptop (IBM)
1 - Dad's laptop (HP)
1 - Configuration laptop/troubleshooting laptop (Elite book 2540p)
1 - traveling laptop (Elite book 2540p)
3 - spare elite book laptops
2 - spare PCs
2 - tablets
Parts to build another 3 PCs and bins & bins full of salvage parts, cables, fans etc

Network:
1 - Nortel baystack 5520-48t-pwr
1 - TP link 9 port gigabit managed switch
2 - R7000 routers
1 - Hitron gigabit gateway router
2 - D-Link plug and play gig switches

just did a speed test

diachi · Jul 6, 2016

MOTHER OF GOD, 873Mb/s down? That's nuts. I've had a hard time pulling that kind of bandwidth on 1000BaseT :crackup:. At first I confused the upload for the download and though "not bad" - then I looked again. Damn!

One of mine from a couple weeks ago (U/D ratio is terrible

):

gif · Jul 6, 2016

diachi said:
MOTHER OF GOD, 873Mb/s down? That's nuts. I've had a hard time pulling that kind of bandwidth on 1000BaseT :crackup:. At first I confused the upload for the download and though "not bad" - then I looked again. Damn!

One of mine from a couple weeks ago (U/D ratio is terrible ):

Rogers offered me 1 gig line for less then what I was paying for 250 gig line, couldn't say no to that

I remember the days, when I used to use free netzero dialup lol or AOL free 30 days internet CDs

diachi · Jul 6, 2016

gif said:
Rogers offered me 1 gig line for less then what I was paying for 250 gig line, couldn't say no to that

I remember the days, when I used to use free netzero dialup lol or AOL free 30 days internet CDs

I'm not sure I want to know ... but if you don't mind my asking, how much do you pay for the 1Gb line? Any data caps?

Haha - The sound of a dialup modem doing its things is always very nostalgic, though we never had AOL, certainly had friends that did mind you.

InfinitusEquitas · Jul 6, 2016

$80 a month gets me 75 down, 35 up, with around 12ms. Actually tops out at ~85mpbs/30mbps.

873... did you sell your firs borne or something?

diachi · Jul 6, 2016

InfinitusEquitas said:
$80 a month gets me 75 down, 35 up, with around 12ms. Actually tops out at ~85mpbs/30mbps.

873... did you sell your firs borne or something?

$150 for 100/5 and a 300GB cap ($2.50/GB thereafter) for me.

12ms ping to where? I get ~14ms between work and home - and that's less than 2km as the crow flies. 80ms to my mail server in Toronto.

Edit: Last year worth of latency/quality data for 8.8.8.8 from my firewall.

Edit 2: Traffic graph too - why not!

InfinitusEquitas · Jul 6, 2016

Usually I test based on random servers in NYC. My office is also 2-3 miles in a straight line, but ~8 miles by road. To office ping is usually 8-10ms.

gif · Jul 7, 2016

diachi said:
I'm not sure I want to know ... but if you don't mind my asking, how much do you pay for the 1Gb line? Any data caps?

Haha - The sound of a dialup modem doing its things is always very nostalgic, though we never had AOL, certainly had friends that did mind you.

Basically I have Rogers bundle... cable TV with VIP package, 2 - HD receivers and 1 HD PVR receiver and 1 gig unlimited internet line - All in I pay $124 (2 year contract)

Before for cable TV with VIP package, 2 - HD receivers and 1 HD PVR receiver and 250 Mb/s unlimited internet line - All in $150 (no contract) <-- This deal was on 50% off for 12 month, my 12 months were coming up so I called in and they offer me the 1gig deal above......for less :wave:

InfinitusEquitas · Jul 7, 2016

Huh... that's actually not bad at all. Considering all I get is internet for $80, no tv, phone, or anything else.

No data caps... went over 3tb one month, didn't have any issues.

vortish · Jul 7, 2016

I currently run fiber on my network at home. I run one pc and a server and its bare bones. But I pay 55 dollars a month for a 100 mbps connection which is fifty each direction and my speed test says i am getting so its not to bad I could get a t 1 fiber line for 150 a month at like 200 mbps
but cant not afford that right now

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/...www.speedtest.net/result/5460102612.png[/IMG]

How many PCs is too many? lol

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