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Our VGA benchmarking PC has been updated with Windows 10

Anthony Garreffa | Computer Systems | Dec 8, 2015 6:19 PM CST

This is something we've been needing to do for a while, but we've finally moved out video card benchmarking machine over to Windows 10. I used Windows 7 throughout the release of Windows 8 and even Windows 8.1, as it seemed that most people weren't moving over to it, and I knew Windows 10 would be the OS to shift to.

Our VGA benchmarking PC has been updated with Windows 10 | TweakTown.com

So here we are, with our VGA benchmarking rig upgraded to Windows 10. I'm running the 64-bit version of Windows 10 Home, with the same hardware we were using before - except for a major upgrade on the storage side of things.

Our storage editor Jon sent me a 2TB SSD from Samsung because the game installs are getting out of control. I've got a handful of games that are over 50GB, and my 480GB SSD is feeling this pain. An upgrade to 2TB is absolutely awesome, something that I've needed for a while now.

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Get your PC ready for the Star Wars Battlefront beta

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Oct 8, 2015 6:53 PM CDT

EA and DICE have finally unleashed the open beta of Star Wars Battlefront, with the new first-person shooter floating out to gamers around the world. There's a few things you should know about it, like updating your PC to get it into better order for the game, as well as updating your GPU drivers for additional performance.

Get your PC ready for the Star Wars Battlefront beta 11

First off, we're going to presume that you have the Star Wars Battlefront beta installed on your PC. If not, open up Origin and download it now. The Star Wars Battlefront beta is just over 10GB in size.

After it's downloaded, make sure your PC has all of the latest Windows updates. If you're up to date, the next step is video drivers. Both AMD and NVIDIA have new Star Wars Battlefront beta ready drivers, with NVIDIA out in front with the latest drivers. We have links for them below.

NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready 358.50 WHQL drivers

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3440x1440 benchmarked on AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 295X2 and more

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Aug 12, 2015 10:38 PM CDT

We've been spending the last week or so benchmarking a crap load of NVIDIA video cards on our 34-inch LG 34UC97 monitor, testing out its native 3440x1440 resolution. UltraWide gaming is really taking off these days, but without performance numbers across a bunch of hardware, it's hard to know where you'll find yourself when you come to picking a video card.

3440x1440 benchmarked on AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 295X2 and more 05

Gaming at 2560x1440 isn't so hard these days, with most $250-$400 cards handling most games on the market without a problem at 60FPS, while 4K requires more grunt. 3440x1440 falls in between both of these resolutions and gives - in my opinion - a better alternative to 4K gaming.

3440x1440 benchmarked on AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 295X2 and more 06

Now that we've tested the GeForce GTX Titan X, GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980 and GTX 780 - and then again with the same cards in SLI, it's time to test out some AMD hardware at 3440x1440. We've got a few high-end cards at our disposal, including the Radeon R9 Fury X, Radeon R9 295X2 and the Radeon R9 390X.

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3440x1440 benchmarked on NVIDIA GeForce cards in SLI

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Aug 11, 2015 12:40 AM CDT

We kicked off our new 3440x1440 benchmarks a few days ago, testing out how the GeForce GTX 780, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X all performed on a 34-inch UltraWide monitor from LG. We're back again, this time toting two each of the GTX 780, GTX 980, GTX 980 and Titan X for some delicious SLI results.

3440x1440 benchmarked on NVIDIA GeForce cards in SLI 10

In our first article, we found that running our suite of benchmarks at 3440x1440 was actually quite good on performance. Most games ran at 60FPS or above, with some of them dipping below 60FPS - this is easy to fix with a few tweaks to in-game settings. But what type of performance do you think we'll see at 3440x1440 when we're running two cards in SLI, especially the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X?

Gaming at 3440x1440 is just utterly beautiful, with the 21:9 aspect ratio really adding to the experience in some games. I'm mostly a Battlefield 4 player and the additional horizontal pixels are glorious, especially when you mix it with a 95-degree FOV with the in-game settings.

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3440x1440 benchmarked on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X, and more

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Aug 9, 2015 12:16 AM CDT

For the course of 2015 so far I've been running an LG 34UC97 monitor as my workstation display, taking in its glorious 34-inch size and 3440x1440 resolution. Since my review of the LG 34UC97 back in December 2014, the UltraWide monitor market has really blown up.

3440x1440 benchmarked on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X, and more 01

We're seeing a new 21:9 display released each month, and we're getting closer to the one that will rule them all: a 34-inch monitor with a native resolution of 3440x1440, but with NVIDIA's G-Sync technology. We should see that released next month, and you can bet your old display we'll have one of those to review very soon.

Until then, I've noticed that no sites are really covering UltraWide resolutions in their benchmarks. Well, we are starting today. We will be running all of our future cards in four resolutions: 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3440x1440 and 3840x2160. But before then, we're going to do a couple of articles to bring you up to speed on various video cards running 3440x1440, and how they perform in our benchmark suites.

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Forcing the Windows 10 update to actually, well, update

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Jul 30, 2015 9:59 PM CDT

Windows 10 is finally here, but it's not smooth sailing for everyone. Some of us, including myself, still can't update their machines, awaiting the OK from Microsoft. But there are ways around that, and that's where this article will help you.

Forcing the Windows 10 update to actually, well, update 12

Microsoft is releasing Windows 10 in waves, which means that you can get it, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be on your machine just yet. There are a few ways around this, where you can download the files yourself and burn them to a DVD or throw them onto a USB stick, or you can manually force the Windows Update software to pull the Windows 10 update from Microsoft, and update your machine manually.

This is the path I had to go down with my ASUS ROG G751 gaming notebook, and after following these steps, it worked. I had tried the other procedure - downloading the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft - but for me, it didn't work.

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Building our new silent PC with the be quiet! Silent Base 800 chassis

Anthony Garreffa | Computer Systems | Jul 29, 2015 2:23 AM CDT

Introduction

We teased that we were building two new PCs a little while ago now, and we've posted the final image of our new PC on our Facebook page, which had a huge amount of engagement with our fans - you, our readers. Well, here's the full PC, part by part, and some tips on building within the be quiet! Silent Base 800 chassis.

Building our new silent PC with the be quiet! Silent Base 800 chassis 02

The goal of this system was to have something that would fit all of our goodies inside of it, run either the Acer XB270HU 27-inch 1440p 144Hz G-Sync display or the LG 34-inch 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor. I wanted it to be as close to silence as possible, all while using some of the fastest components we could.

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Some of our upcoming projects includes two high-end PC builds

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jul 24, 2015 10:26 PM CDT

Right now, I have two machines that power my entire office. The first of which is my video card review test bed, which is powered by an Intel Core i7-5820, the GIGABYTE X99 Gaming G1 Wi-Fi, 16G of Corsair DDR3 RAM, and more. My workstation machine is the ASUS ROG G751 gaming laptop, connected to two LG 34-inch UltraWide monitors at 3440x1440 each.

Some of our upcoming projects includes two high-end PC builds 01

Some of our upcoming projects includes two high-end PC builds 02

I have most of the parts for two entire new systems, with one of them being a build guide article centered around the be quiet! Silent Base 800 and an orange and black theme through, powered by a GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion and Intel Core i7-583

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AMD Radeon R9 Fury X CrossFire on triple 4K Eyefinity (11,520x2160)

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jul 5, 2015 11:11 PM CDT

We have been powering through our AMD Radeon R9 Fury X content since the High Bandwidth Memory powered video card launched just 11 days ago now, where we have our review of the card on its own, two of them in CrossFire, and our latest: the R9 Fury X in triple 4K Eyefinity at 11,520x2160.

AMD Radeon R9 Fury X CrossFire on triple 4K Eyefinity (11,520x2160) 01

During this testing, the R9 Fury X on its own was good, but not great at 1080p and 1440p. At 4K however, it really came into its own. The second card really added some huge benefits to performance at 2560x1440 and 4K, but the single card on its own with a triple 4K Eyefinity monitor setup didn't really offer much over the NVIDIA offerings.

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AMD Radeon R9 Fury X on triple 4K displays (11,520x2160)

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jul 4, 2015 3:12 AM CDT

When I first reviewed the AMD Radeon R9 Fury, I wasn't completely sold on the new card. The refreshed Tonga-style Graphics Core Next architecture didn't add too much to the table, and while AMD were the first to use the super-awesome High Bandwidth Memory, it didn't actually trounce the performance of the GDDR5-based offerings from NVIDIA.

AMD Radeon R9 Fury X on triple 4K displays (11,520x2160) 01

It put the R9 Fury X into a weird position, so I continued my work on it. We secured a second Fury X from AMD and got into CrossFire testing yesterday with some very promising results, which almost completely changed my stance on the card. In CrossFire, the R9 Fury X cards kick some major ass, but it's still not enough. The radiator is a huge hassle, which is where the Fury (non-X) will come in. We will have reviews on the Radeon R9 Fury cards in the coming weeks, which we're quite excited for.

Moving back to the Fury X, we have tested the HBM-based Radeon R9 Fury X on our triple 4K monitor setup. We have triple 4K screens providing a resolution of 6480x3840 in portrait, or 11,520x2160 in landscape.

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