Microcenter is so great.

I don't remember, but if this is a desktop, please don't get Windows 8.

Unless you're a masochist. Then go right ahead.

There's nothing wrong with windows 8.1 if you get rid of the new start screen that I've found. Don't understand the backlash.

Similarly, I didn't understand the big hooplah about 8.1. If you had configured a few settings it didn't change windows 8 in any noticeable ways at all.

I did some research and everything I've read is that 8.1 is better than 7 in almost every way except for the interface and that can be changed.

That build I posted above is no longer. I was able to get Windows at a discount from someone I know at Microsoft and went down to a smaller HDD (which I am getting at BestBuy because I have gift cards). I've improved the video card and motherboard and am only about $25 more than my original build price. Pretty happy about it. Getting the parts tomorrow.

I may get a bigger PSU, as I forgot to take into account the increase power draw from the new video card.

yay Nvidia 900 series: The new GPU will initially be available in two SKUs, the $329 GeForce GTX 970 and the $549 GeForce GTX 980. The GTX 970 has 1664 processor cores running at a base frequency of 1050MHz (boost clock of 1178MHz), while the beefier GTX 980 has 2048 cores running at 1126MHz (boost clock of 1216MHz). The GTX 970 and the GTX 980 both have a 256-bit interface to 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at an effective speed of 7Gbps.

Did they skip the 870-890 series while I was sleeping? Looks like the 780ti is still ahead of the 980 by a bit in most benchmarks, but still costs a decent amount more. Doesn't really look tempting unless you're using something around a 660gtx or 5000 series radeon or older.

I agree.

Good price point for GTX 970. I may look into this if I decide not to get a laptop.

ya was gonna build a 4790k/770.. gonna pick up a 970 instead

Just pulled the trigger on this.

As soon as the Asus ROG SWIFT PG278Q is restocked on Newegg, I'm copping 2 of them and 2 980s.

Has anyone bought the NVIDIA Shield tablet? My Nexus 7 looks to be dieing and this looks like a good replacement Android tablet without even considering the PC streaming capability. But I've read conflicting reviews on how the game streaming works, with some people having no problems with a large number of games and some only getting a few to play smoothly, which has me thinking about maybe holding out for the next Nexus 7 refresh.

So... I don't know what to do. My pc keeps crashing or having gfx driver failures when I'm gaming. I've never had this before and I don't even begin to know how to troubleshoot it. I'm sure there's logs somewhere or something.

What should I do about this? I've never built a pc that had problems before so I dunno wtf to do. I kinda want to either go with a radeon card or a higher level geforce.

First thing is to check your temps with something like CPUID HWMonitor (free version not the trial). If those look normal (nothing over 80-90c under normal gaming load for GPU, CPU if a newer Intel should probably never be getting above 50-60c under load unless you have a hot room or terrible case airflow) I'd try uninstalling then reinstalling your graphics drivers. If that doesn't work it could be a lot of things, not necessarily a bad card. You might buy a new card and find out it's a defective memory stick, faulty mobo chipset or a bad PSU.

You can run a memory test program like memtest to check the RAM and if you're lucky your mobo has temp guages on the northbridge and southbridge chips which should be fairly close to your CPU temp I think (not familiar with how to check those though, you'd have to search). HWMonitor should also report on the voltages for all your hardware, but I'm not sure how reliable those numbers are. Though if your game crashes and it reports a min or max value way above the expected voltage value for a particular rail (12v, 3.3v etc.) your PSU is a likely culprit.

Thank you for the tips. I'll have to post screens tomorrow as my internet is down atm. CPU and gpu temps never got over 46C while gaming, and the voltages were pretty close most of the time. Don't think they got higher than 103% above what they were supposed to be. (Like 3.3v only got as high as 3.4 or so) Ambient case temp wasn't much more than 5F above room temps.

Reinstalled gpu drivers and went pretty barebones (no 3d driver crap I don't actually need). Will see how that goes.

Oddly, in game I'm showing a typical fps around 65-80, but when it dips down to 65 it sure feels and looks a hell of a lot more like 30 fps.

*edit*

internet back up, bwamp!

Those temps are all fine.

What type of graphics issues are you having?

From my experience it could be a PSU issue or it could be a GPU issue if it's just an issue with graphics and not causing blue screen or anything of the sort.

I have had several blue screens. One while playing a game, the other few while a game was on but idling/not actively being played. (I was afk)

Last night was the first night I'd had the "driver has stopped working" error. Could be unrelated.

Aside from that, the only graphical issue is games showing one fps but looking substantially worse.

(Had an issue with extreme mouse lag, but swapped my Microsoft wireless mouse for a Logitech one and it has completely disappeared)

blue screens are mostly RAM problems.

Ram or power problems

Occasionally mobo controllers afaik anyways

Memtest going, 85% thru pass 4, no errors yet

Make sure your onboard integrated graphics driver is up to date even though the error is coming from the nvidia driver. There is a feature that tries to share some of the work with the onboard graphics. This is not very stable and can give the error you mentioned as well as blue screens. I think with nvidia you can turn this feature off.

Also is it the same game with every crash or any game that is played for a long time at high settings. If it is the same game then what game is it and did you check their support pages if they have any. Some games need very specific driver versions because of the above issue.

You can also check for memory problems by playing with only one stick for a while and then with the other to see which one is causing the crashes. That is, if you have 2 memory sticks.

Go to windows search bar and type event viewer and see what errors windows is giving when it blue screens. Then looks them up online to see what is causing them. Everything should be time stamped and there should be red or yellow icons next to the major errors.

what kinda headsets are ya'll using. my turtle beaches are on their last leg and being held together with duck tape. got bout ~$150 to spend on a good set for both gaming/music. Mic really isn't important, not even using the one on the turtle beaches now. whatcha'll think?