By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - PC Discussion - Building an AMD PC... a few questions

CaseyDDR said:
Before you waste money on AMD, check out the i5 by Intel. They are faster for the most part than the phenoms (especially for gaming), and very comparible in price. I got my i5 for 149.99$ at microcenter. The new 1156 motherboards are very cheap also in comparison to the older i7 boards.

I got a MB, 4gb 1600 DDR3 OCZ ram, and the i5 for 340$. MUCH better than anything you can build from AMD for that price, especially since AMD still uses DDR2 (if I remember correctly).

1) At the resolution you're running at, and for the uses that you stated in the OP, you don't need to spend more than $100 on a CPU. Anything more is overkill. The cheapest i5 seems to be $200 on Newegg, and that won't give you a significant performance boost on games over the $90 AMD tri-core that I linked above.

2) AMD boards do indeed use DDR3.

3) As I said before, DDR3-1600 is overkill for gaming (or for anything else except heavy A-V editing or game development or something similarly intensive). Get some 1333 and don't look back.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Around the Network
Garcian Smith said:
CaseyDDR said:
Before you waste money on AMD, check out the i5 by Intel. They are faster for the most part than the phenoms (especially for gaming), and very comparible in price. I got my i5 for 149.99$ at microcenter. The new 1156 motherboards are very cheap also in comparison to the older i7 boards.

I got a MB, 4gb 1600 DDR3 OCZ ram, and the i5 for 340$. MUCH better than anything you can build from AMD for that price, especially since AMD still uses DDR2 (if I remember correctly).

1) At the resolution you're running at, and for the uses that you stated in the OP, you don't need to spend more than $100 on a CPU. Anything more is overkill. The cheapest i5 seems to be $200 on Newegg, and that won't give you a significant performance boost on games over the $90 AMD tri-core that I linked above.

2) AMD boards do indeed use DDR3.

3) As I said before, DDR3-1600 is overkill for gaming (or for anything else except heavy A-V editing or game development or something). Get some 1333 and don't look back.

I edited my post so you might want to check it out, but I'll say a few things.

 

1. DDR-1600 is the exact same price as 1333, no reason to buy the lower quality (i got 4gb for 100$ out door, with 20$ mail in rebate on the way), and it's a quality brand. 

2. As I also stated, Microcenter has i5's for 150$ out the door, I Couldn't pass that up myself, especially for the huge performance boost it gives over AMD. 


Thx for clarifying on AMD and DDR3 though, didn't know they finally made the jump.



The Halo francise is the most overrated bland game to ever hit the console market. It provides a bad name to all FPS that even showed effort at creating an original entertaining plot.

I probably have more ps3 games than you :/ 

Thanks a lot for all the answers guys, I knew I'd get some good help :) I'll be digesting the information and searching for prices for the next few days hehe.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

CaseyDDR said:
...

2. As I also stated, Microcenter has i5's for 150$ out the door, I Couldn't pass that up myself, especially for the huge performance boost it gives over AMD. 

In games, any CPU >= X2 250/X3 435/E6300/Q8200 is 'good enough'. Unless you're at very low resolutions or running graphics more than three years old (edit: ignore that) most games are GPU-bound.

Unless you're doing CPU-intensive work, any quad-core or CPU over $100 is overkill.



Core i5 is the way to go atm, but I also do a lot of encoding and media editing on top of other things ^^; The thing is also an absolute beast when it comes to PS2 emulation



Around the Network
Soleron said:
CaseyDDR said:
...

2. As I also stated, Microcenter has i5's for 150$ out the door, I Couldn't pass that up myself, especially for the huge performance boost it gives over AMD. 

In games, any CPU >= X2 250/X3 435/E6300/Q8200 is 'good enough'. Unless you're at very low resolutions or running graphics more than three years old, most games are GPU-bound.

Unless you're doing CPU-intensive work, any quad-core or CPU over $100 is overkill.

GPUs are starting to be bottle necked heavily by lower end processors recently. The only processors to NOT bottleneck the top of the line cards, and those coming out after are the i7's. 



The Halo francise is the most overrated bland game to ever hit the console market. It provides a bad name to all FPS that even showed effort at creating an original entertaining plot.

I probably have more ps3 games than you :/ 

CaseyDDR said:
...

GPUs are starting to be bottle necked heavily by lower end processors recently. The only processors to NOT bottleneck the top of the line cards, and those coming out after are the i7's. 

Bottlenecked, yes. But at over 100fps in most cases. There would be no visible benefit to buying a faster CPU and watching it rise to 150fps.

Other than Crysis, is there any game that is made unacceptably slow by the CPUs I just mentioned at 1920x1200 or below?



AMD + Nvidia are also hard to find.

AMD + Ati it's easier.

AMD now have cheap quadcore cpu. i think 620 does a good job against core 2 duos.



Soleron said:
CaseyDDR said:
...

GPUs are starting to be bottle necked heavily by lower end processors recently. The only processors to NOT bottleneck the top of the line cards, and those coming out after are the i7's. 

Bottlenecked, yes. But at over 100fps in most cases. There would be no visible benefit to buying a faster CPU and watching it rise to 150fps.

Other than Crysis, is there any game that is made unacceptably slow by the CPUs I just mentioned at 1920x1200 or below?

People with high end cards and top end PCs tend to run bigger than 1920x1200, therefore yes there are PLENTY of games that push the limits when it comes to 2560x1600 (I think that's the next step).  A lot of games even push 1920x1200, I don't think you're realizing how much bigger than is than the 'typical' resolution ppl use of 1280x1024 or 1024x768.

 

Have you actually ever tried to run games larger than 1920x1200 or 1080p? it causes a massive strain on even higher end cards. 



The Halo francise is the most overrated bland game to ever hit the console market. It provides a bad name to all FPS that even showed effort at creating an original entertaining plot.

I probably have more ps3 games than you :/ 

CaseyDDR said:
 

People with high end cards and top end PCs tend to run bigger than 1920x1200, therefore yes there are PLENTY of games that push the limits when it comes to 2560x1600 (I think that's the next step).  A lot of games even push 1920x1200, I don't think you're realizing how much bigger than is than the 'typical' resolution ppl use of 1280x1024 or 1024x768.

 

Have you actually ever tried to run games larger than 1920x1200 or 1080p? it causes a massive strain on even higher end cards. 

The OP is running at 1680x1050, so why does anything in this post matter in the slightest?



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom