By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
disolitude on 01 August 2012
Edit Thread

As a side note...

I've come to realize that all these insane spec'd builds are really not necessary for enjoyable PC gaming. I've been guilty in the past of buying the latest, greatest and most expensive gear and it really wasn't needed to play the games I wanted to play.

I've recently did some test and benchmarks with my old systems and here is what I've observed.

Athlon X2 7750BE + 4GB DDR2 RAM + HD7750 will run pretty much any game at 1080p and medium settings at 30+ fps. This is some seriously old and low end stuff and it's good enough to run a beast like Metro 2033 on medium and 1080p as long as you disable all AA.

Phenom II 940 (AM2+) + 6 GB of DDR2 + GTX580 will run any game at 1080p and max settings. You may need to lower AA to 4X on Witcher 2 and MEtro 2033.

Phenom II 940 (AM2+ overclocked to 3.8GHZ) + 6 GB of DDR2 + GTX580 SLI will run any game in Nvidia surround on max settings, minus AA.

These are 4 year old CPUs and slow memory combined with latest GPUs and they work just fine. I recently built a HTPC with i5 2500K, 8 GB ram and GTX 580, and I feel kind of stupid cause I could have used any two of my old AMD machines with the GTX580 to play games like Max Payne 3 or Alan wake perfectly fine.