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Forums - PC Discussion - Getting a gaming rig. Buy or Build?

youarebadatgames on 07 February 2010

If you haven't already you should check out Anandtech's system buyer's guides for starters, they usually do pretty well on bang for your buck.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3610

Edit: It's a little out of date though, you can probably do better getting the newer equivalents.



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Squilliam on 07 February 2010
Epoch said:
IllegalPaladin said:

Depends on what you want. The Radeon 5870 is $100 more than the Radeon 5850 and the combo you listed gives you a $25 discount compared to buying the Radeon 5870 and i7 860 on their own.

Here's a link to Guru3d's review of the Radeon 5850. The page it's on is the first of the benchmarks. If you scroll down you can see a graph on each game benchmark page with the results of numerous graphics cards (including the 5870) at 1920x1200 resolution and 8xAA. 

As for the power supply, I think that would be enough unless you planned on having dual GPU's.

Wow, for the price I'd be better off with the 5850 for sure.  Then If I need more power later, I can just buy a second and put it in Crossfire.  Thanks again man.

Galaki, my budget is around $1200.

Remember the 1156 pin i7/i5 motherboard / cpus come with very few PCI-E lanes, not enough to do crossfire/sli and especially not if they use USB 3.0. You're better off with either an AM3 based AMD system or a 1366 pin i7 system if you want both crossfire and USB 3.0.

Edit: This is a good combo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.325941

MSI motherboard, Phenom 965 and XFX 5850 for $650 with $55 off for combo.

 



Tease.

Epoch on 07 February 2010
Squilliam said:
Epoch said:
IllegalPaladin said:

Depends on what you want. The Radeon 5870 is $100 more than the Radeon 5850 and the combo you listed gives you a $25 discount compared to buying the Radeon 5870 and i7 860 on their own.

Here's a link to Guru3d's review of the Radeon 5850. The page it's on is the first of the benchmarks. If you scroll down you can see a graph on each game benchmark page with the results of numerous graphics cards (including the 5870) at 1920x1200 resolution and 8xAA. 

As for the power supply, I think that would be enough unless you planned on having dual GPU's.

Wow, for the price I'd be better off with the 5850 for sure.  Then If I need more power later, I can just buy a second and put it in Crossfire.  Thanks again man.

Galaki, my budget is around $1200.

Remember the 1156 pin i7/i5 motherboard / cpus come with very few PCI-E lanes, not enough to do crossfire/sli and especially not if they use USB 3.0. You're better off with either an AM3 based AMD system or a 1366 pin i7 system if you want both crossfire and USB 3.0.

Thanks for the input, but I realized thats probably not gonna happen, as nice as it would be =(.  I don't think I'll be running anything that crazy in the near future that requires dual graphics cards, and I can't justify the cost, even to myself lol.  Is USB 3.0 worth getting? 

This is what I've got so far, Ive dropped from the i7 to the i5 quad simply because I don't think the extra $100 gets me that much more processing power, unless someone thinks its worth it?  If any of these are junk, incompatible, or I'm missing something, please let me know!  Thanks again for all the help.

 

Total so far: $1207    <--- not bad, thats about what I wanted to spend. Still need an OS, keyboard and mouse tho.

 

 -$16.00 Instant
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Epoch on 07 February 2010

@Sqilliam, that looks like a really good deal, I'm in Canada so prolly be a bit more expensive, but how does that processor compare to the i5 ?  I am wary of AMD processors, I had a bad experience when I first started with PC gaming. 

Sorry bout the formatting, copy paste didn't work out so well I guess.



Squilliam on 07 February 2010
Epoch said:
Squilliam said:

Remember the 1156 pin i7/i5 motherboard / cpus come with very few PCI-E lanes, not enough to do crossfire/sli and especially not if they use USB 3.0. You're better off with either an AM3 based AMD system or a 1366 pin i7 system if you want both crossfire and USB 3.0.

Thanks for the input, but I realized thats probably not gonna happen, as nice as it would be =(.  I don't think I'll be running anything that crazy in the near future that requires dual graphics cards, and I can't justify the cost, even to myself lol.  Is USB 3.0 worth getting? 

This is what I've got so far, Ive dropped from the i7 to the i5 quad simply because I don't think the extra $100 gets me that much more processing power, unless someone thinks its worth it?  If any of these are junk, incompatible, or I'm missing something, please let me know!  Thanks again for all the help.

 

Total so far: $1207    <--- not bad, thats about what I wanted to spend. Still need an OS, keyboard and mouse tho.

 

USB3.0 is good for high speed data transfer, but you can add it later if you want with a PCI-E card. I can't tell you whether or not you'll make use of it unfortunately.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341017&cm_re=ocz_modxstream_pro-_-17-341-017-_-Product

Might be a good choice for a PSU. You can pick up a 600W modular for $65 after promo code - $25 mail in rebate.= $40

I suggest you look at how much memory you'll need for 3D modeling, you may find 4GB isn't enough. Thats about all I can really add at this point.

 

 



Tease.

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Squilliam on 07 February 2010
Epoch said:

@Sqilliam, that looks like a really good deal, I'm in Canada so prolly be a bit more expensive, but how does that processor compare to the i5 ?  I am wary of AMD processors, I had a bad experience when I first started with PC gaming. 

Sorry bout the formatting, copy paste didn't work out so well I guess.

Thats cool. The CPU as you can see there performs roughly as good as the Intel equivalent however it does use slightly more power idle and slightly more power under load. http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545 it performs pretty close to where the i5 lives.

You can save money with the motherboard, with something like this for example for $90

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131603

Thats the big deal with the AMD CPUs, its not the CPU where you save money, but the motherboard and the AM3 boards can take any AMD CPU whereas the 1156 is more a mainstream platform from Intel. I've used AMD CPUs all the time and they make pretty great platforms for the $$$ if you include the motherboard as well. In any case you'll be good with either system I just wanted to offer you an alternative.

 



Tease.

IllegalPaladin on 07 February 2010
Squilliam said:
Epoch said:
Squilliam said:

Remember the 1156 pin i7/i5 motherboard / cpus come with very few PCI-E lanes, not enough to do crossfire/sli and especially not if they use USB 3.0. You're better off with either an AM3 based AMD system or a 1366 pin i7 system if you want both crossfire and USB 3.0.

Thanks for the input, but I realized thats probably not gonna happen, as nice as it would be =(.  I don't think I'll be running anything that crazy in the near future that requires dual graphics cards, and I can't justify the cost, even to myself lol.  Is USB 3.0 worth getting? 

This is what I've got so far, Ive dropped from the i7 to the i5 quad simply because I don't think the extra $100 gets me that much more processing power, unless someone thinks its worth it?  If any of these are junk, incompatible, or I'm missing something, please let me know!  Thanks again for all the help.

 

Total so far: $1207    <--- not bad, thats about what I wanted to spend. Still need an OS, keyboard and mouse tho.

 

USB3.0 is good for high speed data transfer, but you can add it later if you want with a PCI-E card. I can't tell you whether or not you'll make use of it unfortunately.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341017&cm_re=ocz_modxstream_pro-_-17-341-017-_-Product

Might be a good choice for a PSU. You can pick up a 600W modular for $65 after promo code - $25 mail in rebate.= $40

I suggest you look at how much memory you'll need for 3D modeling, you may find 4GB isn't enough. Thats about all I can really add at this point.

 

 

In which case 64-bit it is!

Now if I can only make use of my 64-bit Windows 7. I'm merely rocking an e2160 and 2gigs ddr2 :P



Squilliam on 07 February 2010
IllegalPaladin said:

In which case 64-bit it is!

Now if I can only make use of my 64-bit Windows 7. I'm merely rocking an e2160 and 2gigs ddr2 :P

Lulz! You're actually using more ram with the 64bit binaries than you would have been with the 32bit OS as the system has to load both the larger 64 bit ones and the 32 bit ones for compatibility!

You're well overdue for an upgrade, you know you wanna!



Tease.

Tanstalas on 07 February 2010

If you have the knowledge to build a system, why is this even a question? :)



Unicorns ARE real - They are just fat, grey and called Rhinos

1337 Gamer on 07 February 2010

Build your own PC its FAR cheaper. For $1500 you can build a screaming PC. All components will snap together its almost impossible to fuck it up and there's always tons of tutorials online should you need them.



Long Live SHIO!