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Forums - PC - Building a gaming PC, need advice from you hardware experts

zarx on 12 September 2013
bugrimmar said:
I only need to buy the innards of the CPU. I already have a power supply, mouse, monitor, keyboard, case, etc. That's why $500.


Could you tell us what powersuply, case etc you have? Just to make sure

So on your profile it says you are in the UK so is that £500? Because that is a lot more money than $500...

Also what games are you looking to be playing mostly?

The more information you can give us the easier it will be to make sure that you are getting the right stuff.

 

Win 8 is fine, but if you already have Win 7 there is very little reason to upgrade.



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disolitude on 12 September 2013
CGI-Quality said:
disolitude said:

 

I appreciate the comment above, but I do want to state that I enjoy debating. So yeah if the topic is repetitive, its most likely cause of that... :)

One final statement I want to make is that Intel only pulled ahead of AMD in terms of gaming performance with Sandy Bridge. With the old i7s, they were trading blows with cheaper Phenoms II X4s and getting beaten by the similarly priced Phenom X6 cpus. Sure they had their 1000 dollar i7 980X, but for gaming the price is a non starter. But after Sandy Bridge it was obviously better to go with Intel for high end...

I personally believe that if intel weren't such stingy fucks they could wipe the floor with AMD. They just don't want to set the bar too high but would rather milk every dollar they can out of incremental performance products.

I remember your thread about "Intel toying with AMD". This reminds me of that, but one has to wonder what are they waiting for. I feel the same about nVIDIA. If they have this beastly tech to run all over AMD, what's the hold up?


Competition drives innovation and if Nvidia and Intel arent challenged, they really have no reason to push the bar any higher than expected.

I think that GPU race can swing either way as AMD (ATI) has beaten Nvidia several times in the last 5 years or so. HD5000 series vs GTX 400 and even HD 7900 vs GTX 600 can be considered as a close battle. But on the CPU side AMD really can't compete with intel and Intel smartly recognized that ARM is their biggest competitorr hence why Haswell is all about power consumption.

With that said, if Steamroller does come out on an FX platform and offers a 15-20% improvement per clock over Piledrive FX CPUs, Intel may be persuaded to kick it up a notch.



Captain_Tom on 12 September 2013
disolitude said:
CGI-Quality said:
Captain_Tom said:

SLI and everything wouldn't apply to a simple build, as you know, so I offer Intel as an option, because even the cheaper procs offer better performance than comparable AMD processors. Gaming rigs under $1K offer good cases for Intel, as well. With $500 just for his CPU, I don't see an issue with Intel, but if he wants to save, then no doubt, go with AMD.

Of course everyone doesn't buy top level gear, but I think price vs performance complaints toward Intel are vastly exaggerated.

You know what I will just jump in and try to end this debate right now with these two facts I think we can all agree on:

-Many people act like all of Intel's CPU's are crazy overpriced.   This is not true.  $120 for an i3 is fine, and $50 for a 2.9GHz Celeron is a steal!

-Many people act like AMD CPU's are crazy weak POS.  This is insanely not true.  Some AMD CPU's beat some intel and vice versa.  It depends on which ones we are talking about.

Overall just make sure you buy at least a quadcore or higher.  PEACE!

Nah, Disolitude knows his stuff, so I'm not meaning to come at him like he's misinformed. I just know this debate will never end if he and I go at it!

However, I agree that both situations can be exaggerated, but I was under the impression he wanted a newer CPU, in which case, I suggested Intel. Unless I didn't get the memo, later Processors tend to sway in Intel's favor, and this is confirmed in some of the tests that I've done on the newer hardware. Higher benchmarks and better gaming performance (even though, some AMD CPUs worked better in Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, and Far Cry 3).

I appreciate the comment above, but I do want to state that I enjoy debating. So yeah if the topic is repetitive, its most likely cause of that... :)

One final statement I want to make is that Intel only pulled ahead of AMD in terms of gaming performance with Sandy Bridge. With the old i7s, they were trading blows with cheaper Phenoms II X4s and getting beaten by the similarly priced Phenom X6 cpus. Sure they had their 1000 dollar i7 980X, but for gaming the price is a non starter. But after Sandy Bridge it was obviously better to go with Intel for high end...

I personally believe that if intel weren't such stingy fucks they could wipe the floor with AMD. They just don't want to set the bar too high but would rather milk every dollar they can out of incremental performance products.

Amen!  It astonishes me that an $80 Phenom II x4 965 from 5 years ago can still run most games maxed out.  That is insane!



Captain_Tom on 12 September 2013

I remember your thread about "Intel toying with AMD". This reminds me of that, but one has to wonder what are they waiting for. I feel the same about nVIDIA. If they have this beastly tech to run all over AMD, what's the hold up?


As for Intel, idk I think they are just diverting most of their resources towards ultra-mobile and graphics.  Hopefully Steamroller will beat the living crap out of Haswell (20% clock-for-clock increase, 5% clock increase, and same price would do it) so that Intel gets back on it.

 

Now Nvidia... idk they have never dominated AMD performance wise.  They just simply advertise like they do.



Captain_Tom on 12 September 2013
CGI-Quality said:
Captain_Tom said:
disolitude said:

I appreciate the comment above, but I do want to state that I enjoy debating. So yeah if the topic is repetitive, its most likely cause of that... :)

One final statement I want to make is that Intel only pulled ahead of AMD in terms of gaming performance with Sandy Bridge. With the old i7s, they were trading blows with cheaper Phenoms II X4s and getting beaten by the similarly priced Phenom X6 cpus. Sure they had their 1000 dollar i7 980X, but for gaming the price is a non starter. But after Sandy Bridge it was obviously better to go with Intel for high end...

I personally believe that if intel weren't such stingy fucks they could wipe the floor with AMD. They just don't want to set the bar too high but would rather milk every dollar they can out of incremental performance products.

Amen!  It astonishes me that an $80 Phenom II x4 965 from 5 years ago can still run most games maxed out.  That is insane!

Really? Wow! Never would have imagined that!

My brother was forced to switch from an i7-920 @ 3.2 GHz to a Phenom II x4 @ 4.0 GHz (Long Story).  He got slightly better performance.



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Viper1 on 13 September 2013
Captain_Tom said:
CGI-Quality said:
Captain_Tom said:

Amen!  It astonishes me that an $80 Phenom II x4 965 from 5 years ago can still run most games maxed out.  That is insane!

Really? Wow! Never would have imagined that!

My brother was forced to switch from an i7-920 @ 3.2 GHz to a Phenom II x4 @ 4.0 GHz (Long Story).  He got slightly better performance.

If that's the only difference (i7-920@3.2Ghz and PhenomIIX4965@4.0Ghz), then I'm going to have to call it into serious question.  Applications that are heavily, and I mean very heavily, dependant on clock speed or memory bandwidth may see an edge with the AMD CPU.  Otherwise, the 920 wins most battles.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-965,2389.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2819/2

By the way, the Phenom II X4 965 launched at $245, not $80.



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withdreday on 13 September 2013

Here's my recommendation: 6-8 core AMD, 3.3-3.5 GHz (higher if you can go for it) and a 760 GTX or ATi 7950-7970. I would rec the top end gpus, but so far, I don't think they're worth it. 8-10 GBs of Ram and your choice of storage, but I prefer 2TBs.

 

That system should play BF4 and Rome 2 at pretty decent settings, and it shou;d hold up for the next few 2-3 years as well.



Captain_Tom on 13 September 2013
Viper1 said:
Captain_Tom said:
CGI-Quality said:
Captain_Tom said:

Amen!  It astonishes me that an $80 Phenom II x4 965 from 5 years ago can still run most games maxed out.  That is insane!

Really? Wow! Never would have imagined that!

My brother was forced to switch from an i7-920 @ 3.2 GHz to a Phenom II x4 @ 4.0 GHz (Long Story).  He got slightly better performance.

If that's the only difference (i7-920@3.2Ghz and PhenomIIX4965@4.0Ghz), then I'm going to have to call it into serious question.  Applications that are heavily, and I mean very heavily, dependant on clock speed or memory bandwidth may see an edge with the AMD CPU.  Otherwise, the 920 wins most battles.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-965,2389.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2819/2

By the way, the Phenom II X4 965 launched at $245, not $80.


-My point was  the Phenom and i7 traded blows.  However the Phenom was $245 while the i7 was $305, used less energy, had far cheaper motherboards, and can still be used today in modern AM3+ Mobo's that have USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s.

-The phenom is $80 now.  I never said it was at launch.  But even now a 5 year old processer is still beating the latet i3's while offering full 16/16 SLI options.  It was a beast!



landguy1 on 13 September 2013

The responses already given allow you many options. Unfortunately, you can see that it depends on who you talk to. I historically would recommend Intel, but advise you to just shop around and pretend to build both systems and see where you end up. Pick the least financially painful of the 2.



bugrimmar on 13 September 2013

Alright, sorry for the late reply everyone. I wasn't aware there would be such serious discussion here about my little question :)

Well anyway, from your responses, I think that AMD seems to give more value for money, and it seems that the performance difference isn't all that large. So I will go with AMD, so that I can afford more doodads for other things. Which AMD processor would equal an i5?

And I will be going with the Radeon 7870. It seems to be the best for the price range. With RAM, is 16gb too much? The guy at the computer store is telling me I need it.

Thank you everyone :)