Oh that I like .... If I go to there site I can build a very Similar spec with ssd and win8.1 for £511 ... Or go i5 and gtx for £70 more
Oh that I like .... If I go to there site I can build a very Similar spec with ssd and win8.1 for £511 ... Or go i5 and gtx for £70 more
ok .. possibly the last question ... thanks by the way for all the advice guys, I appreciate your help !
Lets say you had £519
what would be better
with a 250gb ssd - smaller CPU but bigger GPU or vice versa
FX Six Core 4.1Ghz, 240gb SSD, 8gb 1600Mhz, AMD R7 260X 2gb
AMD 6400K 4.1Ghz, 240gb SSD, 8gb 1600Mhz, AMD R9 270X 2gb
forgo the SSD and get a regular drive allowing the bigger GPU and bigger CPU
FX Six Core 4.1Ghz 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz AMD R9 270X 2gb
Asus 6600K 4.2Ghz 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz AMD R9 270X 2gb
OR is it worth waiting a month and spending another £50 on an 8 core
FX 8350 4.2Ghz 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz AMD R9 270X 2gb
or £80more and going intel
Intel Core I5 4460 1tb 8gb 1600Mhz GTX 760 2gb
ALL of them come with Win 8 or 7
Ok so the 6400k.
The 6400k is an APU, this is basically a slower AMD processor with a relatively basic(ish) gpu on the chip. It means you dont need a video card.
Now the 6400 is not fast, and its graphics system is not fast. It is a low end chip for very cheep builds. Even the top end A10 APU is not massively quick compared to an fx6300 + descrete video card. Ok the APU's are faster than just an intel cpu with no graphics card but for a proper gaming machine stay away.
So forget the 6400k as its not designed for what you want.
Imho the one to go for right now is the FX + R9 270x. You get a decent processor plus a decent video card. However both are no balls of fire.
Of your "Wait and see" options...
The fx8350 is a decent processor (even though a lot of review sites have a bummer on it, its actually quite a good chip) but... i am not convinced you need it at, i would spend the coin on a better video card.
As for the i5 option and gtx 760, i would definitally not. The 760 is rubbish, sorry but it just is compared to a r9 280 or 280x with 3gb of ram, nope for gaming i wouldnt. You will not see the difference in gaming between the cpu's but you will notice a big difference in video card capability.
Imho if you want to wait, i would give it a month and get an fx 6350k (the piledriver version) which is a better cpu than the 6300k and get an r9 280x as the video card if you can stretch to it. This gives you a decent cpu and last generations top end video card.
As an example of how little cpu performance is these days i run an ancient old intel 9650 (overclocked to 3.8ghz) with a watercooled r9 290 and its epic on 1080p (ok it soon will have a cpu upgrade to bring it up a bit but its not getting a 350quid i7)
I agree with sideways on the APU - forget the 6400k.
The six core FX-6xxx will be fine for you, those added cores may come in handy if you like to skype or stream etc while playing games, and compared to the entry i5 processors at that price id go for it.
Only thing I dont agree with is about the GTX 760 - true, the R9 280x is a better card, but you pay for it. £200 versus £165 ish for a GTX 760. I have a GTX 670 reference, only rated very slightly higher than a GTX 760, and I have no problem running Battlefield 4 or Skyrim (with full HD textures) on ultra at 1080p.
Just saying dont discount it, thats all. See what offers you can get if you decide to buy parts separate.
the 280 and 280x are more future proof with 3gb of ram, 2gb is not really enough to be honest even on the lower spec cards like these.
A non reference 280 is less than the price of a 760 and is roughly the same performance but with the extra ram, a non ref 280x is a fair bit faster for ~20 quid more and has that extra memory as well.
Imho its a no brainier.
Nvidia's products are fine bits of kit but they price them totally stupid and put them in price ranges that dont make a lot of sense (The 780ti at ~130 quid more than non ref 290x is hilarious as its only what 6 to 8% faster!!!) and the joke that is the Titan Z at 3000 dollars as opposed to the faster and quieter 295x2 at less than half the price shows you pay an Nvidia tax for ... what??
2gb is fine for 1080p, at least for the next couple of years - I dont struggle yet.
If you want to mess with bigger resolutions then yeah, 3gb is the winner.
I agree than Nvidia are literally morons when it comes to prices, and OP dont get sucked in by the fanboy fights.
But then again eBay has some very tasty deals now and again, as does overclockers with their open box deals so keep an eye out when you buy.
Theres a lot of crap on the internet about driver support, but as i've not used AMD graphics cards I cant really comment.
Put it this way, i'll be looking at a 280x and i5 for my next PC - but at your price point the FX-6xxx makes sense too. I doubt there will be much difference, especially when you get upping those voltages!
2gb is already a problem at 1080p right now.
Mantle (which is only on amd right now) pushes ram hard in games like BF4, its not as big a deal when running dx11 but if you start to get games with mantle support then you will want the extra memory.
Its also w*nk when you go to crossfire or SLI, as 2 x 2gb card do not give you 4 gb - its still a 2gb frame buffer.
I would simply not purchase a video card (from any manufacturer) at the moment with 2gb.
We shall just have to agree to disagree then, I think thats a little unfair.
Personally I have no problems with current games on a 2gb card, and with a £500 budget I cant recommend blowing half of it on the GPU without having to seriously scrimp on the rest of the build. For example, an FX processor you need a decent CPU cooler for overclocking, and with a 3gb R9 280/280X and overclocked FX-6xxx I would be looking at a quality PSU above all else.
Spending more like £120-150 on a used GTX 670 or new 760, gives him the space to maybe get the SSD he wants, or Windows, and im willing to bet that with a 6-core FX or low end i5, the difference between a GTX670 and an R9 280 will be miniscule.
FX-6350 and cooler, maybe the hyper 212 evo - £130
decent 990FX Mobo - £60
1tb 7200rpm HDD - £35
8gb RAM - £60
GPU either a GTX 670/760 or basic R9 280 - £150
cheap ATX case - £35
decent 600w PSU - £60
Then a little headroom for postage etc. Still comes in at £530 without an OS.
Its a gaming pc, the majority of the cost should go on the graphics card - thats what does the hard work.
If you want to go down second hand then it opens up a whole lot of possibilities, i have just spec'd new but second hand things are different
However i still dont see the problem with putting in a new 280 which is cheaper than a new 760 (and similar in performance) or spending maybe 20 quid more on a 280x which is going to be a fair bit faster and have more vram.
Ohh and overclocking, the spec's being discussed are for overclocking - hence why things like the Black edition and non reference video cards are being brought up. Turn those clocks up, its free performance. My 290 is running faster than reference 780ti's and was less than half the price of one.
ok, lets say that £500 is too limiting and maybe ~700 is a more realistic amount
i5 4690 vs fx8350
even though the fx is 8 core and clockable the inter webs is still saying i5 due to its single thread power .. is this just intel fanboism
and
GTX770 vs r9 280x
again people are siding with the 770 - for single monitor performance its quicker ?
Agreed ??? ... they both work out the same price
^^ in addition to the above the 4690k is only £20 more ... so if I had a z87 board I could overclock ... whats required to over clock .. obviously cooling, but can I do that with 1333 memory or do I need a faster men like 1866 ?????
RAM's sweet spot (ie, best combination of price and performance) on Intel CPUs is 1600MHz. I've got 2400MHz RAM in my system and I doubt that it makes any significant difference outside of benchmarking (I only got it because it was as cheap that day as standard 1600MHz stuff).
I've stayed out of this thread until now because there is nothing I could say that would be helpful on a £500 budget build. That said, there are a few general points I'd like to make :-
1. 2GB of RAM on a graphics card is NOT enough RAM to run some games these days when you start messing with high levels of anti-aliasing and/or downsampling (where the game is rendered internally at a much higher resolution and then the resolution downsampled to the display resolution - it's one way of reducing aliasing effects). Yes, it's in extreme cases that 2GB isn't enough, but I wouldn't settle for less than 3GB these days.
2. ATI/AMD vs NVidia. I've been a long-term fan of ATI cards but I've always bought them knowing that they're not as good as an NVidia. I bought them knowing that I was being a cheapskate. It's like buying a Ford Focus when you actually want a BMW. You know you want a BMW but your brain keeps telling you "this Ford will do just fine and it's a lot cheaper".
3. SSD. All the way. But make sure you get a 240GB drive - 120GB won't be enough
4. Intel vs AMD. A bit like ATI vs NVidia. Both will do the job, but really, you want the Intel processor.
5. Overclocking. Get a good air cooler (the BeQuiet DarkRock or DarkRock Pro are incredibly good air coolers) and turn the processor speed up. As long as there's good airflow in the case, that's all you need to do.
Those are just a few of my thoughts from reading through the thread again.
Cock ... I am at £900 now
That's more like itOriginally Posted by Johnny
.
Oh and as an aside, I put a system together for one of the traders here a little while back, based around a 4570K (overclocked lightly to just over 4GHz) using about the most reliable parts I can find (rather than the out and out fastest) and that came to just over £1K, so £900 should yield a pretty good system.
The thing that struck me the most, Johnny, is how disappointed you'd have been with a £500 system. Cheap PCs are horrible things and given your favour towards Apple products (just an observation, not a criticism), which don't tend to cut back on the quality of parts used, I just knew that you were not going to be happy with a £500 system and you'd be on here moaning about it from the word go. Specced up properly, a Windows system can be both very fast and very reliable. Sadly, a lot of people seem to think you can put together a good quality, reliable and fast system for about 10p.
Couple of pointers for brands to look at, if you favour quality over the ultimate performance :-
RAM : Kingston - I cannot remember the last time I had to send a duff Kingston RAM module back under RMA.
GPU : Gigabyte - their 'Windforce' cards are superb
Motherboard : Gigabyte (yes yes, I know all the gamers **** over Asus motherboards, but they are hideously expensive for what you actually get.)
Case : Fractal Design (lovely design, not that expensive and easy to tuck cables away for good airflow)
Cooler : BeQuiet (nowhere near as expensive as Noctua but just as effective in real world tests)
SSD : Kingston HyperX (for good value performance. Samsung Pro or Corsair Neutron GTX for out and out performance, but there's not that much in it at the top end. A HyperX drive will see Windows 8.1 cold booting in under 15 seconds from pushing the power button - that's a proper boot, not the mickey-mouse 'hybrid' boot that Windows sets up as standard (which you should disable by the way, as it is responsible for LOTS of problems).
I'm glad this thread is here - I've just got this years bonus
In theory I'm only buying Mobo, CPU, an SSD (If I can stretch to it - and I want to try) and maybe a cooler if my current one can't be transfered...
Looks like I'm looking at an I5 based system if I can then. (Been using AMD stuff fo so long now, my last Intel pc is a P III laptop!)
FMG - if you're not going to be overclocking then the standard cooler will do the job just fine. If you are going to overclock, then for an air cooler you'll struggle to beat the cooler I've mentioned (and given its price, it is almost impossible to beat) especially as it's also damn quiet. Solid state drive prices really have tumbled so it shouldn't be too big a stretch to get one in your budget (although capacity might be a problem). Bear in mind that Intel are releasing new CPUs later this year at the high-end, so if that's the area you were looking at, then you might want to hold off (if you can).
On the subject of SSD drives, I checked the state of my (nearly) 3-year old OCZ drive about a month ago - this is my main Windows boot drive and has all my main applications installed on it. It has only worn out 15% of the spare capacity, meaning it's likely to go on for another 20 years at this rate before exhausting all the spare capacity. The old worries about longevity/durability really are a thing of the past
Just picking out this one. I agree with your other generalisations, but this one strikes me unexpected.
I've had both nVidia and AMD cards over the years and back in the day, I would agree with your point. For someone who doesn't like the sweeping statements made by people harking back to the good old days regarding Norton anti-virus, I'm surprised you still follow the consensus that AMD aren't as good as nVidia.
The 280/290(X) series of cards have dropped drastically in price now, still well under the equivalent price of an nVidia alternative and easily as powerful.
If I wanted to spend ridiculous money on a GPU (i.e top end) on the assumption that 'more money = more power' I still wouldn't buy a Titan Black. Yes nVidia make some fantastic cards and I do like some of the technology they pack in that perhaps AMD need to compete against rather than blindly fanlove mantle, but I disagree that they are the cheap, ginger-haired stepchild of the superior nVidia bloodline.
At the moment I run dual SLI 290X cards watercooled. I haven't felt the need to clock them as I run a single 1440p monitor with everything under the sun set to ultra. Perhaps I need to try out an nVidia card again?
I've got an AMD card myself Ross (a Gigabyte Windforce 7950) but I bought it knowing full well that I was buying a cheaper card than the NVidia equivalent
You're right though, my statement was a little too sweeping and short on detail.
so 3gb R9 280 or 2GB gtx770 ??
scores show the GTX770 to be quicker and use less power on single screens, which is what I will be running ...... but you think that 3GB is needed these days as games rely more on memory ?
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