Budget Gamer Pc

[Bo0oSt]

So i've finally received my tax return and decided its time to move on from my awesome Pentium 4 2.6g with a 20 gig hard-drive and onto something more modern. I've done a bit of of research - all of 2 hours last night and have come up with the following list of parts. Keep in mind im on a strict $900 Budget.

The PC is predominantly used for Gaming. What do you guys think about it? REMEMBER BUDGET PC HERE SO $950 is the absolute Max!

Processor: AM3 x4 955 $187

Motherboard: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H $180

RAM: 4GB Kit DDR3 1333 G.Skill $116

Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX260 $238

Power Supply: Corsair VX550 $ 102

Case: Antec 300 $65

Hard Drive: WD SATA 500 GIG $48

Total: $936

Thoughts?

Daniel

[R31Nismoid]

What screen & resolution are you going to be gaming at?

What games are you going to be playing?

They are the two most important questions to help this thread along

[UNR33L]

i5 and ati 5770

enough said.

OR if you will be playing at higher res / quality

5850.

[bozodos]

neither of those old hat video cards. Go a GTX 460 1GB, the Gigabyte ones are $279 at PC Case Gear (im using one in my build, maybe SLI later).

I'm also using the Antec 300 case, no gimmicky shit FTW.

[Bo0oSt]

Boys i do understand that the 5850 and the GTX 460 are better cards but lets keep in mind the $900 budget

r31 - I have no idea what you're talking about in terms of screen and resolution - Ill be playing games like starcraft 2

please please please remember im not looking for a computer which will eventually turn into Skynet and enslave mankind here

and im not being a smartass here but i have nfi what you're talking about when you say resolution rah rah rah... all i know is i have a 22inch monitor and want to play starcraft 2 lol

Why does everyone go for a i5? i mean the AMD process i looked up is a quadcore and runs at 3.2 whereas the i5 is a dual core and runs at 3.2 but costs $100 more?

Would the above system cut the mustard or can anyone suggest better replacement parts at the same cost?

[Mayuri Krab]

I'm guessing the monitor resolution is either 1680x1050 (if its old) or the more common 1920*1080... it is the # of pixels the monitor has.

& Gaming performance is largely depended on the GPU (video card) than the CPU, so forces your $$$ more on that area...

That AMD CPU is fine for your application IMO, although I would look at getting a current gen mid range video card instead.

Edited August 16, 2010 by Mayuri Krab

[R31Nismoid]

I ask my questions for reasons - i understand a tight budget here, so fear not i'll work within that no problems.

I'll do a price up for you later on when i get home.

However SC2 & similar games, all RTS, do require resonable CPU. Given the amount of processing and so on.

It's not as important in FPS games where the GPU does more of the work.

That said, with "ultra" on SC2, even my ATI 4890, overclocked, was struggling with one of the missions there was that much shit going on. (im running 1900x1200), Core2Duo @ 4.3ghz lol... And that was just campain.

I'd imagine online, 3v3 armies or similar it could be much worse. I'm yet to find that out though given I've not had much of a play at it yet.

CPU wise though in only sitting on around 50% for both cores, so not too intensive but then if it wasn't so highly overclocked i'd say at least 70%.

I'd also say a 22" monitor means 1080p (1900x1080), so you'll definately need a nice card to run the game.

The reason people chose I5 over AMD at the moment is not the chip clock speed, it's the way the chip works. Intel as so much further infront at the moment, and will be for at least the next 18months if not longer IMO. AMD is good for a super tight budget, but if you can afford the Intel then it's without question the choice at the moment.

I'll have a think either way as i currently have 4x PC's on order that i have to build for friends lol, all of them varying budgets too.

So hopefully a 5k order will get me a bit of a discount

Would you be open to 2nd hand parts? Given i might be upgrading in the near future, it could open a few doors for you.

[bozodos]

well tbqh, spending over 200 bucks on a GTX 260 is quite frankly insane when even the 768mb 460 is the same price. Low power consumption too. However if you're willing to spend a tad more, you can get the 1gig version, most of which come with factory overclocks up to around 5850 like performance.

IMO on such a tight budget i'd stick with the AMD, given their quad core is 100 bucks less than the equivalent i5.

[R31Nismoid]

Also I'm waiting to see what AMD do in turn against the Intel release of their cards.

It's going to force AMD to price cut as they are now priced incorrectly for their segments, hopefully it comes in the next few weeks and the 5850 drops down perfectly to mathc the NVidia offering

But ye, i wouldnt get a 260 either way.

[DivHunter]

well tbqh, spending over 200 bucks on a GTX 260 is quite frankly insane when even the 768mb 460 is the same price. Low power consumption too. However if you're willing to spend a tad more, you can get the 1gig version, most of which come with factory overclocks up to around 5850 like performance.

IMO on such a tight budget i'd stick with the AMD, given their quad core is 100 bucks less than the equivalent i5.

It's true the 260 is not worth buying anywhere near that price.

Don't include overclocking or the 5850 wins easily at 5870+ speeds. Putting it in the realm of a $450-600 card.

[liger]

well tbqh, spending over 200 bucks on a GTX 260 is quite frankly insane when even the 768mb 460 is the same price.

Theres a GTX 260 896MB on PC case gear for smack bang on the $200 mark.

also personally i dont touch the newer cards unless theres some form of aftermarket cooling ( be in air/water) available for them. After killing a GTX285 card because of the constant 90*c temps. i've learnt my lesson the hard way.

[DivHunter]

I lol'd hard at the SC2 bug that fried GPUs

Edited August 16, 2010 by DivHunter

[R31Nismoid]

See thats the joy, the ATi cards dont get anywhere near that hot, and the Nvidia 470 (or 475?) runs PERFECTLY cool as well.

Was only released in the last 2-3 weeks so you might not have seen it around.

Same as the ATi cards almost for temp which is some 20 degrees cooler than the GTX 2XX series.

Only taken Nvidia nearly 2 years to get a cooler card out

So hence ATi need to revisit pricing as the 470 (or 475?) is signifigantly cheaper.

Although doesnt fit into the OP's budget at this stage as it'll be around $320 AUD if my guess is accurate.

[R31Nismoid]

I lol'd hard at the SC2 bug that fried GPUs

haha same. Blizzard testing at it's best

Such dumb fken coding when you think about it. Doesnt even make logical sense why you'd leave it uncapped like that.

That said SC2 graphics honestly shithouse... But that's what you get for dragging your feet for 2+ years and deliberately delaying a release to offset WoW patches/installments etc.

DX9, graphics that dont look majorly better when compared to WC3 (8yrs old that is now)

Even the cut-scene's are pathetic IMO, could be SOOO much better.

The gameplay is good, online setup is hands down the worse system I've ever played with though.

I start a SC2 thread later

[Dark26]

You can cap the frame rates in SC2 until Blizzard comes up with a patch, by putting:

frameratecap=60

frameratecapglue=30

In the Documents\StarCraft II\Variables.txt file.

Got them from a video.

There was another problem where I couldn't log on when I first got SC2 cause it said that battle.net is down and to try again later, even though my brother could log in fine. A lot of people had this problem actually...although this is getting a bit off topic so I'll leave it for the SC2 thread.

[Bo0oSt]

btw boys i dont mind going to like 5 different places if the parts are cheaper...

[DivHunter]

Check out the forsale section at http://forums.overclockers.com.au, if you can, not sure if you can access it straight away.

[bozodos]

nah you need to be there for 3 months I think Div, PC Case Gear in my researching are the cheapest, occasionally you can find slightly cheaper prices through StaticICE, but that could be at any shonky vendor online.

TBQH, the ATI drivers suck donkey balls, and that alone was enough to make me look at a Nvidia solution. Pretty much all of the 460's on the market run some kind of aftermarket cooling, and yes most can be overclocked up to a 5870 spec, but you get less power consumption, noise and you do get the dubious benefit of CUDA and PhysX. Things get even better in SLI, but that's not applicable to this build.

No point buying hardware that's already well out of date.

[R31Nismoid]

CUDA & PhysX are at this point, useless in terms of a gaming GPU.

I dont expect that to change in 18months majorly either.

[bozodos]

cuda is good for transcoding, and yeah you wouldn't buy a card purely cause it has physx, tbqh im surprised you haven't lashed out on a new system yet ash