Budget Gaming Rig: Good or Bad?

[StrangleHold]

Just pullin your chain man

Doesnt really matter to me. Either way would not make a diifference between the 2100 and the 955 as long as they get a AM3+ board. Only a benchmark could only tell the difference. Both have good upgrade paths. Upgrade paths as of right now, sure the 2100 has it beat. Nobody knows how good Zambezi will be. But if Zambezi turns out to be as fast or even close clock for clock and a killer overclocker, plus they are all unlocked. You might be pulling fingers.

 

[Okedokey]

Agreed mate, and thats the point isn't it. You could get an AMD chip now (which is slower) in the hope that in a few months you upgrade again (making the cost double), and only to find out that the i3 is still faster. OR, you can wait for the release of LGA2011 and get the low end chip. Either way, the OPs best interest for this purpose (budget gaming) is the i3 2100 or the i5 2500K. Really no argument.

 

[jonnyp11]

yes, he'll find the i3 faster when the cheapest bulldozer is meant to compete with the i5 at the price of 190, that will be beaten by the 125 buck i3 2100

 

[StrangleHold]

yes, he'll find the i3 faster when the cheapest bulldozer is meant to compete with the i5 at the price of 190, that will be beaten by the 125 buck i3 2100

Zambezi isnt going to compete with the i3 series at all. The Zambezi 8000/6000 and 4000 series are to match up against the line up of Intels i5 and i7 series. The A8 series are against the i3

 

[wolfeking]

in that case, if the A8 is any foresight, Zambezi will kick butt.

 

[jonnyp11]

Zambezi isnt going to compete with the i3 series at all. The Zambezi 8000/6000 and 4000 series are to match up against the line up of Intels i5 and i7 series. The A8 series are against the i3

Did you read what i said? i was sarcastically saying that the i3 2100 would compete with the 4000 series price 65 bucks higher (supposedly) that is meant to be competing with the i5, not what you said.

 

[jonnyp11]

as for wolfe, the a8 has nothing to do with bulldozer, it is a slightly tweaked athlon ii with an integrated gpu in there.

 

[wolfeking]

I said foresight. do you not know what that means. You can have foresight with two unconnected things. Foresight, as i know it, is looking at one thing a company makes, and guessing what the rest will be like.
Basically, if the A8 is to compete with i3-2100, and outperforms it, and Zambezi is to compete with the i5 and i7, then it too will (by guessing) outperform them.

 

[jonnyp11]

actually it doesn't, you probably found the 1 bench were the i3 is beaten. And i know what foresight is and all, but bulldozer will kill anything out by amd now, anything by intel is a different matter though, since they massacred amd basically.

 

[wolfeking]

actually not.

 

[StrangleHold]

actually it doesn't, you probably found the 1 bench were the i3 is beaten. And i know what foresight is and all, but bulldozer will kill anything out by amd now, anything by intel is a different matter though, since they massacred amd basically.

For Gaming using the onboard GPU the A8 kicks the i3 butt and equals or even beats the i5/i7. But the i beats it in CPU performance. So you can see where its going when AMD APU gets better cores.

 

[jonnyp11]

yeah, i know the apu is beast, but the graphics benches are the only place, he posted pics showing a bench where the a8 killed the i3, only graphics based benches will show that, and we were talking about the more powerful processor, the i3 is more powerful for a processor, a8 is more powerful for gpu

 

[QwertyMusicMan]

1) several reasons:

1. It is more upgradable. The board I linked has 4 DIMM slots as opposed to the 2 on the one you put. This means that although you have enough memory now, when you want to upgrade later you will have to get rid of all of your memory to upgrade. It also means the total maximum capacity is less.

2. Look at the PCIe slot on the board you picked, and the location of the SATA ports. A graphics card with a 2-slot cooler is going to be obstructing one, if not two of your SATA ports, meaning in reality, after you have your hard drive and DVD drive in there, you have no extra expansion slots should you later wish to add another hard drive or optical drive.

3. The one you picked does not have AM3+ support. Again, this makes for much better upgradablitity (real word? ), because when this system doesn't quite cut it any more, you are stuck, you would have to get a new CPU AND new motherboard, rather than just getting a new Bulldozer (AMD's new line of processors) chip, which will work on AM3+ boards, but not AM3

4. Chipset. The chipset of the board I picked will give you better performance than the one you picked.

2) I doubt you need more than 4GB. I frequently sit with at least 2 games open, TeamSpeak, Google Chrome with at least 10+ tabs, several files/folders, Xfire, Steam, all open at the time, and not rarely another program, be it an FTP client, Photoshop, calculator, whatever, and on 4GB, have yet to see my system go over 75% memory usage.

3) Wattage is not everything. The one I linked is of a much higher quality. You can get 700W PSU's for $20, when you can also get 700W PSU's for $100. The reason why is obvious - quality. The $20 PSU will be less efficient, less reliable and will not actually be able to output 700W, because of the distribution of power.

The components which use the most power, your CPU and video card, take power from the 12V rail of your PSU. Lower end units will not have most of the Amps on the 12V rail, but instead on the 5V and 3.3V rails. This means the manufacturers can claim they have a high wattage power supply, when really, it is no good because the system can't use that power. All that will end up happening is you will overload your already poor power supply.

4) What water? And it already has decent airflow. If you wanted, you could get another fan to draw air in from the front, but it isn't essential to do so

5) Yes, but bare in mind you will also take a performance hit. If you need to cut some corners to save some money:

Change the CPU to: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103871

Change the hard drive to: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769

Change the memory to: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211364

6) I would take this set up over what you have now, however if there is an option to save up a little more, even just $50, you could improve the system further. With a $650 budget, you could change your video card to:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130570

which would greatly improve gaming performance.

Without that though, and just using the set up I put above, you will be playing every single game out now and in the near future without any problems

So you would highly recommend the new processor and video card?
The new case has good ventilation, and will fit everything?
I'm really most interested in Battlefield 3, and do you think that this setup would run it well? To clarify, can this setup run most games on higher settings, period?

 

[jonnyp11]

you might be able to play bf3 on 1024x768 with low settings, and hat's probably be pushing it.

 

[Okedokey]

in that case, if the A8 is any foresight, Zambezi will kick butt.

Posting graphics based benchies is a waste of time. Also, if you are suggesting buying a AM+3 chip now and upgrading later to BD, then you are better off getting an i5 2500K, which is not going to be bottlenecked any time soon and would be cheaper overall.

 

[pc_fanatic]

Posting graphics based benchies is a waste of time. Also, if you are suggesting buying a AM+3 chip now and upgrading later to BD, then you are better off getting an i5 2500K, which is not going to be bottlenecked any time soon and would be cheaper overall.

Exactly why I was going with intel. With amd's bulldozer who knows if will be any good? Intel however, always delivers gaming performance. When you consider the gaming benchmarks intel actually provides more bang for buck. Lower end i3 or i5 is plenty. Most people get cpus that are complete overkill. They should've spent the extra money on better gpu instead.

 

[wolfeking]

Intel however, always delivers gaming performance.

that is just plain BS. I know we are talking in this thread about desktops, but an i3-380 can easily be out performed by a AMD. Especially when both are paired with the same GPU.

 

[pc_fanatic]

I've made up my mind and I'm going with intel. I just can't go with AMD knowing that I'm paying the same but getting less performance. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.

 

[QwertyMusicMan]

you might be able to play bf3 on 1024x768 with low settings, and hat's probably be pushing it.

What limits my current setup, and how could I change it for the better? How much money would it cost, total, with the new setup that you suggest?

Thanks!

 

[jonnyp11]

to get maxed out settings on games today it costs about 1k, to get maxed out settings in a game like bf3 today, it would be closer to 1.5-2k, to max something out is extremely expensive, and rediuculous, maxed out would also mean like 1080i es, which i see no need for unless on a tv like my 65" hdtv, otherwise the amount of detail realy won't be noticed too much, and won't make the game bad or anything, i play on a 17" monitor on 1024x768 most of the time and it looks fine to me, once it's on 1280x1024 i can't tell a diffence, then again it is most likely the monitor, but it doesn't need to be any sharper to me.