New Gameing & Monitor setup on a budget

NO. Never do this. It always ends in tears. Prebuilt systems are never as upgradeable as you think they are.

 

Never, never, never buy an already built branded PC. It's generally cheaper, faster and much higher quality to build your own.

As for the intel/amd debate, I don't see how the 750 is that much better than the 955/965... when looking at the spec's and looking at the price, it fits to me. The AMD's are slightly slow, but noticeably cheaper.

But since you are on a cheaper budget it might be worth looking into getting an AMD Dual Core for VERY cheap and unlocking it to a Quad core.Just make sure your mobo is a SB750 and you will have acc or "Advanced Clock Calibration" and you'll be on your way. Theres a lot of info on the web to show you how to do it, look it up and give it a read to see if its something your interested in.

Really quickly, a GigaByte board: ($109/$95 after MIR + $7 Shipping)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378&cm_re=sb750-_-13-128-378-_-Product

And a CPU to unlock: ($99 + Free Shipping)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...680&cm_re=phenom_II_x2-_-19-103-680-_-Product

So thats $200 + $135 + $8 = 343 for the Intel and $95 + $7 + 99 = $201 for the AMD saving you $142 and you would then have a Quad core system instead of a dual core.

But as samm said, intels perform faster than AMD's but even at stock speeds I'd say getting quad core and saving $142 is well worth the slight performance per core difference, if any at this point.

 

I never said the i5 750 were amazingly faster than the 965, but there is a little difference. It was posted in response to your 'how does a 2.6Ghz intel compare to a 3.6Ghz AMD'. Well, if 3.4 is slightly slower, 3.6 is about right. From that point you have 10% or less extra performance to gain from overclocking an AMD, versus 50+ with an Intel.
I advise against telling people who aren't certain on PC builds to unlock cores. It doesn't always work, isn't always stable, and so on.
Most cheap AMD dual cores can't overclock very far when turned into quads, and if you're willing to unlock cores, you're willing to overclock let's face it. In a games scenario, I would say stick with a fast dual core, i.e. an i3, or a fast quad core, i.e. an i5.

 

I'm sorry but I KNOW intels perform faster but you make it seem as though its a no-contest.
AMD's offer budget performance. Intel offer faster performance, with a hefty price tag.

This guy is looking to run some not so top of the line games when it comes to graphics and I feel pushing him into an expensive I3/I5/I7 setup isn't really needed. He can easily eat away those games and much much more with a much cheaper system.

I think AMD would be ideal for his purpose and keep some money in his pocket. As for a GPU, a 4850, although an aging GPU now will eat those games live and keep your GPU price around or under $100. Although with a lot of games stating they will have DX11 updates in the future, a 5750/5770 might be a decent budget investment to keep you going in mid-range games for a while.

I only recently got rid of a 4670 which played assassins creed on high flawlessly (Creed has higher requirements than the games you listed) and all cards I suggest to you are far superior to a 4670.

It's nice to future-proof your system a bit, but going too far for what you need is wasting money. Mid-Low end gamers shouldn't waste money on high end pricey parts, as upgrades will be cheaper and easier in the long run, while keeping you up to date in tech rather than making a complete new build every 3-4 years.

 

Here's where opinion starts to cloud fact. Core i3 setups really aren't expensive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115222&cm_re=i3_530-_-19-115-222-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=4GB_PC3_12800_Corsair-_-20-145-260-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...406&cm_re=gigabyte_p55-_-13-128-406-_-Product

$330 for CPU, 4GB of good RAM and a good quality motherboard.

Given that the i3 CPU I have chosen is faster than any AMD CPU ever made, even fast enough to beat some AMD quad cores in multi-threaded applications, you'd have to be on a budget lower than this one to warrant buying AMD for a games system.
Throw in a card like the HD4850:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102824&cm_re=hd_4850-_-14-102-824-_-Product
a PSU like the Corsair CX 400W:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139008&Tpk=CMPSU-400CX
a good case like the Antec Three Hundred:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066&Tpk=Three hundred illusion
A decent hard drive and optical drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6283&cm_re=750GB_Black-_-22-136-283-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136167&cm_re=22x_LG-_-27-136-167-_-Product

and we're all done, at less than $650 all in.
This means we can add a nice 22" monitor like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1278&cm_re=22"_samsung-_-24-001-278-_-Product

and have the whole setup done for $860. It's not a quad core system, but it is an admirable games machine.

 

Thats a decent build on the cheap keeping with intel. But I still think you came on too strong on the intel side and made it seem faster than it is, granted they are faster than AMD's, but you make it seem like its 2x faster

So yea, I think that build in the price range will be the most affordable for the performance. It's def worth it. Only problem Intel has to selve now is their expensive upgrade paths. The one thing AMD has left They need to get in the game of higher performance and play catch up... something I hate to say

 

3.6/2.66 isn't double... :S I made the point that there's a substantial difference, and there is.
I don't really see the point with expensive upgrade paths either. The one problem with Intel's lineup is that you need an LGA1366 socket to support the i7 9 series and 6-core processors, but chances are, if you built a low or midrange system to start with, the successor to it will also be low or midrange, so you may well be able to keep the current board/RAM or whatever.
Also remember, that despite the fact that intel have used a new socket, Socket 775 lasted from the early P4 Prescotts many years ago until now. There is more to uprade paths than sockets - AM2/AM3 may well be the same socket, but you try putting a Phenom II into a board designed for the early Athlon X2s, not going to happen. I don't really see much of a difference between the two companies in this regard either. It just so happens that it's now Intel have chosen for their
new socket. It will come to AMD too eventually, or if it doesn't, the current performance gap could well get worse. Speculative, but there's only so much you can pull off with an old architecture.

 

Good parts sam, im going through them and was in the roccess of ordering when i decided to take a look at "second life's" requrement page. seems that second life doesnt like "Radeon" graphics cards... any help?

Thanks

Scott.

 

THis second life?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
Not sure how you can say it doesn't like Radeons. The requirements for nvidia users are 5 times as high as for ATI users. The 8500 is an absolutely ancient card from the very beginning of the last decade, the 6600 is a much more powerful card usually, yet they're ranked the same.
Either way, even the cheapest of cards from today would run it fine.

 

yes, that second life, as i have no idea about graphics cards, im guessing ill go with what you have posted in the previous post?

the SAPPHIRE 100245HDMI Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16814102824

Im just wanting to make sure that whatever i have is going to run this program flawlessly, as ive grown to love it.

Thanks again!!

Scott (the noob)

 

The HD4850 is a very nice value card. It's only cheap because it's being phased out, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's still reasonably efficient, powerful and most importantly it's great value. All it's missing is DX11 and Eyefinity, which for the price, are relatively meaningless.
Games that have minimum requirements of Radeon 8500s can usually be maxed out flawlessly by Radeon X1800s. The HD4850 is around 400-420% as powerful as an X1800. You won't have any problems.

 

Wow! thanks for all the info! Im ordering now, and hopefully will be posting the results as i get it all together! Thanks alot everyone!!


Scott.

 

Okay Got everything up and running! and all i can say is WOW!!! this machine is very very nice!... although i think i mis-wired the front 2 usb connectors and mic/speaker jacks in the front. this machine is blazing fast, does everything i want, and looks good too!!

A many many thanks to everyone who helped in the creation of this!! couldn't have done it without you all!!


Scott.

 

No problem, enjoy the build