Processors

[mansen 1]

And we have another visitor who doesn't seem to understand the concept of BUDGET gaming. An i5 is not for everyone - as powerful as the 2500/3750 are, not everyone can afford to put that much into a machine, especially if they don't expect/want high end performance.

[Voiska 0]

Can people please read this thread before posting. I'm a guitar teacher who earns £100 a week I can't afford a £500 computer. And I don't know much about computers but I'm pretty sure I don't need an i5 to run this game

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Mansen does Soegs i3 build look the shiz? If so I think i'll just suck it up and start building that lol

[-dp- 4]

no you dont need an i5 to run this game, but why waste money on something thats barely upto the job now, let alone in a year-2 years time?

[mansen 1]

no you dont need an i5 to run this game' date=' but why waste money on something thats barely upto the job now, let alone in a year-2 years time?

[/quote']

Because not everyone has the dosh to pay for a one grand machine. :dodgy:

[-dp- 4]

you can put together an (BUDGET) i5 build for ~£450 , where you got a grand from i dont know...

[Voiska 0]

and £450 is over my budget

[Shag 90]

i used to have a dual core amd 3.0ghz overclocked to 3.5ghz and it was totally fine.

I'm sure you could pick one of those up for next to nothing....

In fact I still have it. I took the PSU and gfx card out for my new rig but the RAM 4GB at 1200mhz, MB, CPU dual core overclocked to 3.5ghz, 750 gig HDD, case, xfi fatility sound, dvd and cd rws is sat in my hallway.

Was gonna sell it for £150.

Have u considered a 2nd hand machine? Try eBay.

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

Skint I'm going with your advice' date=' you reckon 4 GIG of RAM will be fine? If so I shall go with the Nvidia you pointed out. Thanks :)

[/quote']

Yeah, no problem. I have 3GB of older, slower RAM and can run DayZ fine. Good luck with the new PC and I hope you enjoy the Mod!

[Soeg 3]

I am glad to see that you have changed your mind, just to react to some of the comments here:

He wants a budget machine, and the i3 2120 is a very good low priced processor that wont bottleneck the new grafic cards. The i3 2120 outperforms all the AMD proccesors, and if you dont believe then go check famous sites like overclockers.net.

Well Voiska that i3 build was not completly optimized yet, as it was just to give an idea of what it would cost and stuff. There are some things like motherboard-RAM compatibility and case choice. So dont buy anything yet. Post your finalized budget and Ill take a couple hours to post a complete finalized build and some guides on how to build the computer. It is not as hard as it may seem and as long as you follow the instructions and handle the components with care you will have no problem.

A very important rule to remember when setting budgets: Wait for the moment when you have the most money available. So like when you sell that guitar, you might have the possibility to go up to 500 pounds budget (Just an example)

And with those 100 pounds extra I might be able to squeze a cheap model of the i5 (wich has 4 cores and has even better performance. If you like speed you could also keep the i3 and add a ssd with that budget ( a ssd is a storage disk that has no moving parts and is very fast, if you put windows on a ssd you can completly boot up in a matter of seconds)

So in short; post your budget, and Ill work out a good build. (Ill let it get checked by another forum wich has a lot of experts on it so Ill make sure its the cheapest and best possible)

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you can put together an (BUDGET) i5 build for ~£450 ' date=' where you got a grand from i dont know...

[/quote']

Well if by budget you mean no gpu and a tiny psu, in that build with the i3 (wich yes, does before worse then the i5 but the 60-65 pounds diffrence in price is not worth it when on a minimum budget) I put in a 6850, wich is a powerfull gpu and has the best price/performance at the moment, and it will be able to max out most new games and play very demanding ones on mid-high combined with the i3. Besides, its the same socket 1155 so he can always upgrade when he has some money for in a year or 2. The build can easyly last 5-6 years if he upgrades every now and then 3-4 years If he doesnt upgrade trough the years.

[-dp- 4]

no by budget, i mean the best parts for lowest cost...

the build i posted , include an 6850 + a coolermaster gx 650 psu and a (albeit cheap) coolermaster case (none of this unbranded/rebranded/chinese junk)

an extra 60-65 £ on a much more powerful cpu is a no brainer really, considering the real world difference between the 2 .....

but OP has his heart set on this i3 build so let him be. :P

[mansen 1]

For the record you do NOT need a 650W PSU as long as it is of a quality brand for a computer like that. I'm running my 2500K, 560TI, 8GB RAM (plus 4 harddrives) overclocked on a 650W from Corsair.

600 is more than enough, 550 as well at times depending on your graphics card - ATI tends to use less wattagepower per horsepower.

[Voiska 0]

Well in 2 days I'v managed to gather £250 by selling stuff and debt collecting lol I am yet to sell my guitar which will go for £300-£500 so my budget is looking promising. I'v decided to go the whole hog as I used to be big into pc gaming but as my tower got outdated I just gave up trying to keep up with new gen games.

[Soeg 3]

Ok cool, tell me when you worked out a budget and Ill make sure to get you the best parts for the money, incase you are intrested, here is a video from newegg on how to actually build a pc:

btw frank, you are so wrong, the i3 DOES NOT bottleneck new gpu's and will perform really well.

[urbanfox 116]

btw frank' date=' you are so wrong, the i3 DOES NOT bottleneck new gpu's and will perform really well.

[/quote']

Not true.

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/articles/max-payne-3-pc/max-payne-3-pc-cpu-performance.png

Even though that's a small margin, it's still a good 10-12%. Not to mention, when you add in that unlocked "K" i5/i7's will OC past 4 GHz on a STOCK HSF, the performance difference starts to mean something.

[mansen 1]

That chart compares an I3 to an I7... from a newer generation. I fail to see the validity of that specific chart - it's true though that an I5 is better but also more expensive.

[nivi 4]

Guys, dont compare games who are GPU bound to arma which is heavy on CPU.

Sure, when game is bound to gpu, processor almost doesnt matter as long as it has 2 cores (e.g BF3, same performance with either i7 extreme or i3) but in Arma, cpu plays a big role or at least bigger than graphics card.

[pengs 8]

Woa nelly. lol

A 8 core FX can be many times faster than a i3, the software just needs to take advantage of it.

Right now an i3 does well on 90% of PC games because most games aren't using more than 2 cores and the i3's integer per core is much faster than that of an FX.

For example, a dual core i3 will choke in BF3 MP where as the i5 won't because BF3 specifically is programmed to use up to 8 cores. But that same i3 will play BF3 SP just as well as an i5 because SP is not as intensive.

An 8 core FX in MP will do minutely better than an i3 in BF3 MP because of it's many cores and the games ability to use it whilst being slower per core than an i3.

So an i3 will be a bottleneck with future games and already is with some current games in specific cases.

It's a double edged sword because software is lagging behind numbers of cores but really the best CPU you could buy today which will perform great and get you through tomorrow (proverbially) is a 4 core i5 2500K/i5 3570K. It won't break your budget and it's a 4 core. With a 4 core you'l have the power if you want to play a game that needs it.

As for Arma 2, it only uses 2 cores so while you could get by with an i3, I'd still spend the little extra for a i5. You will sit pretty knowing that a background task isn't eating an extra 5FPS also with a 4 core.

If you want computer help the last place you need to consult is a online gaming community. Find a hardware forum like hardocp, anandtech or overclock.net.

[steveman0 0]

Are Intel cores leading the pack right now? I see little mention of AMD cores and it always happened when I looked to build my PCs they were always the better price per power by a large margin. My Phenom 2 X6 was like 150$ compared to an equivalent power Intel at a minimum of double the price. I don't know the current market though but it may be worth investigating.

[urbanfox 116]

That chart compares an I3 to an I7... from a newer generation. I fail to see the validity of that specific chart - it's true though that an I5 is better but also more expensive.

It is still valid, especially when at the moment there is no dual core Ivy Bridge CPU. In addition, the difference there is NOT because of IPC strength or higher clock speed, the difference is due to more cores, plain and simple. So yes, the i3 may be Sandy Bridge and the i7 is Ivy Bridge, but the performance difference is not due to IPC strength, clock speed difference, or more threads, it's a result of double the physical cores.

[mansen 1]

And those physical cores mean absolutely shit in games - your court.

[pengs 8]

Are Intel cores leading the pack right now? I see little mention of AMD cores and it always happened when I looked to build my PCs they were always the better price per power by a large margin. My Phenom 2 X6 was like 150$ compared to an equivalent power Intel at a minimum of double the price. I don't know the current market though but it may be worth investigating.

The reason you don't see it mentioned is because AMD has gone down the road of next week and not today.

When someone asks for a basic gaming machine, Intel leads (has lead for a while) because most games don't use 8 cores and Intel's IPC is faster.

AMD is currently void because software sucks but I have a feeling they will do pretty good when software catches up (if they haven't already shot themselves in foot too many times to limp into market share).

[Voiska 0]

I'v got most of my gear now. I'v gone for:

A sweet ass case

4GB DDR3 RAM

ASRock mini ATX mobo 1155

Intel i5 2500K (what does it mean, unlocked?)

Nvidia gtx 550ti

It's all coming together nicely so thanks again for all your help :)

[mansen 1]

I'v got most of my gear now. I'v gone for:

A sweet ass case

4GB DDR3 RAM

ASRock mini ATX mobo 1155

Intel i5 2500K (what does it mean' date=' unlocked?)

Nvidia gtx 550ti

It's all coming together nicely so thanks again for all your help :)

[/quote']

The K in your 2500 means it can be overclocked on any motherboard EXCEPT the H67 ones (That means P67, Z68 or Z77) An excellent choice by the way, unless you want to pay a bit more for the new Ivy "version" called the 3750K, but you'll need a Z68 or Z77 (preferably) to support one of those. If your motherboard IS a H67 then you cannot manually overclock it past what Intel already does automatically (it has a dynamic overclock running) - but the K is still worth the few extra bucks if you ever need more power down the road or for resale.

As for the RAM be sure that it is 1333Mhz or higher - and consider buying a 4GB bar so that you can upgrade to 2x4GB a little later. 8GB of RAM makes a noticeable difference in big games with lots of data to load these days.

550TI is a good choice for the budget gamer - the 560TI is considered the current "sweet spot" for price/performance. The ATI7870 is the next step up if the 560TI isn't enough (just mentioning this in case others come along to the thread)

[deepfried 95]

As for the RAM be sure that it is 1333Mhz or higher - and consider buying a 4GB bar so that you can upgrade to 2x4GB a little later. 8GB of RAM makes a noticeable difference in big games with lots of data to load these days.

Rly? I have 6GB and i've never seen any game use more than 2GB. Arma2/dayZ uses about 1.4gb from what i've seen. In short 've i've never come close to running out of physical RAM, though that doesn't mean you wont hit soft limits with 32bit games.

[mansen 1]

If you remove the pagefile the 8GB will make a lot more sense - a lot less harddrive caching. But mileage will vary from game to game.