Hi, so after years of console gaming I quit… Can’t stand the lackluster graphics, lack of game mods etc. The thing that burns me the most is that I went out and spent 1000 big ones on a full HD 1080p TV only to find that most games barely run a 720p native resolution!!! (yes, my fault I didn’t do the research but c’mon!!!) After thinking about it and noticing that almost all the big titles that I look forward to are available on PC these days I’ve decided to make the jump. I also saw some super high-res screen shots of current games and was literally blown away. A friend of mine claims that I could have all this and more for around 600 bucks! I’ve seen his rig and the games he plays (FO3, ME1 and ME2, Stalker etc) all look pretty amazing. However his stuff is dated and he’s not ready to upgrade so also not ready to do research. As I like a plethora of opinions before I make a decision, Dopers I would like to hear back from you!!! Tell me how I can build a pretty amazing gaming rig not including the monitor for 600 USD or less! Let the games begin!!!
Run a search in “gaming” in the thread title, and you’ll find a lot of threads on this very topic (including one about a week and a half ago).
Not that it’s not a worthwhile discussion - just saying that you’ll probably not get a lot of hits on such a well-trod topic.
Different price points/performance levels.
Both sites have numerous articles on choosing components.
I was going to suggest tom’s Hardware as well. Other than that, just keep in mind that for gaming, the GPU will give you the most bang for your buck. Invest in a modest (but modern) 2 or 4 core CPU, a cheap case, a capable PSU, 4 gigs of RAM, 500 gig hard drive, and then dump the rest of your budget on the GPU. I’d recommend the HD 5770 or 5850 depending on how much money you’ve got left after the above.
As awesome as the 5850 is, it doesn’t belong in a $600 machine. That Econobox on the Tech Report link with a 5770 would be pretty decent though. Be sneaky and try to get an XP license from someone instead of spending $100 on a Win7 license. Win7 is awesome, but spending so much of your budget on it kind of blows, especially since x64 isn’t vital.
I’d disagree with that. 64 bit is what you want in order to take full advantage of 4 or more gigs of RAM, and DX 10/11. Windows 7 is also the more secure, just plain better OS. There is no reason you should be going with XP. It’s a decade old OS. You ca pick up an OEM copy for under $100.
Not only did runner pat give you about the only links you need, tomorrow’s article in Tom’s Hardware will be about a $550 gaming pc. It will give you benchmarks from the most demanding games and give you some idea of the overclocking potential of the pc.
That build from Tom’s is excellent. I’d go and invest in another 2 gigs of RAM for it though.
For a budget PC even though they’re a bit dated I’d go with a core2duo for bang for the buck value. You can get a e7400 for around $100. Gigabyte EP45-UD3L motherboards are loved by all and only cost around $80-90. You can pick up 4gb of ram for $90 or so. A 5750 will run you ~$125ish. A WD1001FALS 1tb hard drive for $95 is a very good value because they’re extremely fast (for a standard drive) and reliable.
You can look around locally for a case and save some money, you can probably find an antec 300 or a CM690 type case for $60. Newegg usually has a significant rebate on a PSU or you might be able to find something locally - you want something reputable in the 400-600w range for this sort of setup, maybe another $75.
That runs around $600 and would be a fine system.
I never fully trust Tom’s hardware guides because they do retarded shit like recommend putting low end cards in SLI for their mid-range priced systems, but they’re usually decent.
That isn’t good advice, you can get a decent quad-core AMD or faster Intel i3 (quicker than the core2duo, has hyper-threading) for the same money, and have an upgrade path if required.
You might be right, I haven’t checked i3 prices in a while, and it looks like they’re pretty reasonable. The last time someone asked me to make a parts list was about 6 months ago, when P55 motherboards, DDR3, and I-anything CPUs were somewhat pricier.
You’re going to pay maybe $40 more for an equivelant motherboard, maybe another $30 for equivelant DDR3 ram, and maybe an extra $30-40 for the CPU depending on which we’re talking about, but it’s probably a worthwhile investment. Depends on how tight the budget is.
Agreed, but I think he needs to buy an operating system so he is going to be overbudget anyway. If I were him I might go with the 5750 as SenorBeef mentioned and then upgrade to a 5850 and Phenom IIX4 955/965BE cpu or whatever is available in a year or so.
I think the core2duo route is a really bad idea. If he wants to upgrade later (which he will, he wants graphics and his budget is $600, he is going to be buying better stuff once he learns more) a Q9550 still costs close to $300 and a similar performing AMD 965 costs more than $100 less.
I’m not talking about a Q9550. That’s a quad (hence the Q) and one of the most expensive core 2 CPUs made. I’m talking about something like a $80 E6300 or $100 E7400. $600 isn’t a a big budget. Quality P45 motherboards are cheap, DDR2 is cheap, and stuff like E6300s are cheap (and they’re chopped down wolfdales, not old 65nms). If he asked for an $800 budget PC I wouldn’t be recommending those parts but c2ds deliver fine performance and leave more money leftover for the GPU.
You guys are asking too much from a $600 system. You can’t do a 5770 and 4 GB and a 64bit OS while remaining on budget.
The 5770 is the most important piece. Next is CPU. That’s why you drop to 2 GB since memory prices are no longer ridiculous and save another few bucks with a vintage OS you can pick up second hand. Jumping up to 4 GB adds $150 to the build, which ggs your budget right there. Maybe if you get really cheeky and recycle optical drives and a case you could do it.
The Athlon X4 630 or X3 435 stomp all over an e7400 while costing less, so that’s a bad idea.
Low-end cards in Crossfire has been a legit recommendation ever since ATI got 99.9% dominance of the video card market and priced everything linearly.
No. The 630 will beat out the 7400 on some multithreaded pure math stuff like video encoding, but the e7400 beats it out on most real world applications which aren’t perfectly multithreaded, which includes gaming. You can make a case that it’s a better route but by no means does it “stomp all over” it. And it doesn’t cost any less.
No, this is never a cost effective solution. Under ideal circumstances you’re getting maybe 1.7x the performance (and very often worse), and if they’re “priced linearly” then you’d always get better buying twice the video card for the same money. CF works fine if you want to add a card down the road when they get cheap, but it’s never cost effective to do from the outset.
You’re right, I only looked at synthetic benchmarks for the e7400 and X3 435. This Crysis benchmark shows the X3 435 throwing out some pretty weak numbers. It’s much closer than I could believe.
I wouldn’t argue the value of a LGA775-based system now, in fact there are probably dozens of AM3, LGA775, LGA1156- based systems that are of great value now, but my post was about the upgrading pathway this guy might take. For builders on a budget, getting a socket AM3-based system is better for eventually upgrading than getting a LGA775.
Fair enough. I’m not objecting to the idea of going i3 or AM3 as bad advice. I’m trying to work with the reality of $600 including the cost of an OS. The money saved on motherboards, CPU, and ram is important here. I would recommend to the OP to add to the budget and consider and i3 system.
I do think considerations about getting an upgradable socket/chipset are overblown. I think the last time I dropped a new CPU into a motherboard after my original assembly was for a pentium-166 back in like 1996. By the time you need a significant new upgrade the world has often moved on to a new socket anyway. (Edit: But I guess I’m atypical since I also haven’t overclocked a CPU to be faster than anything commercially available during this time period also)
Maybe $600 is low enough that it makes more sense to start looking at modifying a discounted retail system.
True, I’d missed that he wanted to include a monitor in $600 budget, which makes it a bit tight. But for a real budget system, AMD would be better value for money than a Core 2 Duo or i3. The Athlon X3 is the best value for money CPU out there right now. More and more applications and games are making use or 3 or 4 cores. For a really cheap system, you could even pair it with an AM2+ motherboard and DDR2 memory, yet still have a useful upgrade path.