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"I need a New PC!" 2013 Part 2. Haswell = #IntelnoTIM, but free online. READ THE OP.

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Cmerrill

You don't need to be empathetic towards me.
Those prices on page 1 do not make sense or correlate to Canadian/real world prices so far in my search for my first gaming PC.

Is it cheaper if I find a very kind USA Gaffer to buy(with my money) my parts and ship them to Canada?
 

asdad123

Member
Okay so this might be a weird request for this "gaming" thread.

Looking to build a PC as small as possible for my parents. Use will be just to browse websites/YouTube.

Got some parts to reuse from his old PC such as a HDD, Radeon 6650 low profile, and RAM (not sure which kind it has. I'll be gutting his 6 year old dell xps420 with a q6600).

I would love to reuse the q6600, but I doubt I can find a motherboard that old lol.

I'm near a micro center, so maybe one of the amd bundles with the motherboard?
 

kharma45

Member
Okay so this might be a weird request for this "gaming" thread.

Looking to build a PC as small as possible for my parents. Use will be just to browse websites/YouTube.

Got some parts to reuse from his old PC such as a HDD, Radeon 6650 low profile, and RAM (not sure which kind it has. I'll be gutting his 6 year old dell xps420 with a q6600).

I would love to reuse the q6600, but I doubt I can find a motherboard that old lol.

I'm near a micro center, so maybe one of the amd bundles with the motherboard?

I'd grab a Haswell Pentium and a cheap ITX board, or AMD has new APUs out in 12 days or so, they could be an option if you're in no rush. Would save on having to put that GPU in.

Those prices on page 1 do not make sense or correlate to Canadian/real world prices so far in my search for my first gaming PC

Of course they don't since they're all US based prices.
 

Cmerrill

You don't need to be empathetic towards me.
Also what is the difference between a card from - EVGA, GIGABYTE, KOTAC?? It's the same card, I think, but different prices. I don't get it.
 

Bboy AJ

My dog was murdered by a 3.5mm audio port and I will not rest until the standard is dead
Those prices on page 1 do not make sense or correlate to Canadian/real world prices so far in my search for my first gaming PC.

Is it cheaper if I find a very kind USA Gaffer to buy(with my money) my parts and ship them to Canada?

How do you know you won't have to pay custom taxes on the mailed package?
 

mkenyon

Banned
Also what is the difference between a card from - EVGA, GIGABYTE, KOTAC?? It's the same card, I think, but different prices. I don't get it.
If it looks the same, then nothing. But they also have their own proprietary coolers. EVGA and Gigabyte both have stellar coolers in the "ACX" and "Windforce" variants.
 

wilflare

Member
280X is grand for 1440p, a 290 would be ideal.

or should I just save like a $140 (in Singapore Dollars) and get the Powercolor 7950 instead?

also...

WD640GB Black is a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)
WD1TB Green is also a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)

should I retire them/conslidate them to a SATA3 (6GB/s) drive with better power consumption etc?
 

bubu

Member
Okay so this might be a weird request for this "gaming" thread.

Looking to build a PC as small as possible for my parents. Use will be just to browse websites/YouTube.

Got some parts to reuse from his old PC such as a HDD, Radeon 6650 low profile, and RAM (not sure which kind it has. I'll be gutting his 6 year old dell xps420 with a q6600).

I would love to reuse the q6600, but I doubt I can find a motherboard that old lol.

I'm near a micro center, so maybe one of the amd bundles with the motherboard?

I would just buy a Chromebook.
 

kennah

Member
I don't, but it still may be cheaper for a just a CPU and Video Card.
By the time you have shipping and duty it comes out to Canadian prices anyway. I've tried. The main advantage is for buying used or if you have a friend driving down then coming back across the border.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
also...

WD640GB Black is a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)
WD1TB Green is also a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)

should I retire them/conslidate them to a SATA3 (6GB/s) drive with better power consumption etc?

SATA3 is useless for mechanical HDDs. I don't remember your build but if you're getting a SSD I'd stick with those.
 

kharma45

Member
or should I just save like a $140 (in Singapore Dollars) and get the Powercolor 7950 instead?

also...

WD640GB Black is a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)
WD1TB Green is also a SATA2 drive (3GB/s)

should I retire them/conslidate them to a SATA3 (6GB/s) drive with better power consumption etc?

Powercolor stuff usually isn't too hot.

I'd keep hold of your drives, handy for offloading games and media too. SSD for your OS, programs and a few select titles, HDDs for everything else.

I would just buy a Chromebook.

Or the ASUS Transformer T100. You can at least use it offline should they want to, and install whatever programs you want.
 

Durante

Member
If you want cutting edge tech so you can run games at 2140p+ or something, then yeah get an i5 or i7.
TheD is right, sentences like this do betray a lack of understanding of how this stuff works. Resolution is one factor which is entirely GPU dependent, so if you play at extremely high resolutions you actually need (relatively) less CPU performance.

High sequential CPU performance is invaluable for maintaining high framerates, minimizing framedrops in demanding scenarios, emulators, and simply overpowering inefficient software by sheer grunt.
 

wilflare

Member
SATA3 is useless for mechanical HDDs. I don't remember your build but if you're getting a SSD I'd stick with those.

Powercolor stuff usually isn't too hot.

I'd keep hold of your drives, handy for offloading games and media too. SSD for your OS, programs and a few select titles, HDDs for everything else.

I'll have a Plextor M5Pro 128GB for my new OS installation (Windows 8.1 Pro.. lol)

would a Seagate Hybrid drive be better as a secondary data drive?

I'm thinking of keeping my
WD640GB Black SATA2 as the main data drive, for excess steam games
WD1TB Green SATA1 as the main storage drive (everything else)

----

hmm bleh. I'm quite limited with my choices in Singapore
it's either the
(1) Powercolor 7950
(2) Sapphire 270X Vapor-X
(3) Zotac GTX 760 AMP
(4) Powercolor 7870

the 280X would be a huge jump I suppose.. but not sure if it's worth paying such a high premium

I have a Dell 2209WA that has a 22inch screen at 1680x1050 reso... not sure if i'll upgrade to 1080p or 1440p (I hope to but hmm)
 

bigkrev

Member
Hey, my first build ever. Hope I did a good job!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($233.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($159.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($79.29 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ Microcenter)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card ($334.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case ($97.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec Basiq Plus 550W 80+ Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1039.21
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-02 12:45 EST-0500)

For some of the stranger choices, my explanation is that I have a 300 dollar Best Buy Gift Card, and they have some of the parts cheaper (the case), or at about the same value (Motherboard and CPU), but PCPartPicker doesn't have Best Buy as an option

My only concerns are the Power Supply (do I have enough power?), and the graphics card- I could save a lot of money dropping down to a GTX 760. The purpose of this machine is to play Titanfall- do you think the 770 is worth the extra money?
 

kharma45

Member
Hey, my first build ever. Hope I did a good job!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($233.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($159.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($79.29 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ Microcenter)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card ($334.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case ($97.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec Basiq Plus 550W 80+ Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1039.21
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-02 12:45 EST-0500)

For some of the stranger choices, my explanation is that I have a 300 dollar Best Buy Gift Card, and they have some of the parts cheaper (the case), or at about the same value (Motherboard and CPU), but PCPartPicker doesn't have Best Buy as an option

My only concerns are the Power Supply (do I have enough power?), and the graphics card- I could save a lot of money dropping down to a GTX 760. The purpose of this machine is to play Titanfall- do you think the 770 is worth the extra money?

Plenty of power.

I don't personally think the 770 is worth it, I'd prefer the 760 as it's only around 10% worse.

I'll have a Plextor M5Pro 128GB for my new OS installation (Windows 8.1 Pro.. lol)

would a Seagate Hybrid drive be better as a secondary data drive?

I'm thinking of keeping my
WD640GB Black SATA2 as the main data drive, for excess steam games
WD1TB Green SATA1 as the main storage drive (everything else)

----

hmm bleh. I'm quite limited with my choices in Singapore
it's either the
(1) Powercolor 7950
(2) Sapphire 270X Vapor-X
(3) Zotac GTX 760 AMP
(4) Powercolor 7870

the 280X would be a huge jump I suppose.. but not sure if it's worth paying such a high premium

I have a Dell 2209WA that has a 22inch screen at 1680x1050 reso... not sure if i'll upgrade to 1080p or 1440p (I hope to but hmm)

Is the Powercolor one their PCS cooler? If it's not then the 760 would be the best choice out of those.

That Plextor SSD and those two HDDs would satisfy me at least.
 
Wasn't sure where to post this so I thought I'd ask here.

I wanted to put a router in my grandmother's apartment for WiFi access. She already gets internet as part of her cable package, but doesn't have a computer.

So, these days can a router simply be plugged in and it will start working, or am I going to have to find a laptop to bring in and install the software?

I only have a desktop, tablet and phone so that would make it kind of a pain.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I'll have a Plextor M5Pro 128GB for my new OS installation (Windows 8.1 Pro.. lol)

would a Seagate Hybrid drive be better as a secondary data drive?

I'm thinking of keeping my
WD640GB Black SATA2 as the main data drive, for excess steam games
WD1TB Green SATA1 as the main storage drive (everything else)

----

hmm bleh. I'm quite limited with my choices in Singapore
it's either the
(1) Powercolor 7950
(2) Sapphire 270X Vapor-X
(3) Zotac GTX 760 AMP
(4) Powercolor 7870

the 280X would be a huge jump I suppose.. but not sure if it's worth paying such a high premium

I have a Dell 2209WA that has a 22inch screen at 1680x1050 reso... not sure if i'll upgrade to 1080p or 1440p (I hope to but hmm)

Nothing to lol about with Win8.1 + SSD. Installed that on my brother's new PC and even with a FX 6300 and a mechanical HDD (WD Blue) it boots very fast. I haven't timed it but it seems almost as fast as mine with Win7 and a SSD.

I wouldn't bother buying any HDD as a data drive to go along with the SSD. Nothing is going to be a significant performance difference over what you have, and over 2TB of storage is likely plenty.

I'd probably go with the 760 if those are all around similar prices. Not sure Zotac is a great brand though. Maybe the 270X is if it's a fair bit cheaper.
 

bigkrev

Member
Plenty of power.

I don't personally think the 770 is worth it, I'd prefer the 760 as it's only around 10% worse.

Thanks. I'm also probably going to get the non-k version of the processor- its 20 bucks cheaper and I don't want to overclock.
I can't fathom that the 770 is only 10 percent better than the 760, considering there is an 80-100 dollar price difference. Are you sure that's correct (I know almost nothing about computers!)
EDIT: I only plan on playing in 1080p
 

wilflare

Member
Is the Powercolor one their PCS cooler? If it's not then the 760 would be the best choice out of those.

That Plextor SSD and those two HDDs would satisfy me at least.

yeap. it's the PCS cooler. not the (+) version though. not sure how much of a difference it makes.

Nothing to lol about with Win8.1 + SSD. Installed that on my brother's new PC and even with a FX 6300 and a mechanical HDD (WD Blue) it boots very fast. I haven't timed it but it seems almost as fast as mine with Win7 and a SSD.

I wouldn't bother buying any HDD as a data drive to go along with the SSD. Nothing is going to be a significant performance difference over what you have, and over 2TB of storage is likely plenty.

I'd probably go with the 760 if those are all around similar prices. Not sure Zotac is a great brand though. Maybe the 270X is if it's a fair bit cheaper.

hmm that's great news. I'm using the Win8 Pro key from my DreamSpark account. is there anyway to install Windows 8.1 Pro straight? better prepare the ISO on a USB.

Powercolor 7870 GHz edition 2GB ~ $241
Powercolor 7950 PCS 3GB ~ $341
Zotac GTX 760 AMP Edition ~ $355
Sapphire 270X Vapor-X ~ $280
Gigabyte 270X ~ $299
MSI 280X TwinFrozr with Battlefield 4 ~ $475
Asus 280X TOP DirectCUII ~ $490

prices are in SGD (which means 1USD = 1.3SGD)

yea... overpriced.. but argh...
 

kharma45

Member
Thanks. I'm also probably going to get the non-k version of the processor- its 20 bucks cheaper and I don't want to overclock.
I can't fathom that the 770 is only 10 percent better than the 760, considering there is an 80-100 dollar price difference. Are you sure that's correct (I know almost nothing about computers!)

If you're comparing reference to reference it's wider but if you've a 760 with a good cooler the difference is around that, maybe 15% at most away from a reference 770.

Stick to the K CPU, you can eek out 20-25% more performance from the CPU increasing the longevity of it. OCing is easy as pie to do, only thing you'll need to add is a Hyper 212 cooler.

EDIT: I only plan on playing in 1080p

Both are good but a 760 is plenty fine if you want to save a few bob.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
yeap. it's the PCS cooler. not the (+) version though. not sure how much of a difference it makes.



hmm that's great news. I'm using the Win8 Pro key from my DreamSpark account. is there anyway to install Windows 8.1 Pro straight? better prepare the ISO on a USB.

Powercolor 7870 GHz edition 2GB ~ $241
Powercolor 7950 PCS 3GB ~ $341
Zotac GTX 760 AMP Edition ~ $355
Sapphire 270X Vapor-X ~ $280
Gigabyte 270X ~ $299
MSI 280X TwinFrozr with Battlefield 4 ~ $475
Asus 280X TOP DirectCUII ~ $490

prices are in SGD (which means 1USD = 1.3SGD)

yea... overpriced.. but argh...

I just ripped the disc and put the ISO on a flash drive with Rufus to install it since the PC didn't have a DVD drive.

270X is basically the same performance as a 7870. So that's something to keep in mind considering the price difference there. The two 270X are likely better models, but that's still a big gap. And the 7950 and 760 are nearly tied performance-wise, slight edge to the 760 (and that OC model is slightly better I believe).

7870 is clearly the winner from a value standpoint, the bottom of the ladder in performance but not $100 worse than the 7950/760. If you want more performance I'd probably go with the 760.
 

soultron

Banned
Hopefully this is an easy-to-answer question, and hopefully it's not too much of a drive-by of me to ask it;

Would you recommend W7 or W8.1? Both can be had for ~$100 in my territory.

The reason I ask is because I have Vista 32-bit installed on my PC right now (temporary, had it sitting around from an older PC; its on a 30-day trial since I've not authorized it yet.) but want to get something that's 64-bit to better take advantage of the i5 4670K I have in my PC.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Whatever is cheaper. I don't know if licenses transfer internationally very well, but you can get Keys off of reddit.com/r/softwareswap for $30-50.
 

kharma45

Member
Hopefully this is an easy-to-answer question, and hopefully it's not too much of a drive-by of me to ask it;

Would you recommend W7 or W8.1? Both can be had for ~$100 in my territory.

The reason I ask is because I have Vista 32-bit installed on my PC right now (temporary, had it sitting around from an older PC; its on a 30-day trial since I've not authorized it yet.) but want to get something that's 64-bit to better take advantage of the i5 4670K I have in my PC.

8.1
 

wilflare

Member
I just ripped the disc and put the ISO on a flash drive with Rufus to install it since the PC didn't have a DVD drive.

270X is basically the same performance as a 7870. So that's something to keep in mind considering the price difference there. The two 270X are likely better models, but that's still a big gap. And the 7950 and 760 are nearly tied performance-wise, slight edge to the 760 (and that OC model is slightly better I believe).

7870 is clearly the winner from a value standpoint, the bottom of the ladder in performance but not $100 worse than the 7950/760. If you want more performance I'd probably go with the 760.

thanks for the clarification :)
hmm would it allow me to do 1080p Very High/Ultra/Max comfortably?

kinda more inclined towards AMD cards (never used nVidia before) with its upcoming Mantle but hmm

the 280X both come with BF4.. so not sure if that changes the value proposition in any way
 

mkenyon

Banned
The AMD cards are overpriced by about 30-40%. That's huge.

There's no way they make sense from a value proposition right now, unless $100 doesn't really make a difference to you.
 

wilflare

Member
The AMD cards are overpriced by about 30-40%. That's huge.

There's no way they make sense from a value proposition right now, unless $100 doesn't really make a difference to you.

hmm the prices are mentioned are in Singapore Dollars.
1USD = 1.3SGD

so gotta divide by 1.3 for all reflected prices
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Built my 2nd PC this week, with many thanks to this thread! (My last was for HL2 many years ago...)

I'm honestly blown away by how much easier and cheaper it is to build a competent PC these days.
Yes!
Those prices on page 1 do not make sense or correlate to Canadian/real world prices so far in my search for my first gaming PC.

Is it cheaper if I find a very kind USA Gaffer to buy(with my money) my parts and ship them to Canada?
Some of the prices are off right now (If you click the link you can see the in progress updated sheet)
Oh, please. You certainly can offset it enough for satisfactory framerates and overall performance for a game. Simply put, if I have a vastly superior GPU than someone with an i5 I'm still going to get better performance in most cases unless it is a very CPU dependent game, and even then it probably won't be so severe that it would make me regret my purchase. And, say, in another year or so when the more expensive GPU's come down in price it will give a significant boost to even a PC with an FX CPU. Would it perform better in an i5? Yes, but honestly at that point if I'm getting >60fps I'm not really caring. Not to mention a CPU like the 6300 isn't really going to seriously bottleneck future GPU upgrades.

If you want cutting edge tech so you can run games at 2140p+ or something, then yeah get an i5 or i7. In my case, though, if my board and CPU are working just fine in a year or two when I am likely to upgrade my GPU again, I'm not going to care about upgrading my CPU, why would I if I can get 60fps+ in every game at the highest settings with a new GPU?


OH NO IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! That doesn't make it worthless. You are acting like any form of significant computing lives and dies by if it can catch up to Core i3/i5/i7 single threaded performance, which is really silly. It's not as good as Sandy Bridge/Haswell, this has been established. Everyone knows this. But it isn't so terrible that it is going to force me to go out and waste $220+ on pricey Intel chips that I have absolutely no need for. I can stream/transcode, game, edit, multitask, basically do anything I want with the FX 6300, even with lackluster single-core performance. And single-core performance, by the way, is going to become less and less relevant for gaming as time goes by.




Okay, "Intel is king". That's nice. I'm not here to get into a pissing contest over Intel vs. AMD, in fact I have no problem admitting that Intel makes better CPU's right now if you haven't noticed yet. I'm here to say that for people on a budget who want something that will deliver great overall performance and not bottleneck GPU upgrades, the FX series, particularly 6300 and higher, are a wise choice. People in this thread are way, way too suggestive/persuasive in constantly implying that a FX chip will be an awful choice because of single core performance. Get the GPU right, if you intend to game at 1080p you absolutely cannot go wrong. In fact, the thing I regret most about my PC when I built it in June isn't the CPU, but the fact that I didn't put extra money towards a better GPU since I saved at least $120 by not handing my wallet to Intel. I still like my 660, but I could have spent at least $60-80 or so for something a little better.

What GPU were they using in that bench btw?
You know exactly what you want on your own budget from your own research. That's awesome. For most that isn't the case. For many titles an FX CPU with the extra change can give you a nicer game experience. For some titles the lack of single threaded power does hamper (Mostly some older MMO titles and RTS).

For a while we had some X4 AMD builds, and I even had FX 4300/6300 build sheets which I waffled on putting up.
Given how everything is now with single thread performance increases stagnating pretty heavily, sockets constantly being discarded, and Intel's 3 year old (2500K) chips still being fantastic, it makes sense to me to recommend the Intel platform since in the future the upgrade from an i3 to i5 makes the most sense from a cost/performance perspective.
 

RoKKeR

Member
So I am coming to this thread unfortunately with the intentions to sell my PC! Between my brother and myself we now own both next gen consoles and as I have now moved on to college life, I am finding less and less time to game and when that time does come, it's usually on a console. My PC has been sitting at home for the better part of a few months and I think it's time for me to move on from PC gaming. I can always come back in a few years, right?

I guess I'm just looking for some advice on how to sell this bad boy. It's a 2011 custom built from IBP, but it was rebuilt in 2013 with a new Cooler Master HAF 922 case and was later upgraded with a 770 4GB. CPU is an i5 2500k. Do you guys think I'd be able to sell the whole package off? And for about how much? Anywhere between 700-900 would be great for me.

I was also thinking of considering just selling off the graphics card for 350-400 and calling it good. So any advice? Suggestions? Is it worth throwing up in the B/S/T thread?
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
So I am coming to this thread unfortunately with the intentions to sell my PC! Between my brother and myself we now own both next gen consoles and as I have now moved on to college life, I am finding less and less time to game and when that time does come, it's usually on a console. My PC has been sitting at home for the better part of a few months and I think it's time for me to move on from PC gaming. I can always come back in a few years, right?

I guess I'm just looking for some advice on how to sell this bad boy. It's a 2011 custom built from IBP, but it was rebuilt in 2013 with a new Cooler Master HAF 922 case and was later upgraded with a 770 4GB. CPU is an i5 2500k. Do you guys think I'd be able to sell the whole package off? And for about how much? Anywhere between 700-900 would be great for me.

I was also thinking of considering just selling off the graphics card for 350-400 and calling it good. So any advice? Suggestions? Is it worth throwing up in the B/S/T thread?
List your components and cross reference [H] B/S/T, Anandtech B/S/T, eBay [Completed Listings].

Package deals usually are $50-$100 lower than parted out.
 

Cmerrill

You don't need to be empathetic towards me.
What kind of performance will I get out of:

i5 4440 with a GTX 770 2Gb?

Im trying to get games Highest settings at 1080p/60fps.
 

RoKKeR

Member
List your components and cross reference [H] B/S/T, Anandtech B/S/T, eBay [Completed Listings].

Package deals usually are $50-$100 lower than parted out.

2500K and 770 probably puts it in the $600 range unless you have a really nice PSU and/or SSD.

Ok thanks, I'll do some looking around.

Edit: Think I've decided just to sell off my graphics card. I'm just not ready to ditch the whole thing at this point and am not ready to do so logistically.
 

mkenyon

Banned
OH NO IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! That doesn't make it worthless. You are acting like any form of significant computing lives and dies by if it can catch up to Core i3/i5/i7 single threaded performance, which is really silly. It's not as good as Sandy Bridge/Haswell, this has been established. Everyone knows this. But it isn't so terrible that it is going to force me to go out and waste $220+ on pricey Intel chips that I have absolutely no need for.
i3's and low end i5s can be found from $100 to $200.

6 threads w/ low IPC vs 4 threads with high IPC is a wash when you're talking about streaming and whatnot.

8350s are generally $200, and you have to spend more in a few other areas to offset the fact that it chugs power like there's no tomorrow. You also get a dead socket/chipset with nowhere to go.

Trust me, the moment an AMD chip makes sense to buy, it'll be in the OP. FWIW, I do put APUs in the SFF guide. Third post on this thread.
 

emag

Member
Wasn't sure where to post this so I thought I'd ask here.

I wanted to put a router in my grandmother's apartment for WiFi access. She already gets internet as part of her cable package, but doesn't have a computer.

So, these days can a router simply be plugged in and it will start working, or am I going to have to find a laptop to bring in and install the software?

I only have a desktop, tablet and phone so that would make it kind of a pain.

Depends on the brand/model, but for the most part it should be plug and play. The only likely issue would be WiFi security/administration settings, but you could set that up with your desktop at your place before taking the router to your grandmother's apartment.
 

TheD

The Detective
Oh, please. You certainly can offset it enough for satisfactory framerates and overall performance for a game. Simply put, if I have a vastly superior GPU than someone with an i5 I'm still going to get better performance in most cases unless it is a very CPU dependent game, and even then it probably won't be so severe that it would make me regret my purchase. And, say, in another year or so when the more expensive GPU's come down in price it will give a significant boost to even a PC with an FX CPU. Would it perform better in an i5? Yes, but honestly at that point if I'm getting >60fps I'm not really caring. Not to mention a CPU like the 6300 isn't really going to seriously bottleneck future GPU upgrades.

If you want cutting edge tech so you can run games at 2140p+ or something, then yeah get an i5 or i7. In my case, though, if my board and CPU are working just fine in a year or two when I am likely to upgrade my GPU again, I'm not going to care about upgrading my CPU, why would I if I can get 60fps+ in every game at the highest settings with a new GPU?

Sigh,

You can NOT offset a CPU that has slow single threaded performance with a GPU!
Having a game that is not CPU limited is a completely different matter, you are not making up for poor CPU performance, you are just not limited by it (on the other hand, if a game is CPU limited, then the GPU can not help one bit!).

Nothing says that a FX 6300 will be able to run all games in the next few years at 60FPS, hell their are some today (like Planetside2, even after the optimizations) that can not keep 60 FPS all the time on a 2500K at 4.4GHz!

And they should also know that despite lackluster single-core performance 6 or 8 core FX series can hold its own against Haswell/Sandy Bridge if you, again, have the right build (GPU basically). That doesn't make it better, but it makes it a viable option for those wanting to save money. Getting the best value is a vital part of educating the consumer, so it is a bit ignorant to write off the FX series.

A 6 core FX can not keep up to a Haswell i5 and a 8 core FX can only keep up when running heavily multi threaded loads.
But even then, it will be using around 2x the power (100Watts more at stock and 160 watts more when both are overclocked!) and if you are running heavily multi threaded programs (or games), depending on how many hours a day you have the CPU under heavy load and how many years you keep the CPU for you will end up making up the cost difference between the the 8350 and the Haswell i5 in power costs!

We should also be glad Intel at least has some competition, imagine if AMD did not exist. You could be paying 2x as much for Intel CPU's that are, in many cases, already overpriced as is.
That does not mean that we should ignore the reality of what CPU is better.

My logic that a 6/8 core FX with a good enough GPU won't give you terrible performance for games, and you are saving up to $120 in the process (more if there's a sale), and will allow you to upgrade your GPU in the coming years with no issue... is spotty? Really? No, what's all over the place are people foaming at the mouth over anyone who buys a FX CPU because it isn't Sandy Bridge or Haswell. You'd think someone went to a used PC shop and bought a Socket 754 chip thinking it would be adequate with the way some people react to the mere mention of anything other than new Intel CPU's.

Also, paying multicore prices for a dual core i3 in 2013/2014 is pure lunacy.

As I said, the savings are a false economy due to the extra power draw.
 

mkenyon

Banned
An FX6300 doesn't outperform a similarly priced i3 though. Unless you find it on sale for $100, but we're comparing MSRP here.

It's a disingenuous comparison to compare a "6 core" 6300 to a "dual core" i3 as well. The 6300 is more like a tri-core with 6 threads, which isn't too different than a dual core with 4 threads.

And again, even if there is a 5% bump either way, with the i3, you get a system that has PCI-E 3.0, tons of SATA 3.0 and the ability to upgrade to a proper gaming processor later on in an i5 or i7 with a chip drop in. With a 6300 you get to go to the 8350, which although amazing at multimedia creation (for the price) is not a gaming processor either.
 

nbraun80

Member
So here's my situation PC gaf:

I was just given a PC (parents got a new one), here are the stats:

HP Pavillion Elite HPE-120f:
intel core 2 quad processor Q9300
8GB DDR3 Ram
1 TB HDD
ATI Radeon HD4350 (512 dedicated memory)
Windows 7 Home premium

I'm guessing my graphics card is the weak point and need a better one. Basically I'm wondering am I correct that the graphics cards is the weak point? What would be a good one to get to fit well with all that?

The highest end games I'm looking to play are only DayZ and Rust. Games like Bioshock and BF4 I will be playing on the new consoles so I mainly will use the PC for PC only games like those two and Indie games on steam.

DayZ reccemmended statsOS: Windows 7 SP1
Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 or AMD Phenom II X4 940 or better
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or AMD Radeon HD 7750 with 1 GB VRAM or better
DirectX: Version 9.0c

Any help is appreciated. :)
 

wilflare

Member
this is so irrational... but i'm inclined to buy the premium for 280X :/

thinking of getting the U2412 to replace my 2209WA

or should I just jump for the Qnix 27inch?

both are the same price in my country...
 

Diablos

Member
Which has been said for years.
And that somehow invalidates multicore apps?

http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

Frostbite 3 is designed for multicore, and it shows. This is an example as to how the FX can indeed hold its own in some scenarios. Even the FX 4100 is doing a fine job.

In those graphs where lots of threads are being used look at the difference between an FX 6300 and the i3. It's pretty slim. Then let's look at single threaded which is still the most important thing

cinebench-r15-single.png


And even then in some applications the much better IPC of the Intel stuff will win out. This benchmark uses 6 threads so you'd think the FX 6300 should win, not so

rendering-3ds-max-2014.png
Here's some benches of the latest i3 Haswell chips for encoding and rendering.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-4340-4330-4130_6.html#sect0

Optimized (see: Freemake benchmark) or not, the FX 6350 and above outperform the i3 for encoding. There's not much of a difference between the 6300 and 6350 at stock. OCing the 6300 an additional 400MHz doesn't do much, and besides that they are exactly the same (except the 6350 doesn't have AVX for whatever reason), so I would expect similar performance from the 6300. I'm not sure if it was you who said you won't be doing this "all day" (edit: you did) or what have you, but I encode/transcode often, and again for the cost of this CPU I am getting excellent performance despite all of the FX series' shortcomings.

Another plus is the FX series has AES, which is great if you encrypt a lot of things (I don't), but it blows Intel out of the water there.

It is also worth noting that the 63xx stacks up quite nicely against the i5 in these benches, neck to neck or sometimes exceeding it for things like compression, yes it falls behind too but taking into account the price difference that is still pretty great.

Clearly, though, the FX line is starting to sweat more and more when put up against the latest Sandy Bridge and Haswell offerings in particular. No argument there. But the FX is not a horrible option if you are not only looking to game, but also do some video encoding and, dare I say it again, furtureproof yourself against multicore apps. I know they've been saying it for years, but you can still do things today that take advantage of multicore, you however seem to think the idea of encoding or running a media server are obscure? I really don't know where you're coming from there. And you don't have to spend "all day" in Sony Vegas to appreciate some of the multicore advantages this CPU has...

Rave reviews from people who've bought them, great. It's not like there will be people out there who will buy something and then say great things about it to justify their purchases.

The reviews that matter on the CPU side are the professional reviews, not user ones, which is what I wanted from you to justify your argument, and you cannot provide those as they don't exist.

If you buy AMD it's not going to mean you cannot play games or perform tasks, I argue against them purely from the standpoint that for most tasks Intel offers better performance from their equivalent CPUs. Again if I was spending all day in Sony Vegas then yes, I'd say AMD is a great buy, but since that isn't what most people are doing Intel stuff is better.

Please, stop trying to argue this. I've provided empirical evidence for what I'm saying, you've provided nothing bar some Newegg customer reviews.
I've bought plenty of things I have regretted, but people tend to view the 6300 as a great value still. Will they this time next year? Maybe, maybe not -- I still think it'll be held in fairly high regard (I want a 65-75W 8xxx FX CPU but I think AMD isn't revisiting it. Wishful thinking!)

It is one of the most popular CPU's on newegg as far as I can tell.

TheD is right, sentences like this do betray a lack of understanding of how this stuff works. Resolution is one factor which is entirely GPU dependent, so if you play at extremely high resolutions you actually need (relatively) less CPU performance.

High sequential CPU performance is invaluable for maintaining high framerates, minimizing framedrops in demanding scenarios, emulators, and simply overpowering inefficient software by sheer grunt.
Yes, and if you are running something at 4K you don't want the highest sequential CPU performance possible? Gaming at that res pretty much implies you have the cash and knowledge to build a rig that is more than adequate for that. I sure as hell wouldn't want a 6300 for that, even. Good thing I don't care about 4K.

Sigh,

You can NOT offset a CPU that has slow single threaded performance with a GPU!
Having a game that is not CPU limited is a completely different matter, you are not making up for poor CPU performance, you are just not limited by it (on the other hand, if a game is CPU limited, then the GPU can not help one bit!)
I by no means meant that throwing a $400 GPU with a 384-bit bus or something into my case is going to crush performance gains from Intel chips. I simply mean it's going to get me to a place for most games that I care to play (sorry, not an RTS guy) that will give me more than satisfactory performance. Saving that $100-120 or so and putting it towards a better GPU is a good idea if your are budget-oriented.

Nothing says that a FX 6300 will be able to run all game in the next few years at 60FPS, hell their are some today (like Planetside2, even after the optimizations) that can not keep 60 FPS all the time on a 2500K at 4.4GHz!
Yes, but I think we are finally heading into an era of more multicore-centric game engines and a stronger GPU presence making the difference in what can make a game run great or like crap.

A 6 core FX can not keep up to a Haswell i5 and a 8 core FX can only keep up when running heavily multi threaded loads.
But even then, it will be using around 2x the power (100Watts more at stock and 160 watts more when both are overclocked!) and if you are running heavily multi threaded programs (or games), depending on how many hours a day you have the CPU under heavy load and how many years you keep the CPU for you will end up making up the cost difference between the the 8350 and the Haswell i5 in power costs!
Honestly, my power bill was the same when I went from my crappy laptop which didn't use much power to my 6300 rig with a 500W PSU. I

That does not mean that we should ignore the reality of what CPU is better.
I've already stated numerous times that the latest Intel offerings (Sandy Bridge, Haswell) are better CPU's. I don't know why you seem to think I'm ignoring that. I'm merely stating that the FX series (particularly 63xx series) is classic AMD price/performance. If you want something better, spend the money and get Intel, no argument there. But the FX is not worthless for budget-oriented system builders.

As I said, the savings are a false economy due to the extra power draw.
Again, my power bill is the same. Went down a couple bucks after buying a new fridge, actually.
 
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