Determining a computer's performance

Kreignitz

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Feb 22, 2015
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Hello! I've been selecting parts for my first rig, trying to get the cheapest rig that'll run my stuff, such as Battlefield 4, GTA V, Minecraft, Crysis, Civilization and so on. I have a clue at its overall performance and how it would run games, but not sure enough, so I'd like a final advice on what I could change for better performance in the same price range before the pact is sealed.

PC Part Picker list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fvHfLk

Specifications:
Processor: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2 GHz, Dual Core
MOBO: Gigabyte Micro ATX LGA1150
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x4GB DDR3 1600 MHz
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500 GB 7200 RPM 16 MB cache 6 GB/s SATA interface
Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti SC, 2 GB VRAM GDDR5, 1.18 GHz, 60 watts
Case: Rosewill FBM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (not really sure about that one, people say cable management is bad)
PSU: Antec 450W ATX
Overall price: 368$

There's also something else I'd like to ask - is it true that a higher HDD density means a (rather significantly) shorter lifespan? I chose a 500 GB over a 1 TB HDD because of this.

Thank you in advance! :)
 
Not going to get better performance without increasing cost.

Higher density does not mean quicker failure.

No difference in reliability or anything between a 500gb and 1tb drive besides the size.
Now if you need more then 1tb you should be using 1 drive for OS/programs and the other drive for whatever is requiring that much space.
 

This surpasses greatly my expectations :heink: Somewhere along the comments on a video of his I heard he fried his processor once because he OCed it to 5.0 GHz 😀 Not like I'm gonna do that.
 
FYI:

The g3258 is a decent CPU for what it is, and a great "starter" cpu for budget builds.

Many people are "drinking the kool aid" because of its high overclock ability and saying it is as good as a core i7.
While yes in single core performance it will match the i7, but anything that is going to put that much demand on the system is going to be programmed for multiple cores and threads, thus an i3 or better cpu has more resources (cores and threads) for that demanding task to be spread to.\
Thus at the end of the day the i3/i5/i7 will still run demanding tasks better.
 

Thanks, I'm going to get the 1TB then. I have a spare SSD for the OS drive already, forgot to mention that. One last question, though - does the SATA interface speed really matter?
 
Yes and No.

A magnetic hard drive will only ever get up to 120MBPS (Thus 1000mbps or 1gbps) so whether you have 1.5, 3, or 6 gpbs does not really matter.

An SSD drive can use almost all of the sata 3 speed which is 6gbps but unless transferring form 1 SSD to another SSD you will barley notice the difference in speed. It is the instant seek time and not the speed that makes an SSD drive such a huge improvement over a hard drive.
 

Heh, I'd love to go with one of those, but I think it'll do better than an i3 when OCed. When looking at a few comparison graphs, I've also noticed NVIDIA cards go pretty well with low-end processors - a G3258 with a 750 Ti gets better FPS than a R9 270x with an i5.
 
Like I said the g3258 is a good starter CPU that can be upgraded latter to something like an i5 or i7.

The g3258 (overclocked) beats the i3 in single core performance, no arguments there.
This is great if you only look at that one benchmark/variable and not the whole picture.
BF4, Chrysis, GTA 5 etc are all coded to use more then one core/thread so being able to use all 4 threads on an i3 at 3.5 ghz is going to be better then 2 cores at 5 ghz.