I offered to create a budget console killer system for a friend, what do you guys think?

[Simonky16]

I didn't want him to buy a ps4. He mainly wants to play GTA 5 on it and doesn't bother about USB2. He already has peripherals and a monitor as well.

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 845 3.5GHz Quad-Core (67$)
MoBo: ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+ (45$)
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 stick for expandability) (28$)
GPU: A used GTX 770 (2GB) from EBay It's a German listing for 130€ which equals 145$
Case: Raidmax EXO ATX (45$)
PSU: From Ebay for 22€ (24$)
Storage: 1 TB HDD for 50$
Total price is about 350$.
Any thoughts?

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

All fine, except the PSU. Don't get a PSU off eBay. Get a SeaSonic or Antec unit, or if the price is too high even an EVGA or Corsair budget one. Don't buy used, especially since I don't know that brand. Also might wait for the RX 470 next week (?this week?)(tomorrow?) seeing as it will perform better.

 

[photonboy]

1) You'll have a CPU bottleneck, thus lower frame rates, but for the budget there's not much else I could recommend.

GTA5 is 30FPS on consoles anyway, though hopefully you can hit 60FPS even if you drop a few settings. (I suggest using Adaptive VSYNC:
a) test with VSYNC OFF, then tweak settings so you are above 60FPS about 90% of the time if possible (may want to use MFAA if supported, or FXAA if HUD not blurry, otherwise MSAA. I don't have the game).
NCP-> manage 3d settings-> add game (GTA5)-> adaptive vsync

Then run game with FRAPS and it should show 60FPS, but if you drop below that you should get some SCREEN TEAR because VSYNC is turned off automatically to avoid STUTTER due to the sync mismatch between GPU and monitor. Screen tear is usually preferably to this type of stuttering.

Later on you'll probably need to adjust a few settings if screen tear is too frequent. Some settings are demanding but don't add much visually so those are the ones to aim for. Again, I don't own the game but these often include Ambient Occlusion, high shadows, beyond 4xMSAA etc.

Tweaking guides exist too, though again choosing VSYNC On/OFF/Adaptive is always the first choice. Note that Geforce Experience offers to set a profile for you. It attempts to run at 40FPS, VSYNC OFF which is a good choice for many people (I can't stand screen tear though in most games).

2) Cost of Windows, DVD/BD player, and game controller has to be included to be comparable to consoles though you can get away without the DVD drive.

3) I agree to look carefully at the power supply. That can cause a lot of issues if it fails or voltages go outside tolerance.

4) Not sure how much, if any memory bottleneck you'd get with a single stick. Obviously having only TWO slots and a low budget limits your options, so unless you can find a 4-slot for a similar price the only other advice I have is go as high as possible with the memory speed.

Something like 1866MHz CAS10 might be the best compromise for single stick.

 

[sapito272]

Operating System? Taking that into consideration would put you over "budget" in comparison to a console.

 

[photonboy]

Operating System? Taking that into consideration would put you over "budget" in comparison to a console.

Yeah, and controller. As I say about the BluRay player isn't necessary but if you want to compare it is.

If you want to compare performance though it's also important to remember that many games on XB1 are 30FPS/900p and may drop at times below 15FPS.

I should also add that some monitors allow the choice of 50FPS in the game menu because of PAL (for me it worked at 1920x1080 and 1280x720 only). My Dell allows this but I don't know if that's common. For budget every little bit helps.

 

[JWoody]

1) You'll have a CPU bottleneck, thus lower frame rates, but for the budget there's not much else I could recommend.

GTA5 is 30FPS on consoles anyway, though hopefully you can hit 60FPS even if you drop a few settings. (I suggest using Adaptive VSYNC:
a) test with VSYNC OFF, then tweak settings so you are above 60FPS about 90% of the time if possible (may want to use MFAA if supported, or FXAA if HUD not blurry, otherwise MSAA. I don't have the game).
NCP-> manage 3d settings-> add game (GTA5)-> adaptive vsync

Then run game with FRAPS and it should show 60FPS, but if you drop below that you should get some SCREEN TEAR because VSYNC is turned off automatically to avoid STUTTER due to the sync mismatch between GPU and monitor. Screen tear is usually preferably to this type of stuttering.

Later on you'll probably need to adjust a few settings if screen tear is too frequent. Some settings are demanding but don't add much visually so those are the ones to aim for. Again, I don't own the game but these often include Ambient Occlusion, high shadows, beyond 4xMSAA etc.

Tweaking guides exist too, though again choosing VSYNC On/OFF/Adaptive is always the first choice. Note that Geforce Experience offers to set a profile for you. It attempts to run at 40FPS, VSYNC OFF which is a good choice for many people (I can't stand screen tear though in most games).

2) Cost of Windows, DVD/BD player, and game controller has to be included to be comparable to consoles though you can get away without the DVD drive.

3) I agree to look carefully at the power supply. That can cause a lot of issues if it fails or voltages go outside tolerance.

4) Not sure how much, if any memory bottleneck you'd get with a single stick. Obviously having only TWO slots and a low budget limits your options, so unless you can find a 4-slot for a similar price the only other advice I have is go as high as possible with the memory speed.

Something like 1866MHz CAS10 might be the best compromise for single stick.

With A 480 or 770 or less it will NOT bottleneck because you wont be able to turn the settings up enough to matter. no you will NOT get a bottlenck with a single stick in gaming and other normal usage scenarios (you wont even notice), 2) and 3) and 4) are correct.

 

[photonboy]

GTA5:
I couldn't compare exact benchmarks, however I could look up CPU scaling for various CPU's. In this case it was really high settings with a Titan GPU:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/203800-rounding-up-gta-v-on-the-pc-how-do-amd-intel-and-nvidia-perform

If you look at the Passmark info it sits about the FX-8320E result, or near 40FPS average.

The GTX770 results are 60FPS, so as expecte the CPU is the bottleneck.

However, obviously we can change some settings though a lot are more GPU specific but keep in mind even GPU enhancements use a bit of CPU code usually.

#2 - ANOTHER BENCHMARK at lower settings->
http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

A Titan X and 2560x1600, but the point is that your CPU would sit about 55FPS under these conditions. So that's your minimum FPS at medium + FXAA because we know the GPU won't be the bottleneck. Dropping to 1920x1080 may or may not help raise the FPS much.

*Long story short is that getting to 60FPS is probably feasible, or you can use VSYNC OFF or whatever and should have a great experience. Plus, it's likely there's been some bit of optimization since these tests though how much, if any CPU benefit is unknown to me.

 

[photonboy]

JWoody,
You are not correct on the CPU bottleneck situation.
(Though it's true most games don't usually benefit from dual channel.)

I'm not even certain what you are implying when you say you can't turn up the settings high enough to bottleneck the CPU, because higher graphical settings shift the bottleneck towards the GPU.

I can give many, many examples showing a better CPU giving higher performance in games when paired with an RX-480 performance or higher. Most people who understand CPU's can do this, so I'd say it's pretty much common knowledge.

1) SKYRIM - older game, but still played:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-14.html

GTX680 used, so a better GPU would have more of a CPU bottleneck at times. His CPU would give between 60% and 70% the performance compared to a modern i5-6600K and the same RX-480. The 1080p chart is obvious with the FX-8350 much lower than the i5-3570K.

2) STARCRAFT 2 - this game only uses two threads and easily becomes CPU bottlenecked. In fact, no CPU can run the game during intense battles without dropping below 60FPS, if not capping or attempting higher FPS it's more of an issue and the difference in per-core performance scales fairly well (so a good i5 with 50% more performance per core can get 40% higher FPS at times)

It may not be typical, but it's a game that is played and that's the reality.

3) BIOSHOCK Ultimate:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_6600k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,15.html

A good i5 is 25% faster in Bioshock. Yes, you still get 100FPS average (though drops can be much, much lower) however this is just an example to indicate CPU bottlenecks exist and are common.

4) TOMB RAIDER (2013) is an example of a game that has MINIMAL CPU bottleneck. It's actually not common for AMD CPU's to not be a bottleneck in modern titles. The exception that PROVES THE RULE.

5) Fallout 4
http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference

1080p results about half way down. They did use a GTX980Ti, but a CPU bottleneck would stil lexist on a GTX770. I'm too lazy to explain that in detail, or point to the GPU benchmark as well but when a top-end Intel CPU gets about 2X the FPS it should be obvious a major bottleneck would still exist with a GTX770 instead. (should vary between 10% and 25% loss comparatively)

I could go on but i think you get the idea.

*Don't misunderstand and think I'm saying the AMD CPU is bad. I think it's a pretty good build in general. And of course games that are capped at 60FPS anyway (if using VSYNC ON with 60Hz monitor) don't have much issue when the CPU allows for higher than 60FPS.

It's just a good idea to get the facts straight, and that is that any AMD CPU will bottleneck a reasonably good GPU by some degree usually but this varies significantly between titles from almost NOTHING to over 40% faster with a good Intel CPU.