Is it worth it?

[Scoobing]

Hi there,

I'd really appreciate any advice on the following system. The price is around $1600 NZD (New Zealand Dollars) which equates to around $1300 USD or 800 British Pounds.

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z...20W-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-i5-QUAD-CORE-2400-3.1G

I want to be able to play Battlefield 3 at high quality and high framerate. I'd also like to be able to play RTS games and some FPS (not sure what exactly as I've been out of the PC gaming loop for a while).

The cost is around my maximum budget, although I could go a little higher. There is a second system I have been looking at that is another $500 NZD extra:

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z...01W-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-i5-2500K-3.3GHz--8GB-D

How long could I expect the cheaper system to perform well? I'd like to see it as a purchase that would last me at least 2-3 years. Should I spend the extra money on the more expensive system?

Thanks for reading and look forward to hearing your advice.

 

[AMD X6850]

Sorry if I'm underestimating your knowledge (and please say so if I am) cos I will try and explain everything.

Don't know whether to trust Great Wall PSU's or not but since they are giving you a 1 year warranty, it's fine.

Do you plan on overclocking? If so, the second system is a must because the first one (i5 2400) allows very little overclocking. Overclocking does allow the system to last longer (in terms of performance, not actual lifetime) and overclocking the i5-2500k is extremely easy (plenty of guides here at Tom's and on other sites). But it would be better to buy a CPU Cooler if doing this, rather than using the stock cooler.
All depends on whether you do plan to overclock.

Another thing you might want to consider is Crossfire/SLI (two video cards in one system working together to get greater performance). Sometime after buying the system, you can always add a second HD 6950 graphics card in crossfire to the more expensive system, increasing its performance lifetime.
This can only be done on the more expensive system, because the motherboard of the cheaper one does not support Crossfire or SLI. Rather, it doesn't support SLI at all and you won't get full performance benefit using crossfire, in comparison to the more expensive motherboard.

But the cheaper one doesn't stop you from replacing the card altogether with a more powerful one if you need to in future.

Other than that, the only other main difference is that the expensive one has an SSD drive + 1TB HDD Drive. This probably won't increase performance lifetime as such but the computer will be much faster starting up. But the 1TB HDD on the cheaper system is still quite fast (WD Black) but not anywhere near as fast as the SSD.

The expensive one also has a Blu-Ray drive instead of a DVD like the cheap one but that's something you can easily add in later if required.

That said, the cheaper system is still quite powerful and should last you the 2-3 years (if required, you can always upgrade parts quite easily).

So the main questions you need to consider are:
1) Do you plan on overclocking?
2) Do you plan on using CrossFire?
3) Is the extra $500 worth all of the above (when the cheaper system should last the 2-3 years)?

 

[Scoobing]

Hi, thanks alot for your reply - your comments were definitely easy for me to understand. To answer your questions:

No I don't plan on overclocking (I'm happy with 3.1Ghz clock speed) and I don't plan on using CrossFire. In the cheaper system do you rate the GTX 560 OC at 1GB as any good?

I'd like to stick with stock cooling as I won't be doing any alterations to the clock speed. I'd be happy to swap out the GPU or motherboard + GPU maybe 18 months down the line if it became an issue.

I think through your feedback I'm definitely considering the cheaper option, it falls within my budget and I think it will suit me well for a few years of gaming!

 

[AMD X6850]

I don't know much about Nvidia graphics cards but a quick look at the benchmarks seems to put the ordinary 560 TI very close to the 6950 of the more expensive system.

Take a look at the benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/benchmarks,123.html

So it is a fairly powerful card.