My friend is gifting me a gaming PC... I have two options

Jun 27, 2018
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Hello everyone! I'm very new to computers and I have had a small interest to build one myself but when I talked to my friend who has a job working with computers, he said he has a couple of test PC's from a while ago and that he can give me one of them!! I need help choosing which would be the better choice, he said they are about the same but I would like more input!

I'll go ahead and list each one:

PC 1:
CPU: Intel i5-4460
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU: EVGA GTX 960 2GB
HDD: 1TB Western Digital 7200RPM
CPU Cooler: Stock

PC 2:
CPU: AMD FX-8320
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU: XFX R9 280x 3GB
HDD: 1TB Western Digital 7200RPM
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 Evo

He also said the graphic cards are interchangeable! I'm not really looking to play triple A games like Far cry 5 ill play that on my PS4 but I'm more looking to do things that you can only do on PC like CS:GO and Skyrim modding and stuff like that! Maybe even fortnite but idk if thats even possible he said these are kind of old.

Which PC should I choose? I'm really excited :) thank you for your help
 
Solution
You should get the 280x either way.

It beat the 960 consumately 3 years ago when it was released.
Now the difference is more pronounced, amd have always supported previous gen cards much better than nvidia with newer driver releases.

That extra 1gb vram also makes a big difference running graphics mods in older games like Skyrim as you mentioned.
Either way you want the 280x rather than the 960.
Its just plain better.

Cpu wise hard choice.

Intel fanboys will,chime,straight in that the 4460 is the better choice.

& at stock speeds I'd agree entirely.

If the board in the 8320 one is decent quality though it changes things a bit imo.

An 8320@4.3ghz isn't far behind a 4460 in single for performance & has an extra 4 threads to fall back on.
 

therealduckofdeath

Honorable
May 10, 2012
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Yeah, PC1 looks quite solid. Intel had a pretty substantial performance advantage over AMD in that generation. Its GPU is probably also better, even though 2GB might be a slight bottleneck these days, but it should at least be quieter than the R9 280x.
 

toshibitsu

Distinguished
The CPU's in both systems are below minimum requirements for some newer games. However, PC1 would be upgrade-able to a nice CPU such as an i7-4790. Depending on the motherboard, you may be able to throw in an i5-4690k or an i7-4790k.
 
You should get the 280x either way.

It beat the 960 consumately 3 years ago when it was released.
Now the difference is more pronounced, amd have always supported previous gen cards much better than nvidia with newer driver releases.

That extra 1gb vram also makes a big difference running graphics mods in older games like Skyrim as you mentioned.
 
Solution