Part 1: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

[soo-nah-mee]

Mr Henningsen, you've done a fine job. A truly helpful guide for all knowledge levels. This should be read by anyone who is considering buying an off-the-shelf gaming rig. Thanks!

 

[cleeve]

Great article, Paul. Very interesting methodology and data, there.

 

[eyemaster]

While I do like the 4870x2, it's a card that's almost impossible to get as well as never at a reasonable price. It's cheaper and easier to get 2x4890 cards. Maybe the testing of the 4870x2 needs to stop?

 

[Ehsan w]

will you be using the same cards on the amd rig?

 

[Ogdin]

One of the best articles you've done in awhile.

 

[jay2tall]

I really like these graphs. Even though they are pretty simple looking and can be a little hard to understand for some. I REALLY think it is useful for people looking for a balanced system. It really shows how some cards with certain CPU's just have no benefit but others have HUGE benefits. GOD JOB. Next time maybe include more CPU's, even though the chard may start to get a little overloaded.

 

[dennisburke]

Just ordered an EVGA P55 SLI along with an Intel i5-750, which has been around for awhile now, and was surprised not to see a P55 and i5 included, considering Tom's has both on hand. P55 is the now/future of anyone considering a midlevel gaming system.

 

[redgarl]

Yay... except for Far Cry 2, I was right most of the time... investing 400$ on a stronger platform don't change a dime if you don't have the gpu to do it.

Straight lines most of the time which prove that a cpu got very little to do on most games without proper horse power.

Investing on a GTX260 with a core i7 lga1366 is a stupid choice. You need a strong card to benefit from your strong cpu.

 

[origosis]

[citation][nom]inmytaxi[/nom]Very helpful stuff.I'd like to see some discussion on the availability of sub $400 (at times as low as $280) 28" monitors. At this price range, does it make more sense to spend more on the LCD even if less is spent initially on graphics? I would think the benefit of 28" vs. 22" is so great that the extra money could be taken from, say, a 9550 + 4890 combo and getting a 8400/6300 + 4850 instead, with the right motherboard a second 4850 later will pass a 4890 anyway.[/citation]

I did almost exactly this 1 year ago. I purchased a 28" for $300 (iINC) and I only had a 4850. The 4850 paired with a E6750 OC to 4GHZ could play Age of Conan at 1440x900 with most setting maxed. i simply played AoC at 1440x900 on the 28" for almost a year and it looked great. I later stumbled on a 4890 for a VERY good deal $160 and grabbed it and OC'ed it to 1GHZ. It runs pretty much everything I throw at it with everything maxed... FPS.. I dunno, but it looks VERY smooth to me... could be the 4GHZ CPU? but we can see the 4890 does not benefit from CPU's much.

long story short I was VERY hay with my 28" even though I really could not play much at 1920x1200 for nearly 11 months.

 

[etrnl_frost]

This is the kind of thing that got me to read Tom's in the first place. Thanks for the good article.

Now to go build my "just behind the wave" machine of gaming awesomeness...

 

[dennisburke]

Just purchased at the egg...will get Thursday...

1-) Windows 7, Home Premium, 64bit, OEM

2-) Intel Core i5-750

3-) EVGA P55 SLI

4-) CORSAIR XMS3 4GB(2X2GB) DDR3 1600 9-9-9-24

5-) WD 640GB Black
_________________________
TOTAL: $624.00 (after rebates and promo codes) Free Shipping/No Taxes

I think this setup should run my EVGA GTX 260 just fine, and I should be ready for Fermi and PhysX.

I have been looking for a decent 27" or 28" HDTV 16:9 monitor, and there are not a lot of choices, and then I came across the 27" Multifunction LCD Monitor (P2770HD) from Samsung which is in the pipeline. By next summer the monitor situation should improve greatly.

 

[scrumworks]

Interesting article. GTX295 seem not to be that much faster than HD4870x2 which many people tend to forget.

 

[tormentor22]

You include 1366 i7, quad core 775, and even E6300 but didnt include the in middle 1156 system for i5, y is that??!!

 

[tormentor22]

Its a great topic, but you include 1366 i7, quad core 775, and even E6300 but didnt include the in middle 1156 system for i5, y is that??!!

 

[juliom]

Why are factory overclocked Nvidia card being compared to regular ATI cards? Doesn't make sense.

 

[enzo matrix]

This is one of the best Toms articles I've read. For me it's also coming at a good time because I am considering building a gaming rig for a friend and upgrading my own.
The one thing I had trouble finding information on is when the cpu is holding back the gpu. These components make it easy for me to see exactly what would be holding back what and what could be overkill.
So an overclocked Athlon IIx4 and a 4850 or 4870 are looking pretty together right now.

 

[etrnl_frost]

[citation][nom]tormentor22[/nom]You include 1366 i7, quad core 775, and even E6300 but didnt include the in middle 1156 system for i5, y is that??!![/citation]
Like the 5800's from ATI, I bet that's going to be in a future article. The i5's are relatively recent. Relatively.

 

[enzo matrix]

Quote from the Introduction: "As mentioned, along the way we'll try to add new products to the mix, taking into account the recent ATI Radeon HD 5800-series and Intel Core i5 launches."

 

[billiardicus]

Excellent article. I wish you could have included the ATI 5000 series cards. I'm sure you guys wanted to but couldn't though.

I've got a GTX 280 on a q6600 running at 3.3ghz. From this article, I think I can upgrade my GPU once again and keep the ol' q6600.

 

[coldmast]

Somewhere someone with an E6300 paired with a GTX 925 is being ridiculed for their poor combination; they won't be able to show their face at a LAN-party until after upgrading.

great article, finally some mysteries have been solved with out having to go searching deep within online forums.

Obviously I'm shocked at some of the crisscrosses, and most importantly the bottlenecks!!! oh the humanity!

waiting for part 2... is it ready... still waiting... ? ...

 

[etrnl_frost]

[citation][nom]Billiardicus[/nom]Excellent article. I wish you could have included the ATI 5000 series cards. I'm sure you guys wanted to but couldn't though.I've got a GTX 280 on a q6600 running at 3.3ghz. From this article, I think I can upgrade my GPU once again and keep the ol' q6600.[/citation]

I wonder how much of it is really CPU/GPU limitation at the quad core and up level. Really only this year did software start taking advantage of the 2 cores, and so once the software starts taking advantage of the 4 cores, we'll probably see another plateau in performance; i.e. the CPU limit.

GPU's, with how quickly they cycle (or maybe because of how intimately the software is related to that technology) don't seem to have that staggered ceiling - yet.

 

[tormentor22]

Sorry for the duplicate post...

 

[7amood]

LOVE THE GRAPHS... really easy to understand

 

[nukemaster]

I think you need to toss Auto Assault out. the servers went dead long ago

 

[exar333]

[citation][nom]tester24[/nom]i think they're money scale is off a little bit... err a lot. A Core i7 920 plus the board and ram is way over 750 now add a $400+ G 295 on that... deep pockets my friend deep pockets.[/citation]

If you can't afford $500-700 (your $750 figure is exaggerated) for the CPU/MB/RAM, you have no business forking over $500 for a Graphics card. Are you stupid?