Part 3: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

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Great article. Looking forward to how the Fermi's fit into everything.
 
Does anyone know how I could contact them or found out the more exact setting for their voltages for their Intel Core 2 Duo E8400? Or better yet know it? More than just the idle?

I basically have the same setup, I've got it to 3.8ghz but 4ghz or higher would be awesome. Thanks.
 
Good luck finding a new RPG for your benchmark suite. Oblivion was really the last PC RPG with notable-for-the-time graphics. Everything that has come since was either on-par with everything else or worse. Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 I think would be the most notable recent entries but the graphics were nothing special in either.

I hate to say it but I don't think we'll be seeing a system killer RPG until Elder Scrolls V. Hopefully it's not made in this gen because it would probably be held back by its console counterparts. Oblivion was only notable because it was released early in the console gen and was one of the first games to truly wow people graphically in that gen. I'm hoping they plan the same for ESV rather than getting another game that plays and looks way too much like Oblivion or F3.
 
It would be nice to see which combinations are a better value at a glance. Any chance of a scatter plot of global FPS against cost, with a point for each CPU/GFX combination? It would be a flawed metric, of course, but it would certainly give a starting point for shopping around.
 
It would be nice to see which combinations are a better value at a glance. Any chance of a scatter plot of global FPS against cost, with a point for each CPU/GFX combination? It would be a flawed metric, of course, but it would certainly give a starting point for shopping around.
 
[citation][nom]failure[/nom]It would be nice to see which combinations are a better value at a glance. Any chance of a scatter plot of global FPS against cost, with a point for each CPU/GFX combination? It would be a flawed metric, of course, but it would certainly give a starting point for shopping around.[/citation]

Id love this. Its to easy to sit and decide on a build, and then notice suddenly that you're grossly over budget after a few thoughts like this "Its only $20-$30 more for this Cas7 ram 😀 Ill throw that in"
 
why do they benchmark a 5750? they don't even recommend it in Best GPUs of the Month. this is stupid. plus the 5970... how many of us are going to spend 700$ on that? and what for, to game on a 30" monitor that costs over 1000$?
where's the 5770? the 5850? the 5830? These IMO are must haves in a review like this!
a failure of a review
 

Your facts aren't straight; plus you're missing the point and failing to grasp the time involved.

The 5750 was the logical DX11 replacement for the 4850 and actually is recommended on the best GPU for the money. The only thing keeping it off in the past was street price, something we surely can't predict months down the road (when choosing hardware for this series).

Instead, we aim to cover the broadest range of graphics from $100 and up. Why would we chop off below $150(more like $170 at the time) and add another card at the GTX 260 performance level instead? That's why the 4870 wasn't in there, or the GTX 275 & GTS 250 for that matter. More is nice but comes at a huge expense of lab time, something this series already taxes heavily! We need to set a limit somewhere, and thus staggered the hardware list. The 5830 wasn't even an available option when testing began. The 5850 would have been nice, but we chose the 5870 instead, sticking to the best card available from each generation (4870X2, GTX295, HD 5970), plus the best single GPU card available (HD 4890, GTX 285, HD 5870).
 
Great article and series Paul. Good Job. I really appreciate the amount of effort that you guys have put in here.
Good to know my E8400 still has some life left. Just ordered a 5850 and now its time to overclock my CPU. Was wondering how much of a difference would overclocks make for instance going from 3 --> 3.6 --> 4 --> 4.5 GHz. I've read somewhere that going above 3.6 GHz (on E8400) does not make much of a difference that is if one is not into benchmarking. I just want good desktop and gaming performance.
Maybe you guys can take this as a subject for a future article.
 
HEY GUYS, IT'S JUNE 17th ALREADY!!! Where is the next part of the article? I have checked in daily for the last month. WHAT GIVES?!?!?
 
Max power consumption ~ 450W!!!

More evidence proving that any PSU above +600W is pure overkill...I don't even know why 1000W PSU's are manufactured yet not a moment goes by without some hapless sucker forking out $$$ on a 750W psu to power his sissy i5/HD5770.
 

I totally agree with you. Oblivion set the bar high and was a personal favorite. DragonAge and ME2 were the ones I looked into. High hopes for TESV.
 
If this is supposed to be an article about balanced PC's then where's the 5850 and 5830, and where are the new Nvidia GTX series 460 (probably one of the best cards made since the 8800gt) & highly overclockable 470 or 480?
Where are the i3s, i5 and lover i7s properly compared against each other? As well as the AMDs?

Are the "Sponsors" deliberately greasing the pockets so the competition is left out?
No body in their right mind is going to stick a $700 5970 in their system and call it balanced. The 5970, 5870, 480, 470 are all enthusiast level hardware. U want balance, show 5850, 5830, and the two gtx460s running on the 530-540, the 661 intels which are actually affordable. No one seams to have the ball to show that cpus in 90% of all gaming cases doesn't make any difference and that its all gpu as long as your sub system is decent. Spending an extra $1000 to get 5 or 6fps extra is just demented. Of course all companies want you st spend you hard earned cash on the top end, that's why you see only top hardware reviewed, and if by some miracle some one does a decent review they call it an anomaly. Look at Crysis in 1680x or 1920x it actually run a tick or two faster on the Q9550 than on the i7, why is that, and there was not much of any peep about that other than "oh it was repeatable". Crysis was coded during a time where there was no i7 chips that's why its better optimized on the Q-series technically inferior 2 year old hardware. Crysis 2 will be optimized for i7.

Toms Hardware has been slipping for a while especially since they got taken over.
Have some balls and review hardware properly, and stop being a sponsor's bitch.
 
If this is supposed to be an article about balanced PC's then where's the 5850 and 5830, and where are the new Nvidia GTX series 460 (probably one of the best cards made since the 8800gt) & highly overclockable 470 or 480?
Where are the i3s, i5 and lover i7s properly compared against each other? As well as the AMDs?

Are the "Sponsors" deliberately greasing the pockets so the competition is left out?
No body in their right mind is going to stick a $700 5970 in their system and call it balanced. The 5970, 5870, 480, 470 are all enthusiast level hardware. U want balance, show 5850, 5830, and the two gtx460s running on the 530-540, the 661 intels which are actually affordable. No one seams to have the ball to show that cpus in 90% of all gaming cases doesn't make any difference and that its all gpu as long as your sub system is decent. Spending an extra $1000 to get 5 or 6fps extra is just demented. Of course all companies want you st spend you hard earned cash on the top end, that's why you see only top hardware reviewed, and if by some miracle some one does a decent review they call it an anomaly. Look at Crysis in 1680x or 1920x it actually run a tick or two faster on the Q9550 than on the i7, why is that, and there was not much of any peep about that other than "oh it was repeatable". Crysis was coded during a time where there was no i7 chips that's why its better optimized on the Q-series technically inferior 2 year old hardware. Crysis 2 will be optimized for i7.

Toms Hardware has been slipping for a while especially since they got taken over.
Have some balls and review hardware properly, and stop being a sponsor's bitch.
Click to expand...
I truly enjoy reader feedback, but every once and a while one like this comes alone. *sigh*

Suggestion: Actually read the four articles and prior reader comments before rehashing and ranting pure nonsense.

This article is from May and consisted of many hundreds of hours of prior overclocking and benchmarking for just this part alone. AMD processors were then covered in Part 4.

So far we have covered 10 CPU’s, 9 graphics cards, 4 platforms, 8 games, 4 resolutions, stock speeds and overclocking, yet in your not so humble opinion we took the easy and bribed route? Get real. To repeat what you should already know, GTX 400’s, Core i3, SLI, and Crossfire are coming later on in the series.

Somehow I think if we had a team of editors benching 24/7 for just this series, you’d still find reason to complain and theorize over omissions. 🙁
 
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