Searching for a budget-oriented video card and processor...

hundreds

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Dec 30, 2009
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Hey everyone,

The last time I purchased a computer was back in 2010 I think... so it's been a while and I am a bit out of the loop. My intention is to purchase a package computer and then swap out the included (likely junkie) video card and get a a better one and install it on my own.

My question is two-part:

1. I want to go with a Windows machine, using an Intel processor. What processor should I be looking for? i3? i5? i7?

2. I want to focus on nVidia (never really had any great experiences with radeons). What card should I be targetting?


My budget is, I expect, kind of low. I am hoping to spend $500 on everything.

And I would like to devote $100 of that to the video card.

I don't need a good audio card. Don't really care about that. My current PC has a solid state drive, which I will be adding to the new computer, so the hdd in the new pc doesn't have to be special. I would like to have 8 GB of RAM, so I guess that is important. I also imagine that whatever package PC I buy will probably ship with a rather lousy video card and equally small PSU.

So I am guessing I would need at least a 500 Watt PSU in the package PC.

This of course depends on what graphics card I end up getting. I am not a huge gamer, but I do like to play a couple games once in a while. I am especially looking forward to the new Star Wars Battlefront 3 that was recently teased at SW Celebration. But that game is a bit off, and I don't think the system requirements have been released as if yet. So in order to better target what I THINK I want, I have a small list of games that have some varying system requirements that, at least according to steam, are fairly recent and popular. I'm not particularly interested in these, just mainly their system requirements.

Shadows of Mordor
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Watch Dogs
Crysis 3
Far Cry 4
Wolfenstein New Order

I think a very important point for me is that since I am one a budget, I am not going to be looking to run games like this in maxed out settings on iMAX resolutions. My monitor only supports up to 1280 x 1024 anyway... so... budget, but hopefully not something that will be immediately useless to me in the 2016 year.


By the way, this is my current Rig:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.8 Ghz
8 Gigs of Ram... not entirely sure of the specs on these...
64-Bit Windows 7
nVidia GTS 250 (oooooollllldddddd)
Sandisk 256 Gig ATA Solid State Drive
On board sound (hah)

Thanks for any feedback you might have.
 

yeskay

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I would suggest that the right time for you to upgrade will be 2nd half of this year. Why?

Intel Confirms Skylake in 2H 2015

Let me give you one more reason why you shouldn't upgrade now.

AMD reiterates plans to introduce New Radeon R9 300 Series GPUs in June 2015.

Source: KitGuru.Net - Read this full article with approximate R9 300 GPU Prices.

The AMD's new R9 300 Series, are expected to use High Band Width Memory (HBM) that will consume less power yet offer superior performance than GDDR5 technology.

"HBM = 65% performance improvement over GDDR5, 40% power reduction and 37X size reduction over DDR4."

So two new technological breakthroughs coming 2nd half of 2015. It's wise to upgrade later than now. Also AMD would have releasesd all their R9 300 series starting from low to high end cards by then. You will have loads of options to upgrade - R9 300 HBN Graphics Cards, Skylake Processors with support for both DDR3 / DDR4 memory, and new Skylake supporting Motherboards with LGA 1151 Sockets.

Cheers!
 

hundreds

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Dec 30, 2009
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Now, I am not OPPOSED to AMD or Radeon. I just don't really know anything about them. Back when I last bought a PC, I had a Radeon that really drove me nuts with driver support. It was junk. I went to nVidia and everything was wonderful.

As far as an AMD processor, I am not really sure which one of those would be an advantageous choice. How do the AMD processors measure up to the Intel ones? Am I more likely to find a PC in my budget if I go AMD but not take *TOO* much of a hit on performance?

And thanks for your responses guys.
 

yeskay

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Your experiences were way back in 2010. Things have changed now with AMD at least with regard to Graphics cards. With regard to playing current modern titles that you have mentioned and the upcoming The Witcher 3, No Man's Sky, Star Citizen etc, I would prefer an Intel i5 paired with either NVIDIA GTX 970 4GB 256-bit or Radeon R9 280X 3GB 384-bit graphics card to play at comfortable frame rates.

An Intel i5 4460 with 4 strong quad cores will perform better than an AMD's 8350 with 8 weaker cores in modern gaming.
 

jerdle

Admirable
AMD purchased the company that makes Radeons, and driver support went from poor quality to on par with Nvidia. (Nvidia fanboys will disagree, but as someone who has alternated between brands with every computer, i haven't run into driver problems for many, many years) Their cards are priced lower than their nvidia equivalents. (i'd take a look @ the r9 285 or r9 280X, which are marginally and considerably better respectively than the GTX 960)

on the CPU side of things, Intel makes better ones for everyday use, no doubt. But AMD once again is the budget choice. Not only do you save money on the CPU itself, but some more on the motherboard.

When you're looking @ a budget of $500, Intel will add up fast, even if you go with the cheapest i3.
That's where you look instead at say an FX-6300.
 

hundreds

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Dec 30, 2009
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Well this is good information. I am probably going to wait a few months, as was suggested, to really stick to my budget. If it seems like I can get a good deal on an AMD processor at that time, I will.
 

yeskay

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It has got weaker CPU and GPU. No good for the modern games you're looking to play. Save your money, upgrade later.
 

jerdle

Admirable
looks terrible :p
Buying a pre-build means mark ups...and you can't afford mark ups. In order to stay under your budget you had a serious downgrade in part quality.
You should order all of the parts off of newegg/amazon....it's as simple as plugging everything together and you get a significantly better PC in the end.

There are youtube videos of like a 5 yr old building a PC...all you need to do is a google search and you're ready.
 

hundreds

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Dec 30, 2009
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Yeah I have built PCs before. A lot of the time, I would get a good PC going. Other times I would have one part not working, but not really have the knowledge to determine WHICH part. I was kind of hoping to avoid that this time around...
 

hundreds

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Dec 30, 2009
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OK, so I have been looking into the possibility of just upgrading my current rig with a new MB, CPU and GPU.

This is what I currently have:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.8 Ghz
8 Gigs of Ram... not entirely sure of the specs on these...
64-Bit Windows 7
nVidia GTS 250 (oooooollllldddddd)
Sandisk 256 Gig ATA Solid State Drive
500 GB SATA Drive
On board sound (hah)

If I was planning on going Intel...

What type/brand of MB would I be looking for?

If I was planning on going AMD...

Same question.

My current rig has a couple of USB 2.0 plugs in the front... or maybe they are 1.0. I have 4 or so 2.0 USB ports in the back. I also have a little headphones jack attached to the same controller with those front USB ports. And I have a memory card reader with 5 different slots on it for various memory cards.

Would it be super difficult to support these?

Finally, it looks like I have a power cord going to the MB from my PSU in the form of a 24-pin plug, specifically with a 10 x 2 row and then a 2 x 2 extended piece on the righthand side.

What is the odds that I will run into a problem with that?

Thanks again!