System Builder Marathon, June 2012: $1000 Enthusiast PC

[megamanx00]

Would have gone for a 7950 and a 2500k instead .

 

[blazorthon]

A great system build in of itself, however I fail to understand the point of even comparing it to the last system, it is for all intents and purposes the same. Good testing and analysis as always by TOMs, but it fails to address some of the most important questions in the mid-price range for a gaming system- which I will list here:
1. Is it worth the extra for the 2500K if you overclock? Also is it worth it if you want to upgrade to xfire/sli?
2. NVidea or AMD at this price point (ok you couldn't get the 670 no p - but I still want to know in future)
3. 7850 Xfire or 7970?
4. Is it worth saving some dosh and getting the 7950 if you OC - will it still play ever game smooth at 1080p or even at 1600p?
These are important questions for those of us buying mid-range pcs now

1. The 2500K, for gaming, won't have much of an advantage over the 2400 in gaming with a single 7970 at 2560x1600 in most games. I'd be a little surprised if there was a noticeable advantage in any game.

2. Right now, the GTX 670 offers better stock performance in most games than the similarly priced Radeon 7950 at or below 2560x1600. However, the 7950 comes with $100 in free games, so if you eithre use or sell those games, it's value is much higher than the price and performance imply. Overclocking, the 7950 is equal to the 7970, so the 7950 can beat some GTX 670s when it comes to overclocking, perhaps all of them with reasonable prices. However, it would be louder, hotter, and a little less power efficient when used like that, so it's all trade-offs. AMD or Nvidia, at this price point, is more subjective than objective than probably any other price point right now. It really depends on personal preference more so at the $350 and up price range right now than any lower price point where AMD pretty much wins substantially (of course, it's stil personal preference, but AMD has a clear victory in the lower price ranges even if you don't want to buy AMD).

3. CFX 7850s wold have been more expensive than the 7970 at the time. However, they would have been faster (especially OC versus OC), but they would have also had an inferior upgrade path because 7850s tend to only have one CF bridge, so you'd probably need a board with at least 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes to do triple or quad Crossfire 7850s without running into what could be a severe communication bandwidth problem between the 7850s. I don't know for sure how well such a system would perform and this might be a good thing for Tom's to test (hint hint Tom's) with the 7700 and 7800 cards.

4. The 7950, when overclocked, has equal performance to a 7970 with a similar PCB and the same cooler. The 7950 and 7970 have nearly identical performance at the same clock frequencies and the 7950 can generally overclock slightly higher, so it can usually make up the small shader count difference with a slightly greater GPU frequency. Basically, for overclockers, the 7970 is nothing but bragging rights compared to the 7950.

 

[blazorthon]

Would have gone for a 7950 and a 2500k instead .

Having the 2500K would have meant that a large portion of the money saved from the 7970 drop to 7950 would be spent where it won't help gaming performance noticeably and would mean that the other problems (IE the case not fitting the 7970 properly) would have probably not been resolved. Heck, maybe a 60/64GB SSD could have been fit in from the drop and that would have been a far better place to spend the money than a 2500K.

 

[Why_Me]

I personally think they went a little TOO overboard on the GPU. Sure, it'll tear through games... but at 4GB of RAM, a non-overclockable i5 CPU, and a P67 motherboard... well... meh...

Not at all. SB and IB cpu's don't gain that much from over clocking in regards to gaming (FPS) and that 4GB of RAM is plenty for gaming not to mention another 2x2GB of RAM can always be added later on if the need ever arises. This is a pretty decent build for that budget. Now if Toms could use "newegg bundle/combo deals" then they might even be able to squeeze a few more bucks for a GTX 670. All too often though I see peeps on here spending money on larger psu's and spendy boards for the hopes of one day adding a second vid card that most likely they never will and what that does is short them in the gpu dept. right off the get go.

 

[blazorthon]

Not at all. SB and IB cpu's don't gain that much from over clocking in regards to gaming (FPS) and that 4GB of RAM is plenty for gaming not to mention another 2x2GB of RAM can always be added later on if the need ever arises. This is a pretty decent build for that budget. Now if Toms could use "newegg bundle/combo deals" then they might even be able to squeeze a few more bucks for a GTX 670. All too often though I see peeps on here spending money on larger psu's and spendy boards for the hopes of one day adding a second vid card that most likely they never will and what that does is short them in the gpu dept. right off the get go.

4GB of RAM can be a problem for gaming. It's not always a problem, but it can be a problem. Sure, this is a decent build for the budget, but that doesn't change the fact that it has problems and Tom's could have done better at the time. The GTX 670 was not out at the time of building (Tom's addressed this in the article), so it wasn't an option.

 

[Why_Me]

4GB of RAM can be a problem for gaming. It's not always a problem, but it can be a problem. Sure, this is a decent build for the budget, but that doesn't change the fact that it has problems and Tom's could have done better at the time. The GTX 670 was not out at the time of building (Tom's addressed this in the article), so it wasn't an option.

True it could be better...now that I look at it again.

Change the board to an H77 or if it's strictly gaming/surfing the net then to a B75 board. Size down to a 7950 or 7870 and then you have your 8GB of RAM, and a better case like the Antec Three Hundred Two. Also change out the cpu to a IB 3450 ...if it was available at the time of the build. Also for $5 more go to a XFX 550w psu and ditch that CWT made 600w psu they have in that build.

 

[blazorthon]

True it could be better...now that I look at it again.

Change the board to an H77 or if it's strictly gaming/surfing the net then to a B75 board. Size down to a 7950 or 7870 and then you have your 8GB of RAM, and a better case like the Antec Three Hundred Two. Also change out the cpu to a IB 3450 ...if it was available at the time of the build. Also for $5 more go to a XFX 550w psu and ditch that CWT made 600w psu they have in that build.

I don't think that Ivy was available. There's just no way that Tom's could resist using Ivy ASAP for SBM.

I would've taken the graphics down to a 7950, but 7870 might be taking it down too far for the money. The 7950 and the 7970 have roughly equal performance and power usage given a similar PCB, cooler, and overclock, so it's not really trading down in anything but cost. The savings should be enough to get an at least half-decent SSD and 8GB of RAM. The case could simply be replaced with a similarly priced, but better case IMO. Ah well, personal preferences

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]4GB of RAM can be a problem for gaming.[/citation]

That has not ever been my experience, Blaze.

If I missed it, I want to know about it. If you can show me a realistic scenario where system gaming performance suffers because of 4 GB, I'll happily re-create it and share it with the world.

But to date, I have never, ever seen that.

 

[vakuma5000]

shoulda been a gtx 670.
should NOT have been a p67 mobo. a z68 or z77 would have been a better choice.
ivy-bridge would have been worth it.
4GB for 35$?? could have gotten 8GB for 10$ more...

This build sucks.
My grandma could have built a better machine for the money.

should have been an unlocked quad, 8gb ram, a gtx 670 and a small ssd.

 

[Why_Me]

shoulda been a gtx 670.
should NOT have been a p67 mobo. a z68 or z77 would have been a better choice.
ivy-bridge would have been worth it.
4GB for 35$?? could have gotten 8GB for 10$ more...

This build sucks.
My grandma could have built a better machine for the money.

should have been an unlocked quad, 8gb ram, a gtx 670 and a small ssd.

Small SSD for what? Your going to purchase a small SSD with a $1000 budget? And how many FPS more do you figure to get with that "unlocked quad" ?

btw as stated the gtx 670 wasn't released when this build was posted.

 

[blazorthon]

That has not ever been my experience, Blaze.

If I missed it, I want to know about it. If you can show me a realistic scenario where system gaming performance suffers because of 4 GB, I'll happily re-create it and share it with the world.

But to date, I have never, ever seen that.

Not directly... I don't know about you, but when I'm gaming, the game is usually not the only thing that is running, although it is the heaviest. I often have a web browser open with at least several tabs and I often have two web browsers open. It's a fairly common thing and I know a lot of other people can have other things open when they game, so I think that it's at least fairly realistic. Just checking my task manager right now, I have Pale Moon at over 350MB and Comodo Dragon at almost 1GB. With 4GB of RAM, that would leave only about 2.6GB or 2.7GB to both the OS and the game. With 8GB, that would leave about 6.6GB or 6.7GB to the OS and game. That can be quite the advantage.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]vakuma5000[/nom]shoulda been a gtx 670.should NOT have been a p67 mobo. a z68 or z77 would have been a better choice.ivy-bridge would have been worth it. 4GB for 35$?? could have gotten 8GB for 10$ more...This build sucks.My grandma could have built a better machine for the money.should have been an unlocked quad, 8gb ram, a gtx 670 and a small ssd.[/citation]

I know that it's been said over and over again and people still make mistaken and often insulting comments such as yours about it, but here, starit from page three of this very article:

Yes, we know that Nvidia's GeForces GTX 680 and GTX 670 both offer better bang for your buck right now. But the GeForce GTX 680 is still encountering availability issues (particularly at the $499 it's supposed to be selling at), and the GTX 670 wasn’t even available when we bought the pieces for this PC.

The only thing wrong with a P67 motherboard is that it doesn't work with the IGP and really, that's probably not a big deal for most of us. I guarantee that there is zero performance advantage when going from a P67 motherboard to a Z77 or Z68 motherboard. None at all. It's just a difference of features.

Beyond that, Radeon 7970 or GTX 670, having a highly overclocked i5 instead of a slightly overclocked i5 will only make so much of a different and if it did, then the winner can simply throw on a small BLCK overclock to at least help that out a little. You might think that your grandmother could have done better and maybe she could have (I don't know her and I won't pretend to, however, it does seem unlikely), but there is pretty much no chance of her being able to have had a GTX 670 in this build back when Tom's ordered the parts because the GTX 670 wasn't even out yet. Also, I could be wrong, but I don't think that Ivy Bridge was out yet either.

 

[cleeve]

With 4GB of RAM, that would leave only about 2.6GB or 2.7GB to both the OS and the game. With 8GB, that would leave about 6.6GB or 6.7GB to the OS and game. That can be quite the advantage.

I'm not saying it doesn't leave more RAM, I'm saying I haven't seen with any certainty that it makes a practical advantage.

Have you measured frame rate performance with a browser open and eating that ram? We may suspect it makes a difference, but we shouldn't assume it does; scientific method, and all that.

From my experience there's no difference. I may be wrong too. But I've used plenty of 4GB gaming systems and I wouldn't simply assume that more available RAM = faster performance. That's an easy trap to fall into.

Might be a good test for us to do. I think we've done similar stuff in the past and it's had no appreciable effect, tho, but might be a good time to revisit.

 

[blazorthon]

I know that it's been said over and over again and people still make mistaken and often insulting comments such as yours about it, but here, starit from page three of this very article:

Yes, we know that Nvidia's GeForces GTX 680 and GTX 670 both offer better bang for your buck right now. But the GeForce GTX 680 is still encountering availability issues (particularly at the $499 it's supposed to be selling at), and the GTX 670 wasn’t even available when we bought the pieces for this PC.

The only thing wrong with a P67 motherboard is that it doesn't work with the IGP and really, that's probably not a big deal for most of us. I guarantee that there is zero performance advantage when going from a P67 motherboard to a Z77 or Z68 motherboard. None at all. It's just a difference of features.

Beyond that, Radeon 7970 or GTX 670, having a highly overclocked i5 instead of a slightly overclocked i5 will only make so much of a different and if it did, then the winner can simply throw on a small BLCK overclock to at least help that out a little. You might think that your grandmother could have done better and maybe she could have (I don't know her and I won't pretend to, however, it does seem unlikely), but there is pretty much no chance of her being able to have had a GTX 670 in this build back when Tom's ordered the parts because the GTX 670 wasn't even out yet. Also, I could be wrong, but I don't think that Ivy Bridge was out yet either.

I'm not saying it doesn't leave more RAM, I'm saying I haven't seen with any certainty that it makes a practical advantage.

Have you measured frame rate performance with a browser open and eating that ram? We may suspect it makes a difference, but we shouldn't assume it does; scientific method, and all that.

From my experience there's no difference. I may be wrong too. But I've used plenty of 4GB gaming systems and I wouldn't simply assume that more available RAM = faster performance. That's an easy trap to fall into.

Might be a good test for us to do. I think we've done similar stuff in the past and it's had no appreciable effect, tho, but might be a good time to revisit.

Yes, it should be tested, but if there is so little RAM left in such a situation, but I don't think that the OS, game, and any background processes are going to fit in a slightly over 2.6GB memory capacity without some trouble. I'm not assuming that more RAM = faster performance, only that 2.6GB or so is not enough for Windows 7 x64, most heavy games, and anything else that is running (such as an AV or firewall) all at once. I know that when I run out of RAM, no matter the situation, stuff slows down. I also know how easy it is to run out of RAM.

 

[u_hsen]

i get my motherboard/cpu from microcenter.com, they have maybe 20 stores in the whole country but they offer cheap cpu cost and a significant 40 or more discount on combo. there fore saves a lot of money tbhat can be put to graphics card.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Why not use the HAF 912? Wouldn't have had a problem with the 7970.[/citation]
So 5 ppl down voted this without even saying why. How sweet of them.

I simply said this because the 912 is only a few $ more than the case here, and it's big enough to fit that card without problems. Plus, one of the HDD cages can be removed in case it didn't fit.

 

[blazorthon]

So 5 ppl down voted this without even saying why. How sweet of them.

I simply said this because the 912 is only a few $ more than the case here, and it's big enough to fit that card without problems. Plus, one of the HDD cages can be removed in case it didn't fit.

That's probably why there were vote downs. The HAF 912 would been over-budget by too much.

 

[Asgaroth]

4GB??? You gotta be kidding.

8-16GB!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Asgaroth[/nom]4GB??? You gotta be kidding.8-16GB![/citation]

8GB can be useful for gaming and I'm sure of that. however, I can't imagine any realistic scenario for most gamers where 16GB would help at all. That's more of a thing for professional work. Regardless, the 4GB versus 8GB argument has already been addressed and it just so happens to have been addressed a mere few posts above yours.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]That's probably why there were vote downs. The HAF 912 would been over-budget by too much.[/citation]
$18? :O but yeah i guess...

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]$18? but yeah i guess...[/citation]

Keep in mind that they were already a little over their budget. Going further may have been unacceptable.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Keep in mind that they were already a little over their budget. Going further may have been unacceptable.[/citation]
Agreed...

BTW, on the 4 vs 8 debate...i use 4GB...never been a problem. But, i remember, when i had 4GB but ran 32-bit Win 7 (had an old scanner that didn't have 64-bit driver support), BF3 used to crash randomly. Once or twice it gave me an vague (for me) error message, the only thing i could get out of that was something to do with RAM.

No probs after going 64-bit. Most game devs seem to target a total system memory of 4GB as a best case scenario. I've had stuff running in the background and still not had a crash.

And, for me, Vanilla Win7 uses about 900MB RAM, filled up about 1.2GB while idle, even though i've Norton 360 running on the system. Though i've noticed, the more RAM you throw at a system, the more it uses it for something or the other.

You could monitor your RAM usage while gaming or something, since i guess you've got more than 4GB. Plot a graph, and tell/show us...could be a nice experiment.

 

[bucknutty]

I almost always have resource monitor open on my second screen when gaming. I dont think I have ever seen my win7 64 use more than 3.75 gigs. Normally I have the game open, core temp, resource montor, steam, orgin, AVG, and afterburner all running.

 

[airborne11b]

What a piece of junk. Amd gpu and non k series c.pu. All value lost. Fail

 

[fulle]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]That has not ever been my experience, Blaze.If I missed it, I want to know about it. If you can show me a realistic scenario where system gaming performance suffers because of 4 GB, I'll happily re-create it and share it with the world.But to date, I have never, ever seen that.[/citation]

The difference is hard to see in benchmarks, but the extra memory does help reduce visual problems with memory hungry graphics cards... and leaves breathing room in case you want to do some multitasking. Toms even mentioned it once, right here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-6.html

I've also seen the extra memory help quite a bit in min FPS values.

Problem is, when you're looking at lame bar graphs that only show average FPS values, you don't see things like increased frequency of low FPS dips, more artifacting, pop in, and so on. So it's incorrectly assumed that the increase from 4GB to 8GB of RAM doesn't improve gaming performance.

In this memory article, from Tom's Hardware, your writer "thoroughly recommend a minimum RAM size of 8 GB".

So, yeah, actually, the 4GB of memory decision is questionable. More so, actually, would be the P67 motherboard paired with a i5 2400 that can't OC. Which is a mind blowingly strange pairing, since the P67's only benefit is that it could OC the CPU, (but so can Z68, so why pick a P67?) but the 2400 can't OC... but wait! for about a 20 dollar increase in cost you could have got a 2500k and made the P67 board a more valid decision.
I totally don't get it. Seems like a mistake, to be honest. Like a "whoops, picked the wrong Mobo" or "whoops, picked the wrong CPU", since I don't think anyone would have intentionally picked the 2 of those together.

But, yet, it was on purpose.

Like choosing 4GB of DDR3 1600 for 34 dollars, when you can bump that to 8GB for a mere 12 dollar price increase, was apparently, also on purpose.