Best value "Entry Level" gaming PC.

[NTMBK]

Last year christmas time I built new pc for the kids - went with 6600k apu; A88 fm2+ mb; 4 gigs of 2000 ram; 256 gig hd; mini tower case; dvd burner; with win 8; came total to 275 pounds......it runs everything smoothly 30 frames I've thrown at it.
Guildwars 2 - Gary's mod; LoL; Champions Online; Neverwinter; D3; WoT *everything high on WoT* all at 1440 by 900....I haven't even bothered to overclock it

I'm most likely going to upgrade that CPU and move that 6600k into new system to replace the other old system. They are hard to beat value wise.

For work I just put together mini itx system with 7600 apu; for 300 quid; that is vesa mountable; uses less that 100w; and plays the few things I've tested on it solidly at 1440 by 900.....*that's min resolution I consider playable* was running around on WoT at medium settings ave 33 frames,

I don't think people realize just how capable these apus are for building cheap gaming machines; specially for slightly lower resolutions. 7600 is freaking fast; and my engineers love the fact it will run solidworks well

Yeah, people on this forum are a bit too used to Titans and 4790ks. My sister has a Llano desktop, and games on it very happily.

 

[MeldarthX]

Yeah, people on this forum are a bit too used to Titans and 4790ks. My sister has a Llano desktop, and games on it very happily.

Exactly I think people tend to forget; when you are putting a system together where every dollar/pound counts....you have to balance playablity with cost.

Also I still can't recommend a dual core even fast one over a quad core; right now I get asked a lot to build between 200-300 pounds; sometimes just 200 pounds......

Sadly I hate putting dual cores in but 5350 isn't a bad little quad core; Intel tends to be priced out in those ranges.

Since I was able to snag the 7600 for 50 quid *which is a steal honestly for this apu* .......would I love K version oh yea; but not for 50 more quid which is 7700k ...

 

[monkeydelmagico]

For work I just put together mini itx system with 7600 apu; for 300 quid; that is vesa mountable; uses less that 100w; and plays the few things I've tested on it solidly at 1440 by 900.....*that's min resolution I consider playable* was running around on WoT at medium settings ave 33 frames,

I don't think people realize just how capable these apus are for building cheap gaming machines; specially for slightly lower resolutions. 7600 is freaking fast; and my engineers love the fact it will run solidworks well

+1 There are certainly people who realize it, the 7600 is a nice piece, well priced, and makes an outstanding mITX build. See post #21 on page 1 :biggrin:

 

[Seba]

For games that even run on such low end hardware, a fast dual core is better than a slow quad core.

Most builds proposed in this thread are office PC builds, not gaming PC builds.

Gaming in 2014/2015 means 1920x1080 ("Full HD").

 

[MeldarthX]

For games that even run on such low end hardware, a fast dual core is better than a slow quad core.

Most builds proposed in this thread are office PC builds, not gaming PC builds.

Gaming in 2014/2015 means 1920x1080 ("Full HD").

No it doesn't....I know a massive amount of people with 19" monitors at 1440 by 900.....or 720p;

Discussion here is to see what can be minually put together that still offers respectable gaming which is 30 fps.

Second might want to check mins on those "fast dual cores* as they are usually way lower than those quads; along with the fact; are we talking maxed 1080p or just 30 frames 1080p at low settings?

What you think what gaming should be is something different from what others think. That is why these questions are posed; to help recycle some hardware; to see what average person's needs are....

 

[NTMBK]

Gaming in 2014/2015 means 1920x1080 ("Full HD").

Spoken like a true Master Racer :thumbsup:

Gaming means gaming. Why do you think millions of people still buy games for the XBox 360 and PS3?

 

[Seba]

No it doesn't....I know a massive amount of people with 19" monitors at 1440 by 900.....or 720p;

For me, it does.

No it doesn't....I know a massive amount of
Second might want to check mins on those "fast dual cores* as they are usually way lower than those quads; along with the fact; are we talking maxed 1080p or just 30 frames 1080p at low settings?

The dual cores I have in mind are Pentium Haswell (and maybe Celeron Haswell).

Of course, paired with a discrete graphics card, like GTX 750.

You can pair a quad-core Kabini with the same GTX 750 and compare the results.

What you think what gaming should be is something different from what others think. That is why these questions are posed; to help recycle some hardware; to see what average person's needs are....

I don't think that everybody else sees things like you do, either.

If you want to recycle old hardware, then you have plenty Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad PCs that you can buy for cheap. No need to buy a new Kabini slow machine.

 

[Seba]

Gaming means gaming. Why do you think millions of people still buy games for the XBox 360 and PS3?

They bought Xbox 360 and PS3 because there was nothing better (no better game console). Now they have Xbox One and PS4.

In this age of LCD panels, to play at a lower resolution than the native one (which tends to be 1920x1080) means to further degrade the image quality.

 

[NTMBK]

They bought Xbox 360 and PS3 because there was nothing better (no better game console). Now they have Xbox One and PS4.

In this age of LCD panels, to play at a lower resolution than the native one (which tends to be 1920x1080) means to further degrade the image quality.

So? Image quality isn't the only reason people play games... Why do you think Microsoft just paid $2.5bn for Minecraft?

 

[Seba]

For Minecraft you can buy a smartphone.

 

[MeldarthX]

We're talking budgets of 300 or less pounds; lets see 750 is half that budget right there or more......

For you that's fine; for a ton of people that are coming to me to build them systems says different. They are still using their old monitors; cause they want to play some games on it; but not the main goal.

I'm also PC master race; 1080p; but I'm not dropping £800+ on a pc for my son to play roblox.....a browser game......

Guess what a lot of people think like that too; why spent that amount when I can get something between 250-300 pounds that will play it just as well as my beast system. Of course he loves coming to mine and playing on my system; bigger monitor; better stuff; but when he's at his mom's he bounces between an old AMD X2 5600 *oc to 3 ghz* with 9600GT card; and the AMD 6600k apu system....

Guess which one is faster......yep 6600k apu system; again we are not about you or me. This discussion is about cheapest you can set to for a budget system; guess what that means; lower than 1080P.

wow; and where did I say buy kabini; *which honestly isn't that bad for mini itx system*

Have you'd bothered to read; I've said; I've been using systems with 6600k; *that's Richland* and new 7600.....both are solid at 1440 by 900....6600k slightly faster as its clocked much higher.

I would love 7600k apu; but either I need to go down to 7400k; or pay more for 7700k.....as I'll be most likely upgrading the 6600k system to better apu and cycling the 6600k into a new system.

Now if person only wants to play some facebook games; Kabini 5350 system would be more than enough and; far far cheaper than anything you've suggested along with the fact it could play some other games at lower resolution and low settings.

Seba; those dual cores you listed are viable but would have to gpu; 750ti problem its priced way too high; in that price range you can buy much faster card.....as the igpu in those dual cores aren't exactly same level AMD;s apu counter part.

 

[Seba]

A Kaveri based PC would be a powerful enough entry level PC build. But Kaveri is expensive and to get best results you also need expensive RAM. Richland is cheaper, but also with a weaker integrated graphics.

So it is more cost effective to just buy a Celeron or Pentium Haswell, cheap RAM (even DDR3-1333 will do) and a GTX 750. Such a PC could be easily build for no more than 250 pounds before taxes.

I do not know what better than GTX 750 Ti card can you buy from the same price, but it does not matter. If you can get a better card for the same money, then get that instead.

Anyway, GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti are different cards (and GTX 750 is even cheaper).

For Facebook games, buy a smartphone and you are set.

 

[Dannar26]

There are a few commonalities I've noticed here. Admittedly, this is the kind of place where enthusiasts congregate. And many of them are economically confortable too. This skews their perception.

I was gaming just fine for the past 5 years on stock clocked core2 quad with a gtx260 on 1600x900, and then 1080p. Yeah I wasn't getting max fps or max frames, but I could run stuff quite comfortably at or around 30fps. I never installed a game that didn't or barely worked, although CoH2 was getting kind of hairy (poorly optimized as it is).

The guys here forget the times before they made > 70k annually, or before they knew exactly how and what to buy, and how to best build it. I otherwords, they forget the novice days.

I love threads like these. It let's us poor noobs build away and join the master race without requiring 2k at a shot and an electrical engineering degree.

Huzzah, more like this!

 

[frozentundra123456]

We're talking budgets of 300 or less pounds; lets see 750 is half that budget right there or more......

For you that's fine; for a ton of people that are coming to me to build them systems says different. They are still using their old monitors; cause they want to play some games on it; but not the main goal.

I'm also PC master race; 1080p; but I'm not dropping £800+ on a pc for my son to play roblox.....a browser game......

Guess what a lot of people think like that too; why spent that amount when I can get something between 250-300 pounds that will play it just as well as my beast system. Of course he loves coming to mine and playing on my system; bigger monitor; better stuff; but when he's at his mom's he bounces between an old AMD X2 5600 *oc to 3 ghz* with 9600GT card; and the AMD 6600k apu system....

Guess which one is faster......yep 6600k apu system; again we are not about you or me. This discussion is about cheapest you can set to for a budget system; guess what that means; lower than 1080P.

wow; and where did I say buy kabini; *which honestly isn't that bad for mini itx system*

Have you'd bothered to read; I've said; I've been using systems with 6600k; *that's Richland* and new 7600.....both are solid at 1440 by 900....6600k slightly faster as its clocked much higher.

I would love 7600k apu; but either I need to go down to 7400k; or pay more for 7700k.....as I'll be most likely upgrading the 6600k system to better apu and cycling the 6600k into a new system.

Now if person only wants to play some facebook games; Kabini 5350 system would be more than enough and; far far cheaper than anything you've suggested along with the fact it could play some other games at lower resolution and low settings.

Seba; those dual cores you listed are viable but would have to gpu; 750ti problem its priced way too high; in that price range you can buy much faster card.....as the igpu in those dual cores aren't exactly same level AMD;s apu counter part.

A poster has already shown that the igp on a Pentium plays Lego games better than a 5350. I believe there are published benchmarks showing similar results, but I am at work and dont have time to look them up. In any case, you cant dismiss gaming on the pentium and then say the 5350 is not that bad, when data has been shown that the pentium *without* a discrete card is better for gaming, and to boot will give far higher cpu performance in most cases. It does not really cost that much more either.

 

[MeldarthX]

A Kaveri based PC would be a powerful enough entry level PC build. But Kaveri is expensive and to get best results you also need expensive RAM. Richland is cheaper, but also with a weaker integrated graphics.

So it is more cost effective to just buy a Celeron or Pentium Haswell, cheap RAM (even DDR3-1333 will do) and a GTX 750. Such a PC could be easily build for no more than 250 pounds before taxes.

I do not know what better than GTX 750 Ti card can you buy from the same price, but it does not matter. If you can get a better card for the same money, then get that instead.

Anyway, GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti are different cards (and GTX 750 is even cheaper).

For Facebook games, buy a smartphone and you are set.

You know what that's not bad for a budget system; I'd most likely replace 750 with the faster 260X for the same price.......I just don't like dual cores

7600 was hard to pass up at 50 quid; looks like its shot back up in price; 6600k has come down in price which handles things well as a budget system.

Frozen - you're right on that and I'll concede that point Looks like Intel's gotten slightly more viable on low end; my only issue is even with the extreme OC on some of those Intel dual cores; the mins and frame varies that been reported..*i'll find it later*

but - budget gaming has a price; duals and quads will do; same as igpu or apus.... We are here to get the best bang for our buck/quid

 

[frozentundra123456]

There are a few commonalities I've noticed here. Admittedly, this is the kind of place where enthusiasts congregate. And many of them are economically confortable too. This skews their perception.

I was gaming just fine for the past 5 years on stock clocked core2 quad with a gtx260 on 1600x900, and then 1080p. Yeah I wasn't getting max fps or max frames, but I could run stuff quite comfortably at or around 30fps. I never installed a game that didn't or barely worked, although CoH2 was getting kind of hairy (poorly optimized as it is).

The guys here forget the times before they made > 70k annually, or before they knew exactly how and what to buy, and how to best build it. I otherwords, they forget the novice days.

I love threads like these. It let's us poor noobs build away and join the master race without requiring 2k at a shot and an electrical engineering degree.

Huzzah, more like this!

There is a vast middle ground between a high end system and the lowest end. I think it is unfair for you (and others) to insinuate that posters are callously saying everyone has to have a 1500.00 system for PC gaming. Perhaps a few feel that way, but I certainly do not, and I think many others agree.

 

[Gikaseixas]

There are a few commonalities I've noticed here. Admittedly, this is the kind of place where enthusiasts congregate. And many of them are economically confortable too. This skews their perception.

I was gaming just fine for the past 5 years on stock clocked core2 quad with a gtx260 on 1600x900, and then 1080p. Yeah I wasn't getting max fps or max frames, but I could run stuff quite comfortably at or around 30fps. I never installed a game that didn't or barely worked, although CoH2 was getting kind of hairy (poorly optimized as it is).

The guys here forget the times before they made > 70k annually, or before they knew exactly how and what to buy, and how to best build it. I otherwords, they forget the novice days.

I love threads like these. It let's us poor noobs build away and join the master race without requiring 2k at a shot and an electrical engineering degree.

Huzzah, more like this!

Dannar very well said.
Here people tell me that my FX8350 sucks for gaming just because, well it's made by another company.

 

[cbn]

Frozen - you're right on that and I'll concede that point Looks like Intel's gotten slightly more viable on low end;

With Haswell the iGPU saw a large improvement compared to Ivy Bridge (10 Gen 7.5 EUs vs 6 Gen 7 EUs).

So I think AMD is trying to match that improvement on the A4-7300 by increasing iGPU by slightly greater than 50% compared to A4-6300. Unfortunately for AMD their dual cores lack the CPU power of the Haswell Celerons, so it will be interesting to see where this goes.

P.S. Just playing around with my G3258 with CPU downclocked to 3.0 GHz (and dual channel RAM downclocked to 1333) I'm noticing frame rates of around 60 FPS in a certain steady state open area of Skyrim using 1024 x 768 low. With the resolution increased to 1280 x 1024 (still low settings) the FPS in the same scene drops to around 47. With resolution increased yet again to 1920 x 1080 low the steady state FPS drops to around 27 or 28 during that same scene.

And while I don't consider such a scene representative of gameplay, I do think it gives us some idea of how the Haswell iGPU is scaling with increased resoluition. (Going from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 1024 which is a resolution increase of around 67% the frame rate drop off (60 --> 47) is not that bad. However, increasing pixels yet again from 1280 x 1024 to 1920 x 1080 which is a resolution increase of 58% there is a severe drop off in frame rate, 47 --> 28)

 

[janeuner]

It's also peculiar to forget that switching from 1080p to 1280x1024 is essentially doubling your GPU performance.

When you consider that the target audience is probably a bunch of college kids, I wonder if a 720p television wouldn't be the staple component of a budget gamer build. Haswell and Kaveri iGPU both post very reasonable framerates at that basis.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Dannar very well said.
Here people tell me that my FX8350 sucks for gaming just because, well it's made by another company.

I know right.... and I sucks even more because I'm only running an FX 8320.

I think it will be another 3-4 years at the minimum until a new game might actually run choppy on these 8 cores as long as you have a good GPU.

 

[cbn]

It's also peculiar to forget that switching from 1080p to 1280x1024 is essentially doubling your GPU performance.

It wouldn't quite be like doubling GPU performance, probably more like having a 60% better GPU.

 

[cbn]

When you consider that the target audience is probably a bunch of college kids, I wonder if a 720p television wouldn't be the staple component of a budget gamer build. Haswell and Kaveri iGPU both post very reasonable framerates at that basis.

That is a really good point you are making about the 720p TV considering an iGPU machine is most likely to be used as a gaming HTPC.

What I think I will probably end up doing is test that resolution in cases where increased detail settings (or graphically demanding games) are causing a strong frame rate drop off between 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024.

1280 x 1024: 67% more pixels than 1024 x 768
1280 x 720 (aka 720p): 17% more pixels than 1024 x 768

 

[frozentundra123456]

It wouldn't quite be like doubling GPU performance, probably more like having a 60% better GPU.

Correct. To get a doubling of gpu performance, you would need to go to something like 800p, depending on the aspect ratio.

Also, cpu performance becomes more important as resolution is lowered, especially with something with weak cpu performance like Kabini or FM2 single modules.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

We're talking budgets of 300 or less pounds; lets see 750 is half that budget right there or more......

300 pounds is just under $500.- I've built the best APU ONLY system so far. C'mon you weenies beat it. :sneaky:

 

[cbn]

Also, cpu performance becomes more important as resolution is lowered, especially with something with weak cpu performance like Kabini or FM2 single modules.

I would definitely expect Haswell Celeron to be stronger than either AM1 or FM2 or FM2+ dual core at low resolutions.

As resolution and/or detail settings rise, a FM2 or FM2 dual core with a strong enough GPU should start to win at some point. However, with that mentioned I have two questions:

1. Does AMD actually provide enough GPU on their low end FM2 or FM2+ SKUs to allow this to happen?

2. If a FM2 or FM2+ dual core does surpass a Haswell Celeron as resolution and/or detail settings increase does it happen with a playable frame rate? (Example: I have seen cases of AMD APU beating Intel processors in gaming benchmarks.....but only at levels of GPU stress that result in both processors being unplayable. While this is interesting data for academic reasons, it says little for practical usage utility)