Can I get a good gaming desktop for $700?

[mfenn]

This looks pretty good to me. I'd probably save a few bucks by going with the ASRock Z68 Pro3 though.

 

[lehtv]

At a budget of $700 I would honestly go with AMD X4 965BE, an AM3+ chipset mobo (upgrade to Bulldozer later), and 6950 2GB. I don't see spending on i5-2400 nevermind 2500K a great choice gaming-wise, it limits your GPU choice at this budget.

$715 AR. Compared to the 2500K build above, this one has 8gb RAM instead of 4gb, 6950 2GB instead of 560 ti 1GB, and an aftermarket CPU cooler.

 

[DominionSeraph]

At a budget of $700 I would honestly go with AMD X4 965BE, an AM3+ chipset mobo (upgrade to Bulldozer later), and 6950 2GB. I don't see spending on i5-2400 nevermind 2500K a great choice gaming-wise, it limits your GPU choice at this budget.

With an i5 2400 he can get the same GPU you specced. It's only ~10% faster than a GTX 560 Ti (and that only in some games), so any money in the budget is better spent going to the 2500k than upgrading the GPU over the GTX 560 Ti.

Really, OP should do his best to up his budget to allow for an i5 2500k + 6950, but if he has to save $30 somewhere, it's best saved at GTX 560 Ti vs 6950 than dropping CPU, especially to a 955/965. (I do not see an 8 core Bulldozer as being a gaming powerhouse when most games don't max out four cores. And he can afford a 2500k now so why drop down to a 965 in the hopes that maybe later he'll have a decent upgrade in Bulldozer for an additional ~$200?)

At this point AMD doesn't have any CPUs I'd recommend unless you're upgrading a current AM2. (Since LGA 1155 has motherboards just as cheap as AMD, with the release of the Sandy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums Intel now owns from low to high)

 

[lehtv]

With an i5 2400 he can get the same GPU you specced. It's only ~10% faster than a GTX 560 Ti (and that only in some games), so any money in the budget is better spent going to the 2500k than upgrading the GPU over the GTX 560 Ti.

560 Ti is 1GB, 6950 is 2GB. That it's 10% faster is just a bonus.

What do you have to compromise on if you upgrade to 2400 or 2500k and still want to stay within budget? If the budget was $800, I'd completely agree, 2500k is the way to go.

At this point AMD doesn't have any CPUs I'd recommend unless you're upgrading a current AM2.

All of Intel's sub i5-2300 CPUs are dual core. I would rather get an AMD quad core.

 

[aphelion02]

And why does that 1GB matter if you are only getting a minimal performance benefit from it? The performance between the 6950 2GB and 1GB versions are less than 5%, especially if you consider the resolutions the OP will likely play at.

 

[DominionSeraph]

560 Ti is 1GB, 6950 is 2GB. That it's 10% faster is just a bonus.

Of what relevance is RAM size if it's not impacting speed?

What do you have to compromise on if you upgrade to 2400 or 2500k and still want to stay within budget?

I posted a 2500k build. The compromises were 500GB instead of 1TB (saving $10), a case that isn't a HAF 912 (which can be changed now that the $10 promo on the RC 430 is gone necessitating the $10 increase in cost), 4GB instead of 8GB (saving $17 which can be added later), and the slightly hotter and slightly slower GTX 560 Ti instead of a 6950. (both being mid-high end cards.)

All of Intel's sub i5-2300 CPUs are dual core. I would rather get an AMD quad core.

For gaming and general use a Sandy Bridge dual is simply faster. Even in video encoding, which is embarrassingly parallel, a 955 barely beats an i3 2100.

And Sandy destroys the Athlons in gaming.

Don't anchor on things like core count and video RAM size. All that matters is performance.

 

[akugami]

Microcenter in store only but the i5 2500k is $180 + tax. This is a lot cheaper (at least at time of writing) than most places.

 

[PingSpike]

People are suggesting some decent builds although they're running a little over budget. I'd agree those are probably the best route to go since they'll have more longevity for only a little bit more money. That said you can certainly build a great gaming rig at that budget and its pretty easy if you already have a monitor and keyboard/mouse. It also kind of depends on your monitor though for how much you need to spend on a video card. I don't play a lot of games these days, mostly source stuff and frankly upgrading my hd4850 seems kind of pointless with my 1680x1050 monitor.

But if you want it easy you could probably grab a prebuilt and just stick a video card in it. People are kind of crapping on this and it might bite you on the back end, but it certainly gets the job done right now without much fussing around. If you got in on that student discount windows 7 though I would say build anyway.

 

[lehtv]

Of what relevance is RAM size if it's not impacting speed?

Surely you're not suggesting that 6950 is 10% faster because of having more VRAM?

The reason I would pick it over 560 Ti is that 1GB simply isn't enough for many current games at 1080p, and that number of games can only increase in the future.

I posted a 2500k build. The compromises were *etcetc*

Exactly. I would not compromise those, if you would then that's fine for you I guess. BTW you forgot the aftermarket CPU cooler.

And Sandy destroys the Athlons in gaming.

I was talking about Phenoms.

Don't anchor on things like core count and video RAM size.

Perhaps core count is not very important, agreed. But video RAM is important. I do "anchor" on that, like it or not.

All that matters is performance.

Of course not. Performance is just one thing. VRAM capacity for future titles isn't all about pure performance, it's also about stability (yes, games can crash due to insufficient VRAM) and getting the most longevity out of the hardware you pay for. Not getting an aftermarket cooler means the PC will probably make more noise. AM3+ allows for upgrading to Bulldozer, while H67 doesn't support Ivy Bridge. Z68+SB will go over budget without the compromises discussed before.

 

[titan131]

The reason I would pick it over 560 Ti is that 1GB simply isn't enough for many current games at 1080p, and that number of games can only increase in the future.

Out of interest, what leads you to believe 1gb isn't enough for 1920 × 1080? Last I was aware the performance gap between the 6950 1gb and 2gb version was quite small at that resolution.

If it were me I would go for DominionSeraph's build because the 2500k really quite a lot better. That's if you can increase your budget to accommodate it.

 

[lehtv]

Out of interest, what leads you to believe 1gb isn't enough for 1920 × 1080?

I own 560 Ti 1GB and I play at 1080p. Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Civ 5 and GTA4 all saturate the VRAM. I would not be surprised if the same was true with BF3 and Skyrim, nevermind what games we have 1 year from now - and a new GPU should last easily longer than that. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that midrange 28nm GPUs will have 2GB VRAM.

If it were me I would go for DominionSeraph's build because the 2500k really quite a lot better. That's if you can increase your budget to accommodate it.

For $800 you could get the 2500K and not compromise on VRAM, HDD space, aftermarket cooling, and RAM (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2192841 minus the SSD, cheaper case + aftermarket cooler).

 

[DominionSeraph]

I own 560 Ti 1GB and I play at 1080p. Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Civ 5 and GTA4 all saturate the VRAM.

And what are you basing this on? Afterburner?

Anandtech's Bench shows Civ5 at 36FPS at 2560x1600 with 4xAA, which is a perfectly fine drop from 1920x1200 and 1680x1050. Metro 2033 looks like it's probably running out of RAM going to 1920x1200 with analytic AA.
There's nothing here to warrant dropping down to an AMD quad just to get 2GB. You're talking 30% less performance across the board just to cover for an edge case that can be dealt with by reducing AA or texture detail a bit.

 

[FearoftheNight]

Personally for about $600 shipped I bought a dell xps 8300 and a 6850 video card
See sig.

 

[lehtv]

And what are you basing this on? Afterburner?

Yes, and other people's reports especially with regard to Crysis 2 and GTA4.

@FearoftheNight, 6gb memory on an i5 2300? Did the Dell come equipped like that

 

[DominionSeraph]

Yes, and other people's reports especially with regard to Crysis 2 and GTA4.

Afterburner isn't accurate.

You worry way too much about meaningless and misleading minutiae. Hell, I'm surprised you haven't said that 6950 is 3.6x better because it has 1408 cores and the GTX 560 Ti only has 384.

 

[lehtv]

Afterburner isn't accurate.

Am I to just take your word for it?

It was pretty accurate when I was playing Civ 5 in DX11. When the memory reached ~1GB used according to AB, I started getting texture glitches, and entering the diplomacy scene with another Civ leader caused the game to crash. The crash did not occur if I entered the diplomacy scene before VRAM got saturated. And the texture glitches and the crashes did not happen in DX9 which, according to AB, used much less VRAM (likely due to lower texture quality and lack of shadowing).

While this is obviously a bug in the game, it's also something that wouldn't happen with more VRAM.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Am I to just take your word for it?

It was pretty accurate when I was playing Civ 5 in DX11. When the memory reached ~1GB used according to AB, I started getting texture glitches, and entering the diplomacy scene with another Civ leader caused the game to crash. The crash did not occur if I entered the diplomacy scene before VRAM got saturated. And the texture glitches and the crashes did not happen in DX9 which, according to AB, used much less VRAM (likely due to lower texture quality and lack of shadowing).

While this is obviously a bug in the game, it's also something that wouldn't happen with more VRAM.

So your solution to a bug is to suggest a processor that is only 70% of the speed in that particular game rather than just turning down the texture detail until the thing is fixed?

Jesus.

 

[lehtv]

So your solution to a bug is to suggest a processor that is only 70% of the speed in that particular game rather than just turning down the texture detail until the thing is fixed?

You obviously haven't paid attention to what I've written in this thread. My recommendation to get the X4 965 instead of 2500K is not based on the performance of those two processors in this particular game. It is based on the fact that the i7 2500K build compromises on HDD space, RAM size, aftermarket cooling, GPU performance and VRAM. If less VRAM was the only issue, I would be happy to go with 2500K. But it is only one of many shortcomings which, in my opinion, weigh more combined than the lowered performance of a 965BE.

You claimed Afterburner measurements are inaccurate. Post evidence pls.

 

[mfenn]

I don't think that Afterburner is inaccurate per se, but it's numbers are often misleading. A game can use the extra VRAM to aggressively cache textures and geometry. Thus that VRAM would appear to be full to Afterburner, but it isn't strictly required. Sort of like Window's SuperFetch disk cache.

Now, that's not to say that a buggy game might suck at managing its VRAM, but that's not really the fault of the card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

while H67 doesn't support Ivy Bridge.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? The interface between the CPU and chipset is the same for all 1155 CPUs, I see no reason why the lower-end 1155 chipsets wouldn't support IB, unless it is some sort of planned obsolescence.

 

[lehtv]

Do you have any evidence to back this up? The interface between the CPU and chipset is the same for all 1155 CPUs, I see no reason why the lower-end 1155 chipsets wouldn't support IB, unless it is some sort of planned obsolescence.

You're right. I don't know why I thought that, some brainfart I guess. Thanks for clearing that up, I googled some and IVB is indeed supported by all the Cougar Point chipsets.

 

[StrangerGuy]

$700+ gaming builds are 2500K based or you are doing it wrong.

 

[lehtv]

:/ here we go again...

 

[FearoftheNight]

Yes, and other people's reports especially with regard to Crysis 2 and GTA4.

@FearoftheNight, 6gb memory on an i5 2300? Did the Dell come equipped like that

yes

 

[lehtv]

i5 2300 is meant to use dual channel DDR3. Or maybe the RAM is some of Dell's legendary proprietary hardware - 3GB DDR3 modules?