Gaming system for $800. AMD or intel, nVidia or AMD/ATi?

[TheInternal]

Greetings!

I recently did a crap ton of research for a friend to build her an ultra-budget WoW rig, only to have her up the budget by $300. Rather than spend another full day trying to determine what's best, I figured I'd ask you fine folks to cut down on my research time a little.

What I do know
============

- The system will mainly be used for World of Warcraft, games, college level school work, Photoshop, and occasionally hooked up to a TV (will require HDMI)

- Budget is capped at $800

- She wants a minimum of 4 GB of RAM and at least 1 TB of hard drive space (I know these should be easy to obtain)

- Parts NOT needed - she already has a 23" monitor capable of 1920x1200, a USB keyboard and mouse, and a DVD-RW optical drive with light scribe.

- This system will be built and used in South Carolina, USA.

What I don't know
==============

- What's the best bang for the buck right now in CPUs in general and/or for this price range? Core i5? A higher end AMD processor?
(Found this little site: http://www.yougamers.com/hardware/stats/3dmark06/priceandperformance/ with some info. Would most agree that Core i5-760 and AMD Athlon II x4 635 are the best value per dollar from the respective camps? )

- What about GPUs? Is there a valid argument for or against going AMD or nVidia at this point? Would the Geforce GTX 460 and Radeon HD 5830 be the best from the respective camps?

- Which brands are currently solid in the motherboard arena?

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I appreciate any comments / feedback and will continue researching as well as browsing the forums. Thanks for your consideration.

 

[mfenn]

For $800, you're probably going to want to be looking at an AMD platform. The GTX 460 is also a smoking deal at $230 (the 5830 is crap unless you can find one for really cheap), so let's see if we can't fit all of that into $800.

Phenom II X4 955 + mobo combo $222
G.Skill DDR3 1333 4GB $83
GTX 460 1GB $230 - has mini-HDMI, so you will need a mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter
Samsung F3 1TB + Corsair 650TX combo $120 AR
Antec Three Hundred $60
Total: $715

You can stop here if less than $800 is better, but if you want to get closer to $800, you can change the GPU to a GTX 470 for $275 AR

 

[TheInternal]

thanks for the suggestion, mfenn. It's sounding like, after sending her some of my initial findings, that she's going to want to seriously look at the core i5 760. Hopefully I can find some good combo deals.

 

[mfenn]

The problem with the 760 at your price range is that the CPU alone costs almost as much as the Phenom II + mobo. You're going to have a hard time getting a halfway-decent gaming GPU in there with a 760.

 

[TheInternal]

yeah. that's my main concern with intel too. I mentioned it to her and will see what I can do. If it's not doable in her budget range, I'm guessing she'll listen to me if I suggest an AMD solution.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I'm pretty sure the i5-760 will smack around the X4 955 six ways from Sunday on any benchmark, and it uses far less power and generates far less heat. You should mention these advantages to her as well.

I think the 760 would give more lasting performance over time than the 955 will.

 

[Sp12]

But are those benchmarks significant? In games the P2 is strong enough to avoid notably bottlenecking a single-GPU, and the money saved could be put towards a stronger GPU/SSD.

If you have the money, then I would definitely go for the i5; conversely, if going i5 means cutting into your GPU budget, then for a gaming system it's not a good choice.

 

[f4phantom2500]

isn't intel discontinuing the LGA 1156 platform? if this is the case i think a phenom ii x6 would be a wiser choice overall than the i5 at the $200 price point...but as mentioned the phenom ii x4 should be plenty fast and the extra cash would be better spent on the GPU.

if your friend doesn't want to overclock at all, despite how simple it is with the amd black edition processors, consider this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.480465

about $12 more for an extra 200MHz

 

[madeuce]

if your friend doesn't want to overclock at all, despite how simple it is with the amd black edition processors, consider this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.480465

about $12 more for an extra 200MHz

I agree with how easy it is to OC the black edition processors. I had never overclocked a CPU in my life until 4 days ago. OC a 965 to 3.8GHz. Took me all of 10 minutes and ran very cool and stable, just changed the multiplier.