Getting new PC. Thoughts

[Splintert]

Amd is fine, people saying otherwise are intel fanboys or ignorant.

Intel is usually better for most games though since they have higher clock speeds per core but lately have less cores than amds offerings. Higher cores is really only good for strategy and rts games that can actually utilize the cores, most games do not and that is why intel is usually regarded as being better for gaming.

God no.

AMD is regarded as crap for games because of its poor single thread performance, it has absolutely nothing to do with core count or clocks.

Intel has been handing AMD's ass to them for 4 generations in single thread performance, and AMD has only recently caught up in multithread applications. Games aren't multithreaded applications.

What you mean to say is that AMD is "good enough", it's certainly functional for games especially if you want to get their far superior APU units (versus Intel HD). In Arma, however, he'll be losing out a lot of frames compared to equivalent Intel offerings.

I just came from an AMD to Intel processor, and the performance increase is large enough that it cannot be contributed to the generational difference between processors. Intel's architecture is simply better for games.

 

[hudson57]

I would love a good Intel build but I just build one as close to my AMD one and its about £120 quid over my AMD which is already over my budget. By having the Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4570 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache insted of the AMD its alot more straight of the bat, even before I upgraded the Graphics card.

 

[Splintert]

Based on my experience with a similarly performing system (Phenom II X4 965 = FX-6300 in games), (HD 6850 < 750 Ti) I can say that you'll get good performance in Arma until you add a good number of players. 40FPS max on most missions with any reasonable number, 20 minimum under worst case general gameplay.

The i5-4670 will easily stay above the 60FPS needed for perfect gameplay, only dipping below in worst case scenarios. You could go to a lower tier i5 and maintain the majority of the 4670's performance and save yourself some money. Even a good i3 would probably perform better than an FX.

 

[hudson57]

That's the Intel build

Spoiler

Case
COOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4440 (3.1GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® Z87-A: ATX, USB3.0, SATA6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 760 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£79)

Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Sadly its still around £860 which is a little higher then I planned but if its capable of running the games I mentioned the I am willing to wait till I have the funds.

 

[SkyTime]

Well... i5 2500k seemed to be the best bang for your buck some months ago, don't think it has shifted that much. You could always invest in a watercooler in the future for overclocking, a Corsair Hydro would be super easy to install and the smaller ones aren't even that expensive. Just don't be a retard like me and buy a processor without the crucial K in it, and then spend 140e on a Corsair Hydro H110 for uber OC.

 

[Silver Wolf]

Sorry but if you're looking for best bang for you buck why are you buying a new case?

Using an old one could save you those 80-90$ .

 

[hudson57]

Ok I am just going to pick two builds and thoughts on those since I think we could talk about whether Intel or AMD for a long time.

Intel build £868

Spoiler

Case
COOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4440 (3.1GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® Z87-A: ATX, USB3.0, SATA6GB/S, SLi, XFIRE

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 760 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£79)

Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 11 to 13 working days

AMD build £732

Spoiler

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 912 PLUS MID TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD FX-6300 Six Core CPU (3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3+)

Motherboard
ASUS® M5A97 LE R2.0 (DDR3, USB3.0, 6Gb/s)

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 760 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

1st Hard Disk
1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£89)

Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365

Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 11 to 13 working days

Only really intrested in upgrades under £50. If its really worth it then I am willing to spent a bit more on the graphics card.

 

[Splintert]

GPU is fine at 760, you really won't need more than that for just about anything.

Quite simply, the Intel build will perform considerably better in CPU intensive games than the AMD one. The AMD will perform sufficiently for all games except extremely CPU intensive ones like Arma.

 

[Fehnor]

I don't know **** about AMD. Reading reviews, the AMD processor gets very hot. Both motherboards have similar mixed reviews. The intel build comes with a caviar black, the best 7200 rpm drive on the market. 

They look very similar.

 

[Kevlar]

AMD is regarded as crap for games because of its poor single thread performance, it has absolutely nothing to do with core count or clocks.

Intel has been handing AMD's ass to them for 4 generations in single thread performance, and AMD has only recently caught up in multithread applications. Games aren't multithreaded applications.

What you mean to say is that AMD is "good enough", it's certainly functional for games especially if you want to get their far superior APU units (versus Intel HD). In Arma, however, he'll be losing out a lot of frames compared to equivalent Intel offerings.

I just came from an AMD to Intel processor, and the performance increase is large enough that it cannot be contributed to the generational difference between processors. Intel's architecture is simply better for games.

I meant to say single  thread performance when I was mentioning clocks basically. Hard to explain stuff without caffeine in the morning and using my phone to type.

I haven't used amd since the beginning of dual cores (socket f I think it was called)

 

[Slawtering]

Hows this?
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3t37H

Spoiler

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£189.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard:  ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard  (£78.46 @ Amazon UK)
Memory:  Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  (£59.15 @ CCL Computers)
Storage:  Transcend SSD340 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  (£85.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card:  MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card  (£167.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case:  NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case  (£66.00 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply:  Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£36.04 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System:  Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit)  (£73.83 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £756.06
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-17 01:15 BST+0100)

Don't take this advice as gospel but past 80+ Bronze is a waste of money unless you are running your PC 24/7. Sure you have the added safety net but the premium price you pay on top of an already brilliant PSU is not needed. Bare in mind you should always look for the 80+ Bronze though, don't be too cheap.

 

[Splintert]

The IPC improvements of the i5-4xxx vs i5-2xxx are going to be worth the upgrade, considering the similar cost if he's willing to pay.

 

[hudson57]

Hows this?
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3t37H

Spoiler

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£189.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard:  ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard  (£78.46 @ Amazon UK)
Memory:  Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  (£59.15 @ CCL Computers)
Storage:  Transcend SSD340 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  (£85.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card:  MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card  (£167.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case:  NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case  (£66.00 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply:  Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£36.04 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System:  Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit)  (£73.83 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £756.06
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-17 01:15 BST+0100)

Don't take this advice as gospel but past 80+ Bronze is a waste of money unless you are running your PC 24/7. Sure you have the added safety net but the premium price you pay on top of an already brilliant PSU is not needed. Bare in mind you should always look for the 80+ Bronze though, don't be too cheap.

While it is much cheaper, I have no experience building computers what so ever so I would be left with £756 worth of computer parts and no actual computer .

 

[Kevlar]

You can learn by watching a youtube video. Every motherboard also comes with a very detailed manual. Most of building it is simply plugging everything into the corresponding location and then screwing it all down to your case.

 

[hudson57]

Watched a few vids on building a PC and still unsure.
Some tips of this would be good.

Spoiler

Processor: Intel Core i5-4570 3.60GHz
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R7-260X OC 2GB
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Storage: 1TB Hard Disk
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H87M-HD3 (Socket 1150) mATX
Power Supply: 500W Corsair CX500M Modular PSU
Case: Sharkoon Bulldozer Black/Green Gaming Case
Optical Drive: LiteOn 24x Internal SATA DVD RW Drive

 

[Splintert]

It makes a lot of sense when you have all the parts together. There's really only one way they can fit together, just install them in the following order, give or take -

Case - PSU - Hard drives/CD drives - motherboard - CPU - RAM - GPU

Then wire everything together. Nicely. Then fans.

 

[hudson57]

Watched a few vids and I think it might be worth building it myself. Only thing I am still unsure about is installing the drivers.  On one vid one the PC was build the bios popped  up, then he installed W7 and then he said you have to install drivers.  They look simple enough but I am really worried I will mess something up while building it or setting it up.

 

[Splintert]

Oh yeah, no one thought to mention that you have to acquire an operating system on your own if you build your own system.

It's (almost) impossible to mess up a Windows installation, and installing drivers is as easy as going to the website for your motherboard and downloading them.

 

[Kevlar]

It's (almost) impossible to mess up a Windows installation, and installing drivers is as easy as going to the website for your motherboard and downloading them.

Next,next,next,next, enter name, next, next, done.

Unless you go into advanced settings I don't think you can even screw up much except maybe the time :/

Drivers come with your GPU and motherboard and are often better off being downloaded from their websites for the most recent one since they disk they give you will be the most recent one when they launched that product.

Bios options are mostly for overclocking and you won't need to even do that until you would want to overclock really (or if you have multiple hard drives and your OS is trying to load off the wrong HDD).

 

[Untitled.]

Knowing how to download drivers is good anyway since you'll likely have to update random drivers sooner or later.