Hovering over the buy button (£1200 budget)

pmk24

pmk24

pmk24

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Lo folks,

Last pc kept me going for 3 years so plan to do the same again with this one.

Normal games played FPS some MMO's for c6 and general media center duties (but no ripping / encoding so the i5 will be ok?)




Thoughts?

The main do I or dont I was to go for a 6950 (or 70) and then xfire it later or go for a fast single card solution with the nvidia.

I have picked a small case though and need to see if the cooler will fit in there so any input is welcome or if i have made some really noobish mistake let me know :D

I will be clocking it hopefully to a good standard but really need a small case for travel and desk retail is a premium :D

Cheers
 
Understood but i need it to last for 3 years and would love to play bulletstorm, crysis 2 and diablo3 and not need to tweek (them days are behind me now) for fps boosts.

However where would you cut back? as memory is dirt cheap, SSD is great for windows, chip and mobo are great quality vs cost of lower versions so its the gfx and cooling the place to cut a few pennies? the cost isnt the killer for me as long as were about 1200 :)

thanks
 
iDroid84 said:
That's possibly too over powered for just playing average games and normal use. You could downgrade a lot of that hardware and you wouldn't even notice.
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+1.

Phenom II X4 system will do all you want easily, add a HD5850 into the equation and problem solved - if you spent £240 on graphics you could get a HD6950 and flash it to a HD6970 - 3rd fastest card on the planet and much faster than the over-priced Fermi GTX570.

H70 is not particularly good for this price either, its a bit naff :p

A decent air cooler just as an Akasa Venom will do the same job for £30 less.
 
Cookeh said:
+1.

Phenom II X4 system will do all you want easily, add a HD5850 into the equation and problem solved - if you spent £240 on graphics you could get a HD6950 and flash it to a HD6970 - 3rd fastest card on the planet and much faster than the over-priced Fermi GTX570.

H70 is not particularly good for this price either, its a bit naff :p

A decent air cooler just as an Akasa Venom will do the same job for £30 less.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

I admit i took a look at what ocuk use in their prebuilds and sorta worked around the bits :D so will have a read on the venom looking on http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/306?vs=293 the 570 and 5850 run comparible at stock so may indeed look at the flashing route, cheers pal :D
 
pmk24 said:
Thanks :)

I admit i took a look at what ocuk use in their prebuilds and sorta worked around the bits :D so will have a read on the venom looking on http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/306?vs=293 the 570 and 5850 run comparible at stock so may indeed look at the flashing route, cheers pal :D
Click to expand...

Its the HD6950 that can be flashed :p And its faster than the GTX570 at stock anyway :p

HD5850 is comparable the GTX570 and costs £150
HD6950 beats GTX570, can be flashed to a very fast card, and costs £240
GTX570, slower than the above, and costs a mammoth £300! :eek::eek:
 
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Think you need to edit Cookeh ;)


OP: I agree with your build tbh. You want it to last for 3 years or so and imo...

Phenom and 5850 won't do that as well as SB + 570. The only thing I would maybe think about is yes getting a 6950 instead of 570 and flashing it to 6970 but other than that - I agree with you spend the £1200 a clocked i5 SB to like 4.8Ghz is too good to say no to imo.

Go for it I say.
 
Thanks folks I am going to read up about the flashing the 6950 up and have changed the cooler to somthing smaller but is still good at cooling shiz.

So its now down to if all this will fit into the case OK and if it will support xfire at a later date (psu seems big enough doesnt it?)



Thanks folks its great that theres a forum like this to just fire off things and get good level headed answers for us once techy but now it just needs to work type people :D
 
pmk24 said:
Understood but i need it to last for 3 years and would love to play bulletstorm, crysis 2 and diablo3 and not need to tweek (them days are behind me now) for fps boosts.

However where would you cut back? as memory is dirt cheap, SSD is great for windows, chip and mobo are great quality vs cost of lower versions so its the gfx and cooling the place to cut a few pennies? the cost isnt the killer for me as long as were about 1200 :)

thanks
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Might not be a killer but it would be a waste. Downgrade it and give the extra cash to someone who needs it then.

Seriously, most PCs now will last 3 years if you take good care of it. Spend less money now and then do middle hotspot upgrades when/if needed in the future.

EDIT, it looks like your still wasting money from the above. I'm not going to do the specs for you but keep adjusting it.
 
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I honestly don't see how he is wasting money tbh.

He wants to play future games and not bother about mini upgrades in the future so the spec he has gone for suits. If he was going for the 2600k instead of 2500k then fine - that is a waste but suggesting a Phenom and 5850 just doesn't work as he would get next to nothing for them in the future.
 
Cookeh said:
Its the HD6950 that can be flashed :p And its faster than the GTX570 at stock anyway :p

HD5850 is comparable the GTX570 and costs £150
HD6950 beats GTX570, can be flashed to a very fast card, and costs £240
GTX570, slower than the above, and costs a mammoth £300! :eek::eek:
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Certainly wouldn't agree with your first statement there. We all know the 5850 is a good card at around the £140-150 mark but is no way comparable to the GTX 570. See benchmarks below. Also the 570 will generally overclock proportionally more than the 5850 too.

AMD Radeon HD 5850 - 725MHz/4000MHz
vs
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 - 732MHz/1464MHz/950MHz

570 is comparable to the 6950. As 99% will flash to the 6970, the 6950 offers the best value for money high end card at the moment.

AMD Radeon HD 6950 - 800MHz/5000MHz
vs
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 - 732MHz/1464MHz/950MHz


Howitzer said:
I for one think that reviewed spec you've put together looks spot on!

That PSU will easily handle future Xfire.
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Agreed. Would still be worthwhile in seeing how the 560s perform as they should come in around £200 for a reference card.

Also, worth noting the i5 2500K has shot up in price here on ocuk, and can be had for £178.99, a whopping £36 difference.

Or "Intel Core i7 2600K Sandy Bridge *OEM*" can be had for £246.20!
 
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looking at the early 560Ti reviews it seems to edge over the 6950/70 for the resolutions i will be running on my 21" tft now bring on payday :)
 
Pitching in here to give a +1 to everything Cookeh's had to say (except for 5850=570, which is contradicted by benchmarks).

Bear in mind that you're only really going to need something in the 30-40 FPS area (on super high settings) to make your game smoothly playable. A Phenom II X4 with a 5850 could reasonably be expected to do that for 2 years at 1920x1080, with maybe a drop to "just" high settings for the third year before your next upgrade. Talk of 6950/70s and GTX 570s is mad overspend, even at that resolution, and as the OP's screen is only 21 inches, I'm guessing it may only be 1680x1050.

You also really don't need 8GB of RAM- 4 is plenty.

Save all that extra money and put it towards your next upgrade.
 
hybrid572 said:
Pitching in here to give a +1 to everything Cookeh's had to say (except for 5850=570, which is contradicted by benchmarks).

Bear in mind that you're only really going to need something in the 30-40 FPS area (on super high settings) to make your game smoothly playable. A Phenom II X4 with a 5850 could reasonably be expected to do that for 2 years at 1920x1080, with maybe a drop to "just" high settings for the third year before your next upgrade. Talk of 6950/70s and GTX 570s is mad overspend, even at that resolution, and as the OP's screen is only 21 inches, I'm guessing it may only be 1680x1050.

You also really don't need 8GB of RAM- 4 is plenty.

Save all that extra money and put it towards your next upgrade.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was quite a typo ;) :p
 
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