Which CPU for a £300 gaming rig

slovenlyjimmy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:17

Hi guys,

Really new to building to PC gaming having decided to move over from Xbox 360.

I have a tight budget of around £300 for the whole system, but already have a HDD to get me going. I'm looking for a rig that will mainly be used for Indy games, but needs to be easily upgraded to run higher spec games as I plan to migrate fully from console gaming to PC gaming at the end of the current Xbox generation.

So for the CPU I'm currently considering the AMD A10-5700 mainly for the decent integrated graphics which should cope with Indy games. I'll then save up for a decent Graphics card for when I ditch the the Xbox.

Wondering if you guys had any thoughts? I did originally consider a Intel Pentium G870 and a £70 GPU, but eventually decided I'd need to replace both in 12 months rather than just getting a new GPU?

Would welcome any thoughts.

Thanks.

Martini1991 · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:21

The A10 route seems sound, however, CPU performance may be a little lacking in future games, and won't exactly be that easy to get an upgrade.

The pentium and GPU with replacing in 12 months doesn't seem too bad.

Think I'd possibly wait for the Haswell stuff to launch, if only to see how the IGP performs, worst case scenario it's a bit behind trinity, but without the compromise of potential CPU performance.

imginy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:24

I would get a cheap ivy i5 rig and use on board graphics and then you can stick a real gpu in when you have the money.

Martini1991 · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:25

imginy said:
I would get a cheap ivy i5 rig and use on board graphics and then you can stick a real gpu in when you have the money.

Possible option, but would you really want to game on a HD4000 over a 7660D?

slovenlyjimmy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:35

Would love to be able to do an i5 rig, but really don't see how I could do it on my budget, even using the IGP?

Martini1991 · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:36

slovenlyjimmy said:
Would love to be able to do an i5 rig, but really don't see how I could do it on my budget, even using the IGP?

You can't.

imginy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:38

slovenlyjimmy said:
Would love to be able to do an i5 rig, but really don't see how I could do it on my budget, even using the IGP?

£168 cpu 3570k has pretty good onboard
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-404-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=567

£70 motherboard asus z77
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-555-AS

4gb ram £17
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-023-TG&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=

A case you can get for £20
psu is normally around £35

So that put you £10 over budget but gives you the best gaming processor out there ready for when you add your graphics card.

slovenlyjimmy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:53

imginy said:
A case you can get for £20
psu is normally around £35

Being able to squeeze an i5 Ito my budget would be great, but £55 for a good PSU and case seems quite tight. Everything I've read so far has said to never be tight with a PSU!

imginy · 12 Jan 2013 at 23:55

Martini1991 said:
Possible option, but would you really want to game on a HD4000 over a 7660D?

The 7660 is obviously much better short term

But the i5 is definitely needed for long term anything less is just going to need replacing.

I went amd to save money after being told they were good enough and ended up replacing 4 months later with i5.

imginy · 13 Jan 2013 at 00:01

slovenlyjimmy said:
Being able to squeeze an i5 Ito my budget would be great, but £55 for a good PSU and case seems quite tight. Everything I've read so far has said to never be tight with a PSU!

3570k uses a lot less power than older processors and also new radeon 7*** and nvidia 6** graphics card use much less.

So you still get a decent brand gaming psu but you don't need that much power I should imagine a 450w would do.

Look at this the whole rig with 3570k under full load with prime is only drawing 160w at the wall http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2012/05/01/intel-core-i5-3570k-cpu-review/7

slovenlyjimmy · 13 Jan 2013 at 00:06

Thanks, I'll take another look at radeon 7*** specs as I thought they all said min 500w PSU required.

I'd rather be safe than risk frying something!

imginy · 13 Jan 2013 at 00:21

slovenlyjimmy said:
Thanks, I'll take another look at radeon 7*** specs as I thought they all said min 500w PSU required.

I'd rather be safe than risk frying something!

Take a look at this the most power the 7850 ever used in the test was 100w

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_hd_7850_and_7870_review,7.html

Depends what graphics you want and if you plan on overclocking your cpu and gpu.

My rig is a 3570k overclocked to 4.8mhz with a overclocked 660ti and loads of extra fans plus extras and I run it all on a xfx 550w psu.

I'm not saying get a cheap psu because sooner or later they will kill your pc

Make sure you get a gaming one from a decent brand

I would pick you one out but not sure what graphics card you plan on getting or if you plan on overclocking.

slovenlyjimmy · 13 Jan 2013 at 00:45

Ideally I'd be looking at an AMD 7870, but realistically it will prob end up being a 7770.

Question is do I go with an i5 and no GPU and buy a GPU later or start with a Intel Pentium G870 and a good GPU, the upgrade to an i5 later?

Martini1991 · 13 Jan 2013 at 01:02

Pentium and decent GPU would game better than the i5 and HD4000.

DarkTheSupreme · 13 Jan 2013 at 01:31

If I was you i'd probably try and save a bit extra and go for a z77/3570k.

I'd rather do that and wait a while, than be kicking myself in a years time.

KingBrian · 13 Jan 2013 at 01:32

I would suggest waiting until you have enough cash then buying parts you need. Using a good cpu with a poor gpu and vice versa will only be frustrating when you're lagging like crazy ingame imo.

yannis76 · 13 Jan 2013 at 23:12

imginy said:
The 7660 is obviously much better short term

But the i5 is definitely needed for long term anything less is just going to need replacing.

I went amd to save money after being told they were good enough and ended up replacing 4 months later with i5.

Which AMD did u get? And what were the apps that didnt run well?
I am asking because I am in the same dilemmas

imginy · 13 Jan 2013 at 23:57

yannis76 said:
Which AMD did u get? And what were the apps that didnt run well?
I am asking because I am in the same dilemmas

The one I got wasn't nothing special just a phenom 960t and overclocked to 4.1mhz

The games I couldn't play very well were new titles online.

Bf3 bl2 skyrim were among the worst.

Bart_Hunt · 14 Jan 2013 at 15:33

slovenlyjimmy said:
I have a tight budget of around £300 for the whole system, but already have a HDD to get me going...

Hi

I was building a low-profile gaming rig myself, I am still in the process actually.
You can see it in my signature - it will cost a total of 760£ (or 640£ with single GPU). You mentioned that you have a HDD already, then you could reduce that by another 60£ (that's how much I paid for my SSD) - so its 580£ with single GPU.
You can easily say that build is future-proof:
- i5 3570 is a great CPU, really strong one.

- Motherboard of my choice is small, but have rich connectivity options, Xfire support for dual AMD graphics, have great BIOS and at last - looks nice

- You could go for cheaper case if you wanted (another -20£ compared to my build):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-010-BX&groupid=2362&catid=2277&subcat= , however I'd say to keep the PSU as it is. Yes, there are cheaper ones but Corsair is rock solid, also If you ever decide to improve your graphics I checked and you can easily put a single Radeon HD 7950 or 7970 in that system.

- I bought RAM on promotion (paid around 60£ for it) so check for those often and you may be lucky. If you don't want to wait:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-133-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

- DvD-RW: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-003-OK&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=951

- If you have operation system software, reduce another 50£ from the cost of build - I had to buy a Windows 8 Pro (that would be 510£ by now). Or maybe you'd prefer Linux, your choice. Otherwise its 560£ (50£ for Windows 8 Pro)

- I didn't add a screen, because I already had one - however you can get one at OcUK, prices start from just 80£.

Anyway, I hope it helped a bit, after all I was in similar situation to yours recently and encountered similar problems (had only slightly bigger budget

).

Good luck with building your rig

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 14 Jan 2013 at 15:38

TBF,an A10 would be better than a Pentium for a lot of newer games which tend to thread better. IIRC,over on TR,the latest G2120(the fastest Pentium CPU ATM) was not doing very well in BF3 and Crysis 2 with regards to latency. Batman AC was around the same for both and only in Skyrim did it do better.

The main advantage of socket 1155,is the upgrade path to a Core i5 although I expect the Pentium to need replacing quicker than a AMD A10.

Also,with Haswell,the major performance boost is with the GT3 IGP with embedded RAM(Crystalwell) which will only be found in some laptops. It has 2.5X times the shaders of the GT2 which will again only be found in some models. All the other models use system RAM as standard and another issue is Intel driver support for newer titles. If AMD and Nvidia can have issues,then I hardly expect Intel to better them. When I was using the HD2000 on my Core i3(which I bought soon after launch) for a few months,L4D had funny texture bugs and that was an old game.

The fact that the GT2 IGP is called an HD4600 indicates not a massive performance boost I suspect, and most desktop models are probably going to be GT1.

On top of this is a refresh of Trinity called Richland being released in the next few months which has further process tweaks and improved power management between the IGP and CPU,meaning higher clockspeeds at the same TDP level for both the IGP and CPU. From what leaked 3DMark11 scores,the top mobile Richmond APU,is around 22% faster than the A10-4600M. It will be interesting to see how this translates to the desktop models.

However,it appears to be a stop-gap as Kaveri seems to be arriving at the end of the year, looking at the latest AMD roadmap.