Been out of the "game" so need you to help spec a mate!

Supercow

Supercow

Supercow

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My mate has asked me to help him spec a £800 gaming PC, however I have been using my macbook for the past 8 months, so I have no idea any more what is the latest "bang for buck" hardware out there.

He only needs the box, no peripherals needed at all, nor does he need software. His budget is flexible, but doesn't really want to go over £800.

Won't be overclocked

So requirements
Gaming PC
Not too much storage space, 500GB will do
No Peripherals or software
Nice sexy small'ish (flexible on the "small'ish")

thanks in advance
 
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If you won't be overclocking then I'd go for the faster dual core, better for gaming. You said no software, so I take it you have an operating system, if not I'd suggest 64 bit vista, it'll make the most out of the 4gb of ram.

What resolution is he playing at?
 
Could even go E8600 in there and still be below the £800.
Also another option would be to do away with the P45 chipset/4870 combo and replace with X38 chipset and 2x4850s, will definetly be faster and not much money difference.
Especially if not overclocking anyway. to be fair a dual lane P45 board (P5Q-E) is apparantly fine for dual cards as the 8*8 slots are not meant to be that much difference in speed only slightly slower.
Dual 4850s are meant to be very good for gaming.
 
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Banny said:
Could even go E8600 in there and still be below the £800.
Also another option would be to do away with the P45 chipset/4870 combo and replace with X38 chipset and 2x4850s, will definetly be faster and not much money difference.
Especially if not overclocking anyway. to be fair a dual lane P45 board is apparantly fine for dual cards as the 8*8 slots are not meant to be that much difference in speed only slightly slower.
Dual 4850s are meant to be very good for gaming.
Click to expand...

I have no idea what those chipsets are etc - could you possibly link a spec together?

ro55o said:
What resolution is he playing at?
Click to expand...

Cheers for that mate, his res is 1680 . 1050 (22"monitor)
 
sup3rc0w said:
Cheers for that mate, his res is 1680 . 1050 (22"monitor)
Click to expand...

No worries, a 4870 would be perfect at that resolution, should handle any game with ease.

In my opinion the E8600 isn't worth the extra cash over the 8400, but if your friends willing to spend the extra money then fair enough.

2 4850's would be faster than a single 4870, but would cost £270 for 2 of them (cheapest 4850 is £135) so it's £70 more than the 4870, and the cheapest X38/X48 board is £140, so in total going for that setup would be £110 more than the 4870, so not worth it, especially at the resolution your mate is playing at. Plus a P45 board, the one that I spec'd can support crossfire, so he could easily add another 4870 at a later date. Just stick with the one card the now.
 
The board specced does not support crossfire, looks like it has only one slot.
the pro version does which is £111 so another tenner with gives you around £280 to get 2x4850s which is easy.
so you are well in budget of the £800.
So if you want best bang for buck get the 2*4850s just check the farcry2 benchmark thread to see where a single 4870 is compared to dual 4850s at the rez you are playing.
 
2 4850's are £80 more than a single 4870, so not worth it. If you were comparing them to a gtx280, then yes they are bang for buck, but at 1680*1050 resolution there is no reason to go bigger than a 4870, even a single 4850 is enough to max out anything (I know as I've got it). Unless he plans on getting a bigger monitor, then it's a waste of money.

Buying a graphics card based on a benchmark for one game is silly, and of course it's going to be better, it's more expensive. Some games suit crossfire, where others don't do so well.

Yes, you need the pro version of the P45 board to enable crossfire, I hadn't realised this, thought it was standard on all P45 boards.
 
Yeah but he has a £800 budget so they are in his price range.
Whatever you obviously know what you are on about, who am I to give advice.
As for crossfire you dont even have it, so how do you know stuff, you read on the net, but not actually tried it. I do have it 4870x2, plus I have had tri crossfireX and on the last gen 3000 series and in all current games it makes a difference and a lot of old ones for that matter. even crysis.
You never even realised when you posted about the P45 board having crossfire, I had to correct you.
For the record a P35 board would do the job with a single card saving even more money, even though the object of the post was to get best performance from £800.
Oh dont get me wrong a 4870 is a great card and would be perfect but better can be had for the money.
 
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Banny said:
Yeah but he has a £800 budget so they are in his price range.
Whatever you obviously know what you are on about, who am I to give advice.
As for crossfire you dont even have it, so how do you know stuff you read on the net, I do have it 4870x2, plus I have had tri crossfireX and on the last gen 3000 series and in all current games it makes a difference and a lot of old ones for that matter. even crysis.
Click to expand...

I said I've got a single 4850 and it runs everything on maximum at the same resolution his friend is playing at, I didn't say anything about me having crossfire. I do plan on going down that route, but only becasue I've already got a 4850 and want a bigger monitor. I was just trying to save the guy some money. I've said that 2 4850's would beat a single 4870, but at that resolution it would be wasted. Fair enough if he get's a bigger monitor then it would be an idea to go crossfire.

The benchmarks online show crossifre doing well in some games and worse in others, why shouldn't I belive these. It all depends if games are developed with crossfire or even SLi in mind, most now are quite compatible. I've noticed in some benchmarks that crossfire scales worse than just a single card. I'm sure that ATI will work on this and crossfire will hopefully only get better, mainly as I want to crossfire another 4850 with the one I've got ;)

At the moment get one 4870, up the motherboard to the P45 pro, if you do end up getting a bigger monitor, and by that I mean something bigger than 24", then get another 4870 and crossfire. Just now a 4870 is more than enough for the size of monitor you have.

Banny said:
Oh dont get me wrong a 4870 is a great card and would be perfect but better can be had for the money.
Click to expand...

No, there's better can be had for more money, for the same money as a 4870 you can't really get any better. I know where your coming from though and for his budget he can get better than a 4870, but it's wasted unless he upgrades to a bigger monitor.
 
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I can put that a better system than you specced for £736 with a better case (Antec 900), the pro version on the P5Q E8600 and two 4850s with a 750w thermaltake PSU, Corsair is still within budget.
 
Then post the spec, it's not between us what he decides to go for, it's just ideas. Not everyones going to have the same view, if they did it'd be a pretty boring place :p

If you could post your spec, because I can't get what you've said to come to £736. If you can get that then it'll definitely be the one to go for.
 
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Can post spec, but thats all
E8600
2*4850 512mb
Asus P5Q-Pro
2*2gb PC6400 Geil Black Dragon
Samsung 20x DVD writer SATA
Thermaltake 700w cable managment PSU, could be swapped for a Corsair for an extra £30, but no need really, even though I have the Corsair myself.
Antec 900 case

But if it was me I would buy a E5200 which is so much cheaper and with luck 4ghz is possible in a P5Q board, rest of it I would keep though.
But OP wont overclock so E8600 is 3.33ghz so quite good really.

Oops my bad I forgot the HD so add another £45 to my £736 to make £781 still very good system for the money and under £800
 
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Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 LGA775 'Wolfdale' "Overclocking E0 Stepping" 3.33GHz (1333FSB) - Retail Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 LGA775 'Wolfdale' "Overclocking E0 Stepping" 3.33GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £169.99
(£199.74) £169.99
(£199.74)
Asus P5N-T Deluxe nForce 780i (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard Asus P5N-T Deluxe nForce 780i (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £131.99
(£155.09) £131.99
(£155.09)
BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £129.99
(£152.74) £129.99
(£152.74)
Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz SLI-Ready Edition Low Latency Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2N800SR4GK) OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz SLI-Ready Edition Low Latency Dual Channel DDR2 (OCZ2N800SR4GK) £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST3500320AS) £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £35.99
(£42.29) £35.99
(£42.29)
Samsung SH-S223F/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM Samsung SH-S223F/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.99
(£15.26) £12.99
(£15.26)
Sub Total : £638.92
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL Select Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.99
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £113.73
Total : £763.64
 
The 4870 is a much better card than the 9800gtx+, a 4850 matches up to this. The nvidia alternative to the 4870 would be the gtx260.

That is a good spec banny. Normally I'd go for the E8400 though, great little overclocker, can easily get up to 4ghz, but since he isn't overclocking the E8600 might be a better shout, although at stock the 8400 is still very fast.

The 5200 is a great chip and overclocks well, but is let down by the small amount of cache and definitely needs overclocked. For a budget system you really cant beat it though.
 
Yeah agreed, its horses for course's really, not sure if cache makes so much difference in games, but dont quote me on that, my CPU is Q9300 with not a lot of cache and is easily up there in the benchies with higher cached CPU's.
 
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