Double check my budget gaming system...

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £124.99
1 x BenQ G2250 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £89.99
1 x MSI 990XA-GD55 AMD 990X Chipset (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G160C9K) £49.99
1 x **B Grade** BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - White/Black £34.99
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £34.99
Total : £414.95 (includes shipping : FREE).



Would leave £35 for the used graphics card, should be able to get something that would be ok for now, but would need upgrading before long.
 
honosuseri said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650Ti WindForce 2X Boost 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £137.99
1 x Iiyama ProLite E2278HD 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £99.95
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 (MB-364-GI) £35.00
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34096M1600HC11DC) £29.99
Total : £468.85 (includes shipping : FREE).



If I was doing CPU and GPU together that's what I'd shoot for. Mobo is B grade (it's £45 new) so might need some sata cables (check in Customer services). Hopefully it's BIOS can take the Ivy CPU but check again with CS. Being a Z68, i5K upgrades are do-able down the line and you can overclock them. This spec is probably the best option all in.

I know he is supposed to be doing an ITX APU build for his parents. That's using 1600Mhz RAM but if he built that first he'd get a good idea of what it can do and know his way around them.
Click to expand...

The 1GB 7850 for £18 less would perform better than the 2GB 650ti overall.
 
Wow - loads of input. Thanks!

Been away today so will have to catch up on all this tomorrow.

But after a very brief scan over the replies, I will say at this stage that I might take this opportunity to upgrade my SLI 560Ti's in my own PC. Flog one of them and this would leave the other to go into my son's build. Only a thought though, as not sure I can afford to upgrade my own system at the moment - besides which it still holds its own!

Thanks again for the replies.
 
 
Potty27 said:
The 1GB 7850 for £18 less would perform better than the 2GB 650ti overall.
Click to expand...

*sighs*

Q. Why is it cheaper?

A. Because you picked a B grade one! ;) There is that single 1GB 7850 there at that price. What happens if someone buys it?

Not that anybody should even be buying a 1GB VRAM GPU now, it's false economy. In fact if you look the 1 & 2GB 7850s are priced the same brand new and the LEGENDARY 7870LE is not much more than them. These B grade 1GB 7850 GPUs are probably DSR returns when people noticed they ordered the wrong GPU and wanted a refund lol 2GB is pretty much the standard now ;)

It's really not hard at all to need more than 1GB of VRAM. The OP may be aware of this if his current GPUs are 1GB. He might have SLI for grunt but the VRAM doesn't combine. Turning off MSAA really helps FPS but I've found that going from say Medium to High texture settings doesn't really hurt the FPS but you do notice the difference in the quality of the graphics. Higher texture settings are going to eat up VRAM though. That's why BF3 was said to need a GPU with atleast 1.5GB of VRAM to run Ultra.

Hence why I went for the 2GB 650Ti, it's a little cheaper than the 7850 and you do get CUDA and PhysX for what games do support it. I watched a video comparison a while back, the 1GB 7850 seems to be on par maybe a nose ahead but if I have 2GB of VRAM I could tweak and balance out better in game settings I'm sure.

jarvis82 said:
Wow - loads of input. Thanks!
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You're welcome. It's very tricky and I honestly can't now say what truly is the best path to be fair. Although if you know that you might well upgrade in a few months that does make an APU only build a tempting option. That 7770 is a waste of cash, your 560Ti would be better frankly.

£400-450 is ample to get a 1080P screen and do a Trinity build properly with 8GB of rapid RAM and even a much better cooler to OC it. You could easily make it look very nice indeed and he'd just be waiting on you to upgrade to give it a good boost with a 560Ti GPU.

If you upgrade you would help lower your power use lol I think you are in a similar boat to me. The GPU does ok for what you need for now, it's an itch you want to scratch but know you shouldn't just yet.
 
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honosuseri said:
You're welcome. It's very tricky and I honestly can't now say what truly is the best path to be fair. Although if you know that you might well upgrade in a few months that does make an APU only build a tempting option. That 7770 is a waste of cash, your 560Ti would be better frankly.
Click to expand...
I agree if I was to recommend anyone to get a card for 1920 res, the bare minimum I would recommend would be a 7850 2GB. However in the reality many people are still held back by the budget. I don't think anyone is arguing that it is more ideal to get a card with 2GB vram, but I think the reason why the recommendation for the 7850 1GB is based purely on the fact that if someone was to spend £15 extra for the sake of that tiny gain going from 7770 to 7790, they would be crazy not to spend another £20 extra to get the 7850 1GB, considering the gain there is FAR greater than going from 7770 to 7790.

But yea once hitting the £120 price point, things become more complicated, as for £15 more, people can get a GTX650Ti Boost which is not B-grade and with full warranty...and then for another £15 more, people can get a 7850 2GB.

IMO anyone that only set a budget of £120 or below for graphic card, they should seriously just try to find some extra cash somewhere and get a 7850 2GB; the 777x cards and GTX650Ti/GTX650 (128-bit versions) are underpowered due the the low memory-bus, that people would be far better of just try to find a 2nd hand GTX460/6850/5850/GTX470/GTX570 for around £50-£70 which would handle with games better, and suffer far less performance hit when AA is applied due to their higher 256-bit/384-bit memory bus.
 
honosuseri said:
It's really not hard at all to need more than 1GB of VRAM. The OP may be aware of this if his current GPUs are 1GB. He might have SLI for grunt but the VRAM doesn't combine.

You're welcome. It's very tricky and I honestly can't now say what truly is the best path to be fair. Although if you know that you might well upgrade in a few months that does make an APU only build a tempting option. That 7770 is a waste of cash, your 560Ti would be better frankly.

£400-450 is ample to get a 1080P screen and do a Trinity build properly with 8GB of rapid RAM and even a much better cooler to OC it. You could easily make it look very nice indeed and he'd just be waiting on you to upgrade to give it a good boost with a 560Ti GPU.

If you upgrade you would help lower your power use lol I think you are in a similar boat to me. The GPU does ok for what you need for now, it's an itch you want to scratch but know you shouldn't just yet.
Click to expand...

Fortunately the 1GB v 2GB VRAM arguement was already prominent when I bought the 560 Ti's 18 months ago...and I was firmly in the camp of future proofing...so they are both the 2GB version.

And you are right on the money with your assessment of the itch that wants to be scratched!
 
jarvis82 said:
Fortunately the 1GB v 2GB VRAM arguement was already prominent when I bought the 560 Ti's 18 months ago...and I was firmly in the camp of future proofing...so they are both the 2GB version.

And you are right on the money with your assessment of the itch that wants to be scratched!
Click to expand...

Marines post was ace! Couldn't agree more as he has basically echo'd what I've been trying to say in all my "waffle" lol Buying the best value GPU can be tricky and this is where consoles tend to win as people don't understand the tech or frankly just don't have the time or inclination to.

Come October I'll have had a 1GB 460 (256bit) 2 years and it'll still have a years warranty left. For £100 I can't complain as even today it's doing ok OC'd @850Mhz. To think I might recoup half the cost of the card (I kept the box) selling it on tells me I made a very good choice.

The AMD APU has WIN written all over it for your folks rig. I think you need to build that first so you can see what we mean about it's IGP. For the budget you can do one for your boy properly and make it look nice to boot quite comfortably.

If he has the APU you could most likely hold onto your 2GB SLI setup a good while longer and just hand down one card to him when you do upgrade. That said if you will hand down a card now I'd look to base the build on intel with a Z68 or maybe a B grade Z77 mobo so you have better CPU upgrade options for his rig down the road.

Nvidia has released it's new GPUs, AMDs are due October'ish. If you drop to a single 560Ti that itch could well be justified scratching around then. Don't envy the choice you have to make dude but I do look forward to seeing how it goes :D
 
With the 560ti included, an FX-6300 would be a better choice - it's the same price as the APUs, but offers much better performance overall.
 
i prolly sound a bit whiney and said it in multiple threads before, but i'll put it out here:
with that budget, im sure you could get a much better system with 2nd hand parts than buying new, granted warranties and such will be slightly more problematic
 
teppic said:
With the 560ti included, an FX-6300 would be a better choice - it's the same price as the APUs, but offers much better performance overall.
Click to expand...

Well I know the OP likes intel a lot. It took a while to point out the AMD APU would be a better all rounder than the intel Pentium for his folks in his other thread.

APUs are about the only thing I like to spec from the AMD CPU stables. Potty already made the mistake over the 970 mobo as it wasn't "future proof". A good 990 makes more sense and it does Xfire/Sli properly too but then you need to think about the PSU wattage to use it to it's full potential.

The Z68 as B grade is silly cheap and even new it's sub £50. Does allow Sandy or Ivy i5Ks too. Like I keep saying it's real tricky but I really would be putting a 1080P panel in the spec and then balance around that.
 
No - 970s can run 8350s fine. It's the cheaper board that's the problem, not the chipset.

The 6300 can be run fine on the cheaper boards as it's a lot less demanding. It's not just slightly above an APU, it's considerably better (the APUs are effectively crippled FX-4300s with an added GPU). If you've already got an nvidia GPU, the APUs make no real sense.
 
teppic said:
No - 970s can run 8350s fine. It's the cheaper board that's the problem, not the chipset.

The 6300 can be run fine on the cheaper boards as it's a lot less demanding. It's not just slightly above an APU, it's considerably better (the APUs are effectively crippled FX-4300s with an added GPU). If you've already got an nvidia GPU, the APUs make no real sense.
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Yes mate I know all this. I'm just saying the 990 is a better choice than the 970. Luckily you and Stulid spotted the mistake Potty made over that "budget" mobo as he thought it would be fine with the 8320. I have a feeling that confusion might well revert the OP to his intel preference.

Suggesting he might hand down a GPU has opened up a whole can of worms lol
 
honosuseri said:
have a feeling that confusion might well revert the OP to his intel preference.

Suggesting he might hand down a GPU has opened up a whole can of worms lol
Click to expand...

It has indeed! But the more think about it, the more I feel that I can't justify an upgrade at the moment - my system can still run the latest games at max settings without breaking a sweat...it is something I ponder quite often, since I remember 5 or 6 years ago when new games reduced the previous years tech to a grinding halt!

So with that in mind, I think the 560s will stay in my machine, and I will have to deduce from all the advice in this thread what to do in terms of GPU for my boy's build.

This PC will be a joint gift from me, his Mum and my parents - so I think, we can push the budget to £500. Hopefully that will allow the inclusion of the 1080p panel, but also give a little room for breathing in regard to the GPU choice!
 
So, with the increase to £500 budget I have come up with the following. No AMD input now please...the one thing I'm certain on is the i3.

I'm also aware after some tinternet research that the Gigabyte mobo might not like the Ivybridge i3 without a BIOS flash (despite Gigabyte claiming they marry up just fine). But at the price I can't turn it down, and will just do the BIOS flash one way or another.

Gotta get this ordered tomorrow, for delivery on Monday... Any final thoughts?

Cheers!

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £149.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x BenQ G2250 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £89.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £45.95
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020058-UK) £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
Total : £500.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
You can ask in customer services, although I've been lead to believe the D3s are Rev 2.0 so ok for Ivy.

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7870 Black Boost Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £155.99
1 x Iiyama ProLite E2278HD 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £107.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £45.95
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £39.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £29.99
Total : £505.84 (includes shipping : FREE).



Using the B grade mobo would put you on budget. 1080P LED panel and the 7870LE is impossible to ignore at that price! Please remember to link your account for free P&P ;)
 
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