Gaming on i3? Advice requested

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 11:41

I'm trying to sort out a casual gaming rig for a mate, I'm too far away now to build one for him and have recommended OcUK due to my recent good experiances. I'm looking at this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-345-OE&groupid=43&catid=2475

adding 8gb ram, 120gb ssd, 1tb hdd, and a 2gb HD7850 and no OS comes in on the limit of the budget of £600 @ £606.98

He won't be doing any upgrading or touching the machine for years, it will be basic web browsing and emails, using itunes things like that, I think that's a solid machine for his needs. My only concern is that dual core i3 - I've advised him it doesn't make much of a difference these days (although i own an i7!) but i'm concerned it'll bottleneck his GPU at 1920x1200 - is it possible get that machine and spec it with the cheapest core i5 instead from a gaming perspective? Would it even be needed?

Thanks

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 11:45

I'm quite keen to see his expression when he gets his new machine, he's got a pentium 4 with 2gb ram and a gtx 8800 - or at least I think that's what it was, the last top spec agp card?!!?

wazza300 · 17 Apr 2013 at 11:53

should be fine imo,esp with the 7850 and an ssd

Doomedspeed · 17 Apr 2013 at 12:17

7850 is a great card and I doubt the i3 will bottleneck it, though at 1200p you may be close.
If you could put a 3330 in it, that may help.

harshuk · 17 Apr 2013 at 12:19

Good choice however if he is casual have you checked out a trinity build?

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:17

I know nothing about AMD CPUs anymore. The last one I had was an Athlon XP2100+ and had no end of head and chipset issues with it. I know things have changed completely since then but I've stayed in the Intel CPU and Chipset camp ever since.

I'll have a look at the AMD stuff. Trinity is instead of discreet graphics right? I'd really like to include a HD7850.

Marine-RX179 · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:17

The 7850 2GB would be fine for 1920 res so long as he is willing to turn down graphic settings a notch in the more demanding games, as for the CPU, I would strongly suggest getting at least a i5, considering this is to be used for years.

Doomedspeed said:
7850 is a great card and I doubt the i3 will bottleneck it, though at 1200p you may be close.

Actually it bottlenecks even a GTX560Ti in some games, and the 7850 is faster than that.

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:27

Thanks for the responses, my gut was saying it should be i5. Overall on the bundles though they are so much more expensive despite the cpu not actually costing that much more. You're looking at nearly a grand in some cases.

I can only assume they include a slightly beefed up PSU based on the assumption an even higher end card will go in..

yes - they won't mind or notice turning some settings down... that's the problem being an enthusiast, you often lose sight of what "normal" performance expectations are. His son just wants to play the latest games... that was the request - just to be able to play them. look at my 2nd post to see what he is currently coping with!

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:29

oh because of my little rant i forgot the point of my post, can I just call OCuk and get them to chuck in an i5 and pay the difference? Mobo is ok for that right? I think the psu is 430w so no issues there. Remember, they'll never upgrade this or even open it up.

joelk2 · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:30

i have the i3 3220 and the 2gb Gigabyte OC 7850 @ 1100mhz.

runs games fine.

bf3 on high
crysis 3 on medium (some high settings)
simcity on ultra (or very high i think it might be called)

Marine-RX179 · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:34

happyjolly said:
Thanks for the responses, my gut was saying it should be i5. Overall on the bundles though they are so much more expensive despite the cpu not actually costing that much more. You're looking at nearly a grand in some cases.

I can only assume they include a slightly beefed up PSU based on the assumption an even higher end card will go in..

yes - they won't mind or notice turning some settings down... that's the problem being an enthusiast, you often lose sight of what "normal" performance expectations are. His son just wants to play the latest games... that was the request - just to be able to play them. look at my 2nd post to see what he is currently coping with!

When I said turn down the graphic setting a notch, I meant use mix of High and Ultra and 2xAA, rather than all Ultra with 4xAA. I really doubt the different is that noticeable when actually gaming, but the higher frame rate with the slightly lower graphic setting would be really noticeable. The thing is with an i3, you simply cannot avoid frame rate dipping down to below 30fps games, whereas with the i5 overclocked, it would be able to keep frame rate at least above 40fps in most games (when graphic card is not the limitation).

happyjolly · 17 Apr 2013 at 13:44

Apologies Marine, that wasn't a slight on you, I was making a generalisation. It could be me but I get carried away easily! The i5 wouldn't be overclocked out of the box though.

joelk2 - have you experienced frame rate drops that Marine was saying?

joelk2 · 17 Apr 2013 at 14:08

not below 30fps. crysis 3 seems to be a pretty hard game to run from what ive read and it runs ok on my system

if you self build you can get it cheaper.

Marine-RX179 · 17 Apr 2013 at 14:57

happyjolly said:
The i5 wouldn't be overclocked out of the box though.

Actually it would

The turbo boost will add 400MHz to stock clock, but of course that won't be anywhere as high as manual overclocking.

And even if we were to take overclocking out of the picture, the i5 has twice the number of physical cores of the i3, also not to mention bigger cache size...so in game that would use 4 cores or more, it would have like roughly twice the processing power.

happyjolly · 20 Apr 2013 at 20:12

Marine-RX179 said:
Actually it would The turbo boost will add 400MHz to stock clock, but of course that won't be anywhere as high as manual overclocking.

And even if we were to take overclocking out of the picture, the i5 has twice the number of physical cores of the i3, also not to mention bigger cache size...so in game that would use 4 cores or more, it would have like roughly twice the processing power.

I'm sold! i5 it is, I knew my gut was telling me something - is yours ever wrong? Cheers.

scotsdragon · 20 Apr 2013 at 20:27

have you looked around the thread there a few 600 pounds builds that are very nice.

harshuk · 20 Apr 2013 at 22:35

id go amd 6300 imo.

scotsdragon · 20 Apr 2013 at 22:37

gonna try this basket add on

this is abit over budget, has your I5 and that and im sure some guys can tweak it abit to help you get it down

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Asus HD 7770 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £139.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £79.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-HD3 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seasonic S12II 520W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Arctic White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9W) £59.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 High Performance CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £22.99
Total : £697.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).

happyjolly · 21 Apr 2013 at 11:35

scotsdragon said:
gonna try this basket add on this is abit over budget, has your I5 and that and im sure some guys can tweak it abit to help you get it down

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x Asus HD 7770 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £139.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £79.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-HD3 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seasonic S12II 520W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Arctic White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9W) £59.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 High Performance CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £22.99
Total : £697.88 (includes shipping : £12.50).

decent build, thanks for spending the time on it, it's a bit over budget tho, I think not using the stock cooler is a good idea, but I think a 7850 2gb would be better, for similar money - the case and psu arn't important, ok well the psu is but i'd have guessed a 430w corsair would be fine. also I'm keen to get an SSD in there, at the moment, I've got it to £670ish with an i5, 120gb ssd and 2tb seconday, 8gb ram and a 7850 2gb. I'm wondering though if the SSD is worth it, considering the light use and budget constraint, perhaps better to save that cash and put it somewhere else.... like a slightly better graphics card, or better cooler. hmm..

Flashheart · 21 Apr 2013 at 11:43

Another one for the Fx 6300, cost effective gaming chip and I'd always use it over an I3.

Ive used them a couple of times in different rigs. Very close to my own i7 920 @ 3.8 in benchies and 6 cores for newer games that can take advantage of them.

You could then afford to put a 7870xt in, which would be far better for games.