Gaming on i3? Advice requested

happyjolly

happyjolly

happyjolly

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28 Feb 2013
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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
 
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?!!?
 
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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?
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Actually it would :p 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.
Click to expand...

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

Click to expand...

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..
 
Intel i3 Ivy Raid" Intel Core i3 3220 Ivybridge Dual Core Gaming System
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB £55.99
NO OPERATING SYSTEM £0.00
Seagate Barracuda 2TB £79.99
No Second Hard Drive Option (ZERO Cost) £0.00
HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB Graphics Card £161.99

VAT and shipping Total : £555.60

+ £50 for the cheapest i5 and maybe another £20 for the cooler, making it £625

That's without an SSD - a better all round system considering the £600 budget? Could probably get the GTX 660 for only £8 more, a toss up really, I don't really know what games he likes to play - which is always the question that's asked, but I don't think it really applies here, as we're not watching frame rates, and the 10% diff in games between cards probably won't come into affect due to the res. I did get a HD7950 myself recently, and been playing batman arkham asylum at 2560x1600, I turned on physx, and it murdered the card. When I turned it off it was fine, but could see a lot of "missing" stuff when rebenching.

On Nvidia cards, what's the performance impact of having physx switched on? I wonder if he'll get similar performance in games with the 660 and physix on as opposed to the hd 7850 without physx

I suppose the toss up is i3 and an SSD and standard cooler, or i5 and no ssd but better cooler and (better?) nvidia card.
 
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