Help me squeeze the best out of £600

b4z

b4z

b4z

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Joined
11 Mar 2005
Posts
569
Location
London
I haven't been on these forums in years, i used to be a regular, so i thought i would pop back to get some clear and educated advice, and i'm sure you can provide it.

I have started gaming again after a long time out.

I want to squeeze the best i can out of £600

I need:

1. CPU
2. Motherboard
3. RAM
4. Graphics Card
5. Power Supply

I have fallen in love with DayZ, but i am playing it on a laptop with an i5/4gbram/geforce420m gt and i get an average of 15 fps and its just getting depressing now.

I really want to play DayZ with a decent fps and experience it how it how it should be experienced.

I really value any help and advice you can give me. Thank you.
 
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) with FREE FARCRY3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs & 20% off MOH Warfighter PC Games £239.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £108.98
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 650W V2 High Performance '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020038-UK) £64.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £607.93 (includes shipping : FREE).



If you wish to overclock (which you might as well with a 3570K), add a cooler:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Xigmatek Dark Knight SD-1283 Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler (Socket LGA 2011/1366/1156/1155/775 and AMD FM1/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £28.99
Total : £28.99 (includes shipping : FREE).



If you have no intention of playing those games, get the MSI 7950 instead and sell the vouchers.
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795Q3G2M) with FREE FARCRY3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs & 20% off MOH Warfighter PC Games £227.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX550M High Performance 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020001-UK) £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £32.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £594.94 (includes shipping : FREE).



Not sure what case you have so check the heatsink fits in ok. 7950 is a good fast GPU and you get a nice selection of games with it :)

P.S The i5K has literally just come on offer saving £20ish, which helps pay for an aftermarket heatsink to OC it. Be wise to buy now before it goes back up next week ;)
 
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Thank you for all the replies so far.

I am happy with the cpu/mobo/ram/psu suggestions.

The most important decision i have to make is the graphics card.

Is there a big gulf between ATI and NVIDIA these days? I have been out of the loop for so long.

Which are the best graphics cards at the 200-250 price range? What about this GeForce 660 Ti?
And what about at the 150-200 price range? And are the ones one bracket lower [eg. the 7850] a lot worse?

I want to make sure the PC can run the latest games fairly decently at medium settings [not bothered about maxed out] with a good framerate.
 
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You'll be fine with the 660ti. It's a good card, but a 7950 for the same price will offer you more if you're willing to do a simple overclock - even more if you're willing to get slightly more advanced.
 
With the recent 12.11 drivers, AMD have really caught up with Nvidia performance wise, and price-performance is no contest really. The 7850 is also a very good card, I have one myself. With an overclock (look for the sticky) I can play BF3 at ultra and 1200p fairly easily.
 
b4z said:
Thank you for all the replies so far.

I am happy with the cpu/mobo/ram/psu suggestions.

The most important decision i have to make is the graphics card.

Is there a big gulf between ATI and NVIDIA these days? I have been out of the loop for so long.

Which are the best graphics cards at the 200-250 price range? What about this GeForce 660 Ti?
And what about at the 150-200 price range? And are the ones one bracket lower [eg. the 7850] a lot worse?

I want to make sure the PC can run the latest games fairly decently at medium settings [not bothered about maxed out] with a good framerate.
Click to expand...

660 vs 660Ti, 7950 vs 7850. You can change the GPUs in the comparison to help you find something you like for the price.

I do personally like nvidia. I think having cuda support makes for a better "all round" upgrade as it can also boost the CPU in other software suites such as adobe. Yes AMD has acceleration but CUDA is more widely used. Some games use the PhysX support but it's pretty rare (Borderlands and Batman AA off the top of my head do).

Forget about medium settings, you will be playing on high very comfortably even with say the 7850, which overclocks very well. You said you wanted the most for your money. So I tried to balance my spec to get your CPU overclocked with an aftermarket heatsink and a good GPU that you could overclock which just so happens to be bundled with a few games......most you can get for the price remember ;)

AMD has released new drivers but Nvidia has just released some new Beta drivers to counter that. Hopefully we are helping more than we are hindering
 
 
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