Which CPU for a £300 gaming rig

~>Dg<~ · 14 Jan 2013 at 16:00

imginy said:
I would get a cheap ivy i5 rig and use on board graphics and then you can stick a real gpu in when you have the money.

probably do that and get a second hand gpu to play on while you save some cash the second hand gpus you can pick up which are still very cable for little money is astonishing

Wucked · 14 Jan 2013 at 16:09

Imo your best bet is to wait until you have more of a budget and then get a proper gaming build on your 1st go. Otherwise you're going to have to cut corners now and then spend extra money later correcting it. I prefer PC over console gaming, so its nice to see a new guy joining the community, but it is more expensive. Wait until you can do it properly, otherwise it'll just become an exercise in frustration.

underworld00 · 15 Jan 2013 at 11:56

You could do far worse than get a set up like mine, although you will want to replace it at some point.
Core 2 Duo E7400 overclocked to 3.9 Ghz
4 GB Corsair Ram
Sapphire Radeon 4890 (slightly overclocked)
Antec 300 case

OK so its an old spec, but if you look on certain auction sites you can pick the processor up really cheap and it still has decent grunt. I game at 1920 x 1080 and can generally have a high to very high level of graphical detail turned on in games such as Battlefield 3 and Skyrim.

I plan to upgrade before the next Total War comes out, but this rig has seen me through demanding games and will be really cheap to knock together. Pep it up even more with a SSD!

yannis76 · 15 Jan 2013 at 17:28

imginy said:
The one I got wasn't nothing special just a phenom 960t and overclocked to 4.1mhz

The games I couldn't play very well were new titles online.

Bf3 bl2 skyrim were among the worst.

With what GPU?

imginy · 15 Jan 2013 at 17:55

yannis76 said:
With what GPU?

660ti

BrianB · 15 Jan 2013 at 19:02

Just FYI http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-146-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= this PSU is powering a 7950 and an overclocked Q6600.

liamfolz · 16 Jan 2013 at 13:50

imginy said:
I would get a cheap ivy i5 rig and use on board graphics and then you can stick a real gpu in when you have the money.

^
What i kind of done but with a cheap little GTX260. Made do with that and just upgraded bit by bit.

kitkat9933 · 19 Jan 2013 at 00:46

A10-5800k?

Bromhead · 19 Jan 2013 at 01:28

If it were me, especially as you mentioned indie games, I would just go 3570k and play with intel hd4000 graphics. Stick with indie games until you can afford a good gpu, like the 7850

yannis76 · 19 Jan 2013 at 09:21

What I decided to do is follow the A10 route and play for some time the games at a lower resolution until I add a dedicated used GPU. With this way I can at least play games whereas with the intel you CANT play without a VGA.
Also bear in mind that A10 with a dedicated GPU does play all the latest games slower than Intel BUT good.

Marine-RX179 · 19 Jan 2013 at 10:10

yannis76 said:
What I decided to do is follow the A10 route and play for some time the games at a lower resolution until I add a dedicated used GPU. With this way I can at least play games whereas with the intel you CANT play without a VGA.
Also bear in mind that A10 with a dedicated GPU does play all the latest games slower than Intel BUT good.

To put it into context, the AMD Trinity is an investment which you will be rewarded quickly in the short run, but in the long run...say if someone add a half decent graphic card to it, he would be scratching their heads wondering why they can't get consistent frame rate of 40-60fps+ in the new titles, no matter how much graphic settings they lowered, and/or how fast a graphic card they get.

tbh · 19 Jan 2013 at 10:29

Marine-RX179 said:
in the long run...say if someone add a half decent graphic card to it, he would be scratching their heads wondering why they can't get consistent frame rate of 40-60fps+ in the new titles

On a long enough time scale that's true of any CPU.

I think AMD CPUs will scale better with future titles than you are giving them credit for; seeing as how they will be in all the next-gen consoles games are likely to be heavily optimised for them.

Marine-RX179 · 19 Jan 2013 at 10:47

tbh said:
On a long enough time scale that's true of any CPU.

I think AMD CPUs will scale better with future titles than you are giving them credit for; seeing as how they will be in all the next-gen consoles games are likely to be heavily optimised for them.

It's not even a long time scale...as soon as someone adding even a 6850/5850 level card to it, it would already bottleneck.

It's a fact that the Trinity lack the neccessary power (comparing to even their big brothers the PD counterparts) and is only roughly around on par with Core2Quad/Phenom II X4's tier at best, and no optimisation is gonna change that, since it is pretty much offering only 2006-2009 CPU processing power in 2013.

Are the Trinity good for their price? Yes they are. Are they good enough to deliver good frame rate in all major titles without frame rate frequently dipping down to the 20fps~? No they are not.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Jan 2013 at 11:55

Marine-RX179 said:
To put it into context, the AMD Trinity is an investment which you will be rewarded quickly in the short run, but in the long run...say if someone add a half decent graphic card to it, he would be scratching their heads wondering why they can't get consistent frame rate of 40-60fps+ in the new titles, no matter how much graphic settings they lowered, and/or how fast a graphic card they get.

Marine-RX179 said:
It's not even a long time scale...as soon as someone adding even a 6850/5850 level card to it, it would already bottleneck.

At least from my experience of having a modern Core i3,Core i5,Llano A6,Q6600 and people I know with the Trinty A10,Athlon II X4,Phenom II X4,Phenom II X6 and the FX6300,the Core i3 is more of a bottleneck in many of the modern engines when compared to the last CPU,the ones which will be use in 90% of most PC titles in the next few years. These engines will be used in a range of modern titles from FPS,RPG,online,games,etc. Major engines such as Frostbite 2,id Tech 5,Cry Engine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 are also designed to take advantage of more threads,and there are more which are doing this. Due to the consolidation of companies in the games industry you will see more and more games sharing common engines,especially with more and more PC exclusive franchises now moving to console too,and even the new generation consoles appear to be focusing on more cores but weaker ones.

Even Nvidia drivers now are designed to multi-thread better(not AMD ones apparently).There are better CPUs(Core i5) but the AMD ones are not some doomsay scenario with regards to gaming. So what I had a Q6600 too.

yannis76 · 19 Jan 2013 at 13:01

I wonder if the people criticizing the A10 have actually tried one?
I haven't yet, but I do own a 3570K for my desktop pc and I can assure you that changing from my i5-2300 to i5-3570K (oced to 4200) had absolutely no effect in games!! I say these in order to emphasize how little part take the CPU into the gaming performance.
Also these reviews here show that the A10 is perfectly adequate for HD gaming with a discrete GPU and certainly not far away from the i5:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/47257-amd-a10-5700/?page=5
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-tri...0--discrete-gpu-gaming-performance/17272.html

So instead of waiting when to collect the money in order to build a decent Intel gaming PC, you can just start with the Trinity and whenever you feel ready just add a good VGA. Yes the games will perform slower but really how important is the difference of 60-70fps vs 100fps? If it were 30 vs 60 I would agree its very important, but since an A10 CAN give you 50-60fps in 1080p with a dedicated GPU, what is the problem?

Marine-RX179 · 19 Jan 2013 at 13:08

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
At least from my experience of having a modern Core i3,Core i5,Llano A6,Q6600 and people I know with the Athlon II X4,Phenom II X4,Phenom II X6 and the FX6300,the Core i3 is more of a bottleneck in many of the modern engines when compared to the last CPU,the ones which will be use in 90% of most PC titles in the next few years. These engines will be used in a range of modern titles from FPS,RPG,online,games,etc. Major engines such as Frostbite 2,id Tech 5,Cry Engine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 are also designed to take advantage of more threads,and there are more which are doing this. Due to the consolidation of companies in the games industry you will see more and more games sharing common engines,especially with more and more PC exclusive franchises now moving to console too,and even the new generation consoles appear to be focusing on more cores but weaker ones.

Even Nvidia drivers now are designed to multi-thread better(not AMD ones apparently).There are better CPUs(Core i5) but the AMD ones are not some doomsay scenario with regards to gaming. So what I had a Q6600 too.

I don't know why you are bringing i3 up...when all I was saying was that even the current top-end Trinity CPU is an underpowered Quad-core for today's standard. There's also no faster CPU to upgrade to...and even with the next gen (and most likely the last) on the FM2, it is still most likely not going to get close to the performance of a i5/i7.

yannis76 said:
Also these reviews here show that the A10 is perfectly adequate for HD gaming with a discrete GPU and certainly not far away from the i5:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/47257-amd-a10-5700/?page=5
http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-tri...0--discrete-gpu-gaming-performance/17272.html

That's because those titles in the first one ain't all that demanding, and BF3 and Crysis 2 single player is not that CPU intensive at all and are more GPU bounded in most case. You should have a look at the CPU performance on games like Witcher 2, Hitman, Assassin Creed 3 etc, or BF3 on multiplayer.

yannis76 said:
If it were 30 vs 60 I would agree its very important, but since an A10 CAN give you 50-60fps in 1080p with a dedicated GPU, what is the problem?

Actually that IS the difference in minimum frame rate in some games (may be more like 25fps vs 50-55fps). Also, there's a difference between doing constant 50-60fps and can do 50-60fps at times, but with frame rate frequently dipping to far lower than that.

Martini1991 · 19 Jan 2013 at 13:15

Coincidently, he's made the A10 look worse than what it is by showing it getting beaten in gaming by the i3.

And stating an i5 2300 wasn't any slower than an i5 3570k, well, the i5 2300 isn't exactly slow, and depends on the GPU you've got.
In a fair few titles my stock 2500k can max out my 7970.

Duke · 19 Jan 2013 at 13:40

Personally I would go for a new i3/board/ram and pick up a used graphics card.

yannis76 · 19 Jan 2013 at 15:46

It all depends what one is looking for and what he is ready to pay for.
For a gaming HTPC I chose the A10 vs the i3-i5 route because I could play from the very beginning with a decent CPU/GPU performance. When I receive the goods and setup the PC I will tell you my impressions (vs also my desktop i5-3570+7970).
I am expecting it to be slower but I have serious doubts whether this difference will be that huge.

Gibbo3771 · 22 Jan 2013 at 11:58

Would a G860/G870 with a GTX260 (second hand) not be a good combo? easily get both for 100-120, then you can spend the rest on good RAM, PSU and Mobo for future upgrades?