My friend wants to build a computer. Now I'm trying to help him pick out parts, however sometimes I feel that all the numbers etc can get a little overwhelming.
Can someone perhaps help me pick out parts?
He wants a decent gaming rig. His budget is aproximately 800 euros, but there is a little wiggle room there.
I already concluded he's probably best off with a core i5 processor. (it would appear i7 adds little for gaming purposes)
And 4 gigs of ddr 3 ram.
As for a video card I got my eye on the radeon hd 7970
Would anyone like to give any input on this? Maybe suggest different video cards etc?
Any help would be apreciated.
Go AMD. Intel is paying a tiny bit more for very little gain in comparison to AMDs price. Look at the FX processor first, then maybe a 6-core of another line. And 8GB RAM isn't much more then 4GB, for 800 euros no reason to gimp anything. You'll need it IMO, too. Maybe go with 12GB if you can afford it and use it as a RAMDisk. 800 Euros, I'd expect about a 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM, AMD 8-Core with high end 6000HD series, if not 7000. And then just a $30 or so sound card.
7970 is a fine gaming card though, good choice on that.
Otherwise, just pick whatever you want really. I just highly advise AMD. Never had trouble with ANYTHING AMD. While Intel, I always struggle with drivers, with Linux, with everything about them. Dunno why, I just do.
I don't know much about video cards, but I think an i5 and just 4GB of RAM is a bit low for a gaming PC by today's standards. My laptop has that configuration, but I bought exactly 1 year ago, and even back then this was a modest setup. I believe that the video card is the most crucial thing for gaming, but PCs get outdated really fast, so you really don't wanna go cheap on the rest.
Well from what I gather, the i7 is very expensive compared to the i5, and you gain very little for gaming (you get more multitasking though) Plus i5 and i7 sockets are compatible if I understood correctly, so upgrading when the i7 drops in price or whatever should be possible. Fact is that gaming technology isnt progressing as fast as it once did anymore due to consoles (partially) though.
Reason I went intel is that traditionally they tend to run cooler, does that still hold up? If not, I'll probably look at amd options.
edit: also ram is dirt cheap, but "for now" 4 gigs will do for him, and then he can simply upgrade when he has to. (i've only seen one game ever need more, and it was 8 gigs...and that game isnt even out yet iirc)
edit2: also its meant as the "basic package" til we get the budget alligned, obviously any leftover money can be used to gimp it out a little more.
I can't say it would affect gaming performance directly (it helps when loading interrupts gameplay), but I wouldn't go without a solid-state drive for the OS and main games/apps, then a larger traditional drive for everything else. In my experience, games like Team Fortress 2 that previously took a minute to load now take more like 5 seconds, after moving an SSD.
Ya, ssd would be nice. Definitely will look into it if the budget allows it.
More worried about cpus for the moment though.
AMD FX, trust me on that. Or one of the 6-core AMD's. My friend got an AMD 4-core over an i7 over a year ago and loves me for it because it's 1. Decent bit cheaper, and 2. Will run ANY current PC game fullspeed. He's running Battlefield 3 at IIRC over 60 FPS on trifinity. And I bet a FX processor will do much better that it, as his didn't have the best cache, but in the end he told me it worked perfectly fine for BF3 on Ultra.
I'd probably say do this myself for a gaming PC:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103960They have lower end ones for about $120, but you'll sacrifice some power. They're definitely worth a look though, I would advice it myself. This thing should eat game for breakfast with 8MB L2 and 8MB L3 cache. This does NOT OC to something like 3.8Ghz like some others, those might be better, but still. 3.6Ghz should be good enough. They have a combo package with some FX chips for $300ish for the chip +16GB RAM, But I don't think you need to have 16GB of RAM unless you're rendering or editing 20+ photos in gimp/photoshop the same time.
Major-label PC games tend not to require much more CPU than is present in the consoles that are popular when it is released. A 3 GHz quad core already beats the Xbox 360 (three in-order Power cores with 2-way SMT instead of out-of-order, clocked at 3.2 GHz) and the Wii U (three PowerPC G3 cores clocked at 1.25 GHz). Indie games, with their lower art budgets, tend to require even less CPU (except, I'm told, certain simulations like Dwarf Fortress).
Buy a used last-gen powerful workstation and throw in a good GPU :E