Catch-up info please!

DarkDusk

Hi,
I used to follow all the new releases in PC hardware, comparing benchmarks for gaming etc. However, I slowly stopped doing it, but now my interest has been sparked again. I remember that the 5890 was the best AMD card and the new i7s were the best at the time when I last had interest - for extreme machines i mean.

Would someone be able to fill in the gaps for me? I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
James.

ShadowHearth

All you need to know:

i5 2500k and i5 3570k are best processors for the money out there. Best CPUs to have in gaming machine too, no point going anything higher. Very little increase over the huge price when you go i7.

Ram is cheap. 8gb ram is pretty much a default these days. 1600mhz is the golden spot. No point going anything higher unless you want bigger e-penis

Gpus these days are great. Got quite power efficient and powerfull. Days of " a jaysus, you need at least 1kw Psu these days to run any gpu!" Are over. Something like 550w Psu can run fastest single gpu setups out there.
Nvidia made a very nice range which is very power efficient. For example high end gtx 680 draws less power then old gen gtx 570, but gives waaaay better performance.
Like always AMD is best bang for you money. Prices dropped a lot on their range since release of 7series. You can have a monster PC these days for reasonable money.
SSD is the new pair of tits for geeks these days. You can't even have the right ofeasuring your epenis if you don't even have at least 60gb ssd. Ssd's are used as boot drives. They make windows to load up in matter of seconds.
PC gaming became a lot cheaper venture. You can build a cheap systems and enjoy PC gaming with blast.


That's just from the top of my head.

Wetbench4

I'm pretty much the same boat as the op and i highly recommend the advice given by the regulars on here. I the proud new owner of a i5 3570k / radeon 7870 build. Only built it last week following the advice given on here. Cost me just over €800 and can play games at astonishing graphics settings(well astonishing to me anyway), far cry 3 looks incredible.

Apart from ShadowHearths points, probably the biggest difference i noticed from pc-gaming a decade ago, is how easy it is now to overclock now. The motherboard i bought(asrock Z77 pro3), comes with special overclock programs and its as simple as sliding a slider to overclock.

DarkDusk

Thanks for the info ShadowHearth, most appreciated. I was wondering what is the most demanding game on PC right now in regards to CPU and GPU power? I know that Crysis Warhead was at the time when I was watching the hardware regularly...

ED E

BF3/Arma2 would be the big players that take a fair tank of a PC to run well.

tuxy

I don't find Arma 2 too demanding compared to some other games.

Far cry 3 in DX11 mode is very demanding.
Metro 2033 is a heavy weight with AA and high res.

DarkDusk

ED E wrote: »

BF3/Arma2 would be the big players that take a fair tank of a PC to run well.

BF3, really? I thought that would have been passed out by now... Crysis 3 is on the way though...

ED E

Forgot about FC3 tbh, have yet to buy it.

Metro is used for benching a fair bit, but was never as big as Crysis 1 as far as I can see.

DarkDusk

Ya, when Crysis came out, basically no one could own it, you had to be rich!

ShadowHearth

DarkDusk wrote: »

Thanks for the info ShadowHearth, most appreciated. I was wondering what is the most demanding game on PC right now in regards to CPU and GPU power? I know that Crysis Warhead was at the time when I was watching the hardware regularly...

if you really want to put your PC in to a local orture camp then the best games for that are:

BF3
FarCry 3
Metro 2033 ( still one of the beasts )
Batman arkham city ( sort of, though the bad performance is more due to ****y coding, then game being demanding )

Thing is that a lot of GPUs can still run all of these games on very decent settings and very stable frame rate. there is no such game like Crysis 1 back in the day, where there were no PC which could run the fecking thing all maxed out with stable over 60 fps.

Serephucus

My 670 is the first card that will run it completely maxed out at 19x12, and it pretty much always stays about 60FPS. Big explosions or tonnes of enemies will drop it into the 50s, but other than that it's great.

Now, if we were going to start talking Crysis mods... It'll probably be the 800 series before it can be handled properly.

Tea_Bag

Best motherboard brand this gen is pretty much asrock, with MSI the closest behind I think. obviously you need to read the reviews before buying, but asrock is consistently feature rich at ever price bracket, OCs just as well or better than everyone else and fastest boot times.

Intel still has poor sata3 support, with only 2 native in the chipset. usually you get a marvel controller add on, but you don't use it for anything other than storage drives, ergo pointless being sata3.

AMD excelling in that department, with 6x native sata3 ports.

Intel overclocking is stupid easy, but you need a chipset AND CPU that supports it.

AMD not much harder, and all cpus supported.

AMD has APUs out, which is a CPU with a decent GPU on chip. great for HTPC and low budget builds.

Intel has heat issues with ivy bridge when OCing.

AMD has performance issues in the bedroom, and single threaded apps. not as bad as the missus and benchmarks suggest though.

celeron and Pentium brands are back, and very good for their price.

I'll think of more later.

Serephucus

Tea_Bag wrote: »

Intel has heat issues with ivy bridge when OCing.

I agree with everything except this (to a point). It's only really when you get into clocks above around 4.7 or so that you start hitting stupid temperatures. So for most people running 4.4-ish, heat shouldn't be too much of an issue as long as they're not running the stock cooler, etc. (Which I don't think anyone posting here does, really)

Tea_Bag

its hit and miss I guess. my chip isn't the best, but I was at 4.6 and the temps were almost 90°C on 1 core (80C on another!) with a Corsair A70 with a single GT @ 40%.

dropping to 4.4 and I run the GT @ 15 -> 20% 24/7 and never break 70°C.

turn it off for movies and its perfectly fine passive.

youcancallmeal

In the same boat myself, is Hardwareversand still the best place to buy from price wise?

Gumbi

youcancallmeal wrote: »

In the same boat myself, is Hardwareversand still the best place to buy from price wise?

Essentially, yes. There are othe options out there that may have some part, at some time, cheaper, but on the whole HWVS tend to have the best prices altogether.