1080p Gaming PC

howler

Hi folks, I've been trying to catch up and educate myself about PC hardware for a few weeks now (last time I built a system it had a voodoo 3 in it...), would appreciate some advice.

1. What is your budget? would like to get out under 1200, entirely open to the idea of less too...

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming. I essentially want to be able to play any new release with all the options turned up and cackling maniacally to myself Do justice to something like crysis 3 etc..

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Just keyboard, mouse etc

5. Do you need a monitor? No - planning to use a 1920x1080 42" LCD TV, anyone forsee any problems with this? I'd assume this "low" resolution is going to be a factor...

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? headphones

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes

8. How can you pay? anything

9. When are you purchasing? Early April

So far was thinking of something like this:

Item|Price
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€123.89
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€52.14
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€82.17
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€204.96
Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit (SB-Version)|€80.89
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Boost, 3GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, lite retail|€278.72
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB SATA 6Gb/s|€117.10
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€13.16
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€972.02

I'm not really married to any of the components, would I notice any difference with less spec at 1080p?

No real idea on what case/cooling/psu...I've never overclocked before. I'd like this to relatively quite as it's going to be sitting in the living room.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Gbear

7950 is overkill.

If you have any plan about playing on a higher resolution at any stage it's a good option.

A 7870 would be grand. It'll play anything quite comfortably at full blast, especially when you take overclocking into account.

howler

I might look at getting a higher res monitor at some point, but that would be a while down the line. By the time I get around to doing that I'm sure there'll have been plenty of price drops though, so I'll go with a 7870 if you don't think it's worth it for the current res.

In light of that I'm thinking:

Item|Price
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€123.89
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€52.14
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€82.17
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€204.96
Microsoft Windows 8 64-Bit (SB-Version)|€80.89
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB SATA 6Gb/s|€117.10
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€13.16
FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Black Pearl Window side panel|€104.00
PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition V2, 2GB DDR5|€188.88
be quiet! Straight Power E9 CM 80+Gold|€98.35
Noctua NH-D14, Sockel AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1366/1155/1156|€74.99
2 x BitFenix Spectre PWM 140mm - schwarz|€19.98
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1179.50

Could we do better on any of the other components?

tuxy

Gbear wrote: »

7950 is overkill.

If you have any plan about playing on a higher resolution at any stage it's a good option.

A 7870 would be grand. It'll play anything quite comfortably at full blast, especially when you take overclocking into account.

That's not true there are gaming being released now that will dip well under 60 fps at max setting and that res. (Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3)
The games still look great with slightly lowered setting but there is no way a 7870 will run these smooth(60 fps) with everything maxed
Both the 7950 and 7870 are very good value for money but I would go with the better one if you can afford it.

BloodBath

Stick with the 7950 or get a 7870xt. It's primarily a gaming rig. You would crazy to scrimp on the most important gaming component on a €1200 rig.

If you want 30-60fps in all the latest games on full settings a standard 7870 just isn't going to be able to do that. My overclocked 7970 barely pulls 30 fps on crysis 3, 40-60 on tomb raider and far cry 3.

Save €40 on the cooler and get yourself this instead. You're still going to get overclock's in the 4.5 - 4.6ghz region and it's reasonably quiet.

I'd have a hard time spending €100 on a psu that doesn't have the power for crossifre or sli despite being gold rated and modular. Could save €20 and get this 700w. Not modular and silver rated but €20 cheaper with enough power for a second gpu.

That will give you enough to get a 7950 and stay in budget. Get the sapphire 7870xt if you want to save another €50. It's not far off the 7950 in performance.

Gbear

BloodBath wrote: »

Stick with the 7950 or get a 7870xt. It's primarily a gaming rig. You would crazy to scrimp on the most important gaming component on a €1200 rig.

If you want 30-60fps in all the latest games on full settings a standard 7870 just isn't going to be able to do that. My overclocked 7970 barely pulls 30 fps on crysis 3, 40-60 on tomb raider and far cry 3.

That's at 1440 though I presume.

My 7950 does 30 at 1440. And it's not a very good 7950.

But yeah, for the sake of 5% more of your total budget you'd be just as well.

Better upgradability too. You can get another at a later stage and crossfire them.

BloodBath

No 1080p :S

I wouldn't even consider 1440p for gaming without a dual gpu setup or at least a titan.

tuxy

Some people consider high settings with no anti aliasing as max setting. I think this is where some confusion over frame rates come from.

Gbear

tuxy wrote: »

Some people consider high settings with no anti aliasing as max setting. I think this is where some confusion over frame rates come from.

Anti aliasing completely takes the piss of my hardware.:P

5 year old games slow to a crawl with it on. It's the devil.

marco_polo

I think maybe 6 months ago you could have reasonably argued that much over a HD 7870 was heading towards overkill, but the performance of games that have been released since then like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider have definitely killed that argument stone dead.

BloodBath

I don't use AA on any of those 3 titles. MSAA is crap anyway. I try to avoid using it. It's a resource hog that doesn't even AA transparent textures .

It's a pity so few games support SSAA. It's a far better AA method and for the few games it works with it doesn't impact performance as much.

Image wise I find 2 x SSAA to be superior to even 8 X MSAA without dropping my frames too much but that's probably down to the large memory and bandwidth on the 7950/70.

joetoad

i don't even notice the difference with the AA turned on. I don't bother with it. With the 7770 I get medium to high on crysis at 35 FPS, Max settings on Far cry 3 but with Post FX set to medium, all at 1080P. New Bioshock plays flawlessly on it maxed out as well as dishonored and some other new games

BloodBath

Of course it does. Lighting, shadows and AA are the real performance killers. Most games don't look much worse with these turned down.

Serephucus

I've never really understood the arguement of "You're gaming at only 1080p, so you don't need a Titan, get a 660 Ti instead".

Sure, you'll see more of a relative difference in framerates at 2560, but the fact is both the Titan and 660 framerates will still be lower than if you played at 1080.

On the subject of GPUs (everything else in your build looks good, taking into account changes the lads suggested) I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the GTX 660 Ti or 670 as options. They perform a little slower than AMD's comparable cards, but they're quite a bit more consistent in their framerates, especially where Crossfire is concerned. AMD have said they're working on fixes, etc. but they're going to be a few months yet. I also think, given that the PS4 and XBox 720 will both have PhysX support, that having an NVIDIA card in around Christmas time is going to be a good investment.

BloodBath

They will have processor based physx support which the pc also has.

If considering adding a second card down the line though I'd go with an Nvidia card. Crossfire has more issues at the moment.

Serephucus

Well yes, but you'd think if they're developing for the PC first they'd allow GPU acceleration. It doesn't make sense for NVIDIA to allow PhysX for consoles if they weren't intending for devs to enable GPU PhysX for PC titles.

BloodBath

The option is there as it is currently. Do many developers make use of it currently? No. I don't think that will change much.

There's only a couple of areas where the gpu really shines over the processor anyway like liquid simulation but it's really gpu intensive.

I don't see developers putting the effort into something that is really only going to benefit the tiny portion of pc gamers that have dedicated physx cards or titans.

Serephucus

But that's my point, it might not be any effort. Let's say for the CPU-based console PhysX to work they must be tagged with id=nvphysx, or something similar. All NVIDIA needs to do is still a line in their drivers instructing anything with nvphysx to be passed to the GPU for processing.

Developers don't make use of it currently because there is no point, unless they get handed a wad of cash by NVIDIA. If all consoles, and half of the PC market support it, then they might well start using it.

This move only makes sense on NVIDIA's part if they know that any CPU calculated physics on consoles can be offloaded - by them - to the GPU on the PC. This puts AMD in a really bad position then, because lots of games will then be using PhysX. Consoles will be very well hardware optimised, so they won't see the hit, NVIDIA users won't either for obvious reasons, so that just leaves AMD GPU users, forced to do those calculations on the CPU (which may or may not impact peformance) or do without PhysX entirely.

howler

Thanks guys, lot of really helpful stuff there. I was indeed thinking of sticking in a second GPU after a while, so that leaves me with:

Item|Price
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€123.89
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€56.33
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€81.89
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€207.02
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB SATA 6Gb/s|€116.71
Samsung SH-118AB schwarz|€12.98
FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Black Pearl Window side panel|€106.00
MS Windows 8 64bit (SB-Version) Englisch|€85.39
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€27.99
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W|€81.50
2 x BitFenix Spectre PWM 140mm - schwarz|€19.98
EVGA GeForce GTX 670, 2048MB DDR5, PCI-Express|€341.36
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1280.03

Just a smidge over budget with a 670. I don't neccesarily mind spending a few quid extra on a good card, just as long as it's not money going to waste.

Will probably pull the trigger on this one next week, looking forward to catching up on every PC game I've missed over the last 10 years

BloodBath

That maybe the case but I don't see the dev's adding stuff that the cpu can't handle, like liquids, since the consoles also are using the cpu for calculations. Take borderlands 2 for example. The frame rates are barely impacted running physx on the cpu. The only area where it struggles is when it simulates liquids heavily on 1 of the levels which really needs the parallel processing power of the gpu.

This is another reason that the 8320 and 8350's might push miles ahead of 3570k's as gaming processors.

looking forward to catching up on every PC game I've missed over the last 10 years

Good luck with that. See you in 10 years time then