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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On February 12 2013 06:41 Beardedclam wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2013 06:26 skyR wrote:On February 12 2013 06:18 Beardedclam wrote:+ Show Spoiler +So my Bday is coming up and I haven't bought a new setup in a while. I am just currently using a laptop. I want to make my on CPU (no experience but I am pretty tech savy in general).
Budget- Around 1k might not even need that much because I just play on playing games at high-max quality with high FPS.
Resolution- 1920x1080 and upgrade to 2560x1440 later on.
Mostly for high end gaming.
Upgrade cycle- My last 2 laptops lasted about 3 years. So I would say about 3 years full overhaul buying and upgrading some parts here and there.
When? A week to a month depending on how easy this is
Overclocking? Not sure. If it's recommended than sure. If I can get max performance on most games without it than there is no need.
OS- Might be able to get college discount.
Xfire/SLI - No idea what that is lol.
Where am I buying? I plan to get most from newegg unless I can find better deals somewhere else.
I have been looking at upperbounds setup and stole a few parts I liked from that. Remember I am completely new at this so I need a lot of help. I honestly just want to be able to play most games at max settings with great FPS. I also will upgrade to 120hz (maybe some 3d movies but not too much 3d gaming) monitor later so keep that in mind. I am mostly looking for my best bang for my buck while being ready to upgrade to newer parts easily.
So far I got
Case-COOLER MASTER HAF 912
CPU- Not sure what I need. I have an i7 on my laptop but I know desktops are much stronger.
Mobo- Again not sure
RAM - Not sure
SSD- or HDD?
Video Card- + Show Spoiler + But sold out. Any other suggestions?
Heatsink- COOLER MASTER Hyper 212Do I need this?
PSU- Not sure
Thanks a lot for all the help. Sorry but I am new at this. :D Keep in mind that there are no 120Hz 2560x1440 monitors. For gaming, you will be looking at either the core i5 3570 and a B75 / H77 motherboard if you will not be overclocking or the core i5 3570k and Z77 motherboard if you are. 2x4gb 1600MHz memory. An appropriate size SSD (~120gb or ~250gb) depending on how much games / software you want to have on your primary drive and a secondary HDD for storage purposes. Not sure what video card you were going to link but you'd probably want a 7870 or 7950 for 2560x1440 or 120Hz. You don't need an aftermarket heatsink like the Hyper 212 if you aren't overclocking. Power supply will be the Rosewill Capstone 450. Thanks for the help. Would you recommend overclocking for what I am looking for? Is it worth the extra money for the extra performance or will I not need that much power anyways?
Thats personal
3300 MHz:
Avg: 41.925 - Min: 27 - Max: 58
3700 MHz:
Avg: 46.625 - Min: 32 - Max: 63
4400 MHz:
Avg: 56.025 - Min: 39 - Max: 77
1v1 zvz lategame^
^Starcraft 2 takes very well to CPU overclocking and requires a massive amount of single threaded CPU performance in order to play well in worst case situations (because it is common for them to run at 1/10'th or even less of the FPS you get at the start of the game)
People are very bad at judging preformance and framerates and benchmarking tools reveal such performance, you can get used to the game running poorly (and pretty much everyone does) but a big minimum framerate boost will always feel awesome.
Skyrim and some other games benefit a lot from CPU overclocking, a lot of games you will only see minimal benefit though - slightly more stable framerates is pretty much all you can get from a GPU bound game by overclocking CPU
![[image loading]](http://techreport.com/r.x/cpu-gaming-2012/crysis2-latency-intel.gif)
^Note the blue lines, 2400, 2500k, 2600k. The CPU's have something like 100mhz gaps between them which creates a notable shift in the graph, if you add something like 1.2ghz on top of that you can sure as hell make it notable
While this is all you can get in many GPU bound games, many CPU bound ones you can get massive increases in minimum, average and max framerates and also reduce the time it takes to recover from a stutter, etc
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Wow thanks for the info. I think I will just go ahead and overclock.
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Just go slow and steady and test thoroughly with each step up.
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And ask lots of questions! CPU overclocking these days is simple and methodical, but if you're running into issues it's better to ask first rather than keep crashing needlessly or get to a point where you have to reset CMOS.
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Hi everyone. I'm looking to spend 1,000$ on a desktop for streaming HOTS (including tax etc). I want to stream at high resolution with 720 p. I live in Vancouver, Canada. I'll probably buy/have it made at NCIX.
1)I was wondering if resolution was related to the screen, your pc or both? This is my screen http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/samsung-syncmaster-bx2335-led/4505-3174_7-34140537.html On that website it says max res. is 1920 x 1080.
2)As far as processors go, I've read the i5 3570 is good for gaming. Are there any which are comparable?
3)Which graphics cards will do the job?
4) What should I look for in terms of power supply?
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You need to answer the questions in the OP for us to know what you need/want
and yes you can stream at 720p off a 1080p screen tunning at 1080p if that was your question
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1. Resolution is hard capped by your monitor's native resolution. How good the games work at that resolution (frame rates, textures, anti-aliasing) is then affected mostly by your video card, with the exception of some games such as SC2 where smoothness is very CPU dependent.
2. i5-3570k is the best bang for your buck for gaming if you're overclocking, and arguably still a great choice if you'll run stock. It outperforms the more expensive 3770k in many games, at least partially because they don't take advantage of hyperthreading. However, if you won't overclock, you can go for the locked 3570 or 3470, which will be cheaper and more or less the same quality for your use. If you're looking at a smaller budget, the i3-3225 is also a very good processor for the money. However, given that your main goal is to stream starcraft at 720p with decent framerates (i assume this is what you meant to say), you're going to be taxing all of the the 3570k's cores and overclocking will help a great deal.
3. Unless you go into a little more detail about other games that you play, it's difficult to recommend a video card. Given that you have a $1000 budget, I would be looking at anywhere from a $185 Radeon HD7850 2GB to a $300 Radeon HD7950 in budget, with the NVidia GTX 660, Radeon HD7870, and NVidia GTX 660ti falling in order between the two. If you're just playing Starcraft, it's wasteful to buy anything more than a 7850 (or even a 7770 if you're completely sure you'll only be playing SC2). If, on the other hand, you'll be playing Crysis 3, Rome 2, or any very GPU intensive games coming out this year, get the best card you can in budget as it will make a sizeable difference.
4. It will depend on when you build. For a single GPU setup, any PSU that exceeds 450-500w is overkill. From there, you'll want a unit that's reliable, efficient, and performs as advertised. If you're building ASAP, I'm sure we can help scour NCIX for a deal.
EDIT: Antec Neo Eco 620w $30AR today on Newegg... GOOD THING I BOUGHT PARTS 2 DAYS AGO
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On February 12 2013 22:14 TRaFFiC wrote:
Hi everyone. I'm looking to spend 1,000$ on a desktop for streaming HOTS (including tax etc). I want to stream at high resolution with 720 p.
2)As far as processors go, I've read the i5 3570 is good for gaming. Are there any which are comparable?
No, the i7 3770 adds hyperthreading which makes it better in some cases but its kinda useless for gaming and you will only notice it streaming when pushing encoding settings - if you are not overclocking id say consider the 3770, it might make things a bit smoother for targetting 1280x720@60fps/1920x1080@30fps output - but if you are overclocking, you can more than make up the gap in encoding performance on the 3570k while simultaneously making the game run with significantly higher minimum and average framerates particularly later in the game (potentially 140%+ of any stock CPU)
3)Which graphics cards will do the job?
On low, something like the gtx260 will wreck 1920x1080. I play with it using maxed textures, effects etc and see a CPU limited >300fps early game dropping down throughout the game (always CPU limited)
If you are trying to max the game, then something like a gtx460 should do the job fine, but if you want more performance you can go gtx660/660ti, 670, 680 or radeon 7850, 7870, 7950, 7970 or whatever. I dont think GPU is a big deal at all here, as long as you have something decent by todays standards, it will be important for other games though how much you spend here
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Is this the appropriate thread to ask about a laptop? I am having a semester off of school. And I need a laptop. I am going to play SC2 on it primarily in my time off work. I want a 15" or 17". I am going to play on LOW - but I want a dedicated GPU on it beause I need high framerate. If it could match my 4.5Ghz i7-920 / 5870 ATI performance that would be perfect.
I play on 1920x1080.
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I more or less have this laptop for traveling (when I got it, it had an IVB i5 with ~2.6ghz base clock and a smaller HDD, but this shouldn't be too much different). I also paid about $100 less for it on sale at Microcenter when I bought it, which I thought was a steal.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215660
The setup is decent for a laptop, there's space for an SSD if you want to add one, and it runs SC2 on low settings okay. The big downside is that, unless you spend a lot of time tinkering with power settings, it only gets about 2.5 hours of battery life. I've managed to customize stuff enough to get it a bit past the 4 hours that they advertise, but I'd not go for this if you're going to be using it unplugged all day. It's also slightly heavy, if light is your thing. Native screen resolution is 1600x900, not 1920x1080, which is also a little bit of a bummer, but if you meant you're using an external monitor I've tried that too and it runs fairly similarly at higher resolution. Built in speakers give great sound when you can take advantage of them. It runs pretty cool and quiet, too, which is nice.
I don't think you can find a laptop at a reasonable price that will rival an aggressively overclocked i7-920, but this will at least get the job done fairly well.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
I am going to play on LOW - but I want a dedicated GPU on it beause I need high framerate. If it could match my 4.5Ghz i7-920 / 5870 ATI performance that would be perfect.
+ Show Spoiler +4.5ghz i7 920!?!? jesus (didnt i ask about this before? Its a crazy overclock)
Is not going to happen, sorry. With any decent GPU, performance on low is CPU-limited - you simply wont get a laptop CPU capable of matching a 4.5ghz 920.
Ivy bridge has a nice performance-per-clock lead - 20%, maybe a touch more - but that would require you to keep two cores at 3.7ghz on a 3xxxM or 3xxxQM CPU - Its not going to happen on a laptop.
It's rare to see something over ~2.5 - you want a dedicated GPU, as you know, it doesnt have to be particularly powerful for sc2 on low, and then two cores as strong as you can get, preferably ivy bridge if not sandy. You might want 4 cores for other reasons, its always good to have 4 cores, but that will come at the expense of performance-per-core and/or price.
Looking at the above system linked and some other information, it appears that ivy bridge CPU's have very aggressive turbo ratios.
Four and three core turbo +700mhz, two core +900 or one core +1000 - these are however turbo ratio's and you cant trust them to be up consistently. If the CPU could run at 2.9ghz four-core permanantly, it would be rated at 2.9ghz and not 2.2.
You can get something better than a "low power" QM (3xx2QM) such as (reading from parts list) an i5 3380m (2.9ghz, two-core turbo to 3.6) or an i7 3740QM quad core (QM - quad-mobile) (2.7ghz, turbo's to 3.6 with two cores active)
I'd take the i5 for sc2 - its dual core, has slightly higher base frequencies - turbo's are good, but they will not be up all the time and you cant say for certain if/when they will be up or how high they will be up - it probably has better thermals too, which could help keep those ratio's up on top of the other beneficial effects.
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On February 13 2013 02:44 Cyro wrote:+ Show Spoiler + I am going to play on LOW - but I want a dedicated GPU on it beause I need high framerate. If it could match my 4.5Ghz i7-920 / 5870 ATI performance that would be perfect. + Show Spoiler +4.5ghz i7 920!?!? jesus (didnt i ask about this before? Its a crazy overclock) Is not going to happen, sorry. With any decent GPU, performance on low is CPU-limited - you simply wont get a laptop CPU capable of matching a 4.5ghz 920. Ivy bridge has a nice performance-per-clock lead - 20%, maybe a touch more - but that would require you to keep two cores at 3.7ghz on a 3xxxM or 3xxxQM CPU - Its not going to happen on a laptop. It's rare to see something over ~2.5 - you want a dedicated GPU, as you know, it doesnt have to be particularly powerful for sc2 on low, and then two cores as strong as you can get, preferably ivy bridge if not sandy. You might want 4 cores for other reasons, its always good to have 4 cores, but that will come at the expense of performance-per-core and/or price. Looking at the above system linked and some other information, it appears that ivy bridge CPU's have very aggressive turbo ratios. Four and three core turbo +700mhz, two core +900 or one core +1000 - these are however turbo ratio's and you cant trust them to be up consistently. If the CPU could run at 2.9ghz four-core permanantly, it would be rated at 2.9ghz and not 2.2. You can get something better than a "low power" QM (3xx2QM) such as (reading from parts list) an i5 3380m (2.9ghz, two-core turbo to 3.6) or an i7 3740QM (2.7ghz, two core turbo to 3.6) I'd take the i5 for sc2 - its dual core, has slightly higher base frequencies - turbo's are good, but they will not be up all the time and you cant say for certain if/when they will be up or how high they will be up - it probably has better thermals too, which could help keep those ratio's up on top of the other beneficial effects.
Perhaps I do not need a dedicated GPU from what you said. All I care about is high framerate on LOW quality. Do you have any examples of laptops that could work? I am not going to build it myself. I take back that I want it to match my PC's performance. (I got a very good batch on that CPU in addition I am an experienced overclocker + got very good liquid cooling hardware from EK)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
You do need dedicated, HD4000 cant pull more than about 100fps best case early game at 1280x720 on low IIRC - you need something at least like around 5 times as powerful to not GPU cap you on low on early game 1920x1080 (im not sure how GPU requirements scale throughout the game - better to be safe than sorry). 5x as powerful as integrated is not asking too much, thankfully, but you dont want to get caught with your pants down because you dont have a GPU.
You are a lot like me, and its not actually too crazy to want to match PC's performance - while the best laptop CPU's on the planet at the time of the 920 would not reach half its performance in sc2, sandy and ivy bridge brought massive advances in all areas, but particularly mid and high range laptop hardware i think - though its still too much to ask, because you have a CPU that would destroy anything available at stock on desktop 5 years after it was released with that kind of overclock
Do you have any examples of laptops that could work?
Im not too well versed on laptop GPU's and their performance, but i listed a couple CPU's - you can check the CPU (they are labeled for example xyyzQM with x being the generation number (not there for first gen, 2 for sandy, 3 for ivy), yy being performance indicators and part numbers, z indicating a couple of other things (it should be 0, 2 is low power part etc) and M being mobile, QM being quad core and mobile)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i5_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors
^Good resource, it will tell you turbo ratio's and such. If you find the CPU (you are looking at ivy bridge mobile - sandy bridge is a downgrade but still possible buy) then you can get its turbo ratio's etc.
3740QM for example - "2.7 GHz 8/8/9/10" first number is base frequency, the other ones are turbo multipliers - for sandy and ivy this is just 100mhz. 8/8/9/10 means +8 multipliers on four and three cores, +9 on two cores and +10 on one core - +800, 800, 900, 1000mhz for 4/3/2/1 cores.
Resolution, RAM etc, id assume you more than know what you are doing there, you just want a suitable medium-power GPU - the main focus of your buy is on the CPU. Other things you have to look out for is build quality, thermals (you can ask around about these on a particular model or manufacturer or post here, people should reply)
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On February 13 2013 02:44 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote + I am going to play on LOW - but I want a dedicated GPU on it beause I need high framerate. If it could match my 4.5Ghz i7-920 / 5870 ATI performance that would be perfect. + Show Spoiler +4.5ghz i7 920!?!? jesus (didnt i ask about this before? Its a crazy overclock) Is not going to happen, sorry. With any decent GPU, performance on low is CPU-limited - you simply wont get a laptop CPU capable of matching a 4.5ghz 920. Ivy bridge has a nice performance-per-clock lead - 20%, maybe a touch more - but that would require you to keep two cores at 3.7ghz on a 3xxxM or 3xxxQM CPU - Its not going to happen on a laptop. It's rare to see something over ~2.5 - you want a dedicated GPU, as you know, it doesnt have to be particularly powerful for sc2 on low, and then two cores as strong as you can get, preferably ivy bridge if not sandy. You might want 4 cores for other reasons, its always good to have 4 cores, but that will come at the expense of performance-per-core and/or price. Looking at the above system linked and some other information, it appears that ivy bridge CPU's have very aggressive turbo ratios. Four and three core turbo +700mhz, two core +900 or one core +1000 - these are however turbo ratio's and you cant trust them to be up consistently. If the CPU could run at 2.9ghz four-core permanantly, it would be rated at 2.9ghz and not 2.2. You can get something better than a "low power" QM (3xx2QM) such as (reading from parts list) an i5 3380m (2.9ghz, two-core turbo to 3.6) or an i7 3740QM quad core (QM - quad-mobile) (2.7ghz, turbo's to 3.6 with two cores active) I'd take the i5 for sc2 - its dual core, has slightly higher base frequencies - turbo's are good, but they will not be up all the time and you cant say for certain if/when they will be up or how high they will be up - it probably has better thermals too, which could help keep those ratio's up on top of the other beneficial effects.
Well your bit about turbo - just for the record; my laptop (a 15" samsung series 7 chronos from 2012) can run its 3615QM at 3.1ghz through several hours of SC2. I don't know about minor drops every now and then (possible) but it's almost always rocking along at 3.1 every time I check. (I did it at one point in time)
Granted, as dust builds up etc. I couldn't guarantee that that would continue. And totally unrelated, but I really, really want a Samsung Series 7 Ultra 
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Well your bit about turbo - just for the record; my laptop (a 15" samsung series 7 chronos from 2012) can run its 3615QM at 3.1ghz through several hours of SC2.
Thats your four core multiplier while sc2 is heavily reliant on the performance of a single core, being able to offload and spread secondary tasks to 1+ other cores - see what i mean about turbo being potentially unreliable and unpredictable?
In your case you might be able to override turbo's somehow and run at one-core turbo, get sc2's primary thread on this core and gain a measurable amount of performance - but your CPU has +8 multipliers on four core, +9 on two, +10 on one core, so you could only get +100mhz, or +200 if you ran all of the other cores at stock, which means losing 800mhz on three cores to gain 200mhz on one - potentially not the best thing.
The point is, turbo is complicated
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Thanks a lot again. Just so you know I am not going or planning on overclock in the laptop. I just want it stock for gaming.
Your suggestions are very informative. I am looking for some of them now. And I do not want to rely on turbo either. Do you recommend me looking at pc stores rather than "branded" stores like dell and asus or msi?
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For whatever reason, it seems like these systems want to camp out at the lowest turbo bin when loaded (unless you're maxing out the processor and reaching a power or thermal threshold, even when cores beyond the first are barely touched. On a mobile Ivy quad core, that's 3.1+ GHz though (2.8+ GHz on the 35W versions), so not bad. Expecting the highest possible turbo is not realistic, but expecting the non-turbo speed is pessimistic, only happens for some systems / BIOS.
I never used a Nehalem system though; maybe turbo's changed since then?
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Thanks a lot again.
(:
[Just so you know I am not going or planning on overclock in the laptop
I really doubt you could even if you tried
I think you should look online, you are targetting some pretty specific CPU models and it would have to have a suitable screen, GPU etc, and you also need to check out the model to see if it has awful heat management, quality of keyboard, display, just general build etc. Its not uncommon for laptops that basically cant turbo at all with the GPU under any load - while some others can keep a frequency advantage of like 30% over them using turbo's and the same parts
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Myrmidon, it has indeed changed. While many ivy bridge QM's have 8/8/9/10 turbo's the i7 720, 740qm has 1/1/6/9 turbo's - meaning they run at 1.73 and 1.86ghz respectively unless they are using 1 or 2 core turbo AND it is active. They are also more thermally constrained than recent ivybridge models, as evidenced by running at 1.73ghz four-core turbo instead of 3.1 and having such a low base clock (1.6, 1.73ghz for QM's.. while dual cores were something like.. 2.5?)
Its basically a big bag of NOPE for single threaded performance, first gen i7 QM's. Ivy is leagues stronger.
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Fortunately I am using my own keyboard and mouse. So at least I don't need to think about those two. Only thing is screen. In addition to what you showed me. Although I am really not sure which gpu would be good enough or overkill. As I do not necessarily need to spend a lot more than I need. Since it is just for gaming when not in my "office".
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EPT
