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Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread - Page 422
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Sunnyvale
14 Posts
http://www.microcenter.com/product/399204/G226HQL_Bbd_215_Widescreen_LED_Monitor | ||
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Motlu
Australia884 Posts
The biggest differences between an i3, i5 and i7 are the following (roughly speaking, there's stuff like cache and whatnot as well): i3 is a dual-core with hyperthreading i5 is a quad-core i7 is a quad-core with hyperthreading Now, the question is, what is hyperthreading ? Basically it makes one physical core act like two virtual cores. A core with hyperthreading will be able to take on multi-threaded tasks more easily: something like a 20% performance boost when the task is well-threaded. What is a well-threaded task? Stuff like encoding video (for streaming) or compiling programs. Most games (I say most because there are a few exceptions) do not take advantage of more than 4 physical cores and having few, faster cores is better. This is true especially for Starcraft 2, who is limited to only 1.5 cores. This is why a faster i3 will do better in SC2 than a slower i5. However, that i3 won't be able to stream as well as an i5. Likewise, the i5 is a bit more suited for gaming than the i7 since most games don't take advantage of hyper-threading and the i7 also carries a hefty premium. The i5 is the go-to processor for most gaming PCs but the i3, if it's clocked high enough, is also a solid choice (less so for a streaming / gaming rig). Having more physical cores is also nice if you're running lots of different programs at once. Of course, another important aspect to look at is the clockspeed for Haswell processors. You can't however compare AMD and Intel processors based on clockspeeds since the architecture is different. For SC2, you want the fastest possible intel processor. Normally you can do with with an overclocked i5 but that's kind of expensive. As for the graphics card, as craton said, it's not the biggest deal if your goal is to run starcraft 2, since that game is CPU bound. For GPU bound games (far cry games and things like that) though having a nice graphics card is actually quite nice. Thanks for the clear explanation. How would a non-overclocked i5 compare to an overclocked i3 for sc2, as I don't think my budget is high enough atm to comfortably afford the extra stuff that you need to overclock an i5. It would be nice to have consistent 60fps in all but the largest battles when playing 1v1 ladder on at least medium graphics settings and I hope this is achievable in my budget range. Having 4 cores does seem preferable to me as although I primarily play SC2 i very rarely dip into other games as well like the Bioshocks, XCOM and the Arkham series. Also I like to listen to music using itunes while playing sc2, and as I understand it having an i5 would allow me to do this better than an i3. Currently I am thinking if gong with a locked i5 and a 750ti. Does anyone know how well sc2 will perform usibg this setup? Thanks you guys for answering my barrage of questions, this had made the pc building process significantly less daunting for me! Hopefully once I've finalised my CPU and GPU I can have a completed build to post here for evaluation! | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20335 Posts
Also I like to listen to music using itunes while playing sc2, and as I understand it having an i5 would allow me to do this better than an i3. Background task load -should- be small to the point of not even being mentionable on any modern system. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wRa240u.png) playing a FLAC, if you take out the ~0.43% CPU load from running performance monitor, my computer with all of this running is at under 1% CPU load. That includes Skype, Firefox with 20 tabs open, task manager and even World of Warcraft tabbed out. If you have ANYTHING substantially loading your system when running a game like sc2, then you can probably fix/remove it.. more cores helps with multitasking, yes, but you need a serious load to be even mentionable on a modern CPU. Playing a bit of music is irrelevant. Locked i5 + 750ti = perform great on max settings*, better than anything aside from overclocked 2'nd-4'th gen Intel. It'd run faster on a Pentium g3258 + OC, but that is dual core so i5 would be something like 70% faster if you ran something that scaled well onto 4 cores, or a combination of programs like sc2 and OBS for a good resolution and FPS CPU encoded livestream (though your 750ti could stream using NVENC with any CPU and no CPU load, it'd just be lower quality at the same bitrate than CPU encoding) *As long as you keep Physics, Effects, Reflections the same, changing the other graphical settings doesn't really change performance in sc2 during battles etc at all. 750ti can handle them with whatever settings - in strength, it's somewhat similar to a gtx480; people bought 460's to max sc2 because it was graphically light The i5 is the all around better/safer CPU; it's just not as good for the group of games that love singlethreaded performance | ||
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Yaqoob
Canada3394 Posts
Laptop 1 - Lenova Y50 15inch http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/y-series/y50/ Price says 999 CAD but I can get it for 950.00 It has an i7 4710HQ and Nvidia Geforce 860M and a 1TB 5400 rpm hard-drive with 8GB SSD cache. I've read that the screen is not the best and the colour quality is subpar. Laptop 2 - MSI GE60 Apache 15inch http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152668 949.00 CAD and I can get 25.00 off with visa checkout. It has an i7 4710HQ and Nvidia Geforce 850M and a 1TB 7200 Rpm hard-drive It has the 'worst' video card of the three but a better screen quality overall then the lenova laptop Laptop 3 - MSI Notebook GT70 -1468US Dominator 17inch http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_1199&item_id=069372 1299 CAD It has an i7 4810MQ and Nvidia Geforce 870M and a 1TB 7200 rpm hard drive. ----- When at home, I plan on connecting whatever laptop I buy to a 27inch LED 1080 monitor. My desktop computer is pretty much dead and I travel alot for work and I want a decent gaming laptop for when I am in Northern Canada for work I plan on playing SC2 and other random games like GTA IV & 5, Dragon Age, The Witcher etc I've read alot of cpu/gpu reviews and read benchmarks but I'm not sure if the 1299 laptop is a far better value then the 949.00 ones. Also, I'm planning on getting a 256GB Intel SSD from newegg for 129 (sale) to put in whatever laptop I decide to buy So which one is the better buy and does MSI have better build quality over Lenova. I've also read via reviews that it seems the keyboard for the MSI laptops are better. Also if any Canadians have seen any better gaming laptop deals then let me know. Thanks! | ||
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EtherealDeath
United States8366 Posts
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y0su
Finland7871 Posts
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Motlu
Australia884 Posts
What is your budget? $800-$900 (Australian Dollars) What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Primarily Starcraft II on at least medium settings with preferably >60fps. Very rarely other games along the lines of XCOM, the Bioshock series, the Arkham series etc. What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Just internet browsing alongside watching Youtube videos and Twitch streams. Do you intend to overclock? No Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? No Do you need an operating system? Yes, although I plan on getting a student discount for Windows 8.1. The price for this is not included in my budget, so effectively disregard  What country will you be buying your parts in? Australia My planned builds Version 1: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/ppKssY Version 2: http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/zL9wjX The above two builds are identical except for the CPU I chose (i3 vs i5). I have several questions regarding my builds: 1) I would probably rather get build 2, but currently it does go a bit too far over budget for comfort. I was wondering if there was any other way to reduce the price of version 2 without swapping out the i5 and still retain a similar performance in sc2? 2) Is there any particular difference in the i5 4690 that justifies its increased price over the cheaper i5 models (e.g. the i5 4460) aside from the increased clock speed? Would the cheaper i5 models have the same or similar performance in sc2? 3) Say I do have to downgrade to an i3 (build version 1), what sort of performance would I see in sc2? If there is a decrease in performance using the i3 vs the i5, how significant would this decrease be? Thanks! | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20335 Posts
On December 01 2014 16:05 EtherealDeath wrote: I'm looking to build a computer that will be used purely for video editing, namely Cinema 4D and After Effects. Not counting monitors or peripherals, I would like this to cost in the range of say $2k. Any suggestions on parts? More expensive is fine if there's a good justification. You might want a 4790k, hyperthreading is great for cinema4d (~30% increase in performance). Not sure about After Effects, or how much performance you want for 4d @above: 1; I don't see much really 2; 4460 runs at 3.2ghz with all cores loaded, the 4690 runs at 3.8ghz. That's ~18.75% faster for ~$31 rrp higher - i don't think there is any difference aside from clock speed, but that speed difference is not insignificant 3; If you went to i3 of close to as high clock speed as turbo'd i5, not much decrease. You'd probably end up running at 3.4ghz i3 because the 3.6-3.7 sku can be priced quite highly, instead of ~3.6-3.8 turbo depending on the good i5 model - but for playing sc2 alone, losing the two extra cores won't really hurt you at all, it'd run pretty much the same maybe something like 10% worse i would imagine. Cache amount etc might make a difference but i don't think it's very significant ------------- for the laptop guy, 850/860m can be Maxwell. 870m is a Kepler part, so it's way less efficient (lower battery life under load, more heat) - it can be good idea to stick to the gddr5 Maxwell parts until you can afford a the jump between gm107 and gm204 (one of the 860m's to the 970m) but that's not strictly a requirement, it's just less convenient to have to use a last gen part because there's nothing between "kinda meh" and "high end" for Maxwell right now Of those laptops, the first one is an 860m. 860m is only sold with gddr5, but there is a kepler and maxwell version - the specs page states that it's Maxwell, so you know what you're buying. The second one is 850m with 2GB of VRAM - 850m is only Maxwell, but it's sold with DDR3 sometimes and GDDR5 other times - it didn't say as far as i could see if it was the ddr3 or gddr5 version. That's actually really important so if it's not mentioned and you can't find a solid source for the info, i wouldn't buy it Maybe in some amazing future, Nvidia could stop calling 3 different things by the same name so that you don't need a wiki page to buy any of their laptop products | ||
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Yaqoob
Canada3394 Posts
The second laptop with the 850m is DDR3 | ||
KwarK
United States44127 Posts
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KwarK
United States44127 Posts
good? or http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE500BW/dp/B00E3W19MO/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417435830&sr=1-3&keywords=ssd if I just want it for running games on | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT512MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCUM For the cheapskates, Kingston V300 240 GB (yes, a SandForce drive, but likely fine these days) for $79. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=7455478&SRCCODE Newegg's 3 PM PST Shellshocker is a 8 GB RAM stick, albeit nominal 1333 MHz, so watch that. edit: wait, which country? Anyway, the MX100 is comparable to the 840 EVO, so take whichever is cheaper. | ||
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KwarK
United States44127 Posts
What does nominal 1333 MHz mean for me, ELI5? | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On December 02 2014 03:20 KwarK wrote: Living in US, traveling to UK fairly often and have an address there. My understand of SSDs is that I just put the stuff I want fast load times on it so extra GB is going to be redundant if I only play one game. What does nominal 1333 MHz mean for me, ELI5? What other SSDs do you have? If you're not putting the OS, most programs, page file, etc. on the SSD as well as any games you're frequently running, it's probably a waste. People almost always can find ways to use the space. By nature of the underlying flash memory, the larger-capacity SSDs are somewhat faster (and keeping SSDs further from full capacity as well), but practically these days mostly just in writes and not by a user-appreciable amount unless maybe you're looking at 120 GB or less sizes. 1333 MHz is the effective clock frequency the RAM can be run at. Sometimes they can run faster, especially if you play around with the other settings, but it's not guaranteed. If you have RAM from different models or vendors, sometimes they don't play nice together. And you always need to set them all to the same frequency. If you had a mix of 1866 MHz and 1333 MHz RAM, you would need to set it all to run at 1333 MHz. These days, 1333 MHz is about the slowest you will find any DDR3 RAM. However, RAM performance matters very little for most things on the computer, so it's not very important. | ||
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KwarK
United States44127 Posts
I bought this RAM on your recommendation 8 months ago http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148721 Looks to be 1600 Would this be what I'm looking for? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313421&cm_re=ram_8gb_1600-_-20-313-421-_-Product | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
Lower than about 240 GB seems like a waste for an SSD these days. Unless you're misusing it by not really using it at all, most people find ways to use the space, and cost / GB on models lower than 240 GB are considerably worse now. Either you don't want one at all or want 240+, in my opinion. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20335 Posts
For the cheapskates, Kingston V300 it got changed to a new version using asynchronous nand after they sent out review samples | ||
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KwarK
United States44127 Posts
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On December 02 2014 05:06 Cyro wrote: it got changed to a new version using asynchronous nand after they sent out review samples Away from Toshiba toggle-mode, was it? I don't think the performance difference is of real concern for most consumer workloads. But the point is moot as the sale is over, seemingly. I guess something like an R9 270 should over triple the HD 6670's performance. Here ($130 before MIR): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131545 | ||
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Wala.Revolution
7584 Posts
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