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I see a lot of bad advice in the last page of this thread. Do not ever get an AMD APU for a gaming build -- unless your gaming consists of playing Facebook games. The AMD FX-6300 is the cheapest CPU you should even consider for a gaming build. That processor, if overclocked, probably won't bottleneck most games. Anything cheaper than that will bottleneck games.
But you should really strive to get something a little better than the bear minimum. Try to save up enough money to buy an Intel i5 when making a gaming build. AMD chips have inferior single threaded performance, which is important for gaming. If you can't afford an i5 now . . . postpone your purchase and keep saving money. It is better to have a decent computer in 3 months than to have a terrible computer tomorrow. You will be stuck with the machine for a few years, so you don't want it to be lagging on day one.
As for the GPU, something like a Radeon R9 270X or GeForce GTX 760 would be great. You don't want to get anything cheaper than that for a gaming build. So just keep saving up money until you can make a proper build.
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United Kingdom20342 Posts
Don't listen to this guy. He apparently has no idea what he's talking about. 2GB of video RAM is always enough in modern games unless you are gaming off multiple monitors
He's quoting me, when i started reccomending 7970's instead of 770 due to price and 2gb VRAM not being enough for battlefield 4 at 1920x1080*. In particular for the UK market but still applies to the US, when 7970's dropped to £209-£230 depending on the day for good models, while 770's were at £319 for 2gb versions and £349 for 4gb versions
*can make it work with a setting or two dropped, but adding a second card to SLI and go to 2560x1440 wouldn't work well due to vram constraints for example, while the 7970/280x has no such limitation, which removes value from the nvidia offering
The GTX 770 is more powerful than the 7970
It's also locked at stock voltage while 7970's are not. Depending on the cooling they can be worse than a 770 or notably better
The AMD FX-6300 is the cheapest CPU you should even consider for a gaming build. That processor, if overclocked, probably won't bottleneck most games. Anything cheaper than that will bottleneck games. It's good for a lot of games, bad singlethreaded performance which makes it a hard reccomendation on a starcraft forum but the problem here and with this:
Try to save up enough money to buy an Intel i5 when making a gaming build. AMD chips have inferior single threaded performance, which is important for gaming. If you can't afford an i5 now . . . postpone your purchase and keep saving money. It is better to have a decent computer in 3 months than to have a terrible computer tomorrow. You will be stuck with the machine for a few years, so you don't want it to be lagging on day one.
As for the GPU, something like a Radeon R9 270X or GeForce GTX 760 would be great. You don't want to get anything cheaper than that for a gaming build. So just keep saving up money until you can make a proper build.
It's decent advice, but with such a build you're doubling his budget. Many people don't want to do that, so i'd expect a few different suggestions or light discussion on how to fit into it (or maybe increase budget slightly, but maybe not double unless his requirements demand it)
Also, tomshardware forum for "more informed advice" is kinda insulting to a lot of the regulars here 
Thanks for taking part in thread, please try to be a little less confrontative though. Can still criticize freely, but Incog is still pretty new in the thread and it's better to have some discussion started (especially back and forth with builds) than nothing 
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Ty so much for the help so far, i guess if it would mean a large improvement i might be able to increase the budget with 25-50€ (who needs to eat anyway  )
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Am very new and very newbie to computer building in general, what I often do is repeat things that more experienced users have told me or I'll give advice based on what I would do in a given situation. My advice is definitely off at times but generally the more experienced people here will correct my mistakes very politely. In the process, the dude needing advice gets good advice and I learn more.
Often in posting in this thread I tell myself I shouldn't be giving advice given how little experience I have. The thing is that you learn so much proposing buildings and having them criticized by others, I just can't resist. In this case I learned that going with a cheap AMD processor isn't optimal and that it would be better to make concessions on the video card rather than the processor when thinking of a rig on a tight budget.
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AM3+ is terrible value, decent motherboards are stupidly expensive. For me FM2 is the way to go value wise, high end boards such as the Gigabyte A85X/A88X-D3H are only $80/90 and an Athlon X4 750K/760K is also only $80/90. Compared to the price of the FX-6300 $120 and the Gigabyte 970/990FX D3H boards ($110/135), the difference in price is just too much ($160-180 for FM2, $230-255 for AM3+) to justify.
Then we have the small difference in IPC. For the majority of games the FM2 platform will be better as the FX-6300 and Athlon 750K/760K have similar max overclocks (on a CM 212+/EVO) of ~4.5Ghz.
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United Kingdom20342 Posts
Shadowplay is apparently live and awesome for those who have slightly early release of new driver and geforce experience 1.7! will post numbers as soon as i can vs xsplit/OBS. Gotta shower/eat and actually get the driver myself since a guy dropboxed it on ocn and the link expired
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United Kingdom20342 Posts
On October 27 2013 22:23 Incognoto wrote:
Am very new and very newbie to computer building in general, what I often do is repeat things that more experienced users have told me or I'll give advice based on what I would do in a given situation. My advice is definitely off at times but generally the more experienced people here will correct my mistakes very politely. In the process, the dude needing advice gets good advice and I learn more.
Often in posting in this thread I tell myself I shouldn't be giving advice given how little experience I have. The thing is that you learn so much proposing buildings and having them criticized by others.
Exactly this, and everyone is here to help, more help/community is always appriciated! (incog/salient)
First quick impression of shadowplay: Wtf, why did nobody do this yet
1920x1080, 60fps recording. From a 340fps base i got less than a 2% performance hit first try, so small it's within margin for error. Gotta spend some time with a bunch of resource graphs open etc and playing
Oh and to update on 290x/290 - i think now they can be really good depending on cooling and temps. I've heard too many conflicting reports on the frequencies you can hold on the reference cooler, but seems like they could be scary on non reference and maybe water, meanwhile the regular 290 with non reference coolers could be insane.
4gb 770's are still close to £350 here - they'd be directly competing with the 290 and that's a joke in of itself when they'll fall behind the new 280x gpu's when that card gets the update.
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Hi guys!
Right now I'm still using my GTX 560. Not the Ti, just a regular GTX 560, Intel i5-2500k and 8GB of RAM. Its been over a year or so and I want to make some upgrades to it.
I want to be able to play games like battlefield 4 and FFXIV at a constant 60FPS at high settings (or even the highest settings). So my question is: Whats a good video card upgrade from a GTX 560? My price range is around $200-$250 give or take.
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Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better.
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On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better.
Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9
![[image loading]](http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7103/55838.png)
E: he said he has a 560 not a 660.
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My bad, I thought I read 660.
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On October 28 2013 10:16 iTzSnypah wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better. Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9E: he said he has a 560 not a 660.
how old is this chart? no way 660ti/670 out performing 7970. Must be when the drivers were shit.
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On October 28 2013 11:12 da_head wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 10:16 iTzSnypah wrote:On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better. Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9E: he said he has a 560 not a 660. how old is this chart? no way 660ti/670 out performing 7970. Must be when the drivers were shit.
June 25th 2013 is the date of the article.
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On October 28 2013 11:12 da_head wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 10:16 iTzSnypah wrote:On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better. Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9E: he said he has a 560 not a 660. how old is this chart? no way 660ti/670 out performing 7970. Must be when the drivers were shit.
Hey bro, 7970 isn't 7970 GE.
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I would wait and see what Nvidia does to counter the new AMD Cards. I hope Nvidia finally releases a new budget-card again. If you don't want to spend 250€++ you can't use Nvidia right now.
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On October 28 2013 11:45 iTzSnypah wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 11:12 da_head wrote:On October 28 2013 10:16 iTzSnypah wrote:On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better. Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9E: he said he has a 560 not a 660. how old is this chart? no way 660ti/670 out performing 7970. Must be when the drivers were shit. Hey bro, 7970 isn't 7970 GE.
7970GE wasn't even specially binned was it? Pretty much 7970 is an underclocked GE afaik.
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On October 28 2013 13:26 Rollin wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 11:45 iTzSnypah wrote:On October 28 2013 11:12 da_head wrote:On October 28 2013 10:16 iTzSnypah wrote:On October 28 2013 09:19 skyR wrote:
Constant 60 FPS on high settings in BF4 is really unrealistic, you're basically never going to achieve this unless you play at 800x600 or avoid multiplayer altogether. Something in the $200-$250 range is not that big of an improvement over a GTX 660. Going up to a $300 7970 would be much better. Considering the GTX 760 is ~$250 and in anand's review it more than doubled (~136% more) the average frame rates of the GTX 460 (which we know that the 560 is just a higher clocked 460)...I don't see how it's not that big of an improvement. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/9E: he said he has a 560 not a 660. how old is this chart? no way 660ti/670 out performing 7970. Must be when the drivers were shit. Hey bro, 7970 isn't 7970 GE. 7970GE wasn't even specially binned was it? Pretty much 7970 is an underclocked GE afaik.
7970 has hard clocks and 7970GE has higher clocks + boost.
Reference clocks are 925Mhz for the 7970 and 1000+50Mhz for the 7970GE, which would explain why the 670 was outperforming the 7970.
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United Kingdom20342 Posts
Big price drops on 780/770
insane i don't know about US but this just happened:
This Week Only Offer
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 WindForce 3x OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N780OC-3GD)
Average rating of 5.0 Gigabyte Out of Stock
£409.99
swear that thing was over 500 when i went to bed, everywhere. Classy's didn't dip nearly that low ("only" a £50 price drop) but it's not worth paying like 12% extra for one over other monster cards
770's dropped cleanly by £40 too some of them more
going to be interesting next month with 780ti, 290 and nonreference coolers for 290x and probably 290 dropping!
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United Kingdom20342 Posts
290x is apparently a different beast without the terrible reference cooler, i'm kinda baffled that amd screwed themselves so hard on launch day with it
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EPT
