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New PC for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

A friend of mine saw our videos and got hooked. now he wants to buy a PC.


with a budget of 860$, what's the rig one can buy these days?
What GFX card?
What processor?
What Mother Board?

Re: GFX card for a friend - Alwarren - 05-22-2014

(05-22-2014, 09:20 AM)Variable link Wrote: A friend of mine saw our videos and got hooked. now he wants to buy a PC.


with a budget of 300$, what's the best card to buy these days?
What processor?
What Mother Board?

If that is a budget for the whole PC, I don't think it will go very far, especially if he wants to play Arma 3.

For Arma 3, I would say the minimum is:
Intel i5-2500k  or i5-3470k -> around $200
8 gigs of RAM -> around $80
Mainboard -> around $40

So at this point we're at 320 with no harddisk, case, power supply etc. You can add another $150 for that I suppose.

Then the graphics card. For budget I'd go for AMD, a Radeon HD 7850 is pretty decent and costs around 150.

In total, it would add up to about 700 for a decent gamer PC.

If we're talking 300 for the graphics card, then I'd go for Geforce GTX 770 which is around 300, or a Radeon 290X, the latter being a fantastic card but seriously over 300.

Re: GFX card for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

Oh crap, the 300 budget is only for the GFX. the whole budget is 860 USD. Fixing OP.

Re: GFX card for a friend - Alwarren - 05-22-2014

(05-22-2014, 12:13 PM)Variable link Wrote: Oh crap, the 300 budget is only for the GFX. the whole budget is 860 USD. Fixing OP.

LOL, okay, that makes more sense.

GeForce GTX 760 or 770 then if nVidia.
RadeonHD R9 280X for AMD.

They're both equally priced (AMD is a bit cheaper and a bit faster) at around 300.

EDIT: Comparison of the two: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1041?vs=1037
(Blue is AMD, Red is NVidia)

Re: GFX card for a friend - Bubba - 05-22-2014


I think you can get a pretty decent Arma3 rig with that money. I spent about 1,3k € on my PC a year ago and most likely you could get the same, or even better stuff for that money today. Something that should run at high settings at least.

I'm not absolutely sure if these benchmarks can be straight compared to PC gaming power, but this site has a pretty good amount of benchmarks of different CPUs and GFX cards (You can find them in the other tabs on the top of the page). All the categories also have option to search for "best bang for the buck". Here are the GFX cards in best value for money: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html


Also, I believe that at the moment the best value for high end cards are in the AMD R9 series.
On the other hand, I've always had a Nvidia and will most likely buy the next one from them also.


Edit: Okay, so the whole budget is 1160 USD? I didn't read the past comments properly! Tongue But that should get a really good PC for ARMA3.

Re: GFX card for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

(05-22-2014, 12:38 PM)Spete link Wrote: Edit: Okay, so the whole budget is 1160 USD? I didn't read the past comments properly! Tongue But that should get a really good PC for ARMA3.
no, the whole budget is 860 USD! Oh boy I made a mess...

Re: GFX card for a friend - Alwarren - 05-22-2014

(05-22-2014, 12:38 PM)Spete link Wrote: I'm not absolutely sure if these benchmarks can be straight compared to PC gaming power.

They do reflect things pretty well. They're mostly game benchmarks.

Quote:Also, I believe that at the moment the best value for high end cards are in the AMD R9 series.
On the other hand, I've always had a Nvidia and will most likely buy the next one from them also.

I agree, AMD always made the better cards, but nVidia generally has better support. If you are into 3D graphics and use a program like Blender, CUDA will be an issue you're interested in (Since Blender's Cycle renderer does not work on AMD's buggy OpenCL implementation).

On the other hand, I think AMD always had the better display quality.

Having said that, the CUDA argument made me switch to NVidia since now I can run Blender's renderer on the GPU, and that's about 10x faster than CPU Smile

Re: GFX card for a friend - Bubba - 05-22-2014

Do you have a preferred site you will order the parts from?

Re: GFX card for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

I suppose Amazon, to a US address.

Re: GFX card for a friend - Rund - 05-22-2014

My GTX 770 holds up pretty well, and I can run any current game just fine with it. Make sure he considers an SSD, because it makes your new PC feel smooth like a baby's ass Smile

Re: New PC for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

(05-22-2014, 02:26 PM)rundll.exe link Wrote: My GTX 770 holds up pretty well, and I can run any current game just fine with it. Make sure he considers an SSD, because it makes your new PC feel smooth like a baby's ass Smile
For sure... I already informed him that he must include an SSD.

Re: New PC for a friend - leachyboy77 - 05-22-2014

SSD is mandatory, that goes without saying. I also think that the GTX 770 is the way to go. I prefer nVidia over AMD, and the support is better too. A cheap case and internal storage should only cost about $150 combined, plus an SSD which would be around $120 (assuming he's going for a basic 120GB model). Then you have a motherboard, where a decent one that will hold up to what he wants to do will be around $180 maximum. A 4th gen i5 will run him $200. A good set of 8GB 1600MHz RAM will be up to $100.

We're at $750 at this point. Now is where the GPU comes into play. The cheapest new version of a 770 is around $350. A GTX 760 is around $260, and is much better value for what you're paying. That would bring the total to $1010. You can skimp on some of the other items, but if you want true quality, I'd look for things in that price range. I'm also assuming he'd be getting a standard 2TB hard drive for storage, which is around $85. If not, you can cut that out of the price. You could find motherboards for $120 or even around $100, but you'd be missing some features/quality in those. The RAM could be found for about $70-$80, which isn't really a big deal. The only surefire prices are the SSD and the CPU, those won't change. It's up to how much he wants to spend (obviously).

Here's a great site that I use, you can check prices and performance of different GPUs and CPUs. There's even a "Best Value" chart, which I use a lot to give recommendations to people. It's made up of tons of people's real life benchmarks, so it gives realistic results. Hope I helped a tad.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Re: New PC for a friend - Variable - 05-22-2014

Thanks a lot leechy! This is very helpful. I'll let you guys know what he decided, and hopefully, it won't be long before he plays with us.

Re: New PC for a friend - Variable - 06-23-2014

CPU selection, I recommended him the 'k' one, was that wise?

I5-4570s (6M cache, 3.6 GHz)-96.53$
I5-4570T (4M cache, 3.6 GHz)-97$
I7-4820k (10M cache, 3.9 GHz)-164.34$
I7-4770s (10M cache, 3.9 GHz)-150$


Re: New PC for a friend - Misha - 06-23-2014

That's a good one, optimal price/performance ratio, comparable to 3570k which I drive.