77 replies to this topic

[FlipOver]

Maggiman, on 21 May 2014 - 06:44 AM, said:

For now it's no big deal anyway. There are still many Games out there that run fine on 4GB, or can't even use more than 2GB. (Yes 2, not even 4) so 8GB is fine. But remember when true next gen titles come, they might need more.

Thank you, mate.

I'll really take that into consideration.
After all, I may end up getting a second screen down the road, by then, might use one for MWO (or any other demanding title) and the other for my TV + TS3 and other light stuff. So even then I might not need to have over 8GB and even if I do, I'll have 2 extra slots to add another 2x4GB... seems about right

[FlipOver]

UPDATE

Hey guys, just letting you all know after a while, I decided to get the purchase order with the following items:

CPU - INTEL CPU CORE i5-4670 3.40GHz LGA1150 BOX
MOTHERBOARD - ASUS SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK 2 LGA1150
TOWER - Cooler Master Silencio 452 Black
POWER SUPPLY - Cooler Master G750M MODULAR 3D 80 PLUS BRONZE
MEMORY - 2x HYPERX 8GB 1866MHz DDR3 CL10 HyperX Fury Series
HDD - SSD Samsung 2.5“ 840 Evo 250GB


I remember you all, the idea was to get a budget computer, but decent enough to hold its own for a few years (hence why the i5 and not the i7, the 1.86MHz CL10 memory instead of something "better", and so on).
About the GPU, will get one closer to Christmas or right after it, to get some better pricing (I'm inclined to something like GTX 6xx or 7xx depending on the promotions at the time)

I want to thank you all for your tips and advice on this issue.
Will be doing a followup post in the near future once I get all the hardware, assemble and install de software.

Edit - Just some extra info- This rig isn't going to cost me anything over 650Eur, that's why I decided to pair a couple of 8GB memory sticks instead of 4GB ones. Their price was acceptable

Edited by FlipOver, 18 August 2014 - 06:13 AM.

[Smokeyjedi]

^ thats one hellova board for a locked I5.......but who said overkill was a bad thing?

Edited by Smokeyjedi, 18 August 2014 - 06:27 AM.

[FlipOver]

Smokeyjedi, on 18 August 2014 - 06:27 AM, said:

^ thats one hellova board for a locked I5.......but who said overkill was a bad thing?

Indeed you are right.
Thing is, overclocking the CPU would stress the stock cooler in the long run, or would force me to add 25-40Euro to get another cooler (maybe a liquid one).
Since I'm not going to overclock the CPU anytime soon, I thought this board would be fine to accommodate any new CPU I would purchase if need be to replace this one in about a year or 2.
Also, pricing wise, i found a great discount on it at around 120-125Eur.
So I thought I should spend a bit more on one of the most important components on a computer and if in the future I need to upgrade the rig, this MB can surely be still used and last a long time.

[Catamount]

it's sound like both Maxwell and Pirate islands are coming out before Christmas. Early rumors on AMD's side suggest a 50% or so performance jump (just based on stream processors, TMUs, ROPs, etc) from the 290x to the 390x. Maxwell is also looking very, very impressive, if the early mobile chips are any indication (huge performance jumps with power drops and even fewer stream processors)

[FlipOver]

Catamount, on 18 August 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

it's sound like both Maxwell and Pirate islands are coming out before Christmas. Early rumors on AMD's side suggest a 50% or so performance jump (just based on stream processors, TMUs, ROPs, etc) from the 290x to the 390x. Maxwell is also looking very, very impressive, if the early mobile chips are any indication (huge performance jumps with power drops and even fewer stream processors)

Thanks for the hint, but to be honest I don't see myself spending anything over 200-250Euro on a GPU. Probably will be going for something in the 200Euro range and I bet I'll get a really nice one around Christmas time for that price

[Smokeyjedi]

^blackFriday@12:01AM, snag an online sale of glory and insane prices.

[Odins Fist]

You can litterally buy an $80.00 to $100.00 Mobo for that Intel chip and you won't notice any difference for what you do, UNLESS you want to run SLI in the future.

That's the thing with a lot of Intel CPUs, they don't need a $180.00 Mobo with extreme power delivery, you're not getting a power hungry AMD FX series cpu.

[FlipOver]

Odins Fist, on 18 August 2014 - 04:33 PM, said:

You can litterally buy an $80.00 to $100.00 Mobo for that Intel chip and you won't notice any difference for what you do, UNLESS you want to run SLI in the future.

That's the thing with a lot of Intel CPUs, they don't need a $180.00 Mobo with extreme power delivery, you're not getting a power hungry AMD FX series cpu.

Well yes, I want to keep my options open in regards to any kind of upgrade, being GPU or CPU.
The only thing that made me think twice was the memory speed at which this MB can read them, but even that is more than enough for now and will be in a near future.
It had more than enough USB 3.0 slots, PCI slots, memory slots...

By buying this MB I'm preventing something that happened to me in the past, having to change it if I want to invest on GPUs or a better CPU.

I'm not pretending to know very much about these things, but I made some choices thinking ahead and for what I've managed to understand, the MB should really be the best quality you can afford.

[Catamount]

FlipOver, on 18 August 2014 - 02:51 PM, said:

Thanks for the hint, but to be honest I don't see myself spending anything over 200-250Euro on a GPU. Probably will be going for something in the 200Euro range and I bet I'll get a really nice one around Christmas time for that price

FlipOver, on 19 August 2014 - 01:11 AM, said:

Well yes, I want to keep my options open in regards to any kind of upgrade, being GPU or CPU.
The only thing that made me think twice was the memory speed at which this MB can read them, but even that is more than enough for now and will be in a near future.
It had more than enough USB 3.0 slots, PCI slots, memory slots...

By buying this MB I'm preventing something that happened to me in the past, having to change it if I want to invest on GPUs or a better CPU.

I'm not pretending to know very much about these things, but I made some choices thinking ahead and for what I've managed to understand, the MB should really be the best quality you can afford.

These two statements make at least some sense individually (keeping in mind that you're still learning as you go here), but are somewhat illogical and contradictory, taken together.

In essence, I think you're starting to think along the right lines, but you're misplacing priorities. In many ways, the GPU is THE heart of a high end gaming system. Once a game is running, everything else, including the CPU, is essentially just support hardware, there to make sure your GPU is being fed enough of everything it needs to do its job and otherwise not hold your framerate back below what your GPU is capable of. Because of this, once all the other hardware in your system is doing that basic job, there's no benefit to having it be more powerful, whereas there's always benefit to more GPU power, at least up to a ridiculously far-flung point.


Given this, it's extremely illogical to spend what has to be damn near 400 euros on a CPU and mobo, but only 200 on a GPU that then essentially won't even take advantage of how awesome the rest of the machine is most of the time. The GPU is precisely the part you don't want to spare an expense on, because there's always more benefit to more (again, for all intents and purposes). You've dug into your pockets this far, save a few more pennies and don't spend less than 300 on the GPU, preferably 400. You yourself have admitted you just bought the more expensive mobo, precisely because you didn't want some piece of essentially support hardware holding back what you want to buy, so BUY something worthy of it.

You could have probably pulled 100 euros off the board for a better GPU and lost nothing, but if you're buying Asus Sabertooth boards just for futureproofing in the first place, you're probably not on a strict, fixed budget

Edited by Catamount, 19 August 2014 - 07:40 AM.

[FlipOver]

To be honest, I thougth a GPU like GTX760 would be good enough and I was hoping those would drop to 200 Euro on the last part of the year.

To place things in a perspective:

When I started this thread, I was in a place where the company I work for, owed me over 3k USD from last year.

Not knowing when or how they would pay me back I was a bit tied up to count all my pennies to get a good machine.

A few days back they have placed a nice amount of the money they owe me in my bank account, and then, after paying some overdue bills, I decided I could spend a bit more on that MB, also add one more 8GB memory stick and upgrade the SSD drive.

But I don't want to blow everything on this purchase, so I thought of waiting for later this year to get a GPU and spend as little as possible while getting something good.

Thing is, you are right, I do need to plan to spend around 400Euro on that GPU.
After all, that MB I chose can definitely handle it (just need to pay attention to the energy consumption of the new GPU).

Who knows, maybe at the end of the year I can find something like GTX7xx (or better) at a reasonable price.

What are your thoughts about my next step regarding GPUs?

Again, thanks for the help.

[Catamount]

Basically, a 760 is a fine GPU, it's just that it would make the entire rest of your system a gargantuan waste of dollars, because considerably inferior parts could support a 760 to the maximum of its potential in most games.

Depending on when each comes out and how each performs, I would suggest getting nothing short of a GTX870 or a Radeon R9 380X. Get more if you can afford more, but either of those will be really good GPUs. Which one is better? Who can say. Maxwell and Pirate Islands are actually both shaping up to look good.

[FlipOver]

GTX 870?
Did you mean 780?
I ask because didn't find much info about that 870 one.

Another question:
If it's worth the money compared with the one you were thinking of, would it be a good idea to buy 2x 760 and use them together?

[Goose]

We'll be getting the GTX 8X0s' Real Soon Now …

[Catamount]

FlipOver, on 19 August 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

GTX 870?
Did you mean 780?
I ask because didn't find much info about that 870 one.

Another question:
If it's worth the money compared with the one you were thinking of, would it be a good idea to buy 2x 760 and use them together?

On paper, the best bang for you buck comes from Crossire/SLI of two midrange cards (whichever carry the best performance/$ that aren't stupidly entry level).

In practice, ehhh, YMMV. In games that take advantage of it, it'll be great. Now that dual-GPU microstutter is all but gone, it'll be fast and smooth. In games that don't, even though they're a minority among intensive games, you're just sitting around with one 760.

I'd just get a single fast GPU for now.


And yes, Maxwell's first real lineup supposedly rolls out in a month or two. Maxwell chips are already out, just not higher end ones. Nvidia and AMD should both have their new lineups starting to come out well before Christmas from the sounds of it. So no, I meant 870. It's just not out yet.

Edited by Catamount, 19 August 2014 - 04:39 PM.

[FlipOver]

So in a way, would it be a safe bet to buy the GTX760 and when MW:O or other games I play take advantage of the dual-GPU stuff, I can buy (at a lower price, since it's probably only going to happen mid next year) another GTX760 and with that I'll be set for a while?

With this I would have spent a total of around 400 Euro by mid next year in 2 good GPUs, which sounds affordable to me.

[Catamount]

If you flat can't afford a high end GPU, then sure, buying two in increments isn't then worst thing you can do.


I would still wait for the new lineups. Maxwell is a lot more power efficient and does a lot with fewer stream processors than Kepler (which is, as far as I'm concerned, an abject failure of an architecture). You might be able to land an 860 in a month or two, and pick up a decent performance boost. Equally importantly, you won't kill your PSU and power bill if you get two. Don't discount AMD either. In your price range they typically offer the better cards right now, with more performance AND more video RAM at any given price point.


Which will be better between Maxwell and Pirate Islands? Who knows. But wait and see before you commit to anything.

Edited by Catamount, 20 August 2014 - 06:19 AM.

[Odins Fist]

GTX 770 4gb superclocked edition EVGA.