25 replies to this topic

[Felix Dante]

http://sellout.woot....m=email#tracked

This looks like a good deal.

Better than what I have!

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Nope as usual for an OEM PC thats a pretty terrible gaming machine.

[Catamount]

It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but a GT640 is quite underwhelming at that pricepoint, and when you consider all the corners they've doubtless cut, the power supply almost certainly being chiefly among them (with the motherboard probably coming in second), it goes from a less-than-mediocre deal to a downright bad one.

In fact, looking at that power supply already makes me leery. "460W" is not a power supply, anymore than "1GB" is a video card (in an ideal world claimed wattage would tell you something useful, if not enough, but we don't live in an ideal world), but when I think of the quality of components probably in that PSU, the fact that its claimed wattage is that low makes me, well...

Edited by Catamount, 19 September 2012 - 10:49 AM.

[Nacon]

Soon as I saw "HP" on it, closed the tab.

EDIT: Best to build your own PC, it's cheaper that way... does require some decent IQ and knowledge to pull that off though.

Go shopping here.

Edited by Nacon, 19 September 2012 - 10:59 AM.

[Barbaric Soul]

here's a decent prebuilt for less than that HP. http://www.newegg.co...N82E16883227435

[Nacon]

Barbaric Soul, on 19 September 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

here's a decent prebuilt for less than that HP. http://www.newegg.co...N82E16883227435

It's a little bit worst than HP's actually... because of the GeForce GTX 560.

[Barbaric Soul]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

It's a little bit worst than HP's actually... because of the GeForce GTX 560.

Really?



The GT 640 doesn't even come close to the GTX 550ti, let alone the GTX 560

http://www.techpower..._GT_640/14.html

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 19 September 2012 - 11:22 AM.

[Nikoliy]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

It's a little bit worst than HP's actually... because of the GeForce GTX 560.

If you are saying that the 560 is slower then the 640 then that is not right.here is a comparison of the 560 vs 650(faster then a 640)
http://www.hwcompare...eforce-gtx-650/

[Catamount]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

It's a little bit worst than HP's actually... because of the GeForce GTX 560.

Not even close. The HP's GT640 isn't even remotely close to being as fast as a GTX 560. In fact, the 640 doesn't even come close to being as fast as the GTX550 Ti

Edit: two posters above beat me to it

Edited by Catamount, 19 September 2012 - 11:24 AM.

[Nacon]

It's worst because of the age on 560 would become apparent than 640 in further updates down the path.
Also... power watt.
Didn't mean to say it's worst in sense of performance, I always look after something that would benefit me in long run.

EDIT: In case you guys haven't noticed... the OP is on a limited budget. Assuming though...

Edited by Nacon, 19 September 2012 - 12:05 PM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

No, only being about a year behind the 600 series, it won't really mean **** in regards to being outdated faster.

How about you use the GT 640 <insert arbitrary gb number here> and tell us from your experience that its better than a GTX560.

Oh and here use this -> http://www.hwcompare...eforce-gtx-560/

[Nacon]

Some times updates would bring you more frames per second. Quite frankly, just because some model have 10-30 fps more, doesn't make it worth $100 difference. The power watt does make big difference if you haven't bothered to read that part in that link you gave us.

You do pay for your power bill, right? When you do... some times it's nice to be able upgrade your PC after few years with the saving you make.

[Vulpesveritas]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Some times updates would bring you more frames per second. Quite frankly, just because some model have 10-30 fps more, doesn't make it worth $100 difference. The power watt does make big difference if you haven't bothered to read that part in that link you gave us.

You do pay for your power bill, right? When you do... some times it's nice to be able upgrade your PC after few years with the saving you make.

100w at 8 hours of usage per year at the average cost of electricity in the united states amounts to not that huge of savings.
Average cost of electricity in the USA per KWH ~12c.
8 hours / day * 365 days/yr = 2920 hours / 10 hours of use per kw = 292 kw total used. , * .$012 = ~$35 / year.

For this you are getting nearly three times the performance. Average usage time of a graphics card is ~4 years, so an overall cost for 3 times the performance comes to approximately the same cost as the system which will cost more outright, which is where he needs the cost lessened the greatest I would assume.

For a better deal, I would be recommending following one of my "Builds of the week guides." As another thing to take into account is the quality of the power supply.

Building your own, you can get an equivalent system with a Radeon HD 7850 and a 80+ gold rated power supply, reaching nearly four times the performance of that HP in gaming ( See ~40-45 fps vs 10-13 in demanding titles) while having an equivalent power draw. (Or less depending on whether the OP chose to get an IB i3 instead of a 95w AMD Quad core, if power draw were a primary concern, at the cost of some performance.)

Similarly the 650 is a much better option than the 640, which at least approaches acceptable levels of performance for minimal increases in power draw. Though this would require a custom system from a computer botique, local store, or simply building your own. (the latter of which I recommend the most if looking for a new PC.)

[Catamount]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Some times updates would bring you more frames per second. Quite frankly, just because some model have 10-30 fps more, doesn't make it worth $100 difference. The power watt does make big difference if you haven't bothered to read that part in that link you gave us.

You do pay for your power bill, right? When you do... some times it's nice to be able upgrade your PC after few years with the saving you make.

Maybe that's how it works on Mars, but here in the United States, that logic doesn't hold up.

You don't buy a video card that's maybe a third as fast, based on the notion that you can upgrade it later with the "savings". For that to even remotely work, and be worth suffering through a vastly, vastly inferior video card, the savings would have to be enough after a given period to be worth sacrificing immediate performance for that period. In other words, the savings from electricity would have to be enough to earn you something massively faster than the GTX 560 you're giving up, in a reasonable amount of time.

So let's do the math. The 640 consumes around 100W at load, while the 560 consumes about 150W at load. Price per kilowatt hour (or per 3.6MJ) in the United States is roughly twelve cents on average. Even if you ran both cards at maximum load, 24/7/365, you would consume about 1.5GJ a year extra with the 560, which means that every year, you'd save yourself approximately $50 a year. Given a more reasonable estimate of, say, using the computer at full load for six hours every day (that's still a ton of gaming), that would drop to $12.50 every year.

So in order to afford even the GTX 560 you're giving up on for that savings, it would take you a decade. A more reasonable scenario would be saving for four years, after which either card would be obsolete, and using your savings to get a faster video card next time, in which case, you'd have a grand total of $50 again. That's not enough for a substantial upgrade that offsets having a video card that's a third as fast for four years.


Edit: changed to reflect proper estimate of relative performance between the cards (I underestimated the difference earlier)

Edited by Catamount, 19 September 2012 - 01:51 PM.

[Nacon]

lol... people getting worked up to change my opinion, apparently.

EDIT: Won't come back to feed the trolls. Good grief.

Edited by Nacon, 19 September 2012 - 02:18 PM.

[mechnut450]

well I won't get into the which is faster on the geforce cards, cause I seen the specs aand my older 275 beats a 550 inmost games, and i put a gt 640 in and had the same preformancce but i could use the newer direct x version and that made a difference in gaming.

I can build a nice pc cheaper than that and it will run mwo and wow with little trouble , I should figure out if i can run wow and and how much difference the 640 would make compared to my 275.. the gt640 is an good card for me I not gaming 24/7 cause I getting married.

[Catamount]

Nacon, on 19 September 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

lol... people getting worked up to change my opinion, apparently.

EDIT: Won't come back to feed the trolls. Good grief.

I don't care about what opinion you hold; I care about people coming to this forum and getting bad advice that hurts them. That isn't trolling; that's keeping a certain standard for the information provided here. And if you don't want people to continue correcting you, then don't obstinately defend an untenable position after half the forum comes on and corrects it.

Quote

well I won't get into the which is faster on the geforce cards, cause I seen the specs aand my older 275 beats a 550 inmost games, and i put a gt 640 in and had the same preformancce but i could use the newer direct x version and that made a difference in gaming

FWIW, your GTX 275 is notably faster than a 550, and a 550 is a lot faster than a 640, so your 275 would plaster a 640 in performance. Of course, in a game like WoW, it won't matter, since either is fast enough to run that game, but in MWO it might make a big difference.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

HazardTrashCan, on 20 September 2012 - 01:18 AM, said:

Wow, why do you must troll him? He's right though. He didn't say anything about performance. H e was talking about making reasonable saving.

He wasn't wrong.

I think you should understanding the word Troll/ing first. Nobody is doing that, they are correcting information.
He has posted on a specific gaming forum, a computer he terms as decent and a good deal.

For this specific game, it is neither a good deal or decent as the GPU is woefully underpowered for gaming.
At the pricepoint for that OEM build you can build or purchase far better (in terms of quality and components) as has been linked here http://www.newegg.co...N82E16883227435
And that costs less than the HP, comes with a non OEM motherboard and far better GPU for less.

Now as with any forum you come across the people that think they know what they are talking about, the hard part is picking out the ones that do.
However a quick summary of the admin made stickies in this very forum help give you some semblance of information in that regard.
Not everyone agrees with the suggestions but they have the evidence in their to support their stance, as always take the information available and do your own research.

Edited by DV McKenna, 20 September 2012 - 02:38 AM.

[Catamount]

More to the point, he was wrong. He suggested the purchase of a machine that would be vastly inferior at gaming to obtain savings from energy efficiency that would have been insignificant (~$12 a year for 6 hours a day of gaming), and we demonstrated that with numbers and citations. That is not trolling.

Gaming is an activity with costs associated with it. Nacon's logic is that you should have a set up that's vastly inferior at gaming, so that you have to pay less of those costs, in order to get something better at gaming later that will end up costing greater sums of money anyways. It's inherently illogical. Why buy a better video card with that savings? Why not just buy another crap card later, and "save" again? If one isn't willing to pay the cost of gaming now, why would one be willing later? The whole thing makes no sense, whatsoever. Furthermore, it's a bad tradeoff. If you want to "save" money on gaming, you don't do it by buying a card that only gives 1/3 the performance, but consumes 2/3 the power, netting a system in total that will be 1/3 as good, but consume 5/6 as much (assuming the rest of the machine roughly matches the GPU in power draw, not unreasonable when dealing with 100-150W cards). Giving up 2/3 of your performance to save 1/6 of your power draw is about as bad a tradeoff as one can make.

Is he entitled to hold that position anyways? Yes. Is it bad advice on a computer forum that would hurt someone who followed it? Absolutely. It's not trolling to point that out.

Edited by Catamount, 20 September 2012 - 05:21 AM.

[Gremlich Johns]

that's why I recently got an EVGA GTX560 Ti Fermi Superclocked instead of something nex gen more expensive with some lower stats. And I can still overclock it a little bit more.

Brand EVGA
Series SuperClocked
Model 01G-P3-1563-AR
Interface PCI Express 2.0 x16
GPU GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi)
Core Clock 900 Mhz (v.s. 822 Mhz reference)
Shader Clock 1800 Mhz (v.s. 1645 Mhz reference)
CUDA Cores 384
RAMDAC 400 MHz
Max Resolution 2560 x 1600

Memory
Effective Memory Clock 4212 Mhz (v.s. 4000 Mhz reference)
Memory Size 1GB
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Type GDDR5
HDMI 1 x mini HDMI
DVI 2 x DVI

How about a GTX580 ($300) and get the water block ($90) for your liquid cooling system.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 22 September 2012 - 08:18 AM.