Gaming PCs Thread...time for a sticky / running thread?

[Guvernator]

Never liked the idea of dual cards either. At first that probably came from the issues people experienced when the technology first became available. Now it just doesn't gel with my geeky engineering side as it's just seems inefficient and not as neat, extra space, extra cooling, extra power used etc.

The next gen cards sound very promising quoting twice the output per watt of power and much better thermal efficiency compared to current cards so I'd probably go with the one newer card as an upgrade route rather than getting a second card.

However I can certainly see why some people like dual cards, you certainly can't argue with the numbers they put out. I expect even the next gen cards while being more powerful and efficient will still struggle to outperform two decent cards from the previous gen.

[FunkyNige]

A friend has two cards and he's forever switching between one and two cards for different games to get decent fps, they are a few years old and he does run two monitors too.
I've found the 3dmark benchmarking tool website quite good for comparing the different components, you can search for score per $, see what's the most popular, etc. based on scores from users.
Here's the list of graphics cards
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu

[Zod]

Direct X12 is supposed to allow different graphics cards to work together in SFR mode (they work together to render parts of each frame), so upgrades may become less frequent in the future.

[Guvernator]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

What are you planning to change? If it's CPU, Skylake is new so a good time to jump on the cycle as it should be good for a while, however in terms of performance increase I don't think it's a massive jump over previous gen CPU's.

If it's GPU your SLi setup already beats most things including the ti card so you might be better off waiting for pascal, unless you want to go

[FunkyNige]

wolves_wanderer said:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9259300

Post to add the Firestrike score.

Pretty shocked at how much better score that is compared to mine
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5715307/fs/647146...
Presumably it's mostly down to my i5 vs your i7? The other numbers don't look too different.

[wolves_wanderer]

FunkyNige said:

wolves_wanderer said:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9259300

Post to add the Firestrike score.

Pretty shocked at how much better score that is compared to mine
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5715307/fs/647146...
Presumably it's mostly down to my i5 vs your i7? The other numbers don't look too different.

Yeah, looks like the physics test is the major difference. My processor is running at 4.8GHz as well which helps. My graphics card is the rest of the difference as it is between the 980/980ti performance wise.

For the thread Toms Hardware have a good set of guides updated monthly or so about best graphics cards & processors at certain price points that can help people deciding on kit

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphic...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-cpus,3986...

[wolves_wanderer]

The hyperthreading will be a percentage and the physics test does load up all 8 threads but the main difference is the clockspeed i reckon

[wolves_wanderer]

Yeah some batches were terrible clockers. I lucked out with this one, it'll bench and play some games at 5GHz but temps are a killer. I've got the stuff to delid but wary of ruining what is already a good chip. I don't think you can see any difference in games from 4GHz up tbh. 4.8 is 1.27v for me and keeps sub 80c so a decent balance.

Edited by wolves_wanderer on Saturday 14th November 16:07

[MrChips]

Rewind 10yrs and I was playing Medal of Honour on my then top spec machine, but since then i've moved over to xBox however i've been finding recently i'm getting headaches after just half an hour of gaming. I suspect it might be the low frame rates on some games as well as using a 40" led tv.
Would low frame rates have a similar effect as lower refresh rates on the old crt monitors? I could never look at a screen running 50Hz as they caused headaches so always had the best monitor possible to run it a bit higher.
If so then it looks like it might be worthwhile making a switch to PC gaming but my two initial questions would be:

- Do you have to pay to play online? I mainly play Battlefield (Star Wars is already on preorder) and GTA.

- Obviously google throws up a huge load of advice etc but has anyone got any other links to building guides that they'd recommend? (apart from those in the original post) or even just some sites/guides that have proved helpful?

Budget will be around £700-900 inc monitor.

[dai1983]

Guvernator said:

Personally if you can, I'd wait a bit if you want Skylake, they've just been released so will carry a premium for the early adopters. I think prices may drop in the new year.

Also for £500 I'd probably be looking at a pre-built system from someone like Dell. There economies of scale mean they often do crazy offers on pre-builds and I don't think you can get close to the VFM, their margins must so low at the prices they some of those for.

When are they likely to have a sale and where do they sell them from? I'm currently in Norway till Xmas so I'm keen to get the parts ordered in the next few days. I also get my vat back from a few retailers while I'm here. Ive been looking into this a bit further and currently have similar builds which are priced below (prices minus vat BTW)

ITX
I5 6500 £430 (frustratingly the £155 6600 is not in stock with Amazon)
I3 6100 £400 (has a Z MB and the faster ram. 6500 build is on a B mb with slower ram)
I5 4460 £377
I3 4270 £338

That leave me with the following choices:
-i3 skylake on a z170 and go for an i5k if I need it later
-bite the bullet and go i5 6500
- realise a 4460 is enough, is 4 core but older tech.
-go 4170 for the lower budget build

The build is to get me interested in computing/programming/gaming again after a time off. For this reason I worry that I may loose interest so I'm cautious about spending over £400. I'm currently leaning towards a 6100 or 4460

[Mannginger]

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9295236?

I'm assuming my CPU is the current limiting factor but defer to you lot for advice on improving this. I'ts certainly not bad at all but if there's cheap and/or easy improvements to be made I welcome your advice!

[Art0ir]

Mannginger said:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9295236?

I'm assuming my CPU is the current limiting factor but defer to you lot for advice on improving this. I'ts certainly not bad at all but if there's cheap and/or easy improvements to be made I welcome your advice!

I have the same setup but a "k" with a very mild OC. Despite what the tests say, your CPU is highly unlikely to hold you back in any real games.

Bumping the memory from 8GB to 16GB helped quite a lot though and very inexpensive.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9202585

[130R]

Art0ir said:

Bumping the memory from 8GB to 16GB helped quite a lot though and very inexpensive.

I have 8GB RAM and have never had an issue when gaming. Having said that I would probably put more in next time.

[MrChips]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Thanks for that! definitely gives me a starting point to compare with. Hoping that there's some stuff come up on the Amazon black friday type deals.

Now i've looked a monitors, I didn't realise they were quite so expensive! I think i'd need to see some in the flesh but would probably be fine with 24" to be honest. Having had a quick google, obviously there seem to be some advantages of going 27" in terms of the definition available but I would guess my rough budget would mean i'm do best trying to get the best 1080p system rather than pushing for higher?

[Squirrelofwoe]

MrChips said:

Thanks for that! definitely gives me a starting point to compare with. Hoping that there's some stuff come up on the Amazon black friday type deals.

Now i've looked a monitors, I didn't realise they were quite so expensive! I think i'd need to see some in the flesh but would probably be fine with 24" to be honest. Having had a quick google, obviously there seem to be some advantages of going 27" in terms of the definition available but I would guess my rough budget would mean i'm do best trying to get the best 1080p system rather than pushing for higher?

I think at your budget you will better served aiming for decent 1080p gaming than trying to push higher. 24" is a good size for 1080p, with the added benefit of there being plenty of wallet friendly options too.

It's a good shout regarding the Black Friday deals, I did a similar thing this time last year when I was upgrading my machine. However I didn't actually find there was too much on there- the common items that got reductions were RAM and SSDs (at your budget you are likely better off sticking with a traditional HD, unless you can get a good deal on a small SSD to load your operating system onto with a traditional HD for everything else).

The other thing that did pop up on the deals was monitors and peripherals (mouse/keyboard/headsets etc).

I picked up a 250gb SSD, a 2tb HD, and a decent gaming headset on last year's deals, and saved approx £75 on what would have cost me around £275- but Amazon aren't always the cheapest to start with...

So well worth keeping an eye out on the Black Friday deals but don't expect to make big savings on CPUs, GPUs, Motherboards etc- or at least not on Amazon anyway.

[Squirrelofwoe]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yeah definitely, it's a nice addition but at that budget I think the money is better spent elsewhere.

[MrChips]

On the subject, what sites should i be looking through to find parts/components? (also any to avoid!?)

[Squirrelofwoe]

MrChips said:

On the subject, what sites should i be looking through to find parts/components? (also any to avoid!?)

I normally use Aria, Scan, and sometimes Amazon (with their almost random price changes they can sometimes be the cheapest!), I'm sure others will be able to offer some other good suggestions too though.

[Zod]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

[FunkyNige]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

That's quite important to note - my score seems the lowest posted by quite a way but I can still play every game I play at max graphics without issue.