Build me a gaming PC that will last... im so outdated

[caddi daddi]

I have 2 280x cards and had a 290 for a while, there are no issues with either.
my 290 was a reference, blower card the only issue was that it was so LOUD. in game it was awesome.
the 280 cards are wonderful little workers, great cards in every way.
nebs has the 290 now, under water and is a happy clam.

 

[bob4933]

Well heres a thought on the matter. If his monitor is vga, he CANT use a 290...

 

[Cnaydmancangt]

LOL it isn't a VGA its a DVI.... My stuff isn't that old man... Hell my 4890 O/C doesn't even have a VGA port.. its duel DVI

This is my monitor.. Back then was a really good LCD, still serves its purpose, Very Low dot pitch, just apparently has a low resolution these days so whatever. I cant afford a $300+ monitor because I sure as hell am not getting a monitor with a big dot pitch and higher resolution , to me that's a downgrade I can see the pixels if it goes above .25


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116391

 

[SF101]

Essentially performance wise anything under a 780GTX wont compete with a AMD R9-280 or R9-290 like i said before even a 780GTX currently with all the optimizations they made to GNC is slower than the 290 now and even the 280 now competes with it.

So essentially nothing in the price range of the 280 or the 290 can compete with it performance wise.

They said Most of the AMD offerings are going to use more power than the Nvidia offerings esp in this mid range area where the nvidia cards sip alot less power.

If the power usage of your gaming rid doesn't bother you (as i also feel) , And you can fit the cards in your current pc case , And your PSU can manage to provide the needed power, Then I see no reasons to stay with nvidia for this as all their offerings are more $ for less performance.

And those points will remain the same for ALL ranges of cards btw.

Even into the high end Nvidia gpu's they are always in a higher price range over AMD's counterparts , Yet typically use less power at similar performance ranges.

If it s was me and i needed a GPU now at these prices the 290 is a no brainer really it will rival 780's at such a cheap price so if you expand your monitor later you will still have the power to run higher resolutions.

The 280/x is formorly the 7950/70 which is still a strong card in its own right aswell the 280x is no slouch in this current market.

 

[Cnaydmancangt]

Im confused the 780 NVidia where does this fit in with the amd 280 and the GTX960.. because the 960 benchmarks im looking at show it to be faster then a AMD 280 and the same price.

But I couldn't find many reviews comparing the two..

Stupid question.. do you still need a pair of memory sticks for duel channel ? Im looking at newegg's combo's and some of them are enticing because you can save 20-30-40$ but some only come with a single 8GB stick of memory.

Its funny how things end up.. first I wanted a budget gaming pc but now its like... Hmm I want more and more..

So im debating on either Getting this R9 290 you guys are insisting on for $270 at newegg, or the GTX260 for $200.. Im deff getting the 4690 cpu, im looking at motherboards, and Gigabyte I think is out of the picture, all their boards seem to have bios and corruption issues.. 4 stars, with say 60 reviews at 5 stars but 20 reviews at 1 star isn't that great I don't like those odds.

However the MSI board this one, looks pretty solid to me.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130770

Im looking at this combo on newegg, The 4690, MSI Z97 listed above, and 1 stick of 8GB of Hyperx ram.. Id need to buy a 2nd stick, but this combo saves me $42, and so the 2nd stick will only be $20 more.. So I'll 16gb of ram.. If I buy the Sapphire R9 290 for $270.. Total so far is $720.. I would deff need a new power supply that's another $100, so price would be $820... However no SSD.... If I get a SSD prices would be nearing 1,000$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1739932


Sooo If I just get the Combo above for $389, plus a GTX960 for $200, and a 2nd stick of ram for $67.. That's 656$, I can probably get away keeping my current PSU because the GTX 260 using only a 6 pin connector and much less power.. So that means I can buy an SSD bringing the total to $800..

Soo my dilemma here ? Its either get a R9 290 and a new PSU and hold off on a SSD, or get a GTX960 keep my old psu and get a SSD

 

[Janus67]

A 250GB SSD is less than $100 which is generally fine for installing your OS and a handful of games then using secondary storage for lesser-played games and your media/data/etc.

 

[SF101]

You will have to look at more recent comparisons to get a clearer idea of the performance differences.

There has been many many driver level GNC optimizations to AMD's 7xxx and 2xx series cards since the 7xx and 9xx series Nvidia cards (more so the 9xx series timeframe tbh).

Old reviews and comparisons have no meaning atm as like i said while nvidia's cards have relatively remained the same performance wise all the GNC cards from AMD has gained quite a-lot in performance in the last year or two.

Thus why you see 280x being compared with 780GTX performance now a days and why people say 290 is surpassing that level of performance now.

 

[bob4933]

In no way is a 960 superior to a 280 except for power consumption.

270 for a 290 is too much money. they literally go on sale between 200-240 all the time. There really isn't much different. The pcs+ I linked you has hynix memory, which is really what separates 290's apart.

- - - Updated - - -

In no way is a 960 superior to a 280 except for power consumption.

270 for a 290 is too much money. they literally go on sale between 200-240 all the time. There really isn't much different. The pcs+ I linked you has hynix memory, which is really what separates 290's apart.

- - - Updated - - -

LOL it isn't a VGA its a DVI.... My stuff isn't that old man... Hell my 4890 O/C doesn't even have a VGA port.. its duel DVI

This is my monitor.. Back then was a really good LCD, still serves its purpose, Very Low dot pitch, just apparently has a low resolution these days so whatever. I cant afford a $300+ monitor because I sure as hell am not getting a monitor with a big dot pitch and higher resolution , to me that's a downgrade I can see the pixels if it goes above .25


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116391

Ive seen more modern monitors than yours with VGA only. Was simply a heads up, not an accusation or judgement.

 

[Cnaydmancangt]

Are all SSD's the same speed ? Because there are literally hundreds of them on newegg lol 120-250 gb and besides some with bad reviews I cant figure out the difference.


EDIT::: Ok I changed the build slightly.. What do you guys think ?? All I need now is a good SSD suggestion preferably under $100 to Keep this build in the $800 range, Managed to get a good cpu 8gb of ram, a new PSU, and a good motherboard from what ive researched and the R9 290 for $750.. I kinda want more memory though.. I have this funny fealing that 8GB will be a limiting factor for me in like 2 years or something... Kinda like my memory now.. I have 4gb and my computer despite getting say 40-50 fps in the games I do play... my ram is maxed out and my computer is using large amounts of pagefile..

When you guys game.. how much memory usage are you typically at ? Is it even close to 8gb ?

Oh and I think I will be able to salvage my watercooling for the CPU.. Im using a very very old Maze 3 block from the athlon XP days.. on my E-8400 wolfdale I made myself a custom mount all I need are 4 mounting holes on a motherboard and I can fit the block on any CPU.. And this block was perfectly fine for the E-8400 I managed to clock it to 4400mhz lol.. Im hoping I can use it on the 4690 as well


http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CYT9Lk

 

[SF101]

Short answer is No , Not all SSD's are equal , Some of the biggest differences are the controllers and the performance they offer The other differences are memory type modules used.

The intel SSD's have had a great track record for performance and low fail rates combined with high amount of writes The main issue with Intel SSD's is they are generally more expensive.

Samsung SSD's also have a great track record for perf / quality and also can be found at good prices.

Their are a few others too with solid offerings currently , anything around 530+ read/write will be quite fast in a SSD , Id recomend 240/256 GB or greater for a OS drive , you can at least install your games onto it then and take that advantage for load times.

I've purchased SSD's from pretty much all your common manufactures and i sell Intel SSD's at work and typically i haven't had too many issues with any of them. " I have seen a few A-Data's through work die in certain types but that was mostly M-Sata SSD's and early models at that" we stopped using A-Datas after that.

if you find a 530+ MBPS read/Write (90,000 iop's or Greater) its hard to go wrong if you stick to solid brands with decent warranty period's.

GL!

 

[bob4933]

Depends on the game.

With a browser playing youtube videos (music) and GTA 5 going, team speak, and broadcasting, yeah Im maxing out 8gb pretty easily.

 

[EarthDog]

When you guys game.. how much memory usage are you typically at ? Is it even close to 8gb ?

It depends on the game. But I haven't been close to maxing out 8GB. But then again, I only have TS (negligible ram use), Pandora in Chrome (negligible compared to the game) going. I play BF4, GTA5, the new Dirt and I dont recall breaking 6GB.

 

[Dlaw]

I can break 8GB in BF4, but I'm pretty sure that has to do with the resolution I play at.

A while back, OP was asking about higher resolution monitors, I would like to clarify a little:

Your resolution (1680x1050) has a total pixel count of 1,764,000. 1080p's pixel count is 2,073,600. That's about a 15% increase in pixels. That means that with two screens of the same size at those resolutions, the 1080p's pixels will be 15% smaller. That creates a more detailed picture, not dot pitch. You don't need a crazy expensive monitor at 1080p so long as you don't need a 36"+ 144hz curved job. A $100 monitor from Walmart will look just fine (not the best, mind you, but still perfectly acceptable).

The only thing about pushing higher resolutions, is you end up needing better (and therefor more expensive) hardware. I'm not saying that you should upgrade your monitor, because if you're happy at your resolution, you can save a ton of money. At 1680x1050, the 750Ti will perform fine for you, so there is no reason to go higher end. If you still want to, that's fine too, but you won't need more. You have to remember, the majority of gamers (even console gamers these days) play at 1080p, so cards are more or less designed to push that resolution.

 

[EarthDog]

Im confused... why would having a higher resolution monitor use more SYSTEM ram? I expect it to use more vRAM... but the load on the system ram shouldnt change much if at all...I play at 2560x1440, less than you, but more than the 1080p Bob mentioned...

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Im confused... why would having a higher resolution monitor use more SYSTEM ram? I expect it to use more vRAM... but the load on the system ram shouldnt change much if at all...

The only reason I could see it making a difference is if it increases the shadow map resolution, since that's typically handled on the CPU.

 

[Dlaw]

Im confused... why would having a higher resolution monitor use more SYSTEM ram? I expect it to use more vRAM... but the load on the system ram shouldnt change much if at all...

Not really sure ED, but since it was a pretty fresh OS install and BF4 was literally the only thing other than Windows running, it's the only thing I can think of. Maybe I maxed VRAM out, and it paged to system ram? It didn't bother me in the least, so I never really looked into it.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Maybe I maxed VRAM out, and it paged to system ram?

This is very possible at 4K if you have the game turned way up.

 

[EarthDog]

The only reason I could see it making a difference is if it increases the shadow map resolution, since that's typically handled on the CPU.

A quick google showed that for vRAM?
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347933187842/

EDIT: That is BF3 though... but BF4 is based off the same engine. Perhaps they switched it to the CPU?
EDIT2: BF4 is FB3... perhaps they switched it to the CPU?

Not really sure ED, but since it was a pretty fresh OS install and BF4 was literally the only thing other than Windows running, it's the only thing I can think of. Maybe I maxed VRAM out, and it paged to system ram? It didn't bother me in the least, so I never really looked into it.

That seems more likely, depending on your settings (read: resolution scale). With my 295x2, I have it set to 140% with 2xMSAA, the rest is default Ultra. I use around 3.4GB of vRAM that way at 2560x1440.

 

[Dlaw]

A quick google showed that for vRAM?
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347933187842/

EDIT: That is BF3 though... but BF4 is based off the same engine. Perhaps they switched it to the CPU?
EDIT2: BF4 is FB3... perhaps they switched it to the CPU?

That seems more likely, depending on your settings (read: resolution scale). With my 285x2, I have it set to 140% with 2xMSAA, the rest is default Ultra. I use around 3.4GB of vRAM that way at 2560x1440.

I wasn't scaling resolution, this was at 4k. Being that even with your scaling, I'm still running about 30% more pixels than you, it seems very likely that I paged out. It's fine with me though, I only picked the game up because it was $10 and I wanted to see what my system could do with it. I'm more than satisfied.

 

[EarthDog]

Right.

Im just trying to put things into relevance and perspective for the OP. Your situation is pretty different than his being at 4K and likely paging out to saturate your ram. We all say 8GB for a gaming machine and it was a shock to hear, out of the gate, two people 'easily' blowing that out of the water, but the circumstances in both of those cases, are a bit unique.