Building a gaming PC

[PrincessCiri]

Exactly. AM1M-A is an ASUS motherboard for Sempron/Athlon CPUs; the compatible CPUs are Athlon 5350 (2.05 GHz), Athlon 5150 (1.6 GHz) and Sempron 3850 (1.3 GHz).

These are similar to the Jaguar CPUs in the current generation consoles, but 4-core rather than 8, and in the Sempron's case, much slower. If his uses for it are not demanding, it is likely to suffice, and at a very low price.

Yeah he's only buying one because his current CPU broke, so he needs a replacement. But broke students can't spend much, and he told me that he's going to buy a brand new PC anyway once he graduates and gets a job.
Atm his rig is pretty last gen anyway, with a 650ti geforce, and his last cpu was a dual core.

Gaming would probably be stuff like Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, SWTOR or something along those lines. This CPU should cope with that, right? I was wondering if he'd manage DA:I but if he can't it's not the end of the world.

 

[M4xw0lf]

Yeah he's only buying one because his current CPU broke, so he needs a replacement. But broke students can't spend much, and he told me that he's going to buy a brand new PC anyway once he graduates and gets a job.
Atm his rig is pretty last gen anyway, with a 650ti geforce, and his last cpu was a dual core.

Gaming would probably be stuff like Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, SWTOR or something along those lines. This CPU should cope with that, right? I was wondering if he'd manage DA:I but if he can't it's not the end of the world.

Well, the 'good' thing here is that even the fastest model for AM1 is still dirt cheap.

http://geizhals.eu/amd-athlon-5350-ad5350jahmbox-a1082971.html

 

[eskiMoe]

Only if you're gaming on a monitor with 1080p or greater resolution. I have an LG E1942 (native res:1366 x 768 ) which is quite old and played most of the games came out recently (from W3 to Fallout 4) on high, textures even set to ultra with my 750 Ti GS averaging 45-60 FPS. Only that crappy Arkham Knight port dips below 25 occasionally.

You are correct, sir. Although, the new Tomb Raider game seems to eat VRAM quite a lot (almost 5GB for me @ 3440x1440 and I haven't even gotten yet into the bigger areas in the game that should eat more..) so the 2GB VRAM might not be enough anymore even at that lower resolution. Maybe.

Also, on another topic. Been reading about the benefits of using higher frequency RAM with games that are CPU bound or very much bottleneck by the CPU (like The Witcher 1 that only fully uses 1 CPU thread)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1487162/...affect-fps-during-high-cpu-overhead-scenarios

So I decided to sell my 1866MHz CAS 10 HyperX Fury kit and bought 2x8GB G.Skill Trident X 2400MHz CAS 10 kit to replace it to see if there's any truth to that and tested The Witcher 1 and what do you know, it actually does improve performance.

Used the same save file and graphics settings and tested the start of Act 4 first with my old Kingston memory. When I go to the small island where the vodyanoy priest resides and look at the shore, the main CPU thread bumps to maximum and frame rate dips from solid 60 to 54 fps minimum and the gameplay feels very jerky. Switched the new 2400MHz kit and tested the same place and it only dropped to 58 momentarily, otherwise solid 60fps. A huge difference in smoothness in that scene. Also tried The Witcher 3 but since Novigrad (despite being very CPU heavy area) never truly maxes out my i7 and it's still more GPU bound area anyways (like the rest of the game) if there were any gains, they were minimal.

So yeah, tl;dr, Older, CPU bottlenecked games definitely seem to benefit from faster RAM but can't say for sure if it's the case with modern titles.

 

[Troldierman]

You are correct, sir. Although, the new Tomb Raider game seems to eat VRAM quite a lot (almost 5GB for me @ 3440x1440 and I haven't even gotten yet into the bigger areas in the game that should eat more..) so the 2GB VRAM might not be enough anymore even at that lower resolution. Maybe.

[video=youtube;8w3xrw7-GbI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w3xrw7-GbI[/video]

^Seems alright to me. 30-40 FPS range@1080p/med settings with EVGA 750 Ti SC. My Gainward GS is a bit better according to Game Debate. So I think I can run it with high@768p and get around 45-50 FPS. Yet to buy it though since I'm not quite fond of that Denuvo crap. More or less 60% games with that stuff have performance issues only MGS V and Mad Max being exceptions.

 

[eskiMoe]

^Seems alright to me. 30-40 FPS range@1080p/med settings with EVGA 750 Ti SC. My Gainward GS is a bit better according to Game Debate. So I think I can run it with high@768p and get around 45-50 FPS.

Maybe. Really depends how much more high textures use vram compared to medium ones. The textures are at times, insanely detailed in the game so it's no wonder it eats so much vram at higher settings. You might be able to pull it off at that resolution though.

 

[PrincessCiri]

Well, the 'good' thing here is that even the fastest model for AM1 is still dirt cheap.

http://geizhals.eu/amd-athlon-5350-ad5350jahmbox-a1082971.html

I think this is the one my flatmate ended up buying! So that's good

 

[M4xw0lf]

I think this is the one my flatmate ended up buying! So that's good

Yeah, it's the most he can make of this system at least.

 

[Senteria]

[video=youtube;8w3xrw7-GbI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w3xrw7-GbI[/video]

^Seems alright to me. 30-40 FPS range@1080p/med settings with EVGA 750 Ti SC. My Gainward GS is a bit better according to Game Debate. So I think I can run it with high@768p and get around 45-50 FPS. Yet to buy it though since I'm not quite fond of that Denuvo crap. More or less 60% games with that stuff have performance issues only MGS V and Mad Max being exceptions.

I'm can run it on high with 60 fps no problem on my gtx 970 and i5 6400 @ 2.7ghz. Putting all settings to ultra like the witcher 3 is not possible if I want to achieve 60fps. The thing seems to run stable but I've only played 3 minutes so far. I was up all night to install software on this new hardware.

 

[dixxn]

Hey all, it's been a while since I last browse this forum. Hope you all doing fine. I have a little question that I need to ask all of you here. So here's the thing, I've been drooling for a Dell U2515H for quite a while. I believe that most of you already know about that monitor, it's a 1440p IPS 25" monitor which has great reviews from what I learned. And for the question, with my i5 4690, GTX 970 Armor 2x OC MSI, and 8GB of RAM, how well do you guys think I could run TW3 on 1440p resolution?

As for now I'm getting about almost 50 - 60fps (which dropped to 40s on specific location, Novigrad for example) all the time on a 1080p res. My settings are almost all ultra settings, minus AA, hairworks on Low and the hairworks AA set to "2", shadows on medium, foliage visibility on high, no blurs.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@dixxn: It's a pity that monitor is 16:9 and not 16:10.

 

[dixxn]

@dixxn: It's a pity that monitor is 16:9 and not 16:10.

Hey Gilrond, if you want the Ultrasharp series, there's a Dell U2412M with the 16:10 ratio. I'm not familiar with that aspect ratio, though, I rarely heard about it

 

[eskiMoe]

Just get the U3415W and enjoy the 21:9 ultrawide experience in games and movies and dual 5:4 1720x1440 for productivity. Best of both worlds.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Hey Gilrond, if you want the Ultrasharp series, there's a Dell U2412M with the 16:10 ratio. I'm not familiar with that aspect ratio, though, I rarely heard about it

I'm already using Dell U2413, which isn't that different from U2412M (both are 1920x1200). But Dell has nothing in the range of 24"-27" with resolution like 2560x1600. They only have 2560x1440 like this one: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&sku=210-ADKB&ref=3053_title

 

[eskiMoe]

Bought the Ergotron LX monitor arm to replace the cheap stand that came with the monitor. The original stand is far from the worst I've used but I wanted more "maneuverability" with the monitor and especially to adjust the distance according to different usage scenarios. Like when using m&kb in various tasks vs when laying back on my chair with a controller and so forth.

Spoiler

Spoiler

I really dig how it looks like the monitor is hovering in the air.

And overall the arm is absolutely fantastic. I recommend it if you're looking for a quality monitor arm with lots of maneuverability. It might be a bit more expensive than the competition but it comes with a 10 year warranty so that's something.

 

[Rawls]

Hey everyone. I hope it's cool to discuss buying here as well. Since Stellaris is coming out soon (PC only) and it's time for a new notebook anyways (I got my old one almost exactly five years ago and it's on its last legs), it's time for a new one. As a disclaimer, I am not looking for anything fancy - playing games on lower settings is fine for me as I play most games on PS4 anyways. I mostly use my notebook for general use - browsing, email, Microsoft office, music, etc. I do however play games every now and then when I really want them and they aren't available on PS4. I know it will suck compared to what most of you have ... and I'm okay with that. So please don't judge too much. Having said all of that, I was thinking about getting an Acer Aspire E 15 E5-574G-52QU

Here are the specs:

• 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6200U processor 2.3GHz
• 8GB DDR3L SDRAM Memory
• 1TB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 15.6-Inch Full HD Screen, NVIDIA GeForce 940M with 4GB VRAM
• Windows 10 Home, Up to 6-hour battery life
• 2 3.0 USB Ports

It looks like it can run Stellaris even at 1920 X 1080. The biggest drawback I can see is I'll have to get an external CD/DVD drive, but that's no big deal. At $549.99 it seems like a pretty good notebook. If there is anything better out there in the $500.00 range, I haven't been able to see it. I'm posting this here just to make sure I am not missing something.

 

[nukeheal]

Hey everyone. I hope it's cool to discuss buying here as well. Since Stellaris is coming out soon (PC only) and it's time for a new notebook anyways (I got my old one almost exactly five years ago and it's on its last legs), it's time for a new one. As a disclaimer, I am not looking for anything fancy - playing games on lower settings is fine for me as I play most games on PS4 anyways. I mostly use my notebook for general use - browsing, email, Microsoft office, music, etc. I do however play games every now and then when I really want them and they aren't available on PS4. I know it will suck compared to what most of you have ... and I'm okay with that. So please don't judge too much. Having said all of that, I was thinking about getting an Acer Aspire E 15 E5-574G-52QU

Here are the specs:

• 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6200U processor 2.3GHz
• 8GB DDR3L SDRAM Memory
• 1TB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 15.6-Inch Full HD Screen, NVIDIA GeForce 940M with 4GB VRAM
• Windows 10 Home, Up to 6-hour battery life
• 2 3.0 USB Ports

It looks like it can run Stellaris even at 1920 X 1080. The biggest drawback I can see is I'll have to get an external CD/DVD drive, but that's no big deal. At $549.99 it seems like a pretty good notebook. If there is anything better out there in the $500.00 range, I haven't been able to see it. I'm posting this here just to make sure I am not missing something.

Refurbished Dell 7559 with student discount code (asked someone who studies) with 560£ at dell website with 1 year warrenty. i7 6700hq and 960m gtx.

 

[michiko.kuukisuzu]

Upgrade: Faster Disc or Stronger GPU?

I want to buy a new PC and I have got a little question.

What is better in your opinion?
1. Good Old HDD from old PC and new GeForce 970,
2. or maybe new SSD (faster) and new GeForce 960?

I want to feel better Uber Settings on Geralt. This is my main target.

Price is similar in my shop, that's why I ask.

 

[cyberpunkforever]

ssd and gtx 980

 

[kachna96]

If you want uber settings, go with 970. SSD will help you with loading times, not with the performance.

 

[LoveGOG]

It depends on how old that HDD is. For people on budget this is the best option in my opinion: Always go for the better GPU alternative for a gaming machine, buy a small SSD just for the OS partition. Use a regular mechanical hard drive (sATA 3.0 7200rpm preferably) for data and games. This combo is good, fast and affordable.