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[ductape]

OK folks, about a year ago I had a thread about a gaming PC build and you all provided some great advice. Money got hard for me and I never bought it. Today I just activated a brand new credit card with 0% interest for the first year so I am going to order a PC tonight or tomorrow.

I have been going through builds and I have boiled it down to two builds, both are very close to each other with a slight difference. I hope that some folks here want to give input on these two builds to help me decide and maybe even suggest their own. And now, the builds.

Build 1:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=10858909
cost: $670.91

This build features the Radeon HD 6850 1GB, a tri-core AMD Athlon CPU, and a motherboard with 2x PCIE slots for crossfire support.
Upsides of build 1 are that I can afford it, and it has the nice graphics card. Downside is the triple core CPU (not sure if this is a big deal) and higher cost than build 2.

Build 2:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=10859309
cost: $560.92

This build skips the graphics card completely, moves up to an AMD Phenom quad-core CPU, and the motherboard sports the integrated Radeon 4290 graphics card, though only 1 PCIE slot so no crossfire possible down the road (would i ever really do this?)

The idea here is to get a graphics card later (soonish) and get more computer for my buck today while still being able to play some of the modern games I cannot play at all. (there's lots I cant play even a little bit, like an of the newer Total War stuff,STALKER, Civ 5, Tropico 3, Arkham Asylum, the list goes on obviously since those games arent even the craziest or even very new for that matter).

Now, some overall questions:

• what do people think about crossfire, essential?
• what about the tri-core versus the quad-core, how big a deal is this?
• is it reasonable to expect that the cost of the graphics card will go down in 6 months?
• any other builds or suggestions?

Some notes about me and what I need/want in a computer:

• I'm not all crazy about graphics, but i want to play Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age, etc.
• I am a designer and use lots of adobe software, CAD and 3D modeling software. Work performance is important to me over gaming
• i probably wont overclock anything, but who knows...maybe.
• I want this computer to last me 5 years or so, but dont expect it to play modern games in 5 years.

I really appreciate whatever anyone has to add to this discussion. This is a big step for me and I trust the collective computer wisdom of this community.

Thanks.

[woose1]

Well, from what I can see, the second build's card is a bit behind, so unless you're planning on upgrading it soon it probably won't last 5 years. (Although quad cores ARE very powerful, and it might not matter.)

When running modern games, video cards are more important, so if you're looking for a computer that is specialized for that kind of activity Build 1 is your best option, and will probably last longer. In addition, when you go from three cores to four cores, there's not a whole lot of improvement to be made. The addition of a second video card will make a beefy computer even beefier, so running high-end modern games won't really be an issue.

Really good video cards nowadays are around the range of 150$ anyway, so you'd be at pretty much the same price, only with the lack of a crossfire capability (Or SLI, if Nvidia's your thing) and an extra processor.

I hope this helps. 

[ductape]

Well, from what I can see, the second build's card is a bit behind, so unless you're planning on upgrading it soon it probably won't last 5 years. (Although quad cores ARE very powerful, and it might not matter.)

I do plan to get a card in a 1-3 months if I go with build 2

When running modern games, video cards are more important, so if you're looking for a computer that is specialized for that kind of activity Build 1 is your best option, and will probably last longer. In addition, when you go from three cores to four cores, there's not a whole lot of improvement to be made. The addition of a second video card will make a beefy computer even beefier, so running high-end modern games won't really be an issue.

Really good video cards nowadays are around the range of 150$ anyway, so you'd be at pretty much the same price, only with the lack of a crossfire capability (Or SLI, if Nvidia's your thing) and an extra processor.

I hope this helps. 

But is the crossfire really the way of the future, or is that still just going to be performance whores for a number of years doing that? Will I be happy with just a single card? Also, the other downside of build 1, while capable of crossfire it has the tri-core CPU, and I doubt I would ever upgrade a CPU while I would upgrade a video card. Also about $100 more expensive.

I am kinda fishing to see if people think that integrated card will be ok for a while, and wether or not I will regret no crossfire, and whats the big deal between tri-core and quad-core.

Thanks for the input Woose!

[Zangi]

Crossfire: Don't expect the same or even compatible cards to be available 3-5 years later. 
Cause that is about the time you would think to pick up another to go with what you got to extend life...

That is if I know wtf I'm talking about here...

[Jehdin]

Well, we can't see those wishlists, as that URL leads to our account's wishlist.

Anyway, Crossfire/SLi is essentially worthless unless you're playing at resolutions higher than 1920x1200 and integrated GPUs will only play most games at low, even then it might be too laggy depending on how demanding the game is.

Also I'd look into Intel processors, they're really much faster than AMD currently.

[ductape]

Well, we can't see those wishlists, as that URL leads to our account's wishlist.

Anyway, Crossfire/SLi is essentially worthless unless you're playing at resolutions higher than 1920x1200 and integrated GPUs will only play most games at low, even then it might be too laggy depending on how demanding the game is.

Also I'd look into Intel processors, they're really much faster than AMD currently.

I think the intel path for equal or higher speed would push it out of my budget range, thats why I went with AMD.

As for the wish lists, I am not sure how else t link them, they are public but I see no other way to share them.

[Jehdin]

Well, we can't see those wishlists, as that URL leads to our account's wishlist.

Anyway, Crossfire/SLi is essentially worthless unless you're playing at resolutions higher than 1920x1200 and integrated GPUs will only play most games at low, even then it might be too laggy depending on how demanding the game is.

Also I'd look into Intel processors, they're really much faster than AMD currently.

I think the intel path for equal or higher speed would push it out of my budget range, thats why I went with AMD.

As for the wish lists, I am not sure how else t link them, they are public but I see no other way to share them.

Need the link from the public wish list area. Or the title of the list, but they might not be listed for a few days if you just made them today.

Might have to just link to the separate components.

[ductape]

Yeah i made those just today and they cannot be found on the publish lists when i search for them.

I think these posts have made me think a bit more about it and I am leaning toward build 2, which is just the integrated graphics card. It's not just a normal integrated GPU. its a radeon and its supposed to be OKish. I will get myself something pimpin in a month or two when I know more what I want, besides it seems a lot of prices have gone up slightly after the holidays. I feel like I can skip the dual GPU thing for now and not worry about it. If you cant play a game with one graphics card, then I dont want to play it that bad i guess.

Seems like a pretty nice computer for the price and I can upgrade it as I go. The PC I am retiring now was built right when PCIE boards were first coming out and it does not have PCIE slots. This will be a substantial upgrade for me.

[Soulwynd]

• what do people think about crossfire, essential?
• what about the tri-core versus the quad-core, how big a deal is this?
• is it reasonable to expect that the cost of the graphics card will go down in 6 months?
• any other builds or suggestions?

1. Don't bother. It's for enthusiasts only. You can run every game on max or near max with your average video card and still get above 30 fps.

2. Overall, given a certain ghz and a certain technology built, the more cores the better. Not every game will make use of multiple-cores, but it does help.

3. Nope. Consider this; The price of your average gaming video card will be around 200 bucks and the price of your better card will be 400+ (+ some inflation). That's if unless there's some drastic change, but it has been like this for the past 8ish years or so. The only thing that changes is that the average video card of a given year is better than the one of the last year, but it sort of compensates with the games adapting to the new technologies and making use of them. So basically, you will put 150-200 bucks in what could be a decent video card, be it now, or a year from now.

[Jehdin]

Yeah i made those just today and they cannot be found on the publish lists when i search for them.

I think these posts have made me think a bit more about it and I am leaning toward build 2, which is just the integrated graphics card. It's not just a normal integrated GPU. its a radeon and its supposed to be OKish. I will get myself something pimpin in a month or two when I know more what I want, besides it seems a lot of prices have gone up slightly after the holidays. I feel like I can skip the dual GPU thing for now and not worry about it. If you cant play a game with one graphics card, then I dont want to play it that bad i guess.

Seems like a pretty nice computer for the price and I can upgrade it as I go. The PC I am retiring now was built right when PCIE boards were first coming out and it does not have PCIE slots. This will be a substantial upgrade for me.

Integrated is still integrated, they can only be so powerful before they take too much power and raise temperatures too much, plus they don't have RAM of their own and have to use system RAM, which is a much slower process than having dedicated RAM. Even a Radeon 5570 will be at least 3 times as fast as any current integrated GPU.

Still, if you're going to be able to get a graphics card soon, I'd go with build 2, better to spend a little bit more and get what you want.

What CPU and motherboard do you have picked out, by the way?

Edit: Also, it's worth noting that Intel is releasing new processors soon, which should drop prices of their current ones and possibly AMD's too.

[Kitsunin]

I'm kind of clueless about these sorts of things, but doesn't Intel have "Sandy Bridge" processors coming out soon?  Could that lower the price of older ones?

[Tilla]

I gotta say this up front, you will regret getting the integrated GPU if you want to play games a lot. Unless you plan to upgrade the videocard ASAP get the first setup. No games out there will take advantage of more than 2 cores anyway at this point.

[Kitsunin]

Are these desktops?  I'm not creating a Newegg account to see this.  If so do notnotnotnotnot go for an integrated card, I mean, I am planning on getting a comp soon (More expensive than these) and it's a laptop with a discrete video card...

Basically, graphics card is totally more important than processor, as long as you aren't stuck with something really crappy like a core 2 duo processor you'll probably be fine there.

I have no clue what crossfire is myself, why is it good?

[Tilla]

Are these desktops?  I'm not creating a Newegg account to see this.  If so do notnotnotnotnot go for an integrated card, I mean, I am planning on getting a comp soon (More expensive than these) and it's a laptop with a discrete video card...

Basically, graphics card is totally more important than processor, as long as you aren't stuck with something really crappy like a core 2 duo processor you'll probably be fine there.

I have no clue what crossfire is myself, why is it good?

Crossfire is ATI's version of SLI.

And yah, gotta agree the video card is more important these days - I am actually on an old core 2 duo (though slightly overclocked) but I get along fine in games still because I upgraded my video card last fall

[Jehdin]

I gotta say this up front, you will regret getting the integrated GPU if you want to play games a lot. Unless you plan to upgrade the videocard ASAP get the first setup. No games out there will take advantage of more than 2 cores anyway at this point.

Actually, there are a handful of games that make use of more than 2 cores. GTA IV and Lost Planet being 2 I know of off the top of my head and the list will only grow, especially within 5 years.

Plus he said he's doing Photoshop, CAD and 3D work, so a quad is probably a good investment.

Are these desktops?  I'm not creating a Newegg account to see this.

You don't need a Newegg account to view wish lists, he just linked to the wrong place as they're not listed publicly yet.