Budget: £300-£500 Main uses of intended build: Medium-Low/Medium-High end gaming, nothing too big though. Parts required: The full works, except monitor. Previous build information (list details of parts): No previous. Monitor resolution: No monitor needed, however the PC will be running on a 1080p TV. Storage requirements: 500GB+ Will you be overclocking: No. Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): None. Extra information about desired system: Must be a small system, preferably AMD based because it's cheaper than Intel + Nvidia. A friend wants a computer build, he wants it cheap as possible but still able to play the latest games in their 'Medium-Low' settings, like Crysis 2, Battlefield 3.etc Basically so long as they're playable in any degree of setting. Found this setup online, would it suffice for med-low battlefield 3? Component Model Price CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition $120 CPU Cooler AMD boxed heatsink/fan $0 Motherboard ASRock M3A770DE $60 RAM Crucial Ballistix sport 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 BL2KIT25664BA1339 $25 Graphics Sapphire 100314-3L Radeon HD 6870 1 GB $175 Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500 GB SATA 6.0Gb/s $40 Case NZXT Gamma Classic Series GAMA-001BK $36 Power Antec EarthWatts Green EA430D 430 W $44 Optical Samsung 22x DVD Burner SATA Model SH-222A $19 Total Price $519 or £332.99 at current exchange rates. I am in the UK, hence why my budget is in £'s and I converted the price of that pre-build... EDIT: He does not need windows.
First off, does he need a copy of windows as well? What you're asking is difficult. BF3 is expected to be one of, if not the most graphically demanding games in the history of PC gaming. At that resolution (presuming it's 1920x1080) I'm pretty sure not many would suggest anything less than a 560ti. That's £180 dropped right off the bat, and if he needs windows that's another £75. It doesn't leave much room for a build. BF three on the Beta is showing about 63FPS on medium, with a GTX 590 and a very very active i7-930. I've seen a benchmark for the Beta pumping out 30fps on med settings on a 560ti, but that's with a 2600k. For £500 you can just about build an i3 2100 system with a 560ti (although you can't really do it with windows). Basically what I'm saying is, I'm not sure what you're asking is possible.
"Main uses of intended build: Medium-Low/Medium-High end gaming, nothing too big though." He's being realistic. Mid/high setting is perfectly possible within that budget. However second hand may be the area to look. Also he's going to be spending towards the £500 end of the spectrum if he want a decent PC
Nothing too big like medium on BF3 at 1920x1080? Or even low on BF3 at 1920 x 1080. I specced up three builds for this thread, it just doesn't add up. Even second hand you're looking at X58 or i5 750 which is still going to set you back £120 to £180. Say it's £120, £180 for as 560ti. £75 for Windows, £45 for a builder series 500, £40 for an Antec 100, £20 for 4gb of ram, £30 for a HD, £12 for an optical and say that's on an i5 750. Still over £500. Not by much granted. And it's an entire system built of compromise, which I never really have a problem with, but every single component is a compromise in this rig if you want to play BF3 on it.
AMD pheonem 955 + 6870 + a £60 AM3+ board + £130 on case/psu/ram/hd £430 on scan going with a 2100 + P67 board would add about £40
Yes, that was one of the build I specced also. Now, let's consider this for a moment. a 560ti partnered with a 2600k @ 4.5 ghz is getting 30fps. I just think more information is needed before you could say "this or this can play BF3 at reasonable frame rates on medium settings".
I think this entire BF3 being uber demanding is getting a bit overdone. At the end of the day its being released on consoles it can't be that bad. Also the mean of graphic card power within the the PC gamer community is two/three generation old tech (4xxx/2xx stuff) http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ Only 27% have DX11 GPU. Dice is a company, they need the game to sell to a large market so scaling should be good. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/10/22/ati-radeon-hd-6870-review/8# 43 avg and 26 min at 1920*1080 with 4xAA, very playable framerates Even if the same settings require 50% more grunt in BF3 turn off AA, knock setting down to high rather than very high and apply a modest overclock and you should see about the same performance levels. If its worse than that its case of god awful optimization. Chances are the card melting being seen so far is a mixture of some extreme setting which provide very little visual improvement for a massive resource cost, diminishing returns kind of thing as well as a fair bit of nvidia/amd being keen to encourage high end hardware sales.
Posted in two other threads, my oc'd gtx 460 gets min 27fps, max of 70fps and average of 36.552fps with all on high and 2xAA. Edit: 1920 x 1080 res
@matty You could of mentioned you live in the US. Hardware's much cheaper there opening up options quite a bit. The build you listed there would (speculating) probably play BF3 at high settings and is very nicely priced. However it does use some cheaper components in order to cut costs limiting upgradibility in the future.
What site are you buying off? It would be easier if could have a look and take parts from there. What is you max budget in Dollars?
I wish all that would cost £332 over here, a similar spec machine cost me well over £400 That system should be fine for low to medium settings
Which is a ghost town. About 10 threads in the past month. However I agree that looking second hand would be a good option.
