advice on gaming pc - Page 7

The thing is we're already kind of blowing his original GPU budget out of the water.

It's not anything about the 7850 being much worse, but being 25% more expensive for relatively the same performance for a guy who originally planned to spend 25% less than a GTX 480......


Hyper threading really only increases performance when the two threads are not being fully utilized by what they are working on, and games tend to fully utilize threads so the HT doesn't really give much extra oomph.... it's a frequently mis-understood feature that has been around since the Pentium 4. Even back in those days most people knew a HT Pentium 4 was only marginally better than a regular one, it could only act as a dual core when the main thread was processing a light load.(non-gaming) Also I agree that more programs and especially games will move to utilize more than two cores soon, but I don't necessarily think that this will help to increase % utilization on a single GTX 480, even in the future.

Maybe in the future when the OP decides to upgrade to the GTX 980 or add another GTX 480 he would want to upgrade to a quad core(even then I would still not recommend i3 2100) or even hexa core by then, but for a single GTX 480 HT isn't going to reduce his bottleneck, a G850 is already going to be enough to fully utilize that graphics hardware.

Umm..no ..just no..960T will handle the heavier games quite well....where an i3-2100 will choke and stop ::

For that matter a Clarkdale is better because they OC to over 4Ghz quite easily.
I'm about to see how a Clarkdale handles a heavy game..bbiab

Mr rice..your original choices are good..I'd get the Samsung RAM though..It's nice and flexible:
Oh..for PSU..Rosewill green 630 for $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147094
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200
Edited by Schmuckley - 5/1/12 at 6:03am

Please stop over exaggerating it is $30 more than a 480, which would be ~14% more expensive xD
An i3 will give, roughly, 10-15% performance increase over a dual core 1155 celeron in games.

lol I think you need to go back and read, I said nothing about the 960T choking
I said, simplistically, that a 960T + good overclocking mobo and cooler will cost significantly more than an i3 and $50 mobo. And with $500 budget he does not need to grab $250+ worth of hardware for just his processor on a gaming rig.
Edited by Ironman517 - 5/1/12 at 6:19am

I can't find a single source of a 7850 for 240$ besides the Powercolor brand, and if I was dropping $200+ on a new graphics card I would be buying one with a good reputation and warranty. The ones with a good brand name are 250+, but you're right the GTX 480 is $210 so it's a bit less than 25%. Even 30$ is a pretty significant difference when you're looking at such a low budget.

Edit: Also we weren't comparing the Celeron here..... it has hardly even been benchmarked. The G850 is nearly the same speed as an i3, but 38$ less.(newegg prices) Still 32$ less if you go with the cheapest prices they can both be found at.(83$ and 115$ respectively)

So I guess you just decided that Anandtech.com has no idea what they are doing?

Intel Pentium G850 - 2.9GHz - 256KB L2 - 3MB L3
vs
Intel Core i3 2100 - 3.1GHz - 512KB L2 - 3MB L3

Benchmark Rating
Dragon Age Origins - 1680 x 1050 - Max Settings (no AA/Vsync)
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
123.1
123.4
Dawn of War II - 1680 x 1050 - Ultra Settings
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
67.7
66.1
World of Warcraft
FRAPS Runthrough - FPS - Higher is Better
89.6
94.1
Starcraft 2
1024 x 768 - Medium Graphics, Ultra CPU Settings
47.8
45.4
Crysis Warhead - 1680 x 1050 - Mainstream Quality (Physics on Enthusiast) - assault bench
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
84.3
89.5
Far Cry 2 - 1680 x 1050 - Playback (Action Scene) - Medium Quality
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
50.5
59.2
Left 4 Dead - 1680 x 1050 - Max Settings (No AA/AF/Vsync)
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
121.5
121
Fallout 3 - 1680 x 1050 - Medium Quality
Frames per Second - Higher is Better
84
86.

The above was pasted straight from their own benchmark, and the very largest difference is 15% on Far Cry 2. The others are all less than 6% off, with some less than 1%....
Edited by Subcutaneous - 5/1/12 at 8:38am

Not that they don't know what they are doing, because they do. But they do not give us enough information. Like a regular benchmark review would.

This review uses a 6970 in the review, so slightly better than the GTX 480.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_4.html

Also, the OP could grab a i3-2120, for ~2-5% increase from a i3-2100 for the same price.

As of right now, I am almost positive these are the cheapest prices for the chips.
$115 i3-2100
$115 i3-2120
$85 G850

I don't really think 2$ is a big deal, but I found the 83$ shipped price on google shopping from a well rated seller. You can do the search if you want.

I also read the xbitlabs article before I ever posted, but I discounted it because they are not trying to find the normal in game performance. In fact they went out of their way to find the most bottlenecked areas, "we select the most CPU-dependent tests"

We already have established that gaming is predominantly GPU dependant, but the CPU does play a role and has an effect on the average. This review is not going for overall gameplay experience, they are pushing it too a bottleneck in order to find how bad the worst case scenario for each is, but in normal gameplay your system will be at the much higher "average" FPS the vast majority of the time.

Average FPS is actually not as big of a deal as you think. Its min FPS matters more.
Here is a situation/example:
Person 1 playing @ 40 FPS
Person 2 playing @ 60 FPS

Person 1 and Person 2 will not/hardly notice a difference in the games, but lets say they get a FPS lag spike.

Person 1 spikes to 35 FPS
Person 2 spikes to 40 FPS

Person 1 will not really notice the lag spike. But person 2 will notice it more due to the higher change in FPS. This is why a GTX 680 is better than the 7970 for BF3, because a GTX 680 has better min fps and lag spikes are not noticeable.

i say only one thing here if you go for a GTX 480 it sucks 500w to 500w from the wall where as the 7850 pulls 430w to 450w which is about 10 to 15% saving on monthly electric bill. you have to decide pay 210$ for GTX480 and pay 10 to 15% extra bill every month or go with a 7850 for 40$ extra and save on a long term path.

This I completely agree with when you consider gameplay, but when you are intentionally going out of your way to load the CPU as much as possible within the game, that is something different.

In Starcraft 2 there are scenes in some custom scenarios that limit FPS to 7 with an i5 2500k at 4.7GHZ and a GTX 480, and that only goes down to 5 FPS swapping the i5 for a G850. Yes it's a big reduction considering the small numbers, but the problem is neither is a normal gameplay scenario. They don't accurately represent what the actual game was designed to present when played normally.

The benchmarks Anandtech uses are designed to simulate intensive realistic in game scenarios and scenes designed to represent realistic gameplay, not tax the CPU as much as you can figure out how to based on the games design.

Also I agree power savings are great, but powers pretty cheap where I live and it would take years for me to make up the difference.....