Possible budget gaming PC build?

Pick your parts from MSY. I'd go for a AMD Athlon x4 640 + Gigabyte 870A-UD3 + 4GB DDR3 Kingston Value RAM + 6870 + Antec Two Hundred + Antec True Power New 650w. Intel's speed advantage evaporates in games. At 1080p, the GPU counts, not the CPU.

Wishmaster said:

parabellum said:

Pick your parts from MSY. I'd go for a AMD Athlon x4 640 + Gigabyte 870A-UD3 + 4GB DDR3 Kingston Value RAM + 6870 + Antec Two Hundred + Antec True Power New 650w. Intel's speed advantage evaporates in games. At 1080p, the GPU counts, not the CPU.

Granted not all games will benefit from raw CPU speed or 4 cores, and are more GPU dependant, but it does depend alot on the type the games the gamer wants to play.

Civ V for example will not only love a powerful GPU, but fast multiple cores, Ideally at least a Quad, will beneifit it greatly.

Few other games are like this as well.

That Athlon is a quad and the 6870 will massacre any game at 1080p.

ratman said:

How about this:


CPU - Intel Core i5 760 CPU - $211.00
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 - $159.00
RAM - 2 x 2Gb DDR3 1333 Corsair Memory - $56.00
GPU - Asus ATI Radeon HD5850 1Gb - $289.00
Hard Drive - 1000Gb 1Tb Seagate SATA2 32Mb - $63.00
Optical Drive - Benq Black 24X SATA DVD Writer - $34.00
PSU - Antec True Power 3.0 750W ATX - $169.00
Case - Antec VSK-2000 ATX Black - $69.00
OS - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit DVD OEM - $108.00


This one includes Windows 7 HP, so the total is $1158. I can spend that much if necessary.

Some of the things you listed can be bought for less from PCCasegear. Total cost of this from PCCaseGear + Shipping is about $1100. Also have a look around at other local PC stores for better prices. Save $30 on your PSU (you won't need 750W) and use that to upgrade your 5850 to a 6870. You may also want to get a bluray instead of a DVD if you're going to spend $34 on a DVD player already (since a bluray player can be bought for an extra $30). If you can somehow save $150 somewhere, you MUST get a SSD as it can make a cheap computer seem like a professional one.

parabellum said:

That Athlon is a quad and the 6870 will massacre any game at 1080p.

I'm not picking on you either but terms like 'massacre' are simply gross exaggerations and more often that not, flat out wrong.

"That Athlon is a quad and the 6870 will perform reasonably well for quite a few games at 1080p. For other games, you may have to lower a few details." would be a much more realistic statement.