How good is it?

[PRiMO]

Alright guys. Im going to make a major upgrade to my computer, and the only parts that will remain will be the drive and my HDD. My purpous is gaming and, I'd like to know if this rig can run games like gta IV, battlefield bad company 2, crysis, far cry, nfs shift, etc etc properly with an average of maybe 50/60 fps + MAXED OUT.

XFX Core Edition 550W - 57.9€
PNY GEFORCE GTX 560 TI - 1GB DDR5 - PCI-EXPRESS 2.0 - 199€
Corsair 2x2048MB DDR3 1333Mhz XMS3 CL9 New Classic - 44.90€
ASUS M4A87TD EVO AMD870G SKAM3 - 97.50€
AMD PHENOM II X4 955 BE Quad-Core 64Bits 8MB BOX SKAM3 - 122.90€
Zalman Z9 Plus LED Display - 51.9€

Total - 574€

 

[Britton30]

Hello PRiMO, I'll throw my two cents in. I'd go for more than 1 550W power supply to make sure there's enough headroom for all your stuff and adding something else new. The X4 975 is slightly more money but is 3.6Ghz instead of 3.2Ghz. The graphics board still uses CPU some CPU time so faster is better and will overclock to 4+Ghz. Also That board should support 1600Mhz, CL8 memory which will add performance too, if possible go with 8GB. You will need to adjust RAM volts and bus setting to do that with an AMD CPU, but it can be done.
The rest looks good. Go to nVIDIA's Driver page to get the latest driver, a new WHQL cerified one will be out soon. Currently the newest is 270.61.

 

[PwnFrnzy]

Agreed, the more wattage your PSU has, the more breathing room with juice your system has. My system is an oldie, using a Power Supply that was PC-Gamer status in 2003, today, its basic computing. I'm wondering how the ol' PSU is holding up with what I threw inside it.
Your cho9ice of a Graphics Card will hold up GTAIV with no problem whatsoever, there are also reviews of the card playing Crysis on it's highest settings, and Shogun 2 on ultra, so it should handle your games with ease.

 

[PRiMO]

I just found a mistake. The processor is the 965 and not the 955. At least on the shop it says it's the 965. The max budget is 600€ so yeah :/ About the processor how much can I OC it to? Just wondering because I've never really OC'd in my life and im not sure if im going to do it because I dont know how lol

 

[Britton30]

I have the 965 BE and have had it to 4.0Ghz but BSOD's there. 3.9 has run stable. Your mileage may vary with your hardware setup and tweaking skill. I am a try-it-and-see kind of guy.
You could probably go somewhat higher with a liquid cooler. Corsair makes a nice all-in-one system, the H60.

 

[PRiMO]

Well maybe yes but the thing is I dont know anything about OC. How to do it, what programs to use, what to change and not change, etc.... One thing : if you could, take my setup as the base and make a 600€ budget setup for gaming purposes, taking in mind resolution wil be 1440x900 and it's priority its to run BF: Bad Company 2, Starcraft 2, NFS Shift and GTA IV smoothly.

 

[Britton30]

That's a tall order PRiMO
Other that my advices in my post #2, I can't help you since I am not a gamer myself. My best thought would be to post a thread in Gaming, most of those people overclock and are hard-core gaming gurus.
I think you are on the right path with the GTX560 and the Phenomx4 965. I suspect your graphics solutio will be the most important single consideration to have good frame rates and few artifacts in your games.

Your 600€ is about $845USD and you should be able to get some good stuff. You will likely have different options than we do in the US too.

 

[Fumz]

Well maybe yes but the thing is I dont know anything about OC. How to do it, what programs to use, what to change and not change, etc.... One thing : if you could, take my setup as the base and make a 600€ budget setup for gaming purposes, taking in mind resolution wil be 1440x900 and it's priority its to run BF: Bad Company 2, Starcraft 2, NFS Shift and GTA IV smoothly.

It's a bad idea to build a machine based on an overclock if you've never overclocked before. Yeah sure, the software most board makers provide makes it so simple a chimp could do it, the problem is that all software accomplishes this by overvolting the cpu.

For example, I've got a chip that'll do 4.5GHz on 1.27 volts. If l leave the board on Auto and let the Asus software handle things, it pushes 1.4 volts. That's crazy... volts kill cpus.

Stay on the path you originally chose. If you want to clock, find out how first. Then, after you know what to do, before you touch a thing, make sure you have enough money in the bank to replace whatever part your clocking. If you fry it, you'll be needing a new one.

While games these days are mostly crappy cpu intense console ports, they're still pretty much GPU dependent, and you're getting a nice card. You may not be able to play every game on "max", but, I'm sure it'll still look sweet.