Friend is looking for a new desktop PC for home use - mostly Office etc. but (teenage and older) kids want to play some games eg. World of Warcraft. She currently has something with a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 500MB HD and Vista, which apparently is too slow (she's still looking into what graphics it's got, I suspect they're on-board). Budget is £500.
I've suggested this:
www.ebuyer.com/398367-cyberpower-gaming-battalion-502-desktop-eecc01139
(8GB RAM, 2TB HD, Radeon 7770 graphics, AMD FX 4170 CPU)
No it's not the best CPU, but the graphics aren't bad. Searching on ebay if you want an i3/5 PC for the same price you'd be looking at 6670 graphics which are about half the performance. So given that the AMD CPU is overkill for Office, and she's probably never going to upgrade it, I reckon it's better to go with the AMD + faster graphics option.
It's only got a recovery disk, so I did suggest she look at machines with a similar spec on ebay without Windows and spend £100 (full retail version, Amazon) on her own copy eg.
tinyurl.com/8u4p3on
Also I told her to use the Crucial memory scanner to see what it would cost to just upgrade the current PC to 4GB, which might solve some of the non-gaming speed issues and save her a lot of money.
Comments and alternative suggestions welcome.
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Gaming on PCs is dying, many games take an age to appear on PC (if at all)
So, keep PC for general use, buy a proper games console. Xbox or PS3
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If it has to be a PC then I'd go for an Intel Core i5 processor at minimum. And find the budget for a decent graphics card.
If they knew someone who could build a custom PC you can get a good value, well performing PC in budget.
What resolution monitor will they be using. If it's 1920x1080 then you're looking at something like the Nvidia GT 660 or better (or AMD equivalent like the 7850). Lower resolution and you could get something cheaper like a GT 550Ti.
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If the existing PC has only onboard Intel graphics then there's a major performance blocker. So a discrete GPU would make a difference. Obviously nothing too high end because the CPU in that PC isn't up to driving anything that powerful.
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>>If they knew someone who could build a custom PC you can get a good value, well performing PC in budget.
That's the way to go, a bit more difficult but ultimately worth it.
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Invariably self or bespoke build is the more expensive way to go, you do get exactly what you want tho. However nearly all games are now written primarily for consoles, and the level of hardware contained within (which is not top of the range or bleeding edge - quite modest in fact)
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 12 Oct 12 at 13:11
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>>Invariably self or bespoke build is the more expensive way to go
If you try to replicate what you can buy from a chain, then indeed it is.
However, if you have specific requirements, then you can purchase/build just what you need, without extra bits thrown in that you don't need - including software.
Depends how much effort you want to put in.
And whilst many games are aimed at the console, some are not. And if it is those that interest you..............
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>> And whilst many games are aimed at the console, some are not. And if it
>> is those that interest you..............
Just out of interest and for my education, which ones? (excluding online virtual worlds like Second Life, which benefit from a good internet connection rather than good hardware)
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WoW is one apparantly. Don't know which others; not a computer game person, really.
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>> But given your interest, this may help.
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>> www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/244808,the-top-10-pc-exclusive-games-of-2011.aspx
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>> Its just the first link on Google.
Thank you, nothing popular there I see.
Edit, oh and I see some of them are available on Xbox.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 12 Oct 12 at 13:42
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WoW is available on Xbox and is one of the massive multiplayer online games that benefits from fast internet rather than fast PC.
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Zero, both I and your therapist are pleased to see you taking an interest in something. But I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong person to talk with about PC games.
I don’t care about PC games. And I would have no clue as to whether or not a particular game is popular.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 12 Oct 12 at 13:48
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Well given that I have a sideline in building bleeding edge high power PCs for a select group of clients with more money than sense, I do. Which is why I asked, in case you had better knowledge than me.
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>>you had better knowledge than me.
A reasonable supposition, but for once, no.
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>> WoW is available on Xbox
Ok, my mistake - couldn't spot it. Graphics do help though; son was very pleased he could turn them on the new PC.
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Yup, GPU performance is key.
My now long in the tooth AMD Phenom II (3Ghz Quad core) coupled with a pair of, also now elderly, AMD 5770s in Crossfire still handles all the latest stuff just fine.
Internal GPUs have the huge problem of texture memory. Those two cards of mine have 2Gb of GDDR5 between them, so all the texture maps remain sat there for use as required rather than having to be fetched. Internal graphics will be using system memory, which is slower and they'll also be competing for bandwidth on the memory controller with the CPU.
One day I'll find something that'll force an upgrade, but we're not there yet.
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Thanks for the responses.
An i5 / Nvidia 660 would be great, but she doesn't need that power - the budget is more important. I did price up some components on ebuyer - £435 for cheapest i5, 660, 8GB, 2TB, DVD, but not including case/PSU and motherboard, which would probably add at least another £100? And I'm not sure she knows anyone who builds PCs, apart from me, and at that price I couldn't take the pressure - sub-£300 is more my level. At first switch-on I'd be a nervous wreck :)
BTW our DIY PC has only got an AMD X3 450 (about half the power of the 4170) and 5770 graphics (3/4 of the 7770) and son runs WoW at max settings, albeit at 1280x1024. Anything more powerful would be a bonus/luxury.
Good point about separate gaming and office machines - I'll put that to her. However if her son is mainly into WoW, AFAIK that's still PC only, so that might be a deciding factor. I think they have at least one Xbox 360 already.
Regarding upgrading the graphics on the current PC, don't yet know what it's got. If it is built-in then a new card might well require a new PSU, assuming it has a PCI-E slot of course. And as you say there's still the lethargic CPU.
Last edited by: Focus on Fri 12 Oct 12 at 13:32
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>
>> PCs, apart from me, and at that price I couldn't take the pressure - sub-£300
>> is more my level. At first switch-on I'd be a nervous wreck :)
You should feel the palpitations when you are pressing the on switch for 1800 quids worth of hardware you just built.
And yes, I have had one go BANG, faulty power supply replaced under warranty.
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>> You should feel the palpitations when you are pressing the on switch for 1800 quids
>> worth of hardware you just built.
No thanks! I hope you took all that considerable stress/trauma into account when calculating what to charge the punter?
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I have a half decent video card I am going to eBay. Can't put my hands on it this minute but let me know if you might be interested and I'll look it out.
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Thanks smokie - she hasn't decided which route to take yet, but I'll bear that in mind.
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Mine is a dual role gaming PC and media centre. Lives in a (ventilated) cupboard under the stairs, so noise isn't an issue.
- i5 3500K processor running a gentle overclock to 4.1GHz. Could go a lot higher if I paid a bit of attention to cooling, but I can't be bothered.
- Factory overclocked NVIDIA GeForce 560Ti graphics card with 1GB RAM
- 8GB Decent RAM (Corsair, IIRC)
- Midrange Gigagbyte motherboard.
- Twenty quid's worth of Novatech value ATX tower case (out of sight, remember)
- 750W Novatech PowerStation modular PSU.
- 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD as boot drive (most visible daily use performance upgrade you can make to a PC)
Runs Battlefield 3 and Dead Island smoothly on max settings. Even the insatiable power sponge that is FSX only requires a couple of minor adjustments from "all max" to achieve a perfectly useable frame rate.
It was a homebuild and cost me somewhere in the high £500s, I reckon. The 2TB of conventional storage I already had in another defunct PC.
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Gaming PC - Zero
