Gaming PC: What should I buy with $1,000 CAD?

[Kreuger]

I don't keep up with the tech much anymore so I have no input there. However to save you some money, if you use NCIX then check out Shopbot and Pricebat for lower prices and then pricematch on NCIX.

[LaP]

On the other hand, LGA1150 is at the beginning of its cycle now. But, we already know that it will replaced by 1151 in the future :/ Same goes for AMD's Bobcat to Puma+ upgrade. It's a gamble :)

From my past experience there's absolutely no upgrade path for Intel. You can only upgrade to another cpu from the same generation and it's usually not worth it. With intel you buy a mid range CPU at around 200$ and then OC it when you need more power and then upgrade the whole machine.

Currently running a core i5 750 @3840 and upgrading to any of the few i7 i could upgrade to would be totally not worth it specially considering they are overpriced on ebay.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Hello,

"Gimmick APIs" like these have been around for years from both NVIDIA and AMD. BT4 was not built on this API so while it may support it (with a patch) you wont see its full potential.

Look at Glide for example. Great API (back in its day, hell its used today as well) but never took off as the "standard".

TruForm, another from ATI that never really "took off".

I strongly recommend you dont buy a video card based on "nonstandard" API it features and more so, if only three games (right now, none use it) plan to use it.

All of this is my opinion :)

i agree with you, though. A lot of these 'look what we can do' gimmicks never take off. AMD, for instance, had hardware tesselation support like 7 years ago and that took like 5 years to become relevant.

[Andre S. Veteran]

In addition to the Tom's Hardware links zhiVago provided, AnandTech has some good up-to-date shopping recommendations as well:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7548/gaming-motherboards-under-175-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7557/best-desktop-video-cards-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7545/best-ssds-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7541/best-desktop-cpus-holiday-2013

 

In my opinion THE killer card is going to be the R9 290 when 3rd party cooler designs start shipping. Look out for ASUS DirectCU II, MSI Frozr IV and Gigabyte WindForce versions (which should all be out by Christmas). In its current form, it offers crazy performance for the money but an equally crazy amount of noise, the reference cooler just doesn't cut it.

 

If that's too much money for your budget, I guess the GTX 760 and R9 270X are good alternatives.

 

If you're going Intel, don't spend much on high speed RAM, it doesn't matter. Just get 2x8GB with standard speeds and timings.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

It's something I learned back in the Core2Duo days. I went for an E6750 instead of the more expensive E6850 or Q6600. Also, thanks for the link. There's virtually no difference at high resolutions.

 

NP, I've been passing this link around this forum for a few weeks when i5 vs i7 springs up. For clarification, the reason you don't see a difference at high settings is because the GPU is the bottleneck there. The reason you see the variation with low settings is because the cpu is becoming the bottleneck there.

[threetonesun]

When buying, always plan on the motherboard and CPU going together. Upgrading on the same socket died a long time ago. CPUs will be powerful for 6+ years these days, and at that point you'll want newer motherboard features anyway.

 

I would also consider the viability of SLI / Crossfire on your motherboard. I used to think it was a silly idea, but I bought a 660, and I could get another one for half the price already, so I'm starting to see why it's so popular. 

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Hello,

Well, if Im wrong (I am human) please tell me why. This way I can learn from my mistakes and not make them in the future :)

 

You aren't wrong that AMD's CPUs tend to see worse single thread performance, etc. But, for gaming that really doesn't matter since the CPU isn't the bottleneck. Dunno if the other poster realized that or not though in their stabby comment.

[riahc3]

Hello,

No "gimmick" api have seen this level of interest in the past. Right now if you listen to people in the industry it looks like they are very interested in mantle.

I hope you are right, Im wrong, and it does take off :) It looks intresting but just 3 games are PLANNING TO support it and that itself doesnt look very promising.

 

i agree with you, though. A lot of these 'look what we can do' gimmicks never take off. AMD, for instance, had hardware tesselation support like 7 years ago and that took like 5 years to become relevant.

Well, it did take off....some of these technologies never see the light of day except on paper!

Your example reminds me of SLI.......SLI was actually "implemented" (I say with quotes because it isnt the same as today) by 3dfx (anyone remember them) on their Voodoo2 cards. NVIDIA bought them in early 2000s and only did they reintroduce SLI in 2004 (supported by many games but somewhat pointless unless you have money and resolution to spare).

 

 

You aren't wrong that AMD's CPUs tend to see worse single thread performance, etc. But, for gaming that really doesn't matter since the CPU isn't the bottleneck. Dunno if the other poster realized that or not though in their stabby comment.

This is true. But to get that extra FPS, you really need a Intel for when a game does need CPU calculations to pass onto the GPU to draw it.

Anyways we are getting offtopic here.

[LaP]

Hello,

I hope you are right, Im wrong, and it does take off :) It looks intresting but just 3 games are PLANNING TO support it and that itself doesnt look very promising.

How good those games will do using mantle will decide if it's going to work or not.

If BF4 mantle edition get a 15-20% boost with mantle versus using directx on the same card then lot of people in the industry will be interested. If the "boost" is under 10% then it will die quickly.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

How good those games will do using mantle will decide if it's going to work or not.

If BF4 mantle edition get a 15-20% boost with mantle versus using directx on the same card then lot of people in the industry will be interested. If the "boost" is under 10% then it will die quickly.

 

I hope it does have some nice performance gains. Certainly a reason to buy ATI cards which tend to be cheaper for performance vs price ratio.

[ryoohki]

You can use PC Park Picker, set you're country to CANADA

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/

 

You can price match pretty much everything at NCIX! :)

[LaP]

I hope it does have some nice performance gains. Certainly a reason to buy ATI cards which tend to be cheaper for performance vs price ratio.

If mantle does provide a noticeable perf gain without adding too much complexity and devs start using it then nVidia will have no choice but to support it or come with a competing tech of their own. Either way i don't think it's gonna be an advantage for AMD cards just for PC gaming in general.

Personally i'm not a big fan of any locked tech like Directx. Something working on PC/Mac and eventually consoles would be the best for both consumers and devs. I would love to see mantle succeed on both AMD and nVidia card eventually. Wishful thinking i know but one can dream ...

[The Gamer]

My vote goes to the Asus P8Z77-V LK mobo. It's what I chose for my first build--built it this year. It allows for SLI in case you ever want to double up your GPU you choose. Combo that with the i5-3570K (if overclocking). 

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

You're welcome :) Yes, I think you should totally try to bring the cost down by all means possible.

 

 

To be honest with you, you can never buy something 100% future proof in today's market because things get obsolete every six months pretty much. So you should forget about upgrading the CPU two years in the future. It won't be worth it. However, upgrading the GPU can make a lot of sense a couple of years down the road if performance in games is what you're looking for.

 

Nevertheless, AMD does seem to support their sockets longer. However, the same physical socket is no guarantee that a newer CPU on the same socket won't require a newer chipset - it's just something to keep in mind.

 

On the other hand, LGA1150 is at the beginning of its cycle now. But, we already know that it will replaced by 1151 in the future :/ Same goes for AMD's Bobcat to Puma+ upgrade. It's a gamble :)

 

As for GeForce vs Radeon, I've recently purchased my first NVIDIA-based card (Asus GTX770) after spending a decade with AMD (*cough ATI :D). I had been anxious before, but now I can't be happier. Overall, I'd say Nvidia provides a more user-friendly experience. Their driver updates don't require restarts and I love their automatic settings optimization feature for games.

You're right. Given the rate at which PC technology is considered obsolete, it's better to invest in a better video card (which can later be upgraded). Now, I don't mind buying the latest Intel CPU and motherboard even if it'll be obsolete in 6 months to a year.

 

As for going from AMD (ATI) to NVIDIA, I'm in the same boat except I haven't purchased the GTX 770 yet. I'll have to wait and see what's on sale in 3 weeks. I hope I'm fast enough to buy the hot items (hot as in, a really good sale price). :p

 

Intel's next two micro architectures Broadwell and Skylake are expected to both use LGA 1150 (The same as the current Haswell). But that doesn't mean that you'll be able to run 9-series CPU (Broadwell) on a current 8-series motherboard (Haswell). Intel has broken compatibility.

That's fine. I don't mind it as long as the gaming performance is satisfactory. And that seems to be the case with Intel's latest Core i5 CPUs.

 

If you're gaming at 1080p : video card, minimum a 660ti or comparable performance video card (think the 760 is the same).

You can get a cheap motherboard, I have 2 build one with a matx 70$ board and the other with a 180$ one they both perform the same about.. The 180$ offer more USB, better oc, more sata but if you don't care about sli, oc, etc than don't overspend on a mb.

For the PSU get at least a 650w, this should run a 780 with a i7 so you have leverage for this

8 gig of ram is plenty.

Bf 4 you need 4 cores, the i5 is great buy ..

Ram : 90$

Mb : 110$

Video card : 260$

PSU : 70$

Case : 60

Os : 99$ (go with windows 8.1 for bf4)

Ssd os boot drive and cache : 120$

The cheaper, the better. As long as it has enough USB ports for my devices (keyboard, mouse, external hard drives, thumb drives, etc) then I'll be happy. I've seen 8GB DDR3 RAM go for as low as $50 on Cyber Monday. I'm sure it'll be just as cheap or even cheaper on Boxing Day. I don't plan on spending $99 for Windows 8.1. I'm happy with Windows 7 and I have a product key for that. Eventually, I'll upgrade to Windows 8.1 but only if I come across a good deal. An SSD is a must for me and I've been eyeing 256GB for my main OS and games and maybe a 2TB hard drive for everything else.

 

Thanks for your input. (Y)

 

In addition to the Tom's Hardware links zhiVago provided, AnandTech has some good up-to-date shopping recommendations as well:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7548/gaming-motherboards-under-175-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7557/best-desktop-video-cards-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7545/best-ssds-holiday-2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7541/best-desktop-cpus-holiday-2013

 

In my opinion THE killer card is going to be the R9 290 when 3rd party cooler designs start shipping. Look out for ASUS DirectCU II, MSI Frozr IV and Gigabyte WindForce versions (which should all be out by Christmas). In its current form, it offers crazy performance for the money but an equally crazy amount of noise, the reference cooler just doesn't cut it.

 

If that's too much money for your budget, I guess the GTX 760 and R9 270X are good alternatives.

 

If you're going Intel, don't spend much on high speed RAM, it doesn't matter. Just get 2x8GB with standard speeds and timings.

Awesome! Thanks for the in-depth response, Andre. I'll check out those links. Choosing the CPU and motherboard will be easy. The tough decision for me to make is AMD or NVIDIA. You mentioned the R9 290 and I originally planned on purchasing the R9 290X. However, my budget has gone down considerably after I made some Black Friday purchases for the family. I'd be happy with the R9 280X but I'll likely go with whatever gives me the best bang for the buck.

 

I don't plan on spending a lot on RAM. I've decided on purchasing 8GB. I feel like 16GB is too much for gaming. And I'd rather use that money for a better video card or a higher-storage SSD.

 

NP, I've been passing this link around this forum for a few weeks when i5 vs i7 springs up. For clarification, the reason you don't see a difference at high settings is because the GPU is the bottleneck there. The reason you see the variation with low settings is because the cpu is becoming the bottleneck there.

I understand why but not a lot of people do. They think buying a Core i7 will give them better FPS. Sure, it will.. but only if you're playing at anything below 1280x720. As you said, the GPU is the bottleneck nowadays. Especially with games like Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4.

 

You can use PC Park Picker, set you're country to CANADA

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/

 

You can price match pretty much everything at NCIX! :)

Nice! I remember visiting a site like that and I was wondering what it was called. I plan on buying the parts online from NCIX and depending on how hot the sale is, I might just opt to get it rather than price match it. They're very stingy when it comes to price matching so I'd rather not waste time with that.

 

Anyway, thanks for the replies guys. This is why I love Neowin and why I consider it my home on the Internet. Gotta love this community.

 

[Jamushroom Veteran]

Aw, I'm too late to the party!

This is what I recently bought for my gaming PC:

MB: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H

CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K @ 3.4 Ghz

CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H100i

RAM: 8,00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 HyperX Blu (Had this in my previous PC as well so didn't technically get this new.)

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Classified (Buying this one at the end of this month. Had to spread this build out over 3 months)

PSU: Corsair AX860i 80+ Platinum

SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB

HDD: Western Digital Blue Caviar - 1 TB

Case: Corsair Carbide 330r

Thought I'd post this as a guideline but I guess you've already made up your mind about what parts you'll be getting :)

[Praetor]

Why, on Earth, are you guys recommending an i7?? :pinch:

I have an good AMD CPU with a powerful GPU and everything i play it plays very well, maximum resolution; the GPU is the bottleneck, not CPU, although that's gonna change when more and more games start using more threads.

 

Also SSD for games is just for speeding the loading time and speeding buffers, it won't make a big difference like a powerful GPU does.

 

So get a good CPU but a much better GPU! :)

[primexx]

^ but an SSD does make everything else run so much better. And for the very reasonable price there's really no reason not to get one for the OS/programs.

[Praetor]

^ but an SSD does make everything else run so much better. And for the very reasonable price there's really no reason not to get one for the OS/programs.

yes but for gaming? not entirely necessary.

[giantpotato]

You aren't wrong that AMD's CPUs tend to see worse single thread performance, etc. But, for gaming that really doesn't matter since the CPU isn't the bottleneck. Dunno if the other poster realized that or not though in their stabby comment.

 

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that statement? An Intel CPU pretty consistently delivers better performance in games than AMD.

 

 http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-11.html

[LaP]

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that statement? An Intel CPU pretty consistently delivers better performance in games than AMD.

 

 http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-11.html

Lot of benchmarks lately don't show that much of a difference between AMD and Intel at 1080p.

http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html

If you buy a core i7 to play at 1280x720 (the benchmarks from your link) you fail badly. At higher res the gpu gonna bottleneck the core i7 in newer games (for old games any 4 cores cpu will do the job anyway).

I would still buy Intel if the price is good but i would have no trouble gaming on a FX-8350.

[Praetor]

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that statement? An Intel CPU pretty consistently delivers better performance in games than AMD.

 

 http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-11.html

 

Funny, same site says and i quote:

 

While lower resolution gaming highlights processor bottlenecks, most people use slightly higher resolution monitors and want to play with increased detail settings. In these situations, the CPU tends to take a back seat to the graphics processor but even at 1080P (ie: 1920x1080) a slower CPU can still have a drastic impact upon in-game performance. In order to illustrate this, we have carried over the games from our previous tests, pumped detail levels to their max and used the increasingly popular 1080P resolution standard.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-13.html

 

For example Dirt 3, DX11 the FX-9590 is on par with an i7 3770K.

 

So it's better so save a few bucks on the CPU because that won't be the bottleneck on the gaming performance anyway (108 frames is way more than enough, even the last CPU on that table gets 94 frames which is also a lot) and spend more on a GPU.

[giantpotato]

Funny, same site says and i quote:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-13.html

 

For example Dirt 3, DX11 the FX-9590 is on par with an i7 3770K.

 

 

So it's better so save a few bucks on the CPU because that won't be the bottleneck on the gaming performance anyway (108 frames is way more than enough, even the last CPU on that table gets 94 frames which is also a lot) and spend more on a GPU.

 

The FX-9590 is more expensive than the i7...

 

I don't see why OP should save a few bucks on CPU, if he can afford an i7 and get a good GPU at the same time.

 

AMD 280x is ~$350

8GB RAM ~$100

 

That leaves $550 for CPU + Mobo which is more than enough for a i7-4770 and a $200 Mobo.

 

I just bought an i7-4770k + Z87-Pro on Black Friday for <$450. Boxing day will probably have a similar deal.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that statement? An Intel CPU pretty consistently delivers better performance in games than AMD.

 

 http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-11.html

 

I didn't have benchmarks to back up what I said, but you provided me with some. Good job on that one, I'm all about efficiently proving what I say is true...

Before I go on, let us restate what I said: for gaming it doesn't really matter if  you get an AMD CPU because the CPU doesn't tend to be the bottleneck. 

 

Now, let's decipher your results for you. You'll notice how on all of the results where the GPU is NOT bottlenecked (low settings) there is a high variation in performance (i.e. on FPS >> 60). This is true of every single processor in the mix. Because, these are the times when the CPU/memory end up being bottlenecks. But, you know what? We don't even care because the performance is very far above the monitor refresh rate already.

 

Now look at the results in your link where the performance is less than 60 FPS. Here I'll link both your benchmarks and ones I found:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170023-amd-vs-intel-the-ultimate-gaming-showdown-5ghz-fx-9590-vs-i7-4960x/2

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-15.html

 

Notice how the performance is very similar? Notice the inconsistencies in whether Intel or AMD is better? Guess what happens if you throw an i5 and i7 in the mix together? The same thing (Scroll up because I already linked those benchmarks earlier in this thread).

 

Now let's bring it all home. Given a sufficiently decent professor and sufficiently decent main memory speeds, you are generally not going to see a bottleneck on your CPU if you are taxing your GPU. I.e. to clarify, you are not going to see much of a performance difference. The only real cases where the CPU and memory bottlenecks come into play is when the GPU isn't doing much of anything. And the times when the GPU isn't doing much of anything is FPS >> 60.

 

tldr; FPS >> 60 == CPU/memory bottleneck. FPS < 60 FPS == GPU bottleneck. Corner cases can and do exist, but that is generally the case with most games.

 

EDIT: Praetor let me know if you agree with my assessment here.

 

EDIT2: I corrected one of my >> because I put the wrong symbol...

[Praetor]

you are comparing an newer AMD CPU with a older gen Intel CPU, at least compare both generations:

- AMD FX-9590 - 349$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113347

- Intel i7 4930K - 579$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116939

 

Also http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170023-amd-vs-intel-the-ultimate-gaming-showdown-5ghz-fx-9590-vs-i7-4960x/3

 

what i mean is that both brands are producing very similar CPUs performance wise; yes Intel does have a better performance and so what? a much cheaper AMD can deliver a top notch performance while saving some bucks.

 

CPU is not the bottleneck in most games anyway.

[Praetor]

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