Most balanced Gaming PC

The most balanced PC would be number two, although a P55 board would be better than H55. The second most balanced would be the Phenom II X4 955 PC, then the i7, then the Athlon.

Sorry I forgot to say when playing at 1920x1080

Hi
I think option 4 will be the best if you want to do gaming only. yeah the processor isnt that good but 5830 in crossfire is surely better than a single 5870.

Definetly number 2 then

if you do this, don't go with an x90FX motherboard unless you plan on crossfireing the 5870 with another 5870. you're wasting your money on the 2x16 lanes if you don't plan on crossfireing. that will save you some money for the motherboard.

oops, I saw 790GX and noted in my mind 790FX. I would still consider getting something with an 8XX chipset with SB850. it should be about the same price.

955 + 5870 = Awesome combo.

In #4, the CPU would be bottlenecked (there's a recent Tom's article on that CPU; it isn't enough to Crossfire two high-end cards. Sorry, I'm too busy/lazy to link it, but it is not balanced).
If it were me, I'd probably choose option #3, or possible #5, which is an i5-650 with a HD5850.

For me, the best would be:
[1] 930+5870 -- Pricey for sure, but well worth it if you can cough out the dough. An overclocker's dream
[2] 750+5870 -- same performance as above in games, a bit reduced in applications. The poor man's 930
[3] 955+5870 -- Unlocked goodness paired with a top tier gpu

i would take number 4, as the Phenom will handle games just fine

ASUS 890 Mobo £160

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB...

AMD 1055t £160
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB...

Crossfire HD 5770 1gb £260 (£130 each)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...

£580 in total, two HD5770 in crossfire with x6 on 890 mobo, you know this makes sense!

Or if price too high swap mobo with Gigabyte £100

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB...

and save £60 bringing total to £520

This leaves option for 2 x 5830 for the extra £60 ( £320 for both) back to £580ish

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...

Or HD 5850 ( £230) For a stupid low price of £490 with the Gigabyte Board!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX...



Added extra is Sata 6Gb and USB3 included on these boards and no crippled PCI lanes that lga 1156 has to put up with!

Summed up- 890 mobo- x6 core AMD and xfire 5770/5830/5850 (your choice) is better than No 1,2,3,and 4!

Moricon, the only problem with that is you have no room for GPU expansion, it might cost more for a 5870, but you can add another later, as opposed to having to remove both 5770's for a different card(s)

Yup, Totally agree, If the budget fits then a 5870 would be better, not a problem, but looking at OP original budget and wanting a balanced system, the x6 on a 890 with 5830 Xfire is the faster solution, and you can always sell two 5830 and recoup costs and replace with 5850 xfire or 5870 xfire!

Looking at OP he also asks to leave out Overclocking and Upgradability in your choices so I did!

what about i7 920 oc and one gts 250 512 mb ?

An i7 920 & GTS 250 combo would be similar to an i7 920 & HD 5750 combo, which isn't really balanced, and the OP would need a bigger frame buffer than 512 MB to handle 1080p resolution. Since OP's main concern is gaming, the best option would be the Phenom II X4 955 & HD 5870, otherwise the Core i5 750 & the HD 5870.

Aww Lmeow, go x6 for a few bob more go on! although i5 750 hd5870 is quick as well!

Thanks for all the answers and suggestions the 4 setups are just examples what I was really getting at is what % of you budget should you spend on the GPU compared to CPU+board (I selected the boards just to show the average price difference on the platforms). The only surprising thing about the answers are the no of people who selected no 2, I thought you would get more going from a 5850 to 5870 than going from a 955BE to an i5 750.

well considering that the phenom doesn't bottleneck the 5870 (or at least not until it gets 120+ fps) the stronger GPU is better to have for gaming

^ +1

The 955 is plenty for the 5870, and for CPU dependent games as well when OCed. This is an awesome duo.

However when 5870 crossfire comes into play... you may see more of an advantage in even GPU bound games with the i5-750. With that much GPU power running the 750 shows it's strength (if you OC, especially).

idk, i would even say that until you get beyond 60 fps or so, the dual 5870's on the Phenom II works fine, after that you might lose a step or two, and for most people that doesn't matter (60 Hz monitor)

The number of FPS doesn't quite matter when dealing with amount of calculations the CPU/GPU will need to compete.

Newer games will run at lower FPS even with the higher end cards and high end CPUs, and they can still have as many calculations as the high FPS older game.

5870 crossfire is going to max out most games anyways, so the future is what anyone is looking towards with that kind of setup (unless they're on eyefinity or 30" monitor). Even a single 5870 does. But if you are using a resolution of 1920x1200 or less the i5-750 seems to be 20%+ ahead of Deneb clock4clock from what I've seen in games today. And when a 20% hit begins to be critical in games (under 40FPS) I'd expect it to be noticeable.

Just my observation. And actually, I'd argue a 750 with a 5970 (5850 crossfire) would match or beat a Phenom II with 5870 crossfire.





Notice the resolution-FPS scaling difference comparing lynnfield and deneb.





I picked out the 'best' examples of what I'm saying, --->here<--- is the review.