Good enough for BF3?

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660
I'm planning to buy a new PC but i'm not sure if it will support BF3.
I'm still looking to get the HD 7850 or the GTX 480.

Specs from the PC i want to buy:

CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K Boxed (Ivy Bridge)
Case: Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper
GPU: Sapphire HD 7850 OC 2GB (PCI-e 3.0 x16) or EVGA 480 (PCI-e 2.0 x16) (which one?)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe (Z77)
RAM: Corsair Dominator CMP4GX3M2A1600C8 (i already have 4)
PSU: Corsair Professional Gold AX650 (is 650w enough?)
SSD: Corsair Force GT 60GB

And what's the difference between PCI-e 3.0 x16 and PCI-e 2.0 x16?

Thanks for your help! :)


 

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660
The 480 is a more powerful GPU, but will run a little hotter and consume more power.
Drivers are rock solid.

The 480 will max BF3, here is my single 480 crunching BF3:

[flash=420,315]http://www.youtube.com/v/BZs_FfriN_Q?version=3&hl=en_GB[/flash]

Will the HD 7850 OC'd max BF3 out to?
 
The 7950 might not have as much performance for the price as the 480, but keep in mind that big power usage differences (more than 40w) lead to decently sized differences in electricity bills over two to three years and the 7950 is still the faster card (by a wide margin).

Also, if you use the most recent drivers, the 7800 cards improve on most of their previous problems. The 7850 is so close to the 480 in performance that you won't see the difference no matter what, but the 480 uses a LOT more power. It probably uses more than 75% more power and that could be a more than 90w difference.

The 480 is probably also louder and runs hotter too. Just something to keep in mind. As a short term card (IE, 1 year or less before next upgrade), the 480 is superb. However, it's power usage will overtake it's high up front performance for the money if you give it too much time.
 

You put a bunch of $$$ where it isn't needed and then shorted yourself on your gpu. That's the last thing you want to do for a gaming build. Case, cpu, psu, ... I mean I can see where an easy $200 can be knocked off without losing quality and that $200 could be put towards a better gpu. I mean if this is for gaming it's all about FPS.
 
^+1.2500k is good enough to max out any game.400r is a better case for $$.gigabyte UD5H-z77 has all the good features for a lesser price.you can get a better power supply unit for lesser price.
BTW,what's your max budget?
 

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660


I know but it's a PC i want to have for atleast 3-4 years maybe even longer. And it's not only for games. It's also for converting films from 5 GB. So that's why i choose an i7. :)
 

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660


Around the 1000 euro's. That's 1,308.30 USD to be precise. hehe
 


The PSU is a lot more than necessary because it is a Gold edition. These are far more expensive than the Bronze edition PSUs despite not being a whole lot more efficient than the Bronzes. I always recommend a Bronze for a high performance for the money build (IE all low/mid end builds and most high end builds, it's only when you spend well over $1500 on parts that efficiency becomes that important) because although it is almost as efficient as Silver and Gold, it is generally a lot cheaper.

A good PSU (yes, 650w is enough for your current system specs) should cost only between $60 and $100, unless you are building a monster machine.

That case is a little more expensive than I would recommend for your budget, but it's an excellent case and it's not that bad of a price at all. However, I prefer to buy a sub $80 case myself.

That motherboard is way to expensive. I wouldn't spend much more than half of that, even on the highest end LGA 1155 build.

That SSD is too small for my tastes, but like the case, that's not as bad as the other issues that I see here. I think that Why_Me's $200 savings was actually a significantly conservative number.

Also, for what you are doing with this system, you won't see a difference between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0. The difference between them is that 3.0 has lower latency and almost exactly double the bandwidth between the PCIe device and the PCIe controller per PCIe lane.

You could have saved a good amount of money even if you had stuck with the i7 for your needs. The motherboard could have been more like $140 (would be just as good and would not hamper performance at all) and you would save $100. The PSU could have been a $60-80 PSU and just be an 80+ Bronze version of the same PSU with the same wattage (~ the same, it could have been a little higher) and you would have saved at least another $70. The case could have been a slightly cheaper model at around $80 or so and it would have been roughly as good (some cheaper cases are as good as or even better than moderately more expensive models, it's all about finding the right deal) and you would have saved another $70 or so.

Even without chaging the CPU, you could have saved another $200 or so and spent that money on more important parts such as the graphics or a higher capacity SSD.
 
I'm also worried about that RAM. Isn't it 1.65v? That could really hurt the longevity of your CPU. You have three optimal choices here: try lowering the voltage down to at most 1.57v or so, replacing the RAM (hopefully, that isn't necessary), or rasing some other setting in the BIOS from 1.0v or so to 1.15v or 1.2v. I think that this setting is called VSMV or something like that, sory that I don't have more info on it. I only recently found out from Tom's and some others that raising it solves the 1.65v memory killing SB and IB CPUs problem because it seems to have only recently surfaced as a solution for this.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that having four 1.65v modules decreases the longevity even further than two 1.65v modules if you don't do one of the two above solutions.
 

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660


What about this motherboard?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130643&Tpk=MSI%20Z77A-GD65

And why should i buy a 400 euro GPU if a 210 euro GPU does the same in gaming? I won't see a difference between 40 FPS and 50 FPS and my screen resolution is only 1440x900.
 

Tbrown37

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2010
110
0
18,680
Okay I just read over the OPs post and to let you know you really don't need to be buying a 7970 7950 or gtx 480 for BF3. Unless you're running it on multiple monitors. Otherwise you're paying extra money so you can turn off vertical sync and see how high the FPS goes. Waste of your money.

My friend has the AMD 6 core 1090t, AMD 6850, AA at 2x, 1920x1080 res, 16x AF ALL settings at high. If you put the settings at ultra the card barely gets choppy. With an intel CPU you will be fine with the 7850 spending an extra 50-125$ on a card because it IS better but you won't tell the difference would be a waste.

Hope this helps and saves you some money!!
 

Tbrown37

Distinguished
Jul 18, 2010
110
0
18,680
If your budget is 1300 dollars and you're playing with 1 monitor you're wasting your money buy a 1000 dollar PC and pick up a 2nd or 3rd monitor with the left over 300.
 
well i tested BF3 on my dad's htc(i3 2100,msi 5770@900mhz)and it was playable.but things start to get worse when you try to max out aa stuff or multiplayer.that's why it is better to build a rig with powerful core components instead of spending on more cores or fancy cases.
 


Sorry about the mix-up with the graphics, I didn't realize that you had a 1440x900 monitor. Even a 7850 or 480 would be way overkill for that, but they would pretty much ensure that they would be enough for some time.

As for that motherboard, I do like it. It's still a little more than I would spend, but it's a much better buy than the other one.
 


A 6850 is not enough for proper 1080p quality play in BF3, or even most other current games. At a minimum, I'd recommend a 6950 or GTX 560 TI for that from that generation of cards, maybe through in the 7850 and GTX 560 TI 448 core into consideration.
 

Orthodux

Honorable
May 6, 2012
59
0
10,660


I'm thinking about buying a new monitor.
Sorry for the language. :)
This one:
http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/247184/benq-g2420hd.html#tab:info
 


If you get a new monitor, then you might want a faster graphics card, such as the 7950. It should be able to do 1080p maxed out for quite some time and if you want to, it is also a compute performance monster, unlike the 7850 or 7870 and Nvidia's cards.