Arthan

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Oct 23, 2010
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Ok, I'm gonna try my best not to turn this into a wall of text.

A few weeks ago I had a little problem with water. The "leaking pipe that floods your whole apartment" kind of water problem. Having just received my insurance money, I am now ready to replace the gaming computer I built a few years ago, which was more or less turned into an aquarium during the incident. It wasn't anything special but it was a nice little computer and it still had great performance running new games on max settings - 1080p.

Now, that leads me to my question. Budget is obviously not a problem here as the amount I received is substantial, but I never was a fan of building for overkill. I don't have any problem with dropping 1500$ + on my system if that is going to yield me interesting results, but if that isn't necessary I would rather spend the money on something else. I saw a few benchmarks today and the budget pentium dual core processors seem to have really impressive performance for their price. On the other hand, the i5 processors also seem to have impressive performance for their price, but I am afraid that might be too much performance for nothing.

Same thing goes for GPUs, I saw some radeon 6850 and 6870 deliver great FPS for their price and I'm wondering if there is any reason to go for the more expensive products.

I do consider myself a hardcore gamer and I play a lot of games, I just don't wanna go spending more than what is reasonable. Can anyone help me shed some light on the performance I can expect from a system built around that kind of dual core cpu today ? I do know a bit about computers and performance but I am in no way as knowledgeable as the people who post on this forum :)

Thanks.
 

JMer806

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Jun 12, 2012
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Some games are more CPU-intensive, like Skyrim for example. For the money, I'd get the quad-core everytime since it's a lot more "future-proof" and will help with the overall speed of your system when you're doing everything else. Yeah the dual-cores are fine and perform well, but if you've got $1500 in the budget there's no reason to not go for the i5. The i7 would definitely be overkill though :p

Here's what I'd get: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ezQj

CPU: i5 3570k
Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO
MB: Asus P8Z77-V
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB low-profile 1600mHz
SSD: Crucial M4 128 GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 670 2 GB
PSU: Corsair TX-750W semi-modular
Optical: LiteOn DVD/CD burner
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium OEM

Didn't include a case but that comes in around $1250, leaving you with plenty of money to find the case that suits you best. This computer will be upgradeable and will plow through any game on highest settings at 1080p. When it stops performing like a beast, pop in another 670 in SLI - the PSU can run it easily - and you'll be good to go for awhile longer.
 

JMer806

Honorable
Jun 12, 2012
515
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11,060


Yeah it's a good one - if you use it a lot, register though so you can save your builds.

Don't forget to choose a best answer to close the thread (unless you've got more questions).