GTX 1050 or Nothing?

Mar 23, 2018
2
0
10
I have a buddy trying to get into PC gaming and he asked me if he needed a 1050 at minimum or if he even needed a GPU for now? I'm aware the prices are all insane, but wouldn't it make sense to at least start with a 1050?

Appreciate all your opinions.
 
If he builds AMD and not G series then he will need one, other than that I would push cash into ram/CPU and buy GPU at later time. Would be good if his iGPU choice can run whatever he want to run on that PC.
 

spdragoo

Expert
Ambassador
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html

Depends on the resolution he's going to play at. Unless he's going to depend on an integrated GPU (which I wouldn't do unless it was one of AMD's Raven Ridge APUs), your absolute minimum should be the GT 1030... but that's pretty much only going to give "good" performance at 720p or lower. GTX 1050 or the RX 560 would be the next step up, but if your friend is serious about gaming at 1080p he'll want at least a GTX 1060 or the RX 470/570 & 480/580.

If the prices are still too high, though, he can always compare those recommendations to similar cards at the same hierarchy level (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html) & see if they might be cheaper.
 
$250 or so buys you a G4600 with decent HD630 graphics, a lga1151 motherboard and 8gb of ddr4 ram.
Not bad for cpu intensive games, less so for fast action games.
HD630 might be around GT1030 performance.
One can then know better how strong a graphics card needs to be.

Do buy a quality550-650w w psu up front to allow for a future graphics card upgrade.
I like the Seasonic focus line.

8gb of ram is ok for gaming only.
If the future adds multitasking while gaming, buy the 2 x 8gb ram kit up front.

lga1151 will allow strong i3/i5/i7 processors as an upgrade.

If, however, the budget is much higher, 8th gen intel and a z370 motherboard is the way to go.
 
It's all dependent upon what the primary focus is as far as gaming is concerned seeing that some types of games are more CPU or CPU (sometimes both) demanding than others. Resolution is a huge consideration as well. Finally, checking the minimum requirements on a desired game is helpful as it will usually be what determines whether your setup is good enough to run it or not.
 

spdragoo

Expert
Ambassador


HD 630 is roughly equal to HD 530, which puts it a few steps below a GT 1030 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html)...but as you said, that's not too bad as long as it's not too intensive.
 

It's not even close, actually. A GT 1030 might be low-end, but even it should be several times as fast as Intel's HD630 integrated graphics. And a GTX 1050 will be around twice as fast as a GT 1030. Intel's integrated graphics are not a good option for anyone who wants to play most recent games, as in many newer titles they'll struggle to 30fps even at 720p at the lowest settings. Only AMD's recently launched Ryzen 2200G and 2400G offer integrated graphics performance around the same level as a GT 1030. And even a GT 1030 level card is a bit too weak to handle 1080p in many newer games, though it should handle 720p rather well.

Plus, even the CPU portion of the G4600 isn't particularly great by today's standards, now that you can get relatively decent quad-core processors for around $100 or so. It's a dual-core processor, and while its hyperthreading will definitely help, having at least four true cores will help performance a lot more in many newer games, which are increasingly making heavy use of four or more threads.

Some cheap quad-core processors for around $100 include the i3-8100 for around $115, the Ryzen 1200 for around $95, and the Ryzen 2200G for around $100. The i3-8100 might offer slightly faster gaming performance than the others, but again, you would likely want a dedicated GPU with it, since Intel's integrated graphics are simply not up to the task of running the latest games in any reasonable capacity. Also, currently there are still only higher-end motherboards available for Intel's "Coffee Lake" 8000-series processors, but lower-end motherboards should be launching within the next couple weeks or so.

The Ryzen 1200 is another option with compatible lower-end, overclocking-capable motherboard's readily available, though it lacks integrated graphics entirely, so you would certainly need a dedicated card for that. The Ryzen 2200G is pretty much the 1200's successor, and as previously mentioned, it does include some relatively decent integrated graphics, just a little behind a GT 1030 in terms of performance in most games, provided you have it paired with a dual-channel kit of relatively fast system memory (preferably around DDR4 2933 or higher). The only notable issue with the 2200G is that it just came out some weeks back, and most of the motherboards for sale out there haven't had their BIOS updated to work with it yet, which can cause trouble getting the system up and running, since you may need to borrow a loaner CPU from AMD to update the motherboard to work with the processor. AMD has more processors coming out in a few weeks though, and we may see more motherboards certified to work with them out of the box by then.

Of course, as I said before, a GTX 1050 will be around twice as fast as a GT 1030, and even that will be a bit faster than the Ryzen 2200G's integrated graphics. And it is possible to find some GTX 1050's that aren't too excessively overpriced. It's possible to find some for around $150 right now, which is definitely more than the card's launch price, but not as much of a markup as there is on higher end cards. Of course, you didn't really specify whether he even needs a new system, or just a graphics card for his existing one, which would be useful to know.
 

jr9

Estimable
Just for 1080p/60Hz general gaming I would start at GTX 1050 even for even the most budget machine. The GT 1030 doesn't perform the greatest in a lot of games. I recommend it only for HTPC or light eSports title machines. It's good for older games as well. It's definitely a lot better than integrated graphics. GTX 1050 would be much, much better than even the best integrated graphics which come in the 2200G or 2400G processors.
 
Mar 23, 2018
2
0
10
Thanks for all of your input! He's definitely going with an Intel build, I should have prefaced with that. This will be a build that he upgrades when he's able to. I'll pass this info on to him and let him sift through it all.