Gaming Computer - £600 Budget

[Guest]

I recently purchased a laptop for university and gaming, and made the foolish assumption that gaming on a laptop would work well (NVidia GT 630M... say no more). I am now contemplating selling it for a Desktop and found this specification that hits my budget spot on:

AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard
TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Sapphire HD 7770 1024MB GDDR5
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM

With a £600 budget, is AMD the right way to go? Does anyone have any recommendations for adjustments?

Any help on easing my mind would be appreciated!

Approximate Purchase Date: Flexible

Budget Range: £600-£750 ($900-$1100?)

System Usage from Most to Least Important: University and Gaming
Are you buying a monitor: Yes


Parts to Upgrade: Starting from Scratch

Do you need to buy OS: Yes

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Recently discovered newegg.com or overclockers.co.uk

Location: Brighton, England

Parts Preferences: Undecided in the Intel/AMD war

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Your Monitor Resolution: Never Really understood this in detail.. sorry

Additional Comments: Used for a mixture of university and gaming, however aimed at meeting gaming specs.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Laptop graphics card wasn't good enough
Thanks

 

[DeusAres]

Here's an Intel option with a great upgrade path...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-3220 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor (£81.65 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£76.62 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£30.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£45.54 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 1GB Video Card (£125.98 @ Dabs)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£31.18 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£49.98 @ Novatech)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Monitor: LG IPS224V-PN 21.5" Monitor (£100.13 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£59.94 @ Aria PC)
Total: £614.60
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-20 23:12 GMT+0000)

Here's an AMD option with a better GPU...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£70.20 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£57.56 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£30.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£45.54 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card (£167.74 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£31.18 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£49.98 @ Novatech)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Monitor: LG IPS224V-PN 21.5" Monitor (£100.13 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£59.94 @ Aria PC)
Total: £625.85
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-12-20 23:14 GMT+0000)

Sorry about going over budget. But you're going to take a tremendous performance hit if you sacrifice the GPU any more. If you still need to save some money, check out the HD 6870.

 

[sam_p_lay]

That's a good spec ^. I'd save a little bit by dropping RAM to 4GB so you can step up to a GTX660. I'd also not buy a Lite-On (just had too many bad experiences with them). I'm in Eastbourne by the way, spent the day in Brighton today (primarily for the Krispy Kremes)

EDIT: I forgot to say what to get instead of the Lite-On Only writers that have never let me down were Samsungs. Minor detail anyway, but it's worth getting good everything.