Grid 2 won’t embarrass the owner of a cheap graphics card, but it will cause enthusiasts who combine a higher-end GPU with mid-range host processing or system memory to chase bottlenecks. Overclocking solved both limitations in my $1600 PC, while the Radeon R9 290 in Don’s $1200 PC appears held back slightly by his PC's DRAM bandwidth limits.

Grid 2 isn’t a great game for identifying enthusiast-level graphics bottlenecks, but it is good for diagnostics. It’s also pretty fun to play.
The harder you lean on graphics, the more Grid 2 demands of the rest of your system. The $1600 and $1200 machines both appear bottlenecked using the Ultra graphics preset at 1920x1080 and below, at least until they're overclocked. Paul had bigger concerns with the prowess of his R7 265, yet still managed to push over 50 FPS at his target 1920x1080 resolution.

- A SBM Based On Reader Feedback
- How We Tested Our Q2 2014 SBM Builds
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Results: Power And Heat
- Results: Overall Performance And Efficiency
- Our System Builder Marathon, By The Numbers
I got my two licenses for like, $20. Though I probably couldn't get any more like that, I don't need any more at the moment, thanks. If you don't want the OS, and you win my PC, just tell me and I'll keep it. Thanks!
Disposition should I be a fortunate winner:
1. Having not messed with a "new" Athlon, I might put a 92mm cooler on it and see what I can get out of it for a week or three. I'd almost certainly contribute a SSD to it, then most likely donate it to a startup I know of that actually is more in need of office-type PCs (but they do play some games).
2. If the motherboard were micro-ATX, I'd probably use most of these parts to upgrade / replace my Phoenix PC, as they represent a platform upgrade. It would be a substantial upgrade to my Omega PC, but I like the idea of maintaining that AM3+ system due to the overall quality of the parts in it. If the Apevia case surprises me due to its quality, I may use it anyway. One way or another, this would lead to another complete system donation though.
3. The parts in this one appear to be of sufficient quality / durability that I would probably end up forsaking the Omega PC for this one. I'd put its 990FX onto my test bench though to keep it around, and donate that one (MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming) as above.
Id also want system build for NAS and UPS and things. If you want to put your swap file in your memory. Get a UPS and link it so if the power fails you computer will shut down correctly. I wish they would of put that in this article.
Power outage is a b+ch. I have not done this but i wish there would be an article on UPS's that work well and turn off everything orderly.
It would be good if we had load shedding and other particulars to make the reliability higher. Id like a solar system with load shedding
I really wish they make more articles on upgrades or recycling, that would coexist with these new builds. I believe most Tom viewers, correct me if I am wrong, are not new to computers. For instance, I had an aging OC'd i7930 x58 with triple channel memory, the mobo died after many years, but tracking down a x58 board new is impossible today. So I had about $300 at the time to spend on a new CPU/MOBO (Im saving up for X99 btw) and wanted to use my old DDR3 1600 memory, SSD , HD, video card, and case.... Now what would be a good recommendation for that scenario? I went the following specs on my signature... $270 + about $30 shipping to Hawaii... :|