Processors & Graphic Cards?

Iconic

Is there a simple method to work out which processor and graphic card you need?

Are the high-end processors primary used for gaming and will an integrated graphic card be sufficient for the average user?

This site http://www.cpubenchmark.net/mid_range_cpus.html is usually quoted here as a good guide for processors but it no good getting a top of the range one if you don't need it!

JasX

Iconic wrote: »

Is there a simple method to work out which processor and graphic card you need?

A good check for whats current and standard is hop onto dell.com and see what they're bundling with their standard/mid range systems... then look on the benchmark site for things around that range (that are recent, not the 3 year old ex-superprocessors).

Decent basic graphics cards start from as little as £20 these days and I'd suggest getting one even for general computer use to take the load off your CPU and main RAM freeing it up for other things you might want to run....

Lokolo

integrated graphics for decent gaming? Erm. No.

Decent graphics cards you'll pay in the range of £75+

I paid £110 for mine and I got Radeon 4890

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Which you can see on this is 4th one down. It runs awesome. I have all my games in 1920x1080 and high settings. Get maximum FPS on CSS on full settings.

But as poster above says, you can get them a lot cheaper. Depends how much of a gamer you are.

JasX

yeah OP says 'average' use so i'm assuming with gaming limited to 'solitaire' type things no card really required.

But if they pickup something basic taking loading off their processor/RAM will speed everythign else up a tad at minimal cost, and make the computer last longer before it gets to the point its too slow & frustrating to use....

I have one of these but again probably a tad excessive for the average user
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_295_us.html


....and yes happy as I am with it might opt for something made by Radeon next time

ddoris

Well 90+ % of motherboards are onboard graphics and for non gaming use a seperate graphics card is not needed.
Any modern dual core cpu is more than up to everyday tasks.
Regarding the chart you linked to a celeron e3200 -£32-is near the top and the next celeron up the range is on the high end chart e3300-£35. dell etc. are using e3200 and e5300-£45- a lot.
Cpu's are improving rapidly, hard to keep up sometimes. Onboard graphics have come on as well -intel x4500 on g41 motherboards is an example.

turbobob

Look at what software you want to run and for any minimum hardware recommendations specified, and then get something at least as good as that really. After that budget comes into play. I always tend to look at things in price vs performance terms.

For example, say you were looking to build a low cost system for browsing and word processing. You can still find the single core Celeron 430 for £27, which would do the job adequately. However, an extra £8 would get you a dual core Celeron E3200, which offers about 3 x the raw processing power. I would in this case go for the E3200 every time, unless you really needed to save £8.

Games is one use for high end processors, but on the other hand very few games currently make use of more than two cores. If you can afford high end then great, but if you wanted to make a gaming machine on a budget, I would probably look to get a fast dual core, and allocate more money to the graphics card. Heavy duty video and photo work would be an area where it would be worth spending the money on a higher end CPU.

Integrated graphics are fine for the average user, I would say. They do vary though. Some are basically a built in full graphics card with its own memory, for example AMD's 785 chipset. These are good, but do cost a bit more. Various integrated chipsets have hardware HD video acceleration now. Intel's older chipsets don't though and are really only suitable for basic desktop use.

Iconic

Thanks for the replies.

So if I don't want to do any gaming but do most other things including editing video would an integrated graphic card do?

If I then added a middle range processor from the list above with Windows7, 500gig or I TB HDD and plently of RAM would I then have a machine that would last me a few years?

ddoris

Integrated graphics would do you -for video editing maybe try for best cpu in budget - HDD-hardly anyone needs a 1 TB hdd - unless you like to put all your eggs in one basket.
Ram has gone up 100% last 2/3 months so maybe don't buy too much at current inflated prices.

JasX

ddoris wrote: »

-hardly anyone needs a 1 TB hdd - unless you like to put all your eggs in one basket.
.

except perhaps people who have alot of videos they edit... they can get rather big. however OP needs to decide if they want to invest in fixed hard drives in their PC or portable drives for easy of moving files around (but more expensive)