Gaming PC or pre owned xbox 360

topcat007

PenguinJim wrote: »

If you're not overlocking, you don't need the 'K' on that i5 CPU. A basic £125 i5 will provide similar performance for a few years. Then again, £165 gets you the i5-4670K (note that you'll need a Z87 motherboard for overclocking instead of the H87 motherboard). You don't need more than an i5-4670K. In five years just add 1GHz to the clockspeed.

You might save yourself a lot of hassle by getting a NVidia card instead of AMD. I wouldn't reject an AMD card myself, but I don't mind fixing tech problems. For friends and family I recommend the superior overall experience of Nvidia (better drivers, quieter and cooler, fewer incompatibilities and game problems, etc). As the GTX 760 has stubbornly refused to drop to a bargain price, I suggest the much-faster GTX 770, which has dropped to £215 plenty of times recently.

You should be able to put together an i5-4670K / GTX 770 build for £600 or less, and it should be stupidly fast for years. If you want to stretch to £650, a £50 SSD will make the whole Windows experience far more pleasant - I'd recommend it.

This is the spec of the £750 one is it overkill..

Zalman Z3 Case in Black or White
Intel Core i5 4670K Processor overclocked to up to 4.3GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Motherboard
AMD Radeon R9 280x 3GB Graphics Card
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 Memory
1000GB SATA SSHD 7200rpm Hybrid Drive
600watt FSP PSU
Onboard High Definition Audio
Windows 8.1

for
GTX 770 it would be an extra £20 bringing total to £770..

The other one which i am expecting a quote on today will hopefully be £550 for


Zalman Z3 Case in Black or White
FX6300
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Motherboard
AMD Radeon R7 270x 3GB Graphics Card
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 Memory
1000GB HDD 7200rpm Hybrid Drive
600watt FSP PSU
Onboard High Definition Audio
Windows 8.1

PenguinJim

Would you consider buying the parts separately and putting them together yourself? You'll need a Philips-head screwdriver, but it'll get you another MoneySavingExpert badge. :money:

matmidgley wrote: »

Funny I had this discussion on a guild forum just a few days ago, He and his friend both were using ATI Cards and were having problems and was switching to nvidia at the same time as 3 others were using nvidia (2 of which were GTX 770) and having problems and going to ATI.

Personally for me I had the HD6970 with a stock cooler for nearly 3 years and not a single problem and I have just switched to the r9 290x twin frozr with no problems in any games.
Also with the implementation of mantle ATI shouldn't be sniffed at

Mantle was great publicity for AMD before last week's DX12 reveal. (Don't get me wrong - I know how difficult it is to keep up with everything tech!)

I'm not drawing my conclusions from a sample of five people. Apart from the occasional game that is released without AMD GPU support (like The Saboteur), AMD offers great price/peformance, and their guy who does the drivers does a very good job of not falling too far behind Nvidia's driver team. If price/performance is genuinely the only thing you look at when considering a GPU, AMD often have a good choice at every price point - especially in the £150-200 bracket right now.

But £215 for the GTX 770, which has G-Sync support today and strong Linux support today (which is likely to mean better for SteamOS in future), seems not only to be the best price/performance, but also the safer, quieter, cooler, less power-hungry and more fully-featured choice. For now.

TherealMandM

PenguinJim wrote: »

Mantle was great publicity for AMD before last week's DX12 reveal. (Don't get me wrong - I know how difficult it is to keep up with everything tech!)

And the ETA on DX12 is by the end of 2015?, where as Mantle is here now and support is growing thick and fast. crytek have just been added to the list and as more developers use it the performance will go up. As its biggest increase is over mid range then It would benefit the OP.

Also G-Sync is pointless to the OP as if he is looking at a mid ranged pc I very much doubt he has a G-Sync enabled monitor

TherealMandM

topcat007 wrote: »

Starting to wonder if it is just better to get a bog standard laptop or desktop , a monitor and pre owned xbox 360 as the console will always be able to play all the games wont it as Microsoft will design them to work on it .. that would all come to under £500

or i am looking at getting a gaming PC at £750 or £550 but not sure yet how much i want to spend .. My only worry here is PC gaming seems a lot more demanding and it always seem you need to keep upgrading bits to get the games at a good quality ?

XBOX 360 also seem to have a massive catalog of games that are dirty cheap ? Does pc have as many games as cheap?

TLDR: Is it better to get a pre owned xbox 360 (maybe even new) or a gaming PC is the decision i need help with ..

£750 would get u a decent enough pc that will last years, Steam has a massive catalogue of games many of which you cannot get on a xbox. you could even look at getting a second hand gaming pc older tech value drops a lot even tho its still high powered and gamers upgrade more as a Habbit (itch that only new tech can scratch) than a Have to

topcat007

PenguinJim wrote: »

Would you consider buying the parts separately and putting them together yourself? You'll need a Philips-head screwdriver, but it'll get you another MoneySavingExpert badge. :money:




Mantle was great publicity for AMD before last week's DX12 reveal. (Don't get me wrong - I know how difficult it is to keep up with everything tech!)

I'm not drawing my conclusions from a sample of five people. Apart from the occasional game that is released without AMD GPU support (like The Saboteur), AMD offers great price/peformance, and their guy who does the drivers does a very good job of not falling too far behind Nvidia's driver team. If price/performance is genuinely the only thing you look at when considering a GPU, AMD often have a good choice at every price point - especially in the £150-200 bracket right now.

But £215 for the GTX 770, which has G-Sync support today and strong Linux support today (which is likely to mean better for SteamOS in future), seems not only to be the best price/performance, but also the safer, quieter, cooler, less power-hungry and more fully-featured choice. For now.

i carnt even build the pc for cheaper then they can do it i checked on part picker

Avoiding building as i would then have to troubleshoot everything if it went wrong

PenguinJim

For £636 you can get:

2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 3 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms OEM NCQ
430W Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-430CXV2UK, 80%+ BRONZE Eff' Quiet Fan, ATX v2.3, PSU
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V
Cooler Master K-350 Black Mid Tower Performance & Gaming Case with USB 3.0 with Side Window w/o PSU
Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3, Intel Z87, S 1150, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 3.0 (x16), D-Sub (VGA) DVI-D HDMI, ATX
Intel Core i5 4670K, S 1150, Haswell, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo, 1200MHz GPU, 34x Ratio, 84W, Retail ("Intel Core i5 4670K Combo", £401.99, top of the page)
and 2GB MSI GTX 770 Twin Frozr, £233.99.

Free delivery at Scan if you have 50+ posts at Hexus, or you could source similar parts at eBuyer. Throw in a 120GB SSD and for under £700 it'll outperform that £770 PC and feel a lot "snappier".

Hmmm... not so much of a price difference after all! :rotfl: You say you were quoted £770 for:

Zalman Z3 Case in Black or White
Intel Core i5 4670K Processor overclocked to up to 4.3GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Motherboard
Nvidia GTX 770
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 Memory
1000GB SATA SSHD 7200rpm Hybrid Drive
600watt FSP PSU
Onboard High Definition Audio
Windows 8.1

Where's that from? I found a similar system from Chillblast, but they charge £936 for that lot. If it's Chillblast, you might be able to get 6% Quidco, too. If you really don't want to build it yourself and don't mind paying someone to build it, you should go for it.

(And don't worry about Mantle, it's so far only useful for making up for some of the lower performance of AMD's CPUs. With an Intel CPU you'd be hard-pushed to see the difference, other than the graphical glitches and game crashes! )

topcat007

PenguinJim wrote: »

For £636 you can get:

2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 3 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms OEM NCQ
430W Corsair Builder Series CMPSU-430CXV2UK, 80%+ BRONZE Eff' Quiet Fan, ATX v2.3, PSU
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V
Cooler Master K-350 Black Mid Tower Performance & Gaming Case with USB 3.0 with Side Window w/o PSU
Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3, Intel Z87, S 1150, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 3.0 (x16), D-Sub (VGA) DVI-D HDMI, ATX
Intel Core i5 4670K, S 1150, Haswell, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo, 1200MHz GPU, 34x Ratio, 84W, Retail ("Intel Core i5 4670K Combo", £401.99, top of the page)
and 2GB MSI GTX 770 Twin Frozr, £233.99.

Free delivery at Scan if you have 50+ posts at Hexus, or you could source similar parts at eBuyer. Throw in a 120GB SSD and for under £700 it'll outperform that £770 PC and feel a lot "snappier".

Hmmm... not so much of a price difference after all! :rotfl: You say you were quoted £770 for:

Zalman Z3 Case in Black or White
Intel Core i5 4670K Processor overclocked to up to 4.3GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Motherboard
Nvidia GTX 770
8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 Memory
1000GB SATA SSHD 7200rpm Hybrid Drive
600watt FSP PSU
Onboard High Definition Audio
Windows 8.1

Where's that from? I found a similar system from Chillblast, but they charge £936 for that lot. If it's Chillblast, you might be able to get 6% Quidco, too. If you really don't want to build it yourself and don't mind paying someone to build it, you should go for it.

(And don't worry about Mantle, it's so far only useful for making up for some of the lower performance of AMD's CPUs. With an Intel CPU you'd be hard-pushed to see the difference, other than the graphical glitches and game crashes! )

Thanks very much for your great effort :beer:

I would need to put OS on top of the £636 though brining it to £707 with CCL winodws 8 standard at £71


Yea it is from chillblast their warranty looks great and not that more expensive than building myself for the hassle

would you recommend the gtx770 or 280x only difference i can see is vram and gtx770 is 8.9 as opposed to 8.5 on GPU boss

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280X-vs-GeForce-GTX-770

is vram more important for future prof?

PenguinJim

You'll find some people arguing vehemently that more than 2GB is absolutely vital. But it's not vital today, and it's unlikely to be in the next few years unless you increase your resolution to 1600P or beyond. By the time a 2GB 770 isn't fast enough at 1080P, it probably won't just be the 2GB that's a problem, but also the 770 chip itself.

Yes, the PS4 and One each have 8GB, but that's a single pool of RAM and VRAM, and the consoles will never target higher than 1080P.

Titanfall was recently released and managed to fill more than 2GB of video memory with its "Insane" textures. Strangely, third-party reports suggested they still looked the same as the "High" textures and were simply uncompressed to take up more space. More recent reports suggest that the latest drivers do a much better job with "Insane" textures on 2GB cards. You might want to look into this topic more and draw your own conclusion, as I don't play Titanfall and haven't been following this particular issue too closely.

For a £20-25 price difference, I'd go for a 3GB or 4GB card, but once you get to £35-40 more I'd rather pocket it today and have it ready for a nice upgrade in three years. It seems that a 4GB 770 is an extra £60 - a nice amount to put towards that new card in 2017. Edit: I think it's worth spelling out that you won't see any benefit at all when 2GB or less is being used on the card. It's not like a faster GPU which will keep adding frames-per-second. That extra 1GB or 2GB will just sit idle for 99.9% of its life, doing nothing! NOTHING! :P

Based on today's prices and performance I'd go for the Nvidia GTX 770 over the 280X as the 770 will be quieter, cooler, less power-hungry, have better drivers and driver support, have better support for possible future applications such as a G-sync monitor or SteamOS, and, oh yes, it's faster.

TherealMandM

topcat007 wrote: »

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280X-vs-GeForce-GTX-770

here is another comparision site http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1037?vs=1041

you can see they are very close and at 1080p either card is more than capable you wont be dissapointed in performance no matter which u choose tbh

topcat007

PenguinJim wrote: »

You'll find some people arguing vehemently that more than 2GB is absolutely vital. But it's not vital today, and it's unlikely to be in the next few years unless you increase your resolution to 1600P or beyond. By the time a 2GB 770 isn't fast enough at 1080P, it probably won't just be the 2GB that's a problem, but also the 770 chip itself.

Yes, the PS4 and One each have 8GB, but that's a single pool of RAM and VRAM, and the consoles will never target higher than 1080P.

Titanfall was recently released and managed to fill more than 2GB of video memory with its "Insane" textures. Strangely, third-party reports suggested they still looked the same as the "High" textures and were simply uncompressed to take up more space. More recent reports suggest that the latest drivers do a much better job with "Insane" textures on 2GB cards. You might want to look into this topic more and draw your own conclusion, as I don't play Titanfall and haven't been following this particular issue too closely.

For a £20-25 price difference, I'd go for a 3GB or 4GB card, but once you get to £35-40 more I'd rather pocket it today and have it ready for a nice upgrade in three years. It seems that a 4GB 770 is an extra £60 - a nice amount to put towards that new card in 2017. Edit: I think it's worth spelling out that you won't see any benefit at all when 2GB or less is being used on the card. It's not like a faster GPU which will keep adding frames-per-second. That extra 1GB or 2GB will just sit idle for 99.9% of its life, doing nothing! NOTHING! :P

Based on today's prices and performance I'd go for the Nvidia GTX 770 over the 280X as the 770 will be quieter, cooler, less power-hungry, have better drivers and driver support, have better support for possible future applications such as a G-sync monitor or SteamOS, and, oh yes, it's faster.

The 280x 3gb is actually cheaper in the build i am looking at

i still have no idea this is driving me dam nuts :rotfl: