Intel or AMD CPU for gaming PC?

xtal191

aperture_nuig wrote: »

Total build cost: €437.22 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i3-2100 Box, LGA1155 €100.97
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 €28.26
Gigabyte GA-PH67-DS3-B3, Intel H67, ATX €76.49
BitFenix Merc Alpha €31.69
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W €54.49
Sapphire HD6870 1G GDDR5 PCI-E DL-DVI-I+SL-DVI-D / HDMI / DP €145.32

New build with some suggested changes,some I made myself. I added a 550 psu (amazon) and a board with crossfire so I can add a second card as an upgrade. Any other suggestions? if anyone spots a way to reduce the price and maintain a good level of performance.

EDIT:
Sorry, I really didnt mean to cause so much disruption in the forum, I even asked in the OP for this not to turn into a flame war :pac:

Dont think you can overclock on H61 or H67 boards, you'd be better off getting a P67 or Z68 board. Im sure someone on here knows for certain though.

aperture_nuig

nesf wrote: »

Planning on overclocking? If not your build is fine.

As a student computer engineer I'm very intrigued by the idea, but don't think I'd chance it

Dublin_Gunner

nesf wrote: »

Can't you read? It's a toss up depending on what kinds of games you play, i.e. where the bottlenecks are given your current system, resolution etc. You're making out that I'm saying in general it's a toss up between a CPU or an extra GPU regardless of game which is obviously not what I said if one can identify the qualifications attached to the usage of "it's a toss up".


You'll only ever get the full benefit of SLI if your CPU can handle the extra load. This is why adding a second card with a weak CPU doesn't give you much of a gain.

Its all about balance. You can't expect to drive to high end GPU's in SLI / Crossfire with a weak CPU. However low end multi-GPU setups, or indeed a single high end GPU should be fine no matter what CPU you put into it.

Saying that, it would be very difficult to recommend anythign below a quad core these days too.

When it comes to gaming, and decent quad core will suffice, paired with a high end graphics card, and gaming at 1920x1080.

But I'll disagree about the adding a second card with a weak CPU doesn;t give you much of a gain - it certainly does, and you can crank the graphics details right up. You will get EVEN more of a gain with a faster CPU, but you cannot honestly say you won't get much of a gain.

Serephucus

Solitaire wrote: »

Serephucus, you are also on exceedingly thin ice. You let this troublemaker get to you and made angry responses that effectively egged him on to even greater heights of insanity. But you also flat-out insulted him, which is not tolerated in any way, shape or form. You should have kept your cool, rebutted him with logic no matter how crazy his assertions and then Reported his posts once he completely derailed this thread. Not go and call him a moron.

Noted. Logic only from here on in.

@aperture: Here's an alternete build from Dabs. I chose Dabs because they offer free delivery, and with budget builds like this, the €30 can make a difference.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €456.48 (inc delivery Free!)
ASRock S1155 Intel H61M DDR3 mATX|€49.19
XIGMATEK Asgard Chassis|€32.52
Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz LGA1155 3MB|€105.45
XFX 550 Watt Core Edition Full Wired 80+ Bronze PSU|€51.20
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) HyperX Blu DDR3 1600MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9|€36.33
Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti 822MHz 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express HDMI|€181.79

nesf

Dublin_Gunner wrote: »

Its all about balance. You can't expect to drive to high end GPU's in SLI / Crossfire with a weak CPU. However low end multi-GPU setups, or indeed a single high end GPU should be fine no matter what CPU you put into it.

Saying that, it would be very difficult to recommend anythign below a quad core these days too.

When it comes to gaming, and decent quad core will suffice, paired with a high end graphics card, and gaming at 1920x1080.

But I'll disagree about the adding a second card with a weak CPU doesn;t give you much of a gain - it certainly does, and you can crank the graphics details right up. You will get EVEN more of a gain with a faster CPU, but you cannot honestly say you won't get much of a gain.

Sure, I accept that. I was thinking of getting the full benefit from SLI requires you to have sufficient CPU power and much of a gain being relative to what the potential gain is with enough CPU power. I phrased it very poorly.

Serephucus

I think what nesf means it that it wouldn't be good value for money. You would certainly gain from it, but for what you pay, you need a decent CPU to make the most of it.

nesf

Serephucus wrote: »

I think what nesf means it that it wouldn't be good value for money. You would certainly gain from it, but for what you pay, you need a decent CPU to make the most of it.

Exactly, you can put 2 580s on a board but if it's an old 1.x GHz dual core processor on that board you could have gone with two much cheaper cards for the same performance boost.

Paul_Hacket

nesf wrote: »

Exactly, you can put 2 580s on a board but if it's an old 1.x GHz dual core processor on that board you could have gone with two much cheaper cards for the same performance boost.

I totally understand that - but why make that point in the context of a discussion about buying a modern cpu such as a 2100 or an AMD x4?

Solitaire

It was an exaggerated demonstration to help put a point across. And you know that.

nesf

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

I totally understand that - but why make that point in the context of a discussion about buying a modern cpu such as a 2100 or an AMD x4?

I thought we were talking in general of whether CPU upgrades are better than an extra GPU card by this stage no? I was using an extreme example because it's easy to agree on and not contentious.

Regardless, the point is that given sufficient set GPU power, the CPU is the determining factor for performance. In such a situation an upgrade from an i3 stock or X4 stock to an i5 stock will give you decent gains all other things being equal and give you more gains if you upgrade to a more powerful SLI set up in the future than if you stayed with the i3 or X4.

It's debatable which you go first but my point was that you want to be upgrading both GPU and CPU if you want to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system. Ignoring the CPU means getting less performance out of your expensive graphics hardware which isn't good value for money.

Paul_Hacket

nesf wrote: »

I thought we were talking in general of whether CPU upgrades are better than an extra GPU card by this stage no? I was using an extreme example because it's easy to agree on and not contentious.

Regardless, the point is that given sufficient set GPU power, the CPU is the determining factor for performance. In such a situation an upgrade from an i3 stock or X4 stock to an i5 stock will give you decent gains all other things being equal and give you more gains if you upgrade to a more powerful SLI set up in the future than if you stayed with the i3 or X4.

It's debatable which you go first but my point was that you want to be upgrading both GPU and CPU if you want to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system. Ignoring the CPU means getting less performance out of your expensive graphics hardware which isn't good value for money.

I'm trying to keep this non contentious also and am sorry the discussion got derailed earlier. I accept a lot of what you say but in fairness this isn't about getting every last drop of upgrade ability in an idealized situation- this was about having an upgrade path that was realistic to the OP's budget. If he's buying a four hundred euro computer he's probably not going to be running out to buy both a processor and a graphics card next year.

Given the reality of that can you agree that since he has indicated above that his favorite games are first person shooters and other 3d heavy ones that he would get more out of upgrading to a second graphics card from either an X4 or a 2100 than he would from doing a processor upgrade?

nesf

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

I'm trying to keep this non contentious also and am sorry the discussion got derailed earlier. I accept a lot of what you say but in fairness this isn't about getting every last drop of upgrade ability in an idealized situation- this was about having an upgrade path that was realistic to the OP's budget. If he's buying a four hundred euro computer he's probably not going to be running out to buy both a processor and a graphics card next year.

I don't know, when I was doing budget builds as a student I always tried to upgrade something each year. But I loved to tinker with systems and can rarely leave them alone for long without doing something to them, even if it's something small like new fans for cooling or whatever.

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

Given the reality of that can you agree that since he has indicated above that his favorite games are first person shooters and other 3d heavy ones that he would get more out of upgrading to a second graphics card from either an X4 or a 2100 than he would from doing a processor upgrade?

Sure, I can accept that. Can you accept that the i3 is a better choice given that he doesn't want to overclock?

Serephucus

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

If he's buying a four hundred euro computer he's probably not going to be running out to buy both a processor and a graphics card next year.

Given the reality of that can you agree that he would get more out of upgrading to a second graphics card from either an X4 or a 2100 than he would from doing a processor upgrade?

Depends on the user. We'll have to wait for the OP to answer that one.

And a second graphics card isn't always a viable upgrade path (as I tried to point out earlier). You might get more performance, but you pay for it in that you have to buy an adequate PSU to handle two GPUs first off, as well as an SLI/CF-capable board. It's not always the best value*.

*This is not even considering multi-GPU scaling/problems, etc. Single GPUs tend to be a lot less hassle to the lazy / less techie of us.

Solitaire

+1. Given that GPUs get more powerful and frugal with time in the long term many people prefer to replace the old GPU with a new one rather than double it up. Because CF requires specific hardware and opens a can of worms most users are best off avoiding. 2-card CF is also very prone to extreme jitter - so generally CF and SLI are best left to high-end triple-card systems.

deconduo

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

I'm trying to keep this non contentious also and am sorry the discussion got derailed earlier. I accept a lot of what you say but in fairness this isn't about getting every last drop of upgrade ability in an idealized situation- this was about having an upgrade path that was realistic to the OP's budget. If he's buying a four hundred euro computer he's probably not going to be running out to buy both a processor and a graphics card next year.

Given the reality of that can you agree that since he has indicated above that his favorite games are first person shooters and other 3d heavy ones that he would get more out of upgrading to a second graphics card from either an X4 or a 2100 than he would from doing a processor upgrade?

Even that is very game dependant. Some games, such as BF3 are almost totally GPU dependant, whereas others such as Deus Ex benefit much more from a CPU increase. See here for example. While those are two extremes, it averages out somewhere in the middle. An i3-2100 + 6950 will be about the same as an i5-2500k + 6850 in most games.

Serephucus

Solitaire wrote: »

2-card CF is also very prone to extreme jitter - so generally CF and SLI are best left to high-end triple-card systems.

I was going to mention that, but actually, they've gotten much better. Back when I had the second 580, both my minimum and average framerates saw basically a linear increase. I.e.:

single card min/avg: 40/60
SLI cards min/avg: 80 120

I can't comment as to AMD's multi-GPU scaling (I know it usually lags a little behind NVIDIAs), but the 500 series seem pretty solid in this regard.

nesf

Solitaire wrote: »

+1. Given that GPUs get more powerful and frugal with time in the long term many people prefer to replace the old GPU with a new one rather than double it up. Because CF requires specific hardware and opens a can of worms most users are best off avoiding. 2-card CF is also very prone to extreme jitter - so generally CF and SLI are best left to high-end triple-card systems.

What about us poor people gaming on higher than 1080p? We're stuck with the dodgy drivers by default almost if we want high performance.

And don't get me started on ATI's lagging behind Nvidia in getting out driver fixes for multi-GPU set-ups.

Paul_Hacket

nesf wrote: »

I don't know, when I was doing budget builds as a student I always tried to upgrade something each year. But I loved to tinker with systems and can rarely leave them alone for long without doing something to them, even if it's something small like new fans for cooling or whatever.



Sure, I can accept that. Can you accept that the i3 is a better choice given that he doesn't want to overclock?

He said in his post that he didn't want to overclock because he didn't want to "risk it". I'm guessing he didn't realize that AMD basically give you a utility with this chip and encourage you to overclock it to 3.8ghz since there is effectively no risk from doing so and no extra hardware is required. If he still doesn't want to overclock given that I'd be happy to recommend the i3.

Serephucus

Don't locked CPUs allow you to overclock to the Turbo Boost frequency, or stock +.4GHz or something? He could get the i3 to, what, 3.5?

Edit: Googled, never mind.

nesf

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

He said in his post that he didn't want to overclock because he didn't want to "risk it". I'm guessing he didn't realize that AMD basically give you a utility with this chip and encourage you to overclock it to 3.8ghz since there is effectively no risk from doing so and no extra hardware is required. If he still doesn't want to overclock given that I'd be happy to recommend the i3.

You've got to accept that some people will never tinker with their hardware, they want something that works out of the box and that's that. Other people will push components hard to get as much value for money out of them as possible.

Regardless, if he's overclocking he wants a good aftermarket cooler to keep the noise down. You can overclock on a stock fan but compared to a dedicated overclocking cooler the thing will be loud as hell. The problem with this in a budget build is that it's another 50 quid if you want a quiet system under load which is something most people want to be fair.

Solitaire

Serephucus wrote: »

I was going to mention that, but actually, they've gotten much better. Back when I had the second 580, both my minimum and average framerates saw basically a linear increase. I.e.:

single card min/avg: 40/60
SLI cards min/avg: 80 120

I can't comment as to AMD's multi-GPU scaling (I know it usually lags a little behind NVIDIAs), but the 500 series seem pretty solid in this regard.

I'm not talking about FPS, I'm talking about per-frame jitter, i.e. microstutter. nVidia are bad and AMD are worse. Its what happens when CF/SLI are too heavily optimised in favour of FPS over stability. AMD now scales better than nVidia for 2-card FPS but the jitter is horrific. The third card sees a surprising dip in scaling but makes things silky-smooth.

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

He said in his post that he didn't want to overclock because he didn't want to "risk it". I'm guessing he didn't realize that AMD basically give you a utility with this chip and encourage you to overclock it to 3.8ghz since there is effectively no risk from doing so and no extra hardware is required. If he still doesn't want to overclock given that I'd be happy to recommend the i3.

Its not risk-free - in fact its plenty risky (relatively speaking) due to the considerable heat output of the faster Phenoms.

Serephucus

Solitaire wrote: »

I'm not talking about FPS, I'm talking about per-frame jitter, i.e. microstutter.

My understanding of microstutter was that it's what happens when card B can't quite push out the next frame as fast as card A, so card A has to wait, giving you a framerate - for one frame - of, say, 10 FPS, versus your usual 50. That's why I was giving minimum framerates as well. There weren't any spikes into horrible numbers.

nesf

Solitaire wrote: »

I'm not talking about FPS, I'm talking about per-frame jitter, i.e. microstutter. nVidia are bad and AMD are worse. Its what happens when CF/SLI are too heavily optimised in favour of FPS over stability. AMD now scales better than nVidia for 2-card FPS but the jitter is horrific. The third card sees a surprising dip in scaling but makes things silky-smooth.

Good to know, thanks.

Eamonn Brophy

nesf wrote: »

You've got to accept that some people will never tinker with their hardware, they want something that works out of the box and that's that. Other people will push components hard to get as much value for money out of them as possible.

Regardless, if he's overclocking he wants a good aftermarket cooler to keep the noise down. You can overclock on a stock fan but compared to a dedicated overclocking cooler the thing will be loud as hell. The problem with this in a budget build is that it's another 50 quid if you want a quiet system under load which is something most people want to be fair.

I don't think a good temp/silent aftermarket cooler is a reasonable goal for a build at this price tbh, if you want quiet, pay more.

Paul_Hacket

nesf wrote: »

You've got to accept that some people will never tinker with their hardware, they want something that works out of the box and that's that. Other people will push components hard to get as much value for money out of them as possible.

Regardless, if he's overclocking he wants a good aftermarket cooler to keep the noise down. You can overclock on a stock fan but compared to a dedicated overclocking cooler the thing will be loud as hell. The problem with this in a budget build is that it's another 50 quid if you want a quiet system under load which is something most people want to be fair.

You're forgetting I have this chip and posted a pic of its heatsink above - which is massive. Overclocking it to 3.8 ghz doesn't raise temperatures that much and I can honestly say I don't notice the fan noise - and I work in media editing so I'm pretty sensitive to noise.

Again, I'm not trying to be contentious but your comments about some people never wanting to tinker with their systems would make a lot more sense to me if you weren't touting a processor upgrade route as one of the reasons to buy the i3. The 'overclock' on the X4 requires you to open a downloaded utility and about half a dozen mouse clicks in a big friendly no-brainer interface. It takes about 60 seconds and doesn't even require a restart.

Finally, I think you might find the below article from Tom's hardware interesting, wherein they analyze cpu versus gpu bottlenecks. They basically find that in modern systems the bottleneck nearly always occurs at the GPU level and also that 8 out of the 20 games they tested significantly benefitted from having a four core cpu. They also state that the multi-core advantage is only likely to increase as time goes on.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-performance-bottleneck,2738-16.html

nesf

Eamonn Brophy wrote: »

I don't think a good temp/silent aftermarket cooler is a reasonable goal for a build at this price tbh, if you want quiet, pay more.

That's pretty much what I'm getting at. I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone to overclock on stock cooling unless they knew beforehand exactly what the decibel levels were going to be like.

Solitaire

Serephucus wrote: »

My understanding of microstutter was that it's what happens when card B can't quite push out the next frame as fast as card A, so card A has to wait, giving you a framerate - for one frame - of, say, 10 FPS, versus your usual 50. That's why I was giving minimum framerates as well. There weren't any spikes into horrible numbers.

Nope. It can cause low spikes in minimum FPS but that's an exceptional case. Usually, its more like having very low or even zero FPS for a fraction of a second, then super-high FPS for the next 1-2/10s of a sec, and so on. This doesn't really affect FPS much at all, as the same number (or from the look of the benchmarks, more) of frames are being kicked out per second; its what happening in the fractions of a second where things have gone horribly wrong. This causes a disruptive visual effect where the image seems to lag and stutter; the (for CF users) infamous "microstutter"

Microstutter is much worse if CF setups are aggressively optimised to push out as many frames as possible per second with no thought given to spacing and stability. AMD are naturally more prone to it as CF alternates cards between frames. nVidia are in their own way worse - they have lower stutter (now entirely due to said optimisation) but also have Tearing to boot as SLI renders half a frame with each card

Serephucus

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

your comments about some people never wanting to tinker with their systems would make a lot more sense to me if you weren't touting a processor upgrade route as one of the reasons to buy the i3. The 'overclock' on the X4 requires you to open a downloaded utility and about half a dozen mouse clicks in a big friendly no-brainer interface. It takes about 60 seconds and doesn't even require a restart.

It's not so much what you have to do, versus what you're doing, with novice users. If you tell them to click here, then save this, then enter this number, fine, they'll do it. If they ask what they're doing, and you tell them they're overclocking - running a processor past its design spec - they'll instantly get antsy and unsure, and not want to risk screwing anything up.

I build systems for a lot of people I know, and maintain them. I've had the above happen to more more than once. People would rather buy money, and get something that they know "just works" - even if it does involve someone else replacing a part for them, they're familiar with that idea. Your tires go bad on your car, you replace them, makes you turn better.

Solitaire

You're not running your PC beyond specifications and safety setting if you're physically upgrading to a compatible CPU. OCing, on the other hand, has a bit of a reputation, much of which is exaggerated but is still offputting.

Paul_Hacket

Serephucus wrote: »

It's not so much what you have to do, versus what you're doing, with novice users. If you tell them to click here, then save this, then enter this number, fine, they'll do it. If they ask what they're doing, and you tell them they're overclocking - running a processor past its design spec - they'll instantly get antsy and unsure, and not want to risk screwing anything up.

I build systems for a lot of people I know, and maintain them. I've had the above happen to more more than once. People would rather buy money, and get something that they know "just works" - even if it does involve someone else replacing a part for them, they're familiar with that idea. Your tires go bad on your car, you replace them, makes you turn better.

The overclock on this isn't running it beyond its design spec - and this guy is a computers student. I'm pretty sure that virtually anyone, novice or not, will feel a lot more comfortable doing a software based overclock which falls within the manufacturer's own safe operating levels, than doing a processor upgrade - one of the touted advantages of the i3.