Having played lots of GTR2 over the years, I decide to spread my wings and give R3E a try....Wow! Instantly love it! Problem is, my laptop doesn't. It's time to get a new gaming PC folks! I was swaying towards the intel/nvidia option, but the cost is getting beyond my budget. I don't actually have a budget, I've got a credit card but I want to keep the bill to a minimum. So what I'm asking is how many of you run an AMD set up? Which cpu/gpu/mobo combo do you have and does it run R3E at high settings levels? AMD seems easier on the wallet, but does it still deliver performance wise? Thanks for any help guys!
Being a long-time AMD supporter it pains me a little to say this but with the current models there's no way to recommend an AMD CPU in good faith. If the producers of a game don't optimize it to utilize their strengths they can lack so much in terms of gaming/single threading performance it's almost beyond belief. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html (Yes, there really are AMD CPUs on that list ^^) It's not quite as bad with the GPUs, but it still looks like nvidia have the upper hand. But there's good AMD alternatives to certain nvidia GPUs which come at a favourable price, depends on what level of enthusiasm you're aiming for. So as you said there is no budget, do you have a broad idea or a limit of how much you'd like to spend?
well I'm now in the process of building new gaming PC. It's going to look like that CPU: Intel i7 6700K (Skylake, LGA 1151) 4.0GHz (as it comes without cooler it gets Corsair H115i liquid,280mm radiator) RAM: DDR4 Corsair Dominator Platinum 2x16Gb 3000Mhz Mo-Bo: Asus Z170-Deluxe OS-Drive: Samsung 950 Pro SSD M.2 Storage: 1x Corsair SSD 128GB, 1x Seagate 1Tb HDD, 1x Seagate 2Tb Power: Corsair HX1000i (1000W) Case: Corsair Carbide 600Q GPU: for start GF 750 1Gb but will be 980Ti but will wait after they put on market new models (this will make the 980 much cheaper) most of the stuff is already in case and awaits few more bits needed to run it. if you know what parts you want to put, go to www.pcpartpicker.com and it will give you estimate value for each part and whole build
unfortunately I have to second this. Maybe and I hope that AMD can close up to Intel with the next CPU-Generation but at the moment you should look at Intel-CPU's. On graphic-cards-side it is not as bad. AMD and nVidia are on a close level. Often you get a more powerful AMD-Card for the same price compared to nVidia. Not sure that @pixeljetstream would agree but IMO on the Hardware-side AMD is a bit ahead. But there are two aspects that hinders them to be in front of most Benchmarks. 1. nVidia did a very good job in optimizing their drivers and reducing the overhead in it and 2. alot of the games have better support for nVidia-Hardware.
apparently new nvidia gfx cards are due out June? Should see a large drop in price of 970/980s so might be worth waiting a little while.
thanks for your replies so far... i guess i wanna cap my budget at around £800. but thats to include a monitor (24"?) and an OS (win10?). ive never built a pc before, but im not afraid of trying in an attempt to reduce costs. im not concerned with the components i eventually pick being top of every test out there, i just want it be capable of running the latest sims like R3E, AC & Rf2 with a decent fps. i was looking at i5 6600k's but with decent(?) AMD chips going for half the price, on paper it looks a viable option. @Christian Göpfert i see in your sig that you have the FX 6350? what sort of results is that giving you in R3E? my laptop has inbuilt intel hd 520 graphics which gives me between 25-40 fps on low settings. it doesnt look great!
I like the CPU in general, great value for money, it's just that they fall behind a bit in CPU hungry games that don't use multithreading, which is pretty much all of them. Bearing in mind my 5-year-old GPU I can run RR at surprisingly high settings, given the right circumstances: I can run every track with 20 cars in total and get smooth 60 fps (vsync). (Except the known issues at Spa and Nords 24h) The problems start kicking in when I'm trying to run with more than 20 cars or when there's car contacts with damage enabled. I think for the biggest part this is due to the CPU hitting its limit. I'm not actually complaining, it's a PC I build 5 years ago and as such it still performs pretty well. It's just that looking at the bare numbers the CPU should be able to handle much more, and it is when it can make use of all its modules. But for a gaming rig I'd still suggest getting an Intel CPU atm.
At the moment I'm still using my old PC that I have upgraded few times and now looks like that: CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz but overclocked at 3.52Ghz Mo-Bo: Asus M3N-HD/HDMI GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 750 1Gb RAM: OCZ Reaper 2x 2Gb Power: 600W cant remember what brand this runs at maxed out settings quite okish (graphic card is struggling a bit), but I'm keeping it at medium just to have better FPS with more cars. other games are good on it too.
Pretty close to what I am running. You will LOVE the 115i cooler if you have ever used a 120 and monitored temps. Im running CPU around 19-20c idle and 35-38 in game. Have fun building! its a great project and feels great if it all works!
yeah think I might do first test run today as the CPU is going to be delivered but then again its a bit too much hassle to swap PSU, GPU and mess with reinstalling Win and drivers. Then again I can do it with just BIOS and build in graphics to test run it but again comes PSU and all the stuff I've got connected to it (might have a quick look for some spare PSU off old PC this would save my life)
So which would be the better amd CPU for gaming at the moment? 6300, 6350, 8300, 8320, 8350? And what's 'black edition'? Does it mean that's it's been overclocked, rather than just overclockable?
Black Edition or a "K" at the end of the designated number means it has an unlocked multiplier (Basically, it can be overclocked) With near enough all things PC wise, the higher the number, the better it is, so go for the highest that your budget will allow for. The 6350 and 8350 now come with an improved "Wraith" cooler in the package which will allow for a modest overclock without you having to spend extra money on a aftermarket cooler. That could give you a small saving if your budget is on the tight side? http://www.pcgamer.com/amds-wraith-cooler-now-ships-with-fx-8350-and-fx-6350-cpus/
As Paul said get best what you can. I'll just add to this the more cores/threads it can handle the better even if its slightly lower on GHz, check on youtube Linus tech tips channel he's got some vids about making budget monsters for gaming
i would definitely look for some used hardware on the motherboard/cpu/memory line. The last couple generation of intel cpus performs pretty much the same in games, so if you pick something from 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx series with a matching mb and memory, you are basically good. However i recommend 4 physical cores (so i5 series). Dig on ebay, with some luck you can pick a 2-3 years old combo under 200 euros. on storage side i would go for a new 128gb ssd, and a 1tb hdd. case at your preference, power supply must be new, from a reliable manufacturer, my favourite is Corsair, the CX series gives very good quality for reasonable price (600w should be more than enough with 1 vga). on GPU side i think with the rest of the stuff a used AMD r290 could still easily fit in your budget, and that card will hold on for 2-3 more years.
so how about this? http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/nG9sbv (by no means final) will the gtx 950 handle the new racing sims ok? still need a copy of windows. any ideas people?
depends what you mean "ok"... imo it is not enough for a smooth full HD experience, if you want to stay on the nvidia side, i think gtx 960 is the minimum what you should aim for... regarding the other parts, i think it is a nicely picked midlevel setup. there are only 2 items i would think about: 1: do you really need an optical drive???, and 2: will you ever overclock your pc? if not, on cpu side 6500 can be an option as well (actually if you go for 6500 cpu and drop the optical drive, you save enough to buy the gtx 960 instead of the 950)
The 950 will handle sims quite well (I've had one) but you would be better served with a 960 as Drei mentioned above. For the sake of an extra 20-30 pounds it's really worth going for. Your going to have the PC for quite a while I would imagine so I would always recommend waiting to save that little extra money as it isn't that much when you think of the timespan that you will own the PC. The list of parts you made is a pretty nice one for the £800 price range but "if" you could hold off, save and stretch to something around the £1000 mark, you'll get those little CPU/GPU upgrades that will serve you so much better in the long run.
went for this in the end if anyone is interested: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/KVkjjX its a GREAT machine!!
thats not bad at all!! I'm just missing few parts from my build and I'm done. It's already up and running and goes mental!