Cheapest computer build that can run Skyrim or BF3 on ultra?

speaker system battlefield 3 image

Garrett Pi

I know nothing about building computers. All I know is I want to run big games on a larger sized monitor with no lag. I have the mouse and keyboard. No speakers though. Thanks :)

Answer
well garret, I will help you paraphrase your question since cheap and gaming computer are actually like oil and water, they cannot be mixed together.

What you want to know is the least expensive gaming PC that can max out BF3 on 1080p, am I correct???

well, The lowest card that can let you play BF3 on max settings on 1080p is the GTX 560 ti with an AVE FPS of 31.8:

http://bf3nation.com/2011/10/battlefield-3-graphic-card-benchmarks-from-580570-gtx-to-radeon-hd-69706900/

But if you wanted to have a smoother gameplay, then the lowest would be a GTX 560 ti 448 cores.

So I'll just give you this example of a build that can max out all games on 1080p including BF3:

Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 BX80623I52500K - $225

GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - $115

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL - $47

Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $86

EVGA 012-P3-2066-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 448 Cores FTW 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - $270 ($250 after rebate)

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850M 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular High Performance Power Supply - $130 ($115 after rebate)

COOLER MASTER HAF 912 RC-912-KKN1 Black SECC/ ABS Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $60 ($50 after rebate)

LITE-ON Internal 24x DVD-Writer 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model iHAS324-99 - $22

inland 70126 Black 107 Normal Keys USB Wired Standard Keyboard / Mouse Combo - $13.79

inland Home/Office Series 88033 7.2 Watts 2.0 Speaker - $10

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler Compatible Intel Core i5 & Intel Core i7 - $30

Acer G215HVAbd Black 21.5" 5ms Full HD WideScreen LCD Monitor 200 cd/m2 20,000:1 Max (ACM) - $130 (1080p)

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM - $100

TOTAL : $1238.79 ($1193.79 after rebate), this is a perfect COMPLETE PC for that price, this build could practically play all games on max settings on 1080p. The GTX 560 ti 448 cores is only slightly slower than the GTX 570 thus it is a great card. And also, this build is SLI ready since the PSU (corsair 850w) is excellent and can handle 2 way SLI of GTX 560 ti 448 cores on a high end system with overclocking.

NOTE : newegg parts and prices

What Specs Should I Look For In a Gaming Desktop?

Zach Fossu

I'd like to get my first gaming desktop. I'm not completely adapt at computers, but I can understand most basic things. I'd just like a few questions, such as if I would need an i7 or I would be fine with an i5. What is the main difference between Intel and AMD? Most discussion boards I've visited about the topic usually have people saying Intel is better because it's "the next generation". I play quite a variety of games such as LoL, WoW, Counterstrike, Diablo, Starcraft, GTA, and hopefully more after I get my new computer which could run all of them at optimal settings. I'd be able to put around $900-$1000 into the computer and want one in which I wouldn't have to upgrade things very often, hopefully coming with a top of the line video card installed. Any tips or suggestions about what to check out or what to look for would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
First, you ask yourself some questions.
1) Build yourself, buy completed, or custom builder?
Building it yourself will take research of good from bad, and advice on your part list.
The pcpartpicker web site, already mentioned in other answer(s) is a shopping and compatibility tool that helps you to also get all the parts you need. You save a variable amount of money, and can choose your own goals. Custom build is normally the highest price, selecting from their part list and they assemble, test, ship. Buying completed takes some shopping. In all three you should still learn good from bad, or take someone's word for it.
2) Your goals in the system?:
Best performance for the money spent, or quality-stability-reliability, or cosmetic features, or upgradability. Some of these overlap, but you get a different result based on your desires in each area.
3) Total cost including what part set?
Base computer, monitor, cables, speakers/headset, keyboard, mouse.
A different total cost yields different results, and even mentioning the $900-1000, what does it include?

Your current games are relatively low requirements. I do not see Battlefield-4, Crysis-3, or even Skyrim. There is a list here and laptop measures of graphics cards, and some Desktop if you select Desktop+Laptop GPU, select games, RESTRICT.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

The general guidance of performance is that settings and frame rates will depend on the graphics card unless bottlenecked by the CPU or RAM or even display (60Hz=60fps).
Will you want to overclock the CPU (even if it gains little in performance?) ?
Digital Storm is a high quality custom builder and they also sell Vanquish as a pre-built in various levels:
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/vanquish.asp

About AMD vs Intel CPUs, the actual gaming performance for the price is very close, although in recording gaming or other applications of non-gaming and multitasking, AMD is often a better value. However, if your eventual goal is a tier 1 system, you can only get there with an Intel CPU.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
You can get great price-performance using an AMD CPU, especially that motherboards are often better featured for the price when adding CPU+Motherboard. AMD CPUs do use more power and are generally less efficient.

i5 vs i7 and CPUs of over 4 cores: Only Crysis-3 with its Cry-3 engine fully utilizes the CPUs capabilities. Games you mention use only one or two cores, and newer games to 4 cores. Skyrim uses 2 cores fully and 2 cores weakly. Hyperthreading virtual cores of i7 are for Crysis-3 and multitasking (like game recording) and editing video. There is little difference in gaming performance starting with 3rd gen Intel i5 through all the i7's.

There is some disagreement about the FX series of AMD versus Intel i3, but once at i5, you have surpassed all AMD in gaming (exc Cry-3 engine). In a build of best value for the money, you start with an i3 or FX-6300. In a build of a future performance at top level, you can start with an i3 and upgrade or start with i5 and be done with it. Haswell Intel is about 6% better than its similar Ivy Brodge, and the motherboards of Haswell generally are better but cost more. Once choosing Intel, you need to decide Ivy Bridge or Haswell. The i5's of Ivy Bridge are adequate for ultra for every game. More CPU power does not increase gaming performance (except if recording). K version cpus are overclockable and must mate with Z motherboards to do the overclocking plus a good CPU cooler. You can still damage the CPU.

In that my answer is running out of space, GPU upgrade is similar to GPU selection:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=As3_bG9s1FBTBnMCpx0UZebty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20130816021720AAgXVjJ
There are good value pre-built by Avatar, CyberpowerPC and iBuypower at Newegg.com, but they will often use some lower grade components.
To Crossfire/SLI 2 graphics cards in the future, you need a dual slot board pcie x 16, and SLI needs x8/x8 capable and that runs better in crossfire.
A high quality power supply is very worthwhile. Bad supplies make mysterious issues and very bad ones can wipe out your system when they blow.
You would have to look through some Q+A in my history to learn more, or email me.
Are you near a Microcenter with discounted CPUs?
First pass Intel Ivy Bridge overclockable and SLI/CF capable build, now $940.90 after promos and rebates, some expire today:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1zg1V
and, a $970 Haswell i5 based:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1zg88
each of which can be edited and swizzled.

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Need help on deciding a Motherboard for a gaming computer?

speaker system battlefield 3 image

ArmyGuy

I am (for the most part) knowledgeable about building computer for gaming, but motherboards have always been a little trouble (mainly with reliability with certain brands). But i am trying to build something completely different now. I am building it in an AZZA 9000 White Full ATX tower. It can accept the bigger ATX mobos and I would like to have one. Also, with this case, (search it on new-egg and watch the video about it), it is HUGE. I want to put a Corsair H100 CPU liquid cooling system on it but with certain mobos, (mainly standard size) it wont reach the radiator in the top of the case.

Now this is for a hardcore, dedicated gaming rig and I am looking to spend max 350$.

Also, I need help deciding on a processor. I was thinking an Ivy Bridge i7, but I am not sure what is the newer and better stuff out there.

It has been about 5 years since I built a new rig from the ground up.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Answer
My experience is in Component Engineering and Procurement Engineering from many years at IBM and Lenovo (now retired young) and I've been answering and researching forums and gaming web sites quite a bit and learned some key things. As long as you are experienced and knowledgeable, you should understand my view:
First of all, about CPU choice- Definitely Intel core i series at the latest releases.
Gaming does not seem to use more than 4 cores and no hyperthreading. When I saw a comment about Battlefield-3 designed for 6 cores, I found a test done with a 1st gen i7 where he underclocked it, turned off 2 cores, turned off hyperthreading in separate tests. The frames per second remained identical.
Old games used 1 core. Mid-time to a couple of years ago 2 to 4 with the 2nd two pretty weakly. The latest games probably use 4 cores effectively, but they are not at 6 cores in their software design yet and may not bother to be, and certainly virtual cores of hyperthreading are a waste.
When you compare i5-3570K, i7-3770K, i7-3970X, you see that in excluding hyperthreading, and then accounting for idle cores, the difference in performance is only a few percent despite the strength in non-gaming and video editing that fully uses the CPUs.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/7
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
http://www.cpu-world.com/cgi-bin/CompareNParts.pl?PART1=Intel_CM8061901281201&PART2=Intel_CM8063701211800&PART3=Intel_CM8063701211700
I have thumbs-down from hard core gamers that think it's better because they spent so much, but when you see them side by side and lab tested, even CPU intensive games aren't getting the difference. Some games recommend the i7's for maximum results, but unless they wrote in for hyperthreading, it cannot be notably better. If you put the extra $100 or more into the graphics, you do better.
i5-3570K and i7-3770K both support pcie x 16 3.0 when motherboard is able to. The fancy i7-3930 and i7-3970's show pcie x 16 at revision 2.0 as Sandy Bridge. I think your choice is gaming should be the i5-3570K, and if you want to spend a bunch more, you go i7-3770K and it should overclock a little higher. You might get a 10 to 15% performance boost over the i5 when a game is cpu dependent and high graphics enough not to max out. 60 Hz displays max at 60 fps, and visual perception maxes at about 40.

About a motherboard, you have PCIe x 16 3.0 number of slots for SLI/crossfire. Single at x16, one at x16 and one running at x4, then x16 as single and two running at x8 sharing bandwidth, and top end boards able to do 2 at x16. Those are probably what you want.
You look for terms on the web site like Mil spec and all solid Japanese capacitors, and 2 ounce copper to get the highest reliability. gold plating could be flashed on or 30 microinches or anything in between and looks the same. The digital power can be of different forms and after seeing a few specs you might notice differences. On board audio has improved and Realtek 898 rivals standard sound cards if you raise the volume with amplified speakers. Some have dual internet. Some various wireless functions. You choose about USB 3.0 internal to bring to the front of the case and eSata and ieee1394 firewire and decide the case to match it. There are high rated older design cases still with USB 2.0 only. Azza 9000 has 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, e-SATA, HD Audio, Mic Front Ports. eSata is not common on motherboards especially as an internal I/O. You may need to wrap back through the back panel when it has eSATA
This is a shopping and compatibility check site and you can share your part list as the permalink or saved:
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/motherboard/#sort=a6&c=52
Put in the CPU first and matching motherboards display.
Then it is a one-by-one check.
Asus and Gigabyte are tops. MSI and Asrock generally slightly lower. Most others you can skip.
If you are on the 1155 package CPU rather than 2011, there are only a few uber-expensive boards.
The case holds XL-ATX, E-ATX, Full ATX, Micro ATX

And, when you consider RAM, note that the memory controllers of latest Intel only support to 1600 speed plus XMP self-overclocking, and with WIndows in 4GB and graphics cards with their own plus sharing a couple of GB, 8GB RAM is usually enough.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P8Z77_WS/#specifications
P8Z77 WS is impressive with 4 PCIe x 16 slots where 2 can run at x16 as a double bandwidth.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-p8z77ws
Also seems to have the double port internal USB 3.0 instead of splitting one.
Many nice features.
Certainly there are many good boards, but need to choose your cpu first.
[adding: Power supplies are the least understood and most neglected. My answer here is already too long so you can look back at my other answers or email with questions]

Need help for the 100th time, can't build own computer, need help on creating one on cyberpower?

Christina

Well, for the first problem: I can't build my own, so please don't tell me to.
2nd: This is for my brother who is a massive gamer but his computer drowned and he has no money.
3rd: I have a tight budget of 1000 dollars, and I need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse with this desktop. Windows 7 included.
I really just want the computer to be able to play games such as Chivalry Medieval Warfare, on possible highest setting. I've asked thousands of questions like this. PLEASE I JUST NEED HELP!

Answer
With your budget, here's the best I could do... The configuration is saved for a few days:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1EUEKJ

Core i5 3470
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 650 Ti (EVGA superclocked)
500GB hard drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Keyboard, Mouse & Logitech speakers
500W Corsair power supply

Your total is $903 with free shipping.

The hop over to Amazon and grab this monitor:
http://www.amazon.com/Hannspree-HL203DPB-20-Inch-LED-lit-Monitor/dp/B006C2CYGI/ref=sr_1_21?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1359595607&sr=1-21&keywords=computer+monitor

You could also check places like CostCo- see if they've got something for that price.

Going with a less expensive 1600x900 monitor instead of 1920x1080 actually improves results in games- he'll be able to play titles like Battlefield 3 and Arma II on ultra settings instead of high. The higher your monitor resolution is, the more powerful your graphics card must be to achieve high frame rates.

You can modify the Cyberpower options slightly if you want, like a 1TB hard drive instead of 500GB for something like $12, or a 600W Corsair power supply for $9 more, but you're already cutting it very close on price. Don't go for the "standard" power supplies, those aren't very high quality and have a reputation for failing within 6 months.

Note that CyberpowerPC is more expensive than building from scratch, you could get a much faster system for the money if you had someone who could assemble the parts. But if that option isn't available, this build is probably your best bet.

For gaming in general and real-time strategy games in particular, Intel CPUs are much better performers than AMD. So I don't recommend going with an AMD-based computer.

Good luck!

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What is the best Specification for a gaming pc?

speaker system battlefield 3 image

Arianne

Well, soon enough i'm gonna buy some pc (gaming pc) what is the best specs for a faster and better performance for a gaming pc? Enough to play (Bioshock series, The sims 3, Grand theft auto IV, and some high-end games) Need Your opinion :)

Answer
To make sure you've got a more or less future-proof computer, you'd want to go with:

- an i5 2500K
- a good Asus or AsRock P67 motherboard
- at least 4GB of DDR3 RAM
- an ATI HD6970 or NVidia GTX560ti core 448
- a decent brand "80plus" 600 watt power supply
- an SSD for the operating system and a 2TB sata 600 HDD for data storage
- a DVD/BluRay burner
- a decent brand 24" monitor for 1920x1080 gaming
- some nice quality speakers like the Logitech Z5500
- Logitech G19 keyboard with an MX518 mouse

The above will tackle anything in Ultra settings, except Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033, which would run in medium to high settings...

what is the highest end configuration u recommend to play any game now a days?dont mind the budget?

it_rox

should include monitor ups speaker n every thing.tell me their rates also.just try. dont tell joysticks and others like driving wheel.

Answer
Well, the most demanding games out there today are games like Crysis and Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Those games make even pretty fancy gaming rigs work pretty hard. The specs for Crysis include Windows Vista (if you want to take advantage of the enhanced abilities of Direct X 10) or Windows XP with service pack 2; 3.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor (if running Vista) or a 2.8 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 processor (if running XP); 2.5 GB of hard disk space (if running Vista) or 1.0 GB (if running XP) and an Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT or greater or an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro or greater. If you go with dual core processors, the game requires at least a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo proc for XP and a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo proc for Vista. Of course, you could go the AMD Athalon route instead as long as the specs are comparable. The game info lists the AMD Athlon 2800+ for XP and the 3200+ for Vista.

I would highly recommend exceeding these system specs by as much as you can. I run Crysis on the "mainstream" setting for all attributes at a resolution of 800 X 600 and I get more or less smooth framerates except when there is a lot on the screen. The game doesn't look as good as it could at these settings, but I go more for smooth gameplay than pretty pictures. My system specs are Windows XP; 3.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 2 GB of RAM; currently 10 GB of free HD space and an Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT with 512 MB of RAM built in. If you can exceed these specs, you'll be able to play the majority of the new games today with no problem. With these specs, I can play less demanding games like Unreal Tournament III, Battlefield 2 etc. with all the graphics turned up on their highest levels and still have smooth framerates.

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