Not in a hurry for a new computer

[sunrise089]

Agree, that old 630 is not a good choice, and unless processors cost especially more relative to other components, you don't want to spend $224 on a processor and then run 4gigs of memory.

This isn't a cannibalized parts machine he's trying to sell you, is it?

[Voldymort]

*Confused*
You guys say that this configuration is horrybad!
Meanwhile in Romania, i've asked all friends with intimate knowledge in IT about it and they mostly say it's decent for my purposes but could be better! -.-'

[NobleHelium]

IT is a joke term.

[sunrise089]

IT guys aren't required to be up on video cards is all. The price and performance between realistic consumer video cards is vastly larger than the spread in CPUs. Realistic CPUs sold in any real volumes might run from $50-$300, and might have a 100% single thread performance spread. GPU numbers are more like $50-$600, and the performance spread can approach 500%. It's easy for an IT guy to see 'Radeon 250' and being only vaguely familiar that the 200- series represents the current card line assume any model is pretty decent, when in fact a 250, a 280, and a 290 are worlds apart from one another.

[T-hawk]

It's easy for an IT guy to see 'Radeon 250' and being only vaguely familiar that the 200- series represents the current card line assume any model is pretty decent, when in fact a 250, a 280, and a 290 are worlds apart from one another.

This is absolutely true and threw me for a loop the last time I was buying a graphics card, two years ago (the Radeon 6670.) Graphics performance is all about parallelism on more texture and geometry units, so a 5 year old card with 10x more of those will still outperform today's low end.

[antisocialmunky]

Actually a lot of the lower end are just rebranded last gen cards that have been bumped down a level on the pricing schedule.

[Bacchus]

I have recently come across this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7963/the-i...-tested/11

And now I'm not sure why anyone would buy anything but the i3 for gaming purposes.

[Jkaen]

Do you mean this one, Jkaen? http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gami...107-7.html

It wasn't that exact one, but effectively the same thing.

[Bacchus]

a cry for help

Ok, this is awkward. As my laptop is aging rapidly (and, being a laptop, has some bullshit Mobility Radeon graphics), I decided to build myself a nice little budgetish PC on a mini-ITX board, using that lovely new power-efficient and low-heat 750Ti. Everything is hunky-dory with one hitch, the ASRock h87m-itx board, whilst supporting the Haswell Refresh line of CPUs, needs a BIOS update to run them. And to update the BIOS, you need to boot. For which you need a functioning CPU. And I, of course, got the Refresh one, because why not.

So, is there anyone in the Londonish area of the UK, to whom I could come for an hour to use an LGA 1150 CPU? I knew that small form factor portability would come in handy! I will gladly bring an amount of beer and/or a boardgame in compensation.

[Hail]

while a geforce gtx 750 ti is awesome in itself, it will not support directx 12.
if one is not awaiting directx 12, then 770 gtx used for around $200 is an awesome deal. imho gaming wise, everything above r9 270x or a 760 gtx is an overkill for a fhd setup.

on bios updating -> high-end asus motherboards have a bios update button. as asus states, it will update the bios from a usb stick without a cpu installed. have no clue about asrock.
low-end motherboards have stripped chipsets. no raid, only 2 dimm slots, less pci-e lines, etc.

on amd apus -> they are memory bandwidth bottlenecked. a next gen. apu with ddr4 should rock

i have an asus motherboard + amd fx-8350 setup. it runs everything fine. tomorrow (1 september) amd will release 8370 and 8370e. with 8mb l2 cache, it might be a beast. 8370e has a 95 watt tpd