Graphics Card in R1000-R1500 range

With all that's said and done - I think I'll buy a new GPU instead of a tower case. I have a tower, though it's been beaten a bit - it'll work. As for my GPU; I don't know how much longer my 8800GT is going to hold. I've needed a new GPU since(a very long time). I would like a new case but "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.
 
Hagan said:
With all that's said and done - I think I'll buy a new GPU instead of a tower case. I have a tower, though it's been beaten a bit - it'll work. As for my GPU; I don't know how much longer my 8800GT is going to hold. I've needed a new GPU since(a very long time). I would like a new case but "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.
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The 8800Gt is still a good card even if it is old.
My father has one and he never complains about it.
I have the hd7770 vapor-x edition and i can play everything even bf4
 
Orion said:
The 8800Gt is still a good card even if it is old.
My father has one and he never complains about it.
I have the hd7770 vapor-x edition and i can play everything even bf4
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What do you mean by play :p. 8800Gt can still hold out, especially at lower resolutions but it is probably time to upgrade :D
 
Orion said:
The 8800Gt is still a good card even if it is old.
My father has one and he never complains about it.
I have the hd7770 vapor-x edition and i can play everything even bf4
Click to expand...

rootworm41 said:
What do you mean by play :p. 8800Gt can still hold out, especially at lower resolutions but it is probably time to upgrade :D
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The 8800GT has been my brother's for a good long while. Then it was borrowed to me almost 2 years ago, I think (after my 9600GT failed). Have had to bake it at least once.

I won't mind use the 8800GT still, but if it goes cookoo again, I won't simply be able to replace it. So, instead, I straight-up buy myself the GT640. It may not be the best card, but at least I'll be able to play games I've played before - just better looking and performing better.

Anyone running a:
Core i3 - 4130 3.4GHz / 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM ?

Those are going to be my specs. Just want to know how well a Core i3 will suffice for games like: Battlefield 3, Far Cry 3, Dishonored etc. I've seen YouTube gameplay on how Far Cry 3 runs with the card (but the CPU is a Core i5); so I can't exactly make comparisons. It ran well with and without FRAPS - playably well.

I'm curious as to how much better it will perform than my old AMD Athlon x64 Quad Core 2.81GHz.
 
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Hagan said:
The 8800GT has been my brother's for a good long while. Then it was borrowed to me almost 2 years ago, I think (after my 9600GT failed). Have had to bake it at least once.

I won't mind use the 8800GT still, but if it goes cookoo again, I won't simply be able to replace it. So, instead, I straight-up buy myself the GT640. It may not be the best card, but at least I'll be able to play games I've played before - just better looking and performing better.

Anyone running a:
Core i3 - 4130 3.4GHz / 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM ?

Those are going to be my specs. Just want to know how well a Core i3 will suffice for games like: Battlefield 3, Far Cry 3, Dishonored etc. I've seen YouTube gameplay on how Far Cry 3 runs with the card (but the CPU is a Core i5); so I can't exactly make comparisons. It ran well with and without FRAPS - playably well.

I'm curious as to how much better it will perform than my old AMD Athlon x64 Quad Core 2.81GHz.
Click to expand...

i3s are great for gaming because most games at the moment don't use many cores. i3s (and Intel in general) have very good single thread performance. You will see a great improvement especially because that i3 is 4th gen.
 
rootworm41 said:
i3s are great for gaming because most games at the moment don't use many cores. i3s (and Intel in general) have very good single thread performance. You will see a great improvement especially because that i3 is 4th gen.
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Thank you, sir.

Appreciate the feedback.
 
Around 2 more weeks and I'll be gaming on my new PC! So psyched! Been a LONG time coming! My long-awaited upgrade :D

From just wanting a new AM2+ motherboard to a completely new upgrade. Big step :P
 
rootworm41 said:
i3s are great for gaming because most games at the moment don't use many cores. i3s (and Intel in general) have very good single thread performance. You will see a great improvement especially because that i3 is 4th gen.
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I'm afraid that is simply not true. More and more games are starting to use additional cores and even older games are being updated to make better use of multithreading. Also with next-gen consoles being based off an 8 core jaguar apu with poor single threaded performance you'll find next-gen games, and their resulting ports, requiring a lot more than just a dual core CPU as a minimum. Case in point, if you look at the requirements for Watch Dogs the minimum CPU required is a quad core and for recommended you need either a core i7 with HT or an 8 core AMD FX chip! :wtf:

In fact this change has even prompted developers to recommend people getting CPUs with lots of cores as highlighted by this Eurogamer article.

Hagan said:
Around 2 more weeks and I'll be gaming on my new PC! So psyched! Been a LONG time coming! My long-awaited upgrade :D

From just wanting a new AM2+ motherboard to a completely new upgrade. Big step :P
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Awesome man, getting new hardware is always fun! If you don't mind me asking what have you settled on / decided to get? :)
 
I'm afraid you didn't read my message properly. I said MOST games... and that i3s are great for gaming. Both statements are true. When did I say anything about the FX chips? By the way they are extremely hard to find at the moment as suppliers are out of stock.
 
Xiphan said:
I'm afraid that is simply not true. More and more games are starting to use additional cores and even older games are being updated to make better use of multithreading. Also with next-gen consoles being based off an 8 core jaguar apu with poor single threaded performance you'll find next-gen games, and their resulting ports, requiring a lot more than just a dual core CPU as a minimum. Case in point, if you look at the requirements for Watch Dogs the minimum CPU required is a quad core and for recommended you need either a core i7 with HT or an 8 core AMD FX chip! :wtf:

In fact this change has even prompted developers to recommend people getting CPUs with lots of cores as highlighted by this Eurogamer article.



Awesome man, getting new hardware is always fun! If you don't mind me asking what have you settled on / decided to get? :)
Click to expand...
Wanted to go for a quad core, but as I previously stated; my contact in Cape Town is unwilling to order and keep the parts for me until I get there, so I have to settle for what I can get -- and an i3 is currently all that fits my budget, which is actually R4000.

Of course. Here's my list:

CPU:
Intel Core i3 - 4130 3.4GHz
(R1649)

Motherboard:
Wibtek B85-M PCID LGA 1150 Socket
(R949)

RAM:
Apacer 4GB DDR3 1333MHz
(R579)

Graphics Card:
Gigabyte GeForce GT640 OC 2GB DDR3 128Bit
(R1249)

----------------

Total: R4429.00

rootworm41 said:
I'm afraid you didn't read my message properly. I said MOST games... and that i3s are great for gaming. Both statements are true. When did I say anything about the FX chips? By the way they are extremely hard to find at the moment as suppliers are out of stock.
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Thanks again for your input, root.
 
rootworm41 said:
Nice system. It will do you well :)
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Thanks, root.

That is what I want to hear.

My old system ran the games pretty well, but it's constant need for maintenance annoyed me.

With my new build I basically plan to start all SP games from over. New build, new experience. It's not like going from an old gallope to a new Mercedes-Benz - but it will be better than my old system -- and that is what I want.
 
graphic card

Why they dont build computer that comes with graphic card on board unlike having to buy a graphic card separately?
 
fanza said:
Why don't they build computers that come with a graphics card onboard, so that you don't have to buy one separately?
Click to expand...

They do, they're called APU's. Intel also integrates it's HD Graphics chips in most of it's modern CPU's.

APU's won't have the same amount of power as a decent dedicated card, at least not for couple of years. It's just common sense, you can't fit the same amount of processing power into something so small, not yet anyway.

Unlike dedicated cards, APU's also don't have their own memory modules (RAM), so they have to use the system RAM, which is why APU builds tend to need higher frequency RAM than builds with dedicated graphics cards.

That's how I think it works anyway...
 
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The_Imp_ZA said:
They do, they're called APU's. Intel also integrates it's HD Graphics chips in most of it's modern CPU's.

APU's won't have the same amount of power as a decent dedicated card, at least not for couple of years. It's just common sense, you can't fit the same amount of processing power into something so small, not yet anyway.

Unlike dedicated cards, APU's also don't have their own memory modules (RAM), so they have to use the system RAM, which is why APU builds tend to need higher frequency RAM than builds with dedicated graphics cards.

That's how I think it works anyway...
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The new Kaveri APUs which launched recently are based off the same Hawaii class revisions as the newer R7 & R9 GPUs. They're also the first APUs to feature HSA meaning they can outperform or at least keep up with higher end cards because of their shared memory architecture. Data no longer needs to be copied back and forth between the GPU and CPU because they're working from the same die and addressing the same memory space. The speed benefits of this should be obvious, unfortunately it would require games to use the Mantle API to take full advantage of it. Unfortunately DirectCompute doesn't fully offer an approach to unified memory, anyway if you're interested you can read more about HSA here.
 
Yeah, I've been meaning to build a new computer for my parents and I'm hoping if and when the new A10-7000 series APUs launch they won't cost an arm and a leg.
 
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