It depends. If you’re leaning toward that questionable setup at Best Buy, I wouldn't bother swapping out the niche parts; maybe just shell out $43 more for the toxic instead. But if you aren't strictly tied to buying everything from a single retailer, I’d definitely pick up some memory 8GB RAM, G.SKILL Ripjaws X series, DDR3 1600MHz This is just one of those limited-time deals, so if you can snag it, go for it... Personally, I’d grab the GTX 770—specifically the MSI Lightning model. It has the highest clock speed, and I quite like how it glows🙄 Plus, it comes with an extra year of warranty... Regarding the games you mentioned, they utilize PhysX, which is designed specifically for NVIDIA cards. You can technically run it with an ATI card, but the workload shifts to your CPU, which ends up handling what the GPU should be doing. That usually results in nasty frame drops; generally speaking, things run much smoother on NVIDIA hardware. P.S. I noticed that Assassin's Creed IV also uses PhysX
You might stumble upon them on eBay, or maybe in some local shops as leftover stock, at butcher shops, or even on tech forums... http://www.ebay.com/itm/q9400-listing-example Here’s one guy selling a few different ones... You can find them on sites like eBay, though the prices tend to be a bit inflated.
Sam Rodriguez55 said:So, why go with GeForce over the R9 now? I’m really not looking to spend my weekend sweating over a PC build myself, though I could easily find someone to put it together for me. If the price at Uzì was significantly lower, I might actually consider building it on my own.
What does the rest of the crew think about this build?
I appreciate everyone's hard work on this. 🙂
NVIDIA is generally the superior GPU choice when you consider their lead in technologies like PhysX and FXAA/TXAA. Plus, after quite a while, they’ve finally started to close the gap on pricing—in terms of actual value for your money—compared to AMD.$167 Whether you're looking at the gtx 760 vs r9 270 x matchup or comparing the GTX 770 against the xx r9 280 x, there's a clear pattern here. Historically, NVIDIA's GTX6xx and 5xx series have always commanded a significantly higher price tag compared to their AMD counterparts in the HD6xxx and HD7xxx lineups. You can't really blame AMD for not picking up Ageia's PhysX technology. Honestly, if that tech had actually taken off, they might have ended up just as defunct as Woodoo was with their 3dfx venture. There is one key difference, though: Woodoo actually tried to force their own proprietary standards onto the market. It’s certainly not impossible for NVIDIA to make a similar misstep; when you try to grab the entire cake in this industry, you often end up swallowing something much less appetizing and going down with the ship. But honestly, you really have to look at how things stand right now... I have to agree with Smartic—that Best Buy bundle is a decent starting point, provided you factor in adding an SSD. Honestly, you might be better off ditching that xx r9 280 x entirely. You could probably find a GTX 770 Lightning at a different retailer for maybe an extra ten bucks, or just grab a Gigabyte GTX 770 from Micro Center. At the end of the day, popping a new GPU into a build like that is pretty much plug-and-play.
Drew Sanchez82 said:For gaming, I’d go with Steelseries keyboards. They aren't nearly as pricey as something from Razer, for instance, but the build quality is solid. Mechanical ones would be the dream, but they definitely break the bank..
Personally, I think you'd find a great value in something like the Logitech G100 or the Logitech G300. I've also heard good things about the G500 model, which usually runs around $140.
Now I'm starting to wonder if Hades just works in a print shop. 😁 The G300 is actually a pretty decent mouse—one of those rare symmetrical designs that works for both lefties and righties. Its main drawbacks are that it feels a bit too light, and the side buttons are positioned in a way that makes them hard to hit with your thumb...
I’m genuinely curious about how much weight there is to this argument:
Even SD cards have a decent lifespan. Take USB flash drives, for instance—they often fail due to poor handling, yet the data itself can almost always be recovered. As for SSDs, it's quite possible too. After all, think about how many vinyl records survived decades of ownership despite being subjected to all sorts of physical wear and tear.
Laptop components tend to burn out much sooner since they’re constantly dealing with significantly higher operating temperatures due to inferior heat dissipation.
Don't let the VRAM type trip you up—whether it's GDDR3 or GDDR5 doesn't change what we're actually talking about here. Your best bet is to focus on the price point versus the core clock frequency. Generally speaking, you want the highest MHz you can get for the lowest price, though that rule really only applies when you're comparing similar cards. Those Radeon HD 7750 models with 2GB of RAM often use GDDR3, which usually means they'll underperform compared to their counterparts. Honestly, for Full HD resolution, you don't need a massive amount of VRAM, especially not for a card this entry-level...
Look, everyone has their own set of criteria when they decide what to buy. For me, there’s a charming girl working at the Best Buy in my hometown, and honestly, she’s the sole reason I bother going there and willingly paying a premium for certain products. When someone tries to tell me I could have found a better deal elsewhere, I find myself spinning a long list of logical excuses just to justify the purchase. It's really just a way to avoid admitting the truth: I have a bit of a weakness for a friendly face.
Everything is fine. You should take your time to think it over—until you actually commit the funds, you still have all the options available to you. Usually, while you're busy crunching the numbers, an even better opportunity ends up popping up anyway...
http://www.hardwarepal.com/call-duty...performance/6/ I ran some tests using a GTX 770, and if you're building specifically for gaming, all these components are worth considering. Some models here offer better voltage regulation, which makes them a superior choice if you plan on overclocking. However, when it comes down to actual gaming performance, your GPU is really the star of the show. You could probably save about $40 by opting for a cheaper CPU and maybe another $50 on the motherboard, leaving you with an extra $133 to put toward a much better graphics card. That price difference between a GTX 760 and a GTX 770 pretty much covers that entire saving. Honestly, no other combination is going to give you better gaming value than this.
Honestly, all those power supplies you mentioned are more than adequate. There's really no need to go hunting for something that can handle 50A (25/2) on the 12V rail. It seems like someone might have misread the original post and mistakenly thought we were talking about an HD6990.
Look, that i5 isn't exactly a premium steal; it’s basically the same architecture as the i5-3350p. Honestly, for just a few bucks more at the same retailer, you could probably snag an FX-8350 instead. As for whether you can trust Best Buy, if luck is on your side, your order might show up pretty quickly—but if not, you could be sitting around waiting for a month.
Honestly, you aren't even going to notice the difference between 40 and 60 fps unless you're dealing with constant frame drops. The real issue arises when your current card is struggling at 15 fps in a specific game, only for the upgrade to peak at maybe 20 or 25. At that point, you're still right on the edge of what's playable, which isn't exactly a smooth experience either.
Larry Ortiz5 said:fosna and the rest of the mod team, I hope you don't mind me reviving this thread. I'd rather not clutter things up by starting a brand new one since my question is basically the same and I'm trying to be mindful of forum space. 😬
Anyway, to get straight to the point, here is my current setup:
I've been weighing the idea for a few days now: selling my current 7870, adding about $50, $200 and picking up a GTX 760. However, looking at benchmarks on AnandTech, they seem to perform pretty much identically. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Would upgrading to a GTX 760 just be a total waste of money?
They aren't exactly identical; the GTX 760 can actually keep up with an HD 7950, but that's beside the point. In your specific situation, any kind of upgrade wouldn't really be worth it—not even moving up to a GTX 770 or an R9 280x. On paper, the numbers look different, but you wouldn't actually feel the difference in real-world use. And usually, when you finally *do* need that extra power, that’s exactly when the performance gap feels the smallest.
To be fair, if we look at the specific comparison between a Sapphire Toxic R9 270X priced at roughly $567 and an MSI GTX 760 Hawk going for $200, the price gap isn't actually that massive. While you might see a slight edge in FPS with the Nvidia card, the power draw is about the same, the noise levels are nearly identical, and from what I can tell, the Toxic actually runs a bit cooler. But since the MSI gaming model is priced almost exactly the same as the Toxic, there’s really no longer a clear advantage when it comes to value...
Well, you have the unlocked multipliers on K-series chips, whereas the non-K models don't offer that, which theoretically makes overclocking them much more straightforward. That said, I still see plenty of reviews showing people pushing the clock speeds higher even on the standard processors without the multiplier advantage.
Choosing between a GTX 760 and an R9 270X feels like a solid value play right now if you can snag one for around $15 to $667. Honestly, it won't make much of a difference regardless of which CPU you pair it with. Personally, I tend to lean toward Nvidia .
