Hello, my friend has a fairly outdated computer and some money to spend so he figured he'd update it.
Here are the current specs:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/g1A7p8r.png[/img]
Not that great.
I'm guessing the mobo, ram, cpu, psu and gpu need replacing since they're all old. He can keep his HDD, optical drive and chassis. He's got a good OS already so no need to buy a better one.
I'm hoping you guys can put something good together. Budget is around 5000SEK (a bit over budget is okay). A cheap SSD wouldn't hurt either. The sites we can buy from are: [URL=www.cdon.com]CDON[/URL], [URL=www.inet.se]Inet[/URL] and [URL=www.komplett.se]Komplett[/URL]
Thank you.
So he is on FM2 socket? Buy an AM3+ motherboard, don't go cheap ass on motherboards.
Well he could first upgrade his GPU, Radeon HD 5700 is ancient so he should get at least a 7790 for 1080p gaming or better also avoid nVidia's GPU's because of crippled compute units and that is the reason why nVidia's GPUs have "CUDA" that is going to die sooner or later since its closed source versus Open CL that is being more and more used and replaces slowly very limited CUDA GPGPU.
He should go AM3+ and buy at least FX 6300 or FX 8320 and overclock it to 4.0Ghz, aftermarket cooler is recommended and later he could upgrade to Steamroller. AMD is cheap and good bang for a buck so for 5000 SEK or 600$ is more than enough, I did not check the prices and I don't know to speak or read any germanic language.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41604109]So he is on FM2 socket? Buy an AM3+ motherboard, don't go cheap ass on motherboards.[/QUOTE]
Athlon II x2 635 is an AM3 processor.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41604109]Well he could first upgrade his GPU, Radeon HD 5700 is ancient so he should get at least a 7790 for 1080p gaming or better also avoid nVidia's GPU's because of crippled compute units and that is the reason why nVidia's GPUs have "CUDA" that is going to die sooner or later since its closed source versus Open CL that is being more and more used and replaces slowly very limited CUDA GPGPU.[/QUOTE]
Just because the HD5000 series is 2 generations old, doesn't mean it's crap. The HD57xx line is still good for casual gaming. It doesn't make much sense to get a HD7790 because it barely offers any performance increase for the cost. He'd have to at least get a HD7850/70 to notice anything.
And who cares about CUDA/Open CL? I really doubt he's going to be bitcoin mining or doing heavy amounts of video encoding.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41604109]He should go AM3+ and buy at least FX 6300 or FX 8320 and overclock it to 4.0Ghz, aftermarket cooler is recommended and later he could upgrade to Steamroller. AMD is cheap and good bang for a buck so for 5000 SEK or 600$ is more than enough, I did not check the prices and I don't know to speak or read any germanic language.[/QUOTE]
No, he should get an Intel build. for ~$600 he could easily get an Intel build that would run circles around anything AMD has to offer. If he used the same GPU with an intel CPU, it would squeeze some extra performance out of the card from being bottlenecked less.
There's no point in getting a faildozer processor. They're power hungry furnaces, inefficient and have terrible single thread performance.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41605021]Athlon II x2 635 is an AM3 processor.[/QUOTE]
It is Athlon II x4 635 not X2, there is Athlon II line on FM2 socket so I was not sure if it was AM2/AM3 or FM2.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41605021]Just because the HD5000 series is 2 generations old, doesn't mean it's crap. The HD57xx line is still good for casual gaming. It doesn't make much sense to get a HD7790 because it barely offers any performance increase for the cost. He'd have to at least get a HD7850/70 to notice anything.[/QUOTE]
Radeon HD 7790 is a considerable upgrade over Radeon HD 5750/5770, it is twice as fast according to benchmarks:
[url]http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7790-vs-Radeon-HD-5770[/url]
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41605021]And who cares about CUDA/Open CL? I really doubt he's going to be bitcoin mining or doing heavy amounts of video encoding.[/QUOTE]
How do you know if he will never do some recording and video encoding, what about Photoshop? He could be doing various things that a GPU could help him to do better and faster than he could do on a CPU. You never know...
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41605021]No, he should get an Intel build. for ~$600 he could easily get an Intel build that would run circles around anything AMD has to offer. If he used the same GPU with an intel CPU, it would squeeze some extra performance out of the card from being bottlenecked less.[/QUOTE]
A stronger CPU can help him in CPU intensive games and slightly improve frames in primarily GPU intensive games while for the most part games are primarily GPU intensive now. A good balance between a CPU and a GPU will have less sticky situations versus a Strong CPU w/ a Weak GPU and vice versa.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41605021]There's no point in getting a faildozer processor. They're power hungry furnaces, inefficient and have terrible single thread performance.[/QUOTE]
If Piledriver is inefficient then Sandy Bridge is inefficient and power hungry junk also, FX 8350 has multi-threading performance of Sandy Bridge i7 2600k and both are 32nm so deal with it and both have 8 threads. CPU's from AMD will do job for less money with higher performance per SEK/$/€...
He could buy an FX 4300/4350 that consumes a lot less than his current CPU and is 15//20% faster or get an FX 6300/6350 that has the same price as i3 3220/3225 and destroy it in multi-threading and multi-tasking.
FX 8350 is about 1/5 cheaper than an i5 and is 15-20% better in multi-threading, far better in streaming and it fits nicely in between i5 and i7. He could get FX 8320 that is cheaper, buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock it to 4Ghz as FX 8350 and actually save up couple of €/$ further.
Then with remaining cash he could buy a strong GPU, an 64 or even a 128Gb SSD for his OS and some games and programs that really benefit from it like ARMA 2/3, MMO's, Adobe/rendering, etc... Later he can upgrade to Steamroller and from available information's it points out that it is going to be 20 to 30% faster clock to clock compared to Piledriver so an 8 core Steamroller could beat i7 4770k and an 6 core Steamroller would match or slightly be ahead in multi-threading against an i5.
Enjoy your Haswell refresh in second half of 2014 ;)
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]It is Athlon II x4 635 not X2, there is Athlon II line on FM2 socket so I was not sure if it was AM2/AM3 or FM2.[/QUOTE]
Typo on my part, the Athlon II x4 635 is an AM3 processor still.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_II_x2#.22Propus.22_.28C2.2FC3.2C_45_nm.2C_Quad-core.29[/url]
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]Radeon HD 7790 is a considerable upgrade over Radeon HD 5750/5770, it is twice as fast according to benchmarks:
[url]http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7790-vs-Radeon-HD-5770[/url][/QUOTE]
It's not "twice as powerful", at most it's between 15-25% better depending on what you're doing. For that 15-25%, you're paying between $150-$170 for that performance, which really isn't worth the cost.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]How do you know if he will never do some recording and video encoding, what about Photoshop? He could be doing various things that a GPU could help him to do better and faster than he could do on a CPU. You never know...[/QUOTE]
He never specified he was doing content creation, and even if he did it requires applications that actually support GPGPU, which are still sparse.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]A stronger CPU can help him in CPU intensive games and slightly improve frames in primarily GPU intensive games while for the most part games are primarily GPU intensive now. A good balance between a CPU and a GPU will have less sticky situations versus a Strong CPU w/ a Weak GPU and vice versa.[/QUOTE]
The problem is that his current processor is bottlenecking the GPU. Getting a stronger CPU with the same GPU will yield better GPU and CPU performance since the stronger CPU can feed the GPU faster.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]If Piledriver is inefficient then Sandy Bridge is inefficient and power hungry junk also, FX 8350 has multi-threading performance of Sandy Bridge i7 2600k and both are 32nm so deal with it and both have 8 threads. CPU's from AMD will do job for less money with higher performance per SEK/$/€...[/QUOTE]
Do you even read CPU benchmarks and specs? It's looking like you're an AMD fanboy that just wants people to use AMD parts.
Let's start off with AMD parts lie about what they are. Their octa cores are quads, their hex cores are tris, their quads are dual and their duals are single. They don't have the number of real cores as advertised, each core can process two threads and AMD PR has had a field day with that fact. But the real fact is that just because each core can process two threads, doesn't mean it has the same performance level as two real cores. The two threads in the core have to share resources, which means that the threads can never take full advantage of the core because something is always running in the other thread causing performance degradation and bottlenecking. It's akin to Hyperthreading on Intel CPUs, but unlike HT you can't turn it off.
Yes, it will give you better multithread performance in things like database servers, but not in games where they're still mostly single threaded or have very limited multi threading support. And even in the games that can utilize threading, they expect to have threads on real CPUs, not shared or virtual ones like HT or bulldozer.
And did you seriously call Intel parts "power hungry furnaces also"? How ignorant are you. AMD has been stuck in the 95-125W TDP band since the Phenom arch. Bulldozer is no different. The "quads" and "hex cores" are 95W, while the "octa cores" are 125W.
Intel's Nehalem arch was 130W (i7) and 95W (i5), sandy Bridge was 95W and less, Ivy bridge was 77W and less and Haswell is 84W and less. All of them have a much higher IPC and IPW than anything AMD has to offer. The only thing AMD has going for them is their parts can overclock to the moon at the expense of power consumption and heat production.
He could get an i5-4670k for $240 or an FX-8350 for $200, which would be thoroughly outperformed for $40 more.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]He could buy an FX 4300/4350 that [B]consumes a lot less than his current CPU[/B] and is 15//20% faster or get an FX 6300/6350 that has the same price as i3 3220/3225 and destroy it in multi-threading and multi-tasking.[/QUOTE]
Haha, what. Both the Athlon II X4 635 and the FX4000 and FX6300 series have the same TDP at 95W.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]FX 8350 is about 1/5 cheaper than an i5 and is 15-20% better in multi-threading, far better in streaming and it fits nicely in between i5 and i7. He could get FX 8320 that is cheaper, buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock it to 4Ghz as FX 8350 and actually save up couple of €/$ further.[/QUOTE]
Any money he saves is going to be used up by the high power consumption and heat output.
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41605820]Then with remaining cash he could buy a strong GPU, an 64 or even a 128Gb SSD for his OS and some games and programs that really benefit from it like ARMA 2/3, MMO's, Adobe/rendering, etc... Later he can upgrade to Steamroller and from available information's it points out that it is going to be 20 to 30% faster clock to clock compared to Piledriver so an 8 core Steamroller could beat i7 4770k and an 6 core Steamroller would match or slightly be ahead in multi-threading against an i5.
Enjoy your Haswell refresh in second half of 2014 ;)[/QUOTE]
Higher clocks doesn't equate to a linear performance increase, the FX9590 shows this all too well. At 4.7 GHz with a [B]220W[/B] TDP, it's still beaten in some cases by the i5-4670k and in nearly all cases by the i7-4770k in performance and power consumption.
AMD isn't doing anything to increase the IPC of their parts, they're just ramping up clock speeds like Intel was failing at doing in 2005 with the Pentium 4.
Guys, let's roll back on-topic for the sake of the OP.
What PSU does he have? We can't see that on stuff like Speccy, so you're bound to have to check the actual insides of his PC.
As for upgrades, an extra stick of RAM is heavily advised, as well as a new motherboard and a new CPU. Replace the GPU with something like a 660 ti or a 760, whichever is cheaper at this point, really.
So, in a nutshell
GPU : [URL="http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=772794"]660ti[/URL] or [URL="http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=784202"]760[/URL].
Mobo : Any LGA 1150 with good reviews. Suggested brands are [URL="http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=781733"]Gigabyte[/URL] and [URL="http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=782065"]MSi[/URL]. Make sure it fits your case.
CPU : i3 or i5, whatever suits your budget. Mostly dependable on if you're going to overclock it or not. Make sure it's a CPU that uses an 1150 socket (that is, any 4XXX processor from Intel).
RAM : An extra stick of whatever stick you have in it now. Make sure it's the exact same thing.
[QUOTE=xNickston;41610987]Guys, let's roll back on-topic for the sake of the OP.[/QUOTE]
I sent him two recommendations in a PM.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Typo on my part, the Athlon II x4 635 is an AM3 processor still.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_II_x2#.22Propus.22_.28C2.2FC3.2C_45_nm.2C_Quad-core.29[/url] [/QUOTE]
It is not AM3, you have variants for AM2/AM3 and FM2/FM2+ socket...
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]It's not "twice as powerful", at most it's between 15-25% better depending on what you're doing. For that 15-25%, you're paying between $150-$170 for that performance, which really isn't worth the cost.[/QUOTE]
Wow, you fail again... His CPU is currently in multi-threading comparable to an i3 3220/3225 so he is not in dire need to replace his CPU, it is an bottleneck as an i3 3220/3225 :P
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf0NAT2nd-I[/url] - Core 2 Quad is comparable to an old Athlon II x4 635, this is with Radeon HD 5570.
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu-udrS5tek[/url] - i5 3570k close to being twice as fast as his Athlon II x4 635, this is with Radeon HD 7790.
So compare graphical settings, both videos are gameplays at 1080p resolution... Also rarely some games can use hyperthreading.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]He never specified he was doing content creation, and even if he did it requires applications that actually support GPGPU, which are still sparse.[/QUOTE]
He did not specified, but that does not mean he won't be doing some content creation sooner or later, you never know.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]The problem is that his current processor is bottlenecking the GPU. Getting a stronger CPU with the same GPU will yield better GPU and CPU performance since the stronger CPU can feed the GPU faster.[/QUOTE]
His current CPU is not a bottleneck when it comes to games that use 4 cores eg Battlefield 3, Borderlands, Crysis 2/3,etc..
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Do you even read CPU benchmarks and specs? It's looking like you're an AMD fanboy that just wants people to use AMD parts.[/QUOTE]
hahaha, you keep failing... The guy is under tight budget and he lives in Europe as me, an i5 3570k in europe costs like 300-400$! That is nearly half of its budget!
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Let's start off with AMD parts lie about what they are. Their octa cores are quads, their hex cores are tris, their quads are dual and their duals are single. They don't have the number of real cores as advertised, each core can process two threads and AMD PR has had a field day with that fact. But the real fact is that just because each core can process two threads, doesn't mean it has the same performance level as two real cores. The two threads in the core have to share resources, which means that the threads can never take full advantage of the core because something is always running in the other thread causing performance degradation and bottlenecking. It's akin to Hyperthreading on Intel CPUs, but unlike HT you can't turn it off.[/QUOTE]
Many people argued, but the facts that FX 8350 is a quad and a octa core at the same time so people can't decide because of CMT type architecture so you fail there. If you would look at the shot of a CPU then you would see that it has 8 cores with shared FPU and L2 cache so you are wrong. Bulldozer was a flop, it was rushed out and they have done Bulldozer architecture partially on a machine that screwed aspect ratio and Piledriver introduced minor tweaks with some bumps in clocks thus maintaining same TDP while giving 10 to 15% performance improvements. Also Piledriver versus Bulldozer in overclocking when it comes to power consumption, it was vastly reduced. That is the current story.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Yes, it will give you better multithread performance in things like database servers, but not in games where they're still mostly single threaded or have very limited multi threading support. And even in the games that can utilize threading, they expect to have threads on real CPUs, not shared or virtual ones like HT or bulldozer.[/QUOTE]
There is not anything virtual in Bulldozer/Piledriver. Each core from Piledriver has an IPC of an Core 2 Duo clock to clock, also it can achieve much higher clocks and lower power consumption. Multi-threading penalty is because of CMT design, if there wasn't any multi-threading penalty then FX 8350 would be faster than i7 4770k by 5% in multi-threading.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]And did you seriously call Intel parts "power hungry furnaces also"? How ignorant are you. AMD has been stuck in the 95-125W TDP band since the Phenom arch. Bulldozer is no different. The "quads" and "hex cores" are 95W, while the "octa cores" are 125W.
Intel's Nehalem arch was 130W (i7) and 95W (i5), sandy Bridge was 95W and less, Ivy bridge was 77W and less and Haswell is 84W and less. All of them have a much higher IPC and IPW than anything AMD has to offer. The only thing AMD has going for them is their parts can overclock to the moon at the expense of power consumption and heat production.
He could get an i5-4670k for $240 or an FX-8350 for $200, which would be thoroughly outperformed for $40 more.[/QUOTE]
Intel's chips are hotter per watt than AMD's, 80 celsius versus 55 celsius...He does not live in USA, he lives in Europe like I do so hardware is a one fifth more expensive than in USA.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Haha, what. Both the Athlon II X4 635 and the FX4000 and FX6300 series have the same TDP at 95W.
Any money he saves is going to be used up by the high power consumption and heat output.[/QUOTE]
It does not mean that his CPU will be at 100% Load, also he lives in cold/winter Sweden so that's a plus and I think power is rather cheap there...
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]Higher clocks doesn't equate to a linear performance increase, the FX9590 shows this all too well. At 4.7 GHz with a [B]220W[/B] TDP, it's still beaten in some cases by the i5-4670k and in nearly all cases by the i7-4770k in performance and power consumption.[/QUOTE]
Why you are mentioning a limited edition CPU? I don't care about it at all since its a limited edition, who would care about Pentium 4 Extreme Edition? Nobody.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;41609924]AMD isn't doing anything to increase the IPC of their parts, they're just ramping up clock speeds like Intel was failing at doing in 2005 with the Pentium 4.[/QUOTE]
Bulldozer was the first generation, Piledriver is "refresh" and second generation on the same node and you can expect something similar with Haswell "refresh"... Higher clocks. You do not even try to mention third generation Bulldozer codenamed Steamroller and see what it could bring up to table and do you even know that AMD's Temash/Kabini have beaten Ivy Bridge in terms of performance per watt and idle/power saving plus a lot cooler than Ivy Bridge or Haswell.
[url]http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/3/6/analysis-amd-kaveri-apu-and-steamroller-core-architectural-enhancements-unveiled.aspx[/url] - Kaveri has Steamroller cores
[url]http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Kaveri-APU-Gaming,22947.html[/url] - Kaveri Steamroller cores are 20-25% faster than Trinity/Richland Piledriver cores
[url]http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2322010[/url] - leaked Steamroller die shot
[url]www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20130331080217_AMD_We_Are_On_Track_With_Steamroller_Micro_Architecture_in_2013.html[/url] - the site crashed or under maintenance
4 core SR as fast as 6 core PD, 6 core SR as fast as i5 HW and 8 core SR as fast as an i7 HW in multi-threading, single thread performance of SR should be around 1.3 to 1.4 points in Cinebench 11.5 Single Core at 4Ghz clock. This is all according to AMD, so its not official. In case they actually accomplish that then AMD will again become a threat to Intel.
If his AM3 motherboard can support Piledriver and in future Steamroller then he can further save up some money.
You live in USA, I live and this guy lives in Europe. In my country an FX 8350 is 275-300$, i5 3570k is 350-400$, i7 3770k is like 500$. An FX 8320 is "mere" 200$!
So FX 8320 200$ vs i5 3570k that is 350-400$, put 2 and 2 and you get the picture, my country is literally an AMD fortress :3
[QUOTE=iAMunderDog;41614019]:downs:[/QUOTE]
It's not even worth trying to debate with you anymore. You're being too much of an AMD fanboy to even try and help this guy.
I already sent him two builds in a PM so you're done here.
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