Questions about what price range to purchase.
I am currently in the process of deciding whether to purchase a desktop computer. I game on my laptop which is a Turion x64 with an integrated hd 3200. I am looking for a system that will be a noticeable improvement from what I am currently using and I want to be able to play games like Starcraft 2 without stuttering. I don't really care about all of the graphical settings being set to "extremely high", but I don't want to run games at 1024 x 768 either.
I am not trying to future proof with this purchase. If I can get 2-3 years out of this computer until it becomes about as dated for gaming as my laptop is now, then I will be very happy. Also, I may be interested in adding a second monitor down the road. This would be primarily for productivity purposes, not gaming.
My questions are as follows:
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Should I wait until after Bulldozer is released to purchase a new desktop?
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Where is a decent sweet spot on the price/performance curve? I will probably take the lazy man's approach and just get a computer from the Logical Increment list. I am thinking about something in the Good - Great spectrum, but I can certainly pay more if there is a compelling reason to.
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Should I be looking at builds other than Logical's?
I respect this community's knowledge about computers and would love to hear your input on this. Both the timeline of the purchase and the money allocated to this purchase are flexible, so please feel free to comment on any adjustments that I should make to those guidelines as well.
Posted Jun 18, 2011, 10:57 PM UTC
No need for that. Like sevaroth said, for pure gaming you can't do much better than a 2500k for the price, however, I think it's a bit out of your budget range. My recommendation would be to buy an x4 955 with an AM3+ motherboard so, in the future, you can drop in a Bulldozer CPU. The x4's right now will only set you back a little over $100, and, even still, it is a perfectly acceptable CPU for the foreseeable future.
You can build a pretty killer machine right now in the $600-$700 range, anything more than a couple hundred above that usually just includes luxuries like an SSD or aftermarket cooling, among other things. The logical build is actually pretty damn good on its own, but you can find better deals if you look closely. Here's something I threw together that I think is pretty damn good for the price. Mind you the OS will set you back another $30/$100 depending on whether you're in school and can get a discount.
Part list permalink / Part price breakdown by merchant
Thank you for the build recommendations. Just to clarify, I am not really interested in buying Bulldozer. I just thought that prices on existing architectures took a dive when a new one came out. I would only use that as a target date if it meant that I could save a lot of the Phenom chip. My underlying assumption about price drops from an event like this could also be false too, it was based on research when I built my last computer which was an AMD Barton 2500 (O/C to 3200 by increasing the FSB) with a Radeon 9800 pro. That was a sweet computer for its time.
Also, I am a student so I will be able to get the OS for $30. I will probably dual boot into Linux as well, though I may just run it in a virtual machine instead.
Thank you for letting me know. Those types of luxuries are the exact things that I want to avoid.
His recommendations look pretty good. One consideration that would still likely be on budget is an upgraded mobo and PSU for CF support in a year or so. It will allow you to upgrade when a game comes along or you start to see a drop in performance.