For the record, my system: AMD Phenom II X4 2.8ghz, 4gb DDR3, 7200rpm SATA hdd, Radeon HD 6770 (upgraded from 4850.) Built 3 or 4 years ago, so not to be used as a guide; I'm pretty sure the AM3 socket at least is obsolete by now.
Vault101 said:
just a few quick and random questions in regards to PC parts
[b/]AMD processors[/b]
lets say I'm on a budget and for whatever reason I might get that brand as opposed to intel, is this an absolutely essential decision? are there drawbacks? (such as future proofing or something) also what uh "speed" or whatever should I be looking for? 3.4 or more?
AMD's fine imo. The main thing you want to research is what the future roadmap for the socket (the physical CPU->mobo interface) you're planning on buying into looks like. At the time I built my machine, AMD had announced hex cores for AM3 like a year down the line, while Intel had two "high-end" sockets: one was a confirmed dead end, the other was prohibitively expensive for me.
Future-proofing is just doing your homework. I can't help on what's good now... my MO goes like "spend weeks researching everything on the market, build computer, stop paying attention until I need to build a new one." But yeah, there's no reason to shun AMD, but just make sure you do your homework on what your options are.
[b/]power supply[/b]
is 750watt essential? I'd assume so
Off the top of my head, I want to say a high mid-range comp (say $900-$1200) would prolly need ~550w, maybe 650 tops. I can't see needing more than that unless you're doing like SLI/Crossfire or water-cooling or something. (Don't quote me on that though.) There are PSU calculators online that will tell you what you need, in any event. Naturally you want to leave yourself some wiggle room, but 750w sounds unnecessary.
[b/]graphics card[/b]
lets say that most of my budget is going into the graphics card (well in this case a GTX670) if I have a good graphics card but the other components aren't quite as good then will that cause issues?
any adivc would be great..thanks!
My personal opinion is that if you only have the budget to splurge on one thing, make it the motherboard. Anything else can be upgraded later with relative ease, but swapping out a mobo requires more effort than building a new computer from scratch. (It's also the hardest/most annoying item to sell.)
When I build a computer, my plan is generally to get a good enough mobo that if I ever feel my machine is getting obsolete, I have upgrade paths available to me. I've since upgraded my graphics card, and I could get a better CPU and 4gb more RAM for like $100 total if I felt like it. Your mobo places a lot of constraints on how good your system can be (CPU models, max RAM and max RAM speed, L2/L3 cache size, max HDD xfer speed, etc) so I'd compare getting a good mobo to pouring a good foundation for a house.
It's
really oversimplifying it (performance comes down to how specific games are coded and what they need to accomplish,) but your computer is as bad as its worst component. A bad computer with an amazing graphics card is a bad computer. It's best to spread you money around so you don't have any performance bottlenecks.
Edit: Oh, and btw, I can still run most games at least at high settings and don't foresee myself buying a new comp for at least a few years.
Also, folk wisdom states that Nvidia cards are better with Intel chips, while ATI are better with AMD (the idea being that Nvidia designs around Intel because they're the market leader, while ATI designs around AMD because they're the same company.) The logic seems reasonable, but I dunno whether there's data behind this or if it's an old wives' tale.
