I built a PC for my friend "his first ever gaming pc" so I just wanted to keep the price down but also get him as many frames as possible so I went AMD of course as I don't care about brand "Except MSI, I'm a bit of a fan boy".
Its my first proper build log video so hope people like it, feel free to tear me to pieces about my choice of quad core FX or the cheap case, or just my no nonsense tone :)
Thanks for looking everyone.
I just bought a couple of 1.6GHz Quad-core 771 Xeons for $4.50 each shipped. Once I find out how high I can overclock them (they're only 1066MHz FSB so they should go pretty high) I'll let you know because if you can get it to 2.5GHz it will start looking reallllllllly really good for the price.
I have a fear of buying Xeons that are a few years old due to motherboard compatibility but yes, if they can be overclocked just a little the should wipe the floor with a FX4300.
How can you match that price with the GPU though? :D
See if you can build a system that beats my basic benchmarks for under $200.
You can mod the 771 Xeons with a sticker over two data pins and possibly a BIOS update with a microcode injection to enable win8 and later but you can get it going on pretty much any 775 board with an Award or Phoenix BIOS that supports BIOS flashing.
I'll be back later with a parts list that I put together - won't be under $200 BUT it will be very cheap. Would post sooner but gotta head up to Canader atm...
Let's see...
Xeon E5310 - $4.50
Decent LGA 775 motherboard - $50
basic Deep Cool tower heatsink - $15
HD 7850 - $75
80+ Bronze PSU - $40
cheap case - $30
So we're talking about around $215 for some admittedly very good parts here. If you can get a motherboard with a good VRM then overclocking the 5130 to Q6600 levels should be a breeze, and if you're not looking for that much horsepower you CAN go with a 7770 for $50... It's by no means 7970 levels of performance for $200 (which frankly was a bit unrealistic a goal) but it'll run a surprising number of games at 1080p even today.
All depends on what your definition of "cheap" is. For many, even something like $300 is pushing the boundaries quite a bit.
Cheap for me is under £350, which I'm guessing with the British exit of the EU gives an exchange rate of like £5 per US dollar, lol. Really though for me it would be like $450 USD.
Anything above that would be getting into high end territory, obviously when we are talking about pre-built that's not going to get you much at all but if you build your self and shop around $500 can get you a very powerful system.