Suggestions for cpu/gpu

Hey everyone i have an asus z87i-deluxe inside a bitfenix phenom with a 250gb samsung ssd and i still need a cpu gpu and ram, my budget is around 950$

 

thanks

 

Mike

Well, since you have/want a high-end mITX system, you should go ahead and grab a 4670k for gaming and light editing. If you like to do heavy editing workloads then feel free to grab the 4770k which will handle that better.

Do you have any game preferences? I think the R9 280x is a good price/performance GPU, with a balanced ability in all aspects of gaming. e.g modding. Depends if you can find one in stock that isn't at a heavily inflated price - following the increase in mining.

i play mostly bf4 and i prefer nvidia gpu's

Battlefield 4 is an AMD optimised game, but you should get pretty similar performance with a GTX 770, which sits on a similar price point. That's going to handle BF4 really well. Ultra textures and a lot of post processing.

I noticed that you have asked about RAM too. If you're only gaming, just grab two 4GB sticks of 1600 speed RAM. Ensure that you get two sticks to you can utilise dual channel memory.

Hey there Michael Mansour, sounds like you have some good head-room so i'll try and help you out as best as I can! So it seems like the motherboard you chose is intended for the 4th generation intel i3/i5/i7 processors. We'll get to that in a minute, so let's start with the RAM. Anything above 4 GB is good but it seems like you want this computer for some serious gaming so I would go with the Kingston Hyper-X 16GB ram set of 2x8. That'll give you about $800 left. Next is the processor. I would go with either the intel i5 4670k or the i7 4770k as both of these are great processors and are unlockable if you wish to do any overclocking. Now with all this nice equipment, you shouldn't skip out on the gpu, so for the gpu I would suggest the Nvidia gtx 770. All of these items (the gpu,cpu, and ram) should fit into your $950 budget nicely. :)

Can i fit a 780 in my budget?

Yeah, you might be able to get a 780 in there. You would certainly get a 780 in your budget if you go with the i5. You only need an i5 for gaming.

Im not just a gamer and personally an i5 just sounds so sub par

Well, get an i7 if it satisfies some sort of E-peen. But you better be sure that you will actually benefit from an i7, otherwise you're just wasting money.

But there's no gaming performance between the i5 and the i7. They are the same chip, but the i7 has a technology called hyper-threading in addition. And HT is nothing more than efficient scheduling which will handle video editing a little better. Though, the i5 is a very very very capable CPU for all given tasks.

I will leave that decision to you. But there are very few things that would actually benefit from HT.

Indeed. I have a 2600k. Would not recommend. Some games run better with Hyper-Threading off. At that point it's an overpriced i5.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2ywzW

just a wee bit over budget... you could get a cheaper 780 that's an EVGA FTW model

I have a hdd and a seasonic g750

I think you did well to get all that inside of that budget, DrunkenPanda.

Good choice on the Seasonic unit. Sounds like you can afford everything you desire

then you can step up to the 780 Classified like I have, which is a monster... and still have a bit of cash left...

or...

you could downgrade the 780 to normal clock model and get the i7... it's all doable... if you aren't doing video editing or running virtual desktops I'd get the i5 and 780 Classy

EDIT: if getting the 780 Classified you may want to check your case for room... it's a bit extra wide

I got the seasonic for christmas, and im selling an old build so i can complete my current one, But what else is different about the i7 and i can get an i7 for 250$ btw

There's not. That's the point. An i7 is an i5 with hyper threading. And HT is just efficient scheduling, which doesn't really benefit your gaming performance. Sometimes HT can hurt your gaming performance. That is why people recommend an i5 as the gamer's choice.

CPUs are created and categorised in a process known as speed binning. So all CPUs are created the same, and those CPUs which are of lower quality or "efficiency" will have a couple of the cores lasered off so they can be sold as i3s. So you understand that i3s, i5s, and i7s are all basically the same piece of silicon. An i7 is the same as an i5, but it might be that little bit more efficient. You might be able to overclock an i7 further than an i5. However, it isn't unusual for an i5 to beat an i7 in both overclocking and gaming performance at stock clocks.

You'd be spending more money for an i7 which won't give you anything in return. Not unless you are doing heavy editing tasks, in which case, it will be a little faster than the i5. There's nothing an i7 can do that an i5 cannot handle nearly as well. I think you would be better off purchasing an i5, and the using that extra cash for additional parts, or just save it.

Hmm ok but why do all the benchmarkers and tech reviewers use i7's on their test benches

Typically, benchmarks are done using i7s from the 2011 platform. They will often be six-core i7s, not your typical 4 core consumer i7s. And those sixcore i7s will do a better job of eliminating any bottleneck to show the best GPU performance that can be attained.

If you really wanted to dispute it, you can check out Austin Evan's channel where he typically overclocks an i5 to remove as much of the CPU bottleneck as possible. It makes little difference.

I'm not gonna lie about it. I own an i7, and I decided to spend the extra money for extra speed in multi-threaded workloads.

You're welcome to search i5 versus i7 for yourself, it'll be what I have told you here. I can't see any reason why you would need it.

If you have the cash, and you want to buy it, then do what makes you happy. I'll leave you with that because I gotta go bed.