New desktop

[2dgreengiant]

Sup guys,

I'm building a new pc and need some advice.

Can't decide if i should get the Intel I5 2500k or the i7 2600k. the price difference is like £100 so its quite a lot. I will be doing gaming e.g bf3, crysis 2 and photoshop/after effects rendering.

Also can;t decide on a gfx card, got like £300 for it so was thinking of a Nvidia 580 or an ATI 7900?

http://www.ebuyer.com/342474-xfx-hd-...s-fx-795a-tdfc

maybe?

Thoughts?

Cheers

[Smoogels]

I would recommend the i5 if you where gaming. That i5 CPU will last for 2-3 years on high+ details on games. It's easily overclocked (to some extent) so if you ever need more power, you can easily get it. When it comes to rendering and the likes, it is pretty fast, no doubt about it but it's noting special either.

The i7 would be a waste of money for games because games do not make efficent use of hyperthreading. You would only see a 3-5 FPS increase with the i7. But rendering is where this CPU comes in handy. It will perform better with that than the i5 but in my opinion I don't think its worth the extra £100.

As for the GPU I'm not really sure about it. You could play on BF3 maxed with a £130 ATI card. I would personally lock any extra money away for the future when better cards are cheaper.

So in summary: Get the i5 2500K. Easy to overclock if needed and can just about all games high/maxed for several more years to come. Also, the performence margin from the i7 is not that huge, in my opinon not worth a extra £100

Edit: Here are some handy benchmarks for the two CPUs: AnandTech - Bench - CPU
I don't recommend going by the benchmarks alone though, it would be worth Googleing some reviews

Hope I helped

[2dgreengiant]

I would recommend the i5 if you where gaming. That i5 CPU will last for 2-3 years on high+ details on games. It's easily overclocked (to some extent) so if you ever need more power, you can easily get it. When it comes to rendering and the likes, it is pretty fast, no doubt about it but it's noting special either.

The i7 would be a waste of money for games because games do not make efficent use of hyperthreading. You would only see a 3-5 FPS increase with the i7. But rendering is where this CPU comes in handy. It will perform better with that than the i5 but in my opinion I don't think its worth the extra £100.

As for the GPU I'm not really sure about it. You could play on BF3 maxed with a £130 ATI card. I would personally lock any extra money away for the future when better cards are cheaper.

So in summary: Get the i5 2500K. Easy to overclock if needed and can just about all games high/maxed for several more years to come. Also, the performence margin from the i7 is not that huge, in my opinon not worth a extra £100

Edit: Here are some handy benchmarks for the two CPUs: AnandTech - Bench - CPU
I don't recommend going by the benchmarks alone though, it would be worth Googleing some reviews

Hope I helped

it did thanks +rep <3

[Dombo]

As for the graphics card, I'd go with the AMD 7950. It's somewhat on tie (it has some better benchmarks) with the Nvidia 580, but has less power consumption
which in my regard is a plus.

P.S. Unless you plan to do a load of video editing, the 3GB of GPU RAM is a slight overkill.

[Freefall552]

Smoogles, please show me a card for less than 300£ that runs bf3 smooth on ultra 1920x1080.

I'd go with the gtx 580 over the 7950 because it feels much better to play games on. It may not give you more fps in every game, but games run so much smoother on the 580. The 580 also performs a few % better than the 7950 in bf3 and a like 2% worse than the 7970. A solid winner concidering it's price!

I'd also go with the i5 because not many games support hyperthreading.

Bf3 benchmark: https://i.imgur.com/FouJQ.jpg

[kamil234]

I agree with Smoogles, get the i5-2500k it has a unlocked multiplier so you can easily overclock it, and it overclocks like a beast. As for the graphic card go with the 580gtx.. or wait for 670 to drop (should be soon)

[Theminatar]

I would recommend the i5 if you where gaming. That i5 CPU will last for 2-3 years on high+ details on games. It's easily overclocked (to some extent) so if you ever need more power, you can easily get it. When it comes to rendering and the likes, it is pretty fast, no doubt about it but it's noting special either.

The i7 would be a waste of money for games because games do not make efficent use of hyperthreading. You would only see a 3-5 FPS increase with the i7. But rendering is where this CPU comes in handy. It will perform better with that than the i5 but in my opinion I don't think its worth the extra £100.

As for the GPU I'm not really sure about it. You could play on BF3 maxed with a £130 ATI card. I would personally lock any extra money away for the future when better cards are cheaper.

So in summary: Get the i5 2500K. Easy to overclock if needed and can just about all games high/maxed for several more years to come. Also, the performence margin from the i7 is not that huge, in my opinon not worth a extra £100

Edit: Here are some handy benchmarks for the two CPUs: AnandTech - Bench - CPU
I don't recommend going by the benchmarks alone though, it would be worth Googleing some reviews

Hope I helped

Ahh but you're forgetting as to why the i7's are so much more expensive. The reason why the i5's are better for gaming compared to the i7's isn't because of just the price alone and the lifespans on them. It's the fact that i5's don't have Hyper Threading on them. When you turn HT off on the i7's they're temps go way down by atleast 10c and you're fps increases as well.

But since the i5's don't have HT built into them, then they are already cooled and ready for gaming.

[Killsomecero]

I would definetely get the gtx, nvidia cards seem to be outperforming radeon in general. I recommend getting a 560/70 ti, or 2 4/5xx cards to run in SLI. would much rather have a high end 570 than a low end 580.
And if you do, keep in mind dual fans and/or 2gb vram helps out the card duration in terms of longevity. Dual fans also give you a much better potential for overclocks if they can keep the card low
As for the intel processor, i5 would be better for gaming like most others have said, the temps are usually low so your fps is very crisp and smooth

[gcxdaniel]

i'd go with the nvidia gtx 580 over the 7950 any day. it feels much smoother and not to mention the 7xxx series are fairly new. it'll probably undergo alot of driver updates and may seem like a hassle.
also, i like the i5 2500k. solid performance all around for the price range.
you should also look into getting an aftermarket cooler. doesn't have to be fancy but a cooler master hyper 212 evo, or even just the standard hyper 212 plus will suffice.
hope this helped make up your decision.

[gcxdaniel]

p.s. don't gimp out on your power supply. but a nice certified and reliable psu.