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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Build your own is usually how I go. But.. kids getting older and x mas coming quick. anyone know of some good pre builkt computers able to handle most new games under $1000 us??

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    They change too quickly to have experience with specific model that is current. I would just avoid the Intel onboard graphic chips. Not because some of them aren't good, but their driver stability with some games is not very good. Still lots of games that just have too many issues.

    I like Dell, don't like HP, but your mileage will vary :) (they all have good and bad models)

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    Ogre in the Playground
     
    ElfPirate

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    They change too quickly to have experience with specific model that is current. I would just avoid the Intel onboard graphic chips. Not because some of them aren't good, but their driver stability with some games is not very good. Still lots of games that just have too many issues.
    You cannot avoid onboard graphics since every new consumer processor has built in gfx chips, both AMD and Intel. What you shouldn't do is expect them to be the main GPU.

    I'd disagree on the "they aren't good". They are perfectly adequate, they just aren't powerful enough. A coupel generations old core i5 will probably struggle to run the newest Assassin Creed game. And I doubt even the now, I think, 8th gen ones will manage.

    Ofc it all boils down to what "gaming" means to you.



    In short you need an ok CPU, for gaming usually my go to is the i5 family. Enough memory, probably around 8gb but the more the merrier. A SSD disc. And the beefiest gfx card you feel comfortable competing with blockchain miners with. Usually at least getting a close to topline (the absolute best ones tend to remain expensive) previous generation card gives you a lot of bang for your back. But it pays to know where in the cycle you are.

    I'm not entirely current but I think nVIDIA recently released a gtx 20x0 series, at least the drviers are very keen on informing me I cna buy one now. So look at gtx 1070-1080 cards in comparisons. My experience is that buying the very budget version of the new series is worse than a similarly priced (often) top line older version.

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    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    You cannot avoid onboard graphics since every new consumer processor has built in gfx chips, both AMD and Intel. What you shouldn't do is expect them to be the main GPU.
    No they don't? In the latest AMD range, for example, only the Ryzen G series has a built-in GPU, while the regular Ryzen does not. Even on the Intel side, while the regular chips do include a GPU, it's a pretty rubbish one--that's why they also have G class processors which have more powerful built-in graphics.

    You're correct that you shouldn't rely on these built-in GPUs, though. Unless you're seriously strapped for cash, a separate plug-in GPU will generally perform better.

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    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Silfir's Avatar

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Since you're looking for a gaming PC, onboard graphics should not be relevant to the conversation unless your budget is like $400 or something. (In which case a Ryzen onboard chip outperforms Intel's, as far as I'm aware.) $1000 should get you a machine that can handle anything. Think RX 580 or GTX 1060 at the very least; GTX 1070 if you're lucky.

    There isn't really such a thing as a go-to prebuilt PC. Sometimes your best option might be to go with an older, discounted model (typically an Intel i5i7 from a couple of generations ago - avoid any AMD CPUs not named Ryzen like the plague) that can easily be upgraded, which is still less of a hassle than building one from scratch (and can sometimes be more cost-effective).

    I'd still build one myself. Your kids can help.
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  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    I had a family member just buy a cyberpowerpc branded system for gaming. They seem to have a bunch of prebuilt option on Amazon plus configurable build-to-order options on their website. However I don't have any personal experience with that brand.
    Last edited by Psionic Dog; 2018-10-26 at 09:46 AM.
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  7. - Top - End - #7
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    I think once you get into "gaming computer" you are stuck with building your own. It is only when you get down to the point that windows dominates the price that buying from Dell makes sense.

    Dell example ($800): https://www.microcenter.com/product/...sktop-computer
    Issues: rotating hard drive (only. And a small one at that). Internal Intel graphics (don't even think about gaming with that). No monitor.

    DIY example ($782): https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/gtYcC...d-gaming-build
    Issues: no monitor, OS, keyboard, or mouse.
    Plus: twice the memory, SSD + twice the storage, CPU nominally faster

    I'm pretty sure it is far more easy to fix the issues (mainly windows and accessories) with the DIY example than the Dell (easily $300 of parts). Upgrading a refurbished Dell (scavenging windows, motherboard, CPU, and upgrading inexpensive DDR3) might also make a lot of sense. Intel CPUs haven't exactly improved all that much in the last 5 years (although they have increased the number of cores in the last two).

    I wouldn't ignore the AMD graphics cards at this point, but I doubt they would help enough (the 580 is too similar to the 1060, the Vega56 will bust the budget).

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    Titan in the Playground
     
    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by wumpus View Post
    CPU nominally faster
    Intel's offerings still generally have better instructions-per-cycle performance, so the Ryzen 5's advantage is more in its price than in actual speed.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    That AMD Ryzen CPU is significantly slower in fully-threaded and (especially) single-threaded applications when compared to the i7 in that Dell. The Dell is still nearly useless for gaming, however, with the lack of a dedicated GPU.

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    Titan in the Playground
     
    tyckspoon's Avatar

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by wumpus View Post
    I think once you get into "gaming computer" you are stuck with building your own. It is only when you get down to the point that windows dominates the price that buying from Dell makes sense.
    I've been out of this field for a bit, but my general experience is that the 'big name' home PC sellers (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) tend to be significantly overpriced for their gaming PCs. They will usually have reasonably good CPUs, large hard drives, and decent quantities of RAM; the sacrifices tend to be in motherboard build level, power supply capacity, and especially in the graphics card. There are a few more gaming-focused build companies where the tradeoffs/balances are more tilted toward the things that are relevant to gamers - they may only be built with 8GB of RAM instead of 12 or 16, and a 500GB spinning HDD instead of 2TB, but they'll take the parts budget saved from that and put it into a mid-tier discrete graphics card and a power supply that will feed it properly. IBuyPower and CyberPowerPC are the two you'll find hanging around in most US markets, and you can find some pretty reasonable systems from them if you're willing to sale-shop a bit.

    (Take a look at something like this iBuyPower model being sold for $800. The major parts alone in it probably cost about 6-700 retail, and it'll whip the linked Dell from earlier in any kind of gaming task.

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    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mando Knight View Post
    Intel's offerings still generally have better instructions-per-cycle performance, so the Ryzen 5's advantage is more in its price than in actual speed.
    Ryzen offers more cores at the same price as an Intel offering, so while the Intel may beat it clock for clock (and the difference isn't actually all that great there--10% at most, and usually less) it will beat the Intel offering in any full-on multi-threaded test. For most games this won't help much, admittedly, unless you're planning to stream the game live while playing it (where the additional cores will help encode the video without impacting game performance).

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Titan in the Playground
     
    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Ryzen offers more cores at the same price as an Intel offering, so while the Intel may beat it clock for clock (and the difference isn't actually all that great there--10% at most, and usually less) it will beat the Intel offering in any full-on multi-threaded test. For most games this won't help much, admittedly, unless you're planning to stream the game live while playing it (where the additional cores will help encode the video without impacting game performance).
    The comparison there was a Core i7 vs a Ryzen 5, where the Ryzen wins on price, not performance: the Coffee Lake i7s are multithreaded 6-core processors, just like the Ryzen 5, and the Core i7-8700 beats out the Ryzen 5 2600 across the board because of it. However, it's also a much more expensive processor, as is the Ryzen 7 that goes toe-to-toe with the i7 performance-wise (though the i7-8700 still narrowly beats out the Ryzen 7 2700X in single-core performance).

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mando Knight View Post
    The comparison there was a Core i7 vs a Ryzen 5, where the Ryzen wins on price, not performance: the Coffee Lake i7s are multithreaded 6-core processors, just like the Ryzen 5, and the Core i7-8700 beats out the Ryzen 5 2600 across the board because of it. However, it's also a much more expensive processor, as is the Ryzen 7 that goes toe-to-toe with the i7 performance-wise (though the i7-8700 still narrowly beats out the Ryzen 7 2700X in single-core performance).
    The processors in the linked computers are a $320 (newegg price) 3.2GHz i7 8700 and a $160 (again, newegg) Ryzen 3.4GHz Ryzen 7.

    The only significant advantage of the Intel chip will be during low-threaded applications where the Intel will be running in burst mode at ~4.6GHz and the AMD will be limited to ~3.9Ghz (and no matter how you overclock it, getting the AMD to 4.3GHz will be impressive. It won't do 4.6GHz. The Intel is locked and expect to pay a lot more if you want to see if it works around 5GHz).

    But when all twelve cores are running, expect both chips to be running at rated clockspeed: the AMD will have a 6% advantage in pure clock speed, eating about least half of Intel's IPC advantage (10-15%). It will be hard to notice the 4-9% advantage the Intel chip brings. If you put that $160 dollars saved into a better GPU, you will almost certainly notice it.

    If you must buy an Intel CPU for a $1000 budget, I'd look at i5 8600K and 9600K chips ($260 and $280 respectively). They aren't that much more expensive than the Ryzens, and if clocked around 4.8GHz or more will beat the Ryzen chips regardless of the number of threads in play (each core will be running fast enough to make up what it loses thanks to a single thread). Just be aware of you extra power and cooling needs (I'd go with an AIO water unit to reduce the cooling noise), and a gaming machine will certainly suffer from losing ~$100 from the GPU budget (especially with a $1000 budget). If you don't want to overclock, I'd go with the AMD (which might be odd, considering they are all unlocked).

    Note that the "prebuilt systems" almost always prefer the 3.2GHz i7 8700. Mostly because you might have to pay a little more money and attention to things like the heatsink and power supply, and of course Intel certainly wants you to think that i7>i5 (the difference becomes meaningless on notebooks: expect to plug the CPU's SKU into google if you want to know how many cores and threads any Intel notebook CPU has).

    That isn't too bad. On the other hand, I'm really wary of the "8GB + 16GB optane memory". That "optane memory" is a superfast flash card hanging off the PCI-e bus that has to page memory in and out in 4k chunks. It presumably has double duty in caching the HDD.

    Adding in your own SSD will likely involve moving windows over to the SSD. This involves shrinking the filesystem and imaging the thing over (does windows do that at all, or you going to have to boot something linux/BSD based?). Installing windows myself on the SSD seems to make much more sense, especially when I know it won't have the shovelware (other than what Microsoft insists on including).

    Scrolling through both IBUYPOWER and Cyberpower I noticed a few things.

    They ship almost exclusively 8-series Intel and 1-(first gen zen) series AMD. Expect to lose another 10% with first gen AMD compared to second gen. They love to include 1TB hard drives. You can buy 1TB drives for $40, and 3TB drives for $60. Unless you know you aren't going to fill up your drives, that's leaving a lot on the table. *If* they bother to include a SSD (they rarely do, and it is a relatively critical item), it at best a 120GB. Basically they are all the SSDs that they can no longer to sell to people looking to buy SSDs because you can get twice the room for ~$25 more.

    Not to mention that if you don't like manually move things between SSD and rotating hard drive, AMD B450 motherboards include "storemi" software that handles that "tiering" for you. Just be aware that it will only meld 256G of "fast storage" to one HDD (not an array or anything). Don't expect this included in any "prebuilt" PC.

    Not to mention some of the other silliness I saw. The first cyberpower I noticed with a 2xxx Ryzen chip made me think they finally included a new CPU. Then I saw it had a G2600 chip (which while newer, has the old core inside). Then I noticed they had added a nvidia GT730 GPU. The computer would actually run games faster by simply removing the nvidia card and using the built in video (unless they wimped out on the memory, but I really didn't want to dig into it).

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Titan in the Playground
     
    PaladinGuy

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    Default Re: Good computer for new gaming at lower price?

    Quote Originally Posted by wumpus View Post
    The processors in the linked computers are a $320 (newegg price) 3.2GHz i7 8700 and a $160 (again, newegg) Ryzen 3.4GHz Ryzen 7.

    The only significant advantage of the Intel chip will be during low-threaded applications where the Intel will be running in burst mode at ~4.6GHz and the AMD will be limited to ~3.9Ghz (and no matter how you overclock it, getting the AMD to 4.3GHz will be impressive. It won't do 4.6GHz. The Intel is locked and expect to pay a lot more if you want to see if it works around 5GHz).

    But when all twelve cores are running, expect both chips to be running at rated clockspeed: the AMD will have a 6% advantage in pure clock speed, eating about least half of Intel's IPC advantage (10-15%). It will be hard to notice the 4-9% advantage the Intel chip brings. If you put that $160 dollars saved into a better GPU, you will almost certainly notice it.
    It says "Our Modest AMD Gaming Build is built around the Ryzen 5 2600" in the first line of the article. The Ryzen 7 (both gen 1 and 2) is a multi-threaded 8-core processor (16 threads), and is significantly more expensive (though still cheaper than a Coffee Lake Core i7). Also, the listed turbo for an i7-8700 with all six cores engaged is still 4.3 GHz (whether or not a Dell prebuilt will actually safely hold onto that turbo is still yet another story, however).

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