AMD have woken up

Seems the last 12 months have been immense for AMD.

First fuji
Second Crimson drivers.
Next their next gen is a massive performance per watt boost to give nvidia hot competition.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9886/amd-reveals-polar...

exciting times.

But AMD really need to get these newer tech's out on their budget boards not just flagship.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 04-Jan-16 23:26:24)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Seems the last 12 months have been immense for AMD.

First fuji
Second Crimson drivers.
Next their next gen is a massive performance per watt boost to give nvidia hot competition.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9886/amd-reveals-polar...

exciting times.

But AMD really need to get these newer tech's out on their budget boards not just flagship.

The tech tends to ripple down over time. I went with the green team (ditched my R9 290 reference with custom cooler for a GTX970) for the last round as I wanted an efficient, quiet high performance card.

Will be interesting to see how Polaris performs against the existing nVidia cards and the next gen cards...

This is definitely exciting times!!

Nelly and myself have been saying for a little while that it finally looks like Nvidia have some competition!!

My 390X sits between 60-70°C at 1080/60fps, with absolutely nothing left to turn up on Shadow of Mordor. That's in a micro ATX case with very little room left after upgrading the PSU, and of course the fitting of the larger GPU itself. It's not silent, but you can hardly notice the fans whilst playing.

If I turn off frame rate targeting, it races to 120 FPS average, but then admittedly starts puffing loudly, though still not enough to over power the game experience itself. If I wanted to run at 1440p for example (where the 390X starts to show it's credentials) I would definitely need a larger case!

But that wasn't the remit for my build originally. If space wasn't at a premium, I'd have bought a much bigger Fractal case with a side window, and added a lot more cooling. Even if I wasn't playing on a TV with a 60Hz refresh rate, I would still target 60fps, as it's easily smooth enough and reducing heat, noise and power consumption appeals to me more than 100+ frame rates.

But at full bore, there is no doubt the G1 Gaming is a hot card for a small case!!

My Nokia 3210 has a better spec .

So for those in the know regarding PC gaming rigs here is a question..?

Find me a powerhouse rig that you would be proud of at a half decent price and doesn't need upgrading 1 month later....

No explain the build clearly and constructively telling me why this is a ultimate gaming PC for the money....

Because you never know Timey may well invest........Ive given up with Steam Machines already even though they have only just been released to the public,not enough information for my liking and the specifications on a lot of the middle of the range steam machines look dated already.

Edited by time2die (Tue 05-Jan-16 19:55:36)

Find me a powerhouse rig that you would be proud of at a half decent price and doesn't need upgrading 1 month later....

Build yourself....£1000-1100

Built for you....£1350-1450

That would get you an i5 4690k and an R9 390X or a GTX980, with a reasonable quality steel case and decent motherboard, cpu water cooler etc. You could obviously go cheaper, but you personally would probably end up going a lot higher!

But bearing in mind the law of diminishing returns me old Brum chum, I would be (am) more than happy with that.

Give us a rough ball park figure that you wouldn't mind spending mate!

Im not building myself thats for sure,if i did it would blow up and leak liquid all over the place and i just don't have the patience or interest to even try.

Jorkila lets say about £2000..........Thats the Graphic Card By the way

Now I'm no expert and I would consider some of these parts overkill but I know you like to have the best so if I was in your position I would go for something along the lines of this

From the base spec I've changed the gpu to the evga branded one (purely because thats the same make as my 970) and upgraded the ram to 3200Mhz ddr4 along with adding the OS

You'll also need a monitor as well as a keyboard/mouse and adapter for you Xbox One controller because it's better than the DS4

From putting these parts together on pcpartpicker it looks like Novatech are charging you between £200-£300 to put it all together.

Edited by jorkila (Wed 06-Jan-16 11:02:09)

I would go for something like this from the Scan 3XS range, overclocked i7-6700K, overclocked GTX980Ti. Can handle pretty much anything you can throw at it.

M.2 boot primary drive with a second 500GB SSD

My only issue with Scan is that about 12 years ago i bought a 3DX system of them and within 6 months it turned into a crawl,took ages to even start and i wouldn't use Scan again I'm afraid .

I spent £1700 on the system and i wasn't impressed ,had duel graphic cards at the time and plenty of ram,played Crysis and i think it was averaging 12 fps at a push with most of the stuff turned up.

Infact it was totally unplayable ?

Cheers for taking the time to do that matey,but I'm still in the dark regarding half this build.

Think i much prefer a water cooled system unless this is that unit,only had a quick look at the link mate its manic here,had a guy come to move the main BT point from the dining room to my office and then a Plummer turn up advising me on this and that,got Oak Furniture land coming tomorrow for the umpteen time [thats the girlfriend love of Mango Wood] Everything has to match in there world.

Also got a skip guy coming to get rid of all this Junk we have accumulated [some left by the previous people].

Had a quick blast of Rise of the Tomb Raider for the first time in weeks and this game is pure class,this is my 3rd play through.

That is fair enough Similar build from PCSpecialist (£1,928.00) is below. To be honest with the Corsair AIO watercoolers it really is pretty easy to put this lot together.

Besides Scan there is this config at Overclockers if you want to squeeze as much performance out of the thing as you can as they will overclock it for you.

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES� AIR 540 GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core�i7 Quad Core Processor i7-6700k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® Z170 PRO GAMING: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs

Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000MHz X.M.P (2 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 DP

1st Hard Disk
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SAMSUNG SM951 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2150MB/R, 1550MB/W)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW & SOFTWARE

Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RM SERIES� MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£109)

Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i GTX Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£89)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days

Edited by Skilty (Wed 06-Jan-16 19:14:23)

Thanks for all that information Skilty much appreciate you for that.

I'm seriously tempted to change from my iMac in the office to some gaming rig,but next week i will feel completely different.

I am getting older but obviously not wiser,i said i would never consider PC Gaming again and my biggest gripe to be honest is the fact that all this stuff will obviously be on my office table and i will then spend hours upon hours staring at a monitor with a headset connected to Team Speak or whatever they now use for online gaming.

Playing on a console is so much more comfortable and appealing to me if I'm honest,and thats what i have been doing for the past decade or so.

There is no way my girlfriend would have all this stuff sitting along side all my other consoles and gadgets in the Living room thats for sure,she moans constantly about all the cables behind the television as it is.

I have Solwise Homeplugs,a network switch,a Sky Hd Box, a Playstation 4,and a Xbox One,and up until a month ago also a Nintendo Wii U,if you add or the cables up for those devices [Each One basically has 3] thats a lot of mess going on around the back of that system and set up.Oh i forgot to mention also my playstation Gold headset and my Xbox One Elite 800x Headset and the charging stand that comes with it,then the Elite controller and that charger...........

Ive tried all the various cable tidy management and its a waste of time.

That is fair enough smile Similar build from PCSpecialist (£1,928.00) is below. To be honest with the Corsair AIO watercoolers it really is pretty easy to put this lot together.

Not if your names Timey it isn't

You need one of these

Redharbinger Desk

Nice bit of kit but for that money it needs to be,only available in the USA by the looks of it ....

Its about time someone came up with a stand or desk that discreetly hid all the Masses of cables that accompany these gadgets and electrical items.

Have a look at Cyber Power. Their customer service was fantastic IMO. A really easy to use configurator as well.

send me the 2k, I will build for you

swap it out with the xbox1

I want £2000 worth not £200

So you wont be happy with a i486, 4meg of memory, windows 95, cd rom, 50gig hdd?

I can also throw in a 1 meg cirrus logic isa card

Cheques in the post.............Not

Not normally the go to place for hardcore gamers I suppose but how about something like this?

No mate.

Buy it direct from Cyber Power themselves. It's slightly cheaper and you can swap bits around as you please.

AND I wasn't joking when I said there customer support is spot on. Sod Currys!!!

It would be loudish in that case though. I'd go for the R9 Nano, based on size alone.

As I said not the normal place to go for a gaming rig I know but it's actually not a bad price considering it has an £800 gpu in it and is actually slightly cheaper than cyberpower themselves considering there is only roughly £30 difference between a 6700k and a 4790k i7.

The only thing that lets it down being a new rig is the fact that it does have a last gen i7 in it I suppose but it's still one hell of a cpu!!

Might be worth seeing if cyberpower would price match it though that way you'll get better customer service for sure!!

To be honest mate thats dead ugly,even worse than the horrid Brick shaped Xbox One.

Don't even look like a PC and the specs alone don't say that costs £2000

And for a Gaming PC like you said in your thread........Currys is the last place i would visit,thats like going to poundland for Duracell batteries and buying a cheap Poundland Product .

Edited by time2die (Thu 07-Jan-16 16:55:15)

The thing I had forgotten was that you'd given up on the steam machine idea so wouldn't be needing a console type case as it's going in your office, but spec wise that's roughly what you're looking at money wise!!

Keep trying you lot you may well convince me sometime this year in taking the plunge into the depths of despair and PC gaming once again 15 years later.

I have seen nothing yet that makes me scream .....I want one of those ?

It needs to have a wow factor and not look like a flattened version of a PC,plus i like the idea of a water cooled system or whats current.

i may get my Atari Jaguar out for a spot of Tempest 2000,the only reason ever to own a actual Atari Jaguar system.

I actually play this on my Playstation vita ?

Anyway after a little tinkering and not chatting to you on WhatsApp i got the Xbox Elite 800x headset working.........Lovely sounding bit of kit,even got a App from Google play form phone to mess with the settings and pre/sets......

Just need a few Xbox One Buddies

Looks a nice headset mate!!

Expect it to be for that price matey I could have bought 3 Playstation 4 Gold headsets for that money.

And for £79.99 that Sony Gold headset top notch Thats providing you stick it on your head the correct way.......Unlike Nelly

Yeah the missus got me the Sony one for my first PS4 but I think I got it for £59.99 on sale!

Edited by jorkila (Thu 07-Jan-16 18:00:18)

But Cyber Steam are giving you a pro oc 6700k and the faster DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3 (because the 4790k doesn't support it). The Skylake also runs slightly cooler which is important in that shoe box lol!

Add in a 3+2 year manufacturers warranty as opposed to the Currys 1 year warranty, and I think you're getting way more for that extra 30 quid mate!

In reply to a post by time2die:

To be honest mate thats dead ugly,even worse than the horrid Brick shaped Xbox One.

Heathen! I like it! But then I'd love a Trinity Extreme too lol!

Don't even look like a PC and the specs alone don't say that costs £2000

Oh yes they do! That's a banging machine if you don't want a silent build. I wish I'd have gone with that case (in white) to sit next to my PS4.

Fair point mate