7 series of AMD has been released recently (9th of January to be precise). So far they've only released their flagship for about $500, but the mid range cards will soon be released as well, and they're almost guaranteed to offer way better value for money than their current series. I recommend waiting for those, especially if you're waiting for paychecks to come in anyway.

Cool, and cheers. I can play the games I want to with the current card (minimum requirements), so your suggestion makes a lot of sense.

I could have this baby in eight weeks...if I live like a miserly recluse.


•Intel i7-2600 Core 3.4GHz, LGA1155, Quad Core, 8 Threads, 8M
•Corsair / Kingston 4GB (1333MHz) DDR3 RAM *FREE Additional 4Gb RAM When Purchase ONLINE
•2Tb 32Mb SATA HDD
•ATI HD 6570 PCI-E 2.1 1GB 128-bit GDDR3, 650/1800 MHz, DVI, HDMI, D-Sub, DX11
• Antec Three Hundred - Black Mid-Tower Gaming Case
• 650W MEGA POWER ECO Series Power Supply
• 12x Blu-ray/DVD Combo Drive
•Intel H67 DDR3, SATA3, DVI, D-Sub, HDMI, USB3.0, 8CH Mainboard
• Microsoft Windows 7- Home Premium 64-bit English

I'd say, get an i5 2500 and buy a much better GPU (supposing you want to use your rig for regular computing plus gaming, and not for serious video editing). You don't need such an expensive CPU for gaming (in fact, the i5 2500 is as fast as the 2600 in games). Even a €100 CPU will suit you fine. GPU, on the other hand, is very important for gaming performance.

Okay, thanks. I'll see what I can find for a bargain price. I kinda like the GTX460, it retails for somewhere between $175 to $185 . The Radeon 6770 is cheaper and doesn't seem too bad.

Still, is it mainly for gaming and office work? In that case, you'd be better off with an even cheaper CPU than the i5 2500 and a much better GPU (like the 6870). Unless you want this computer to last for years, upgrading parts when necessary later on, in which case I'd say get an i5 2500 and at least an 6870 GPU or a 560 ti.

(I've got the 5770 myself, which is the same card as the 6770, and it's really starting to struggle to play some games without framedrops. The 7770 has been released yesterday and is available for about €140 - €150... That's probably a better buy).

I've got the 5670 and it was fine until I got a new Monitor. I toned down the anti-aliasing so it would happily run at 1920x1080.
Other than that, Just Cause 2; runs fine.

I'm probably going to need to upgrade over the next 28 months though.

Yeah, gaming and basic work stuff. Holy Crap! Every man and his dog makes a version of the 560 ti.
The basic 1 gig/ 833 mhrz goes for about $240Au. The 7770 has the power (85 watts) advantage from what I've read, I'm not totally sure of it's price though.

Should be a lot less. Somewhere in the range of $150/€150.

the amd 7-series looks gooood.

I've no idea whether AMD is at all competetive on the CPU scene right now - but presumably they're not.

I wonder what kind of influence it'll have on performance to go with a high-clocked AMD quad compared to an i5...

Their previous generation of CPUs is still quite good from a price/performance pov... But as a gamer, don't buy the new FX series processors. They're... not very good. They're not very good for non-gamers, actually. Best to steer clear of them altogether.
I recommended the Phenom II X4 to a friend of mine. It's only €100, and the GPU tends to be the bottleneck anyway (an additional advantage is that it's a quad core; while performance is about as good in most games as a similar dual core i3, games use an increasing amount of cores, so the AMD processor is more future-proof). He got a complete PC with high quality components for €600, with a 6870 GPU. It can run any game at high to max settings.

yeah, it seems like it could work.

prices are very close between that and an I5, of course:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

That's the issue. The I5 is apparently made of everything wonderful.

The price discrepancy is minimal - but the highest clocked phenom quad underperforms quite a bit. The question is, is it significant?

According to that chart, the increase from a phenomII quad to an i5 is very steep, whereas the one from an atlon tricore 440 slopes much more. But is _that_ significant?

Theoretically, the steeper the slope between two points, the more performance/price you get for the added expense, but practically, what does it mean?

If it means a less steady framerate, or if it means a lower framerate, it's practically much more important than any number on a chart. That's what I really want to know.
The AMD motherboards are also usually much cheaper. If the performance increase is insignificant in all the usual applications, you should actually go with the Atlon 440, because the i5 is more than twice the price....

Those prices are... not representative though, at least not here in the Netherlands. Here one can buy an X4 955 for somewhat more than €100, whereas the i5 2500 costs more than €200. It's half as expensive, while offering probably 80-90% of the i5 gaming performance (at gaming resolutions, like 1920×1080. At low resolutions, the CPU is more likely to be the bottleneck, but then we're talking 100+ fps so performance increases are not noticeable). Looking at prices at amazon, the X4 955 is between 66 and 75% the price of an i5 2500, which makes matters more difficult.

These decisions depend on many things, like current budget and future budget, price/performance ratios, minimum required performance and the main purpose of a new computer. If current budget is fairly low, but future budget somewhat higher, it's probably a good idea to buy a cheap CPU now and upgrade in a few years. If current budget is sufficient, one might rather buy a more expensive CPU and motherboard and not upgrade for a long time.

I wouldn't get the X3, because they're really quite slow. They offer a good price/performance ratio, but personally I think performance is simply too low to be acceptable. If the Phenom II X4 procs are really that expensive, an i3 2100 might be a better buy. If Bobby has the money though, it would probably be better to get the i5 2500. But if the choice is between getting an i3 2100 plus an AMD 6870 or an i5 2500 and a 6770, the former is a far better choice as a gaming PC. The 6870 is relatively cheap right now, since the new 7 series has been released, and the 6870 is in some cases cheaper than the 7770 while being far more powerful (though it also consumes quite a lot more power - 85 watts versus 140 under stress). Prices will probably go down for the new series though the coming months, yields for the 7 series are probably not very good at the moment (which means high costs for AMD) and nivdia will release their mid range cards in a few months, which will probably depress prices.

i agree on every count, but it really bugs me that I don't know the cpu impact on gaming.

If the atlon 3x was good enough, I'd really, really want to know....

While I am allegedly an adult, my impulsive nature is to go with cheapish but adequate...for now. Obviously further down the track I'd go for a system that'd be good for a couple of years, and upgradeable for a couple of more. However I can see the wisdom in getting a quality motherboard and CPU first, and then working from there. It's only now that I can't play games do I realize how much I do enjoy it still.