Is this a good gaming computer?

ramy58

Hi, I'm at a computer store and the guy offers me this:
CPU : i7-3820
Transcend TX2133 16GB RAM
Motherboard : asus x79 (I don't have more info about this)
Western Digital Internal HDD 3.5 '' Sata2 1TB
a dvd-writer
Case : Thermal Take Overseer RX-1VN700M1W2N
Thermal Take power supply 1050W
Inno3D GTX 680 4GB DDR5
Genius keyboard KB110 USB Black
LG LED Monitor 22'' Black Wide

Final Price : 2400$
More info :
Can't get the model numbers right now
I compared the price of the GPU, CPU, case to pcandparts.com and his prices are slight less than pcandparts(He's not a thief)
He's a good friend of mine so the final price is negociable
I'm NOT going to order parts from the internet and build my PC, and it's because I just don't want to do that.

Thanks

AvoK95

Get this:
i7 3770/k
2x4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Kingston HyperX RAM
2TB HDD
128GB Kingston HyperX SSD
Cooler Master SCOUT 2
XFX P1-850S-NLB9 850W PSU
Get a decent gaming keyboard and mouse and a 1500VA+ UPS
2x Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 Vapor-X OC With Boost in Crossfire
MSI Z77A-G43 GAMING Z77
LG IPS234V Wide 23" LED
DVDRW

The 3820 is slower than the 3770, and the X79 platform is for high end workstations and aren't actually made for gaming.
Don't get anything else besides these. 2TB WD doesn't mean that it's the same drive listed, there are 4 types of WD drives.
Avoid Thermaltake products, they're not that great with quality and pricing. 4GB 680 is a waste of money, get a 7950 (Faster than a 680 and half the costs) and put 2 in them and now you have blazing fast graphics configuration. You don't need a 1050W PSU, newer hardware require less and less power, your system can even run on a 650W PSU, but we're going to use 850W just for headroom and durability.
16GB of RAM is a waste. 8GB is actually overkill for anything. Get Kingston HyperX and avoid cheap-o RAM. Don't settle for anything else then Kingston, they're the best in the business.

Also, avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid STORES! I can't stress this enough! NEVER EVER buy from stores!

ramy58

Thanks AVOK but how much will that cost me ?

AvoK95

$2168TTC without a UPS and without a keyboard/mouse with $5 shipping.

ramy58

Can somebody explain to me how 2 graphic cards change something ?

mmk92

ramy58 wroteCan somebody explain to me how 2 graphic cards change something ?

They're an overkill, especially since you're using only a 1080p screen. The only change you will notice is an extra 400$ or so taken out of your wallet.

yasamoka

mmk92 wrote
ramy58 wroteCan somebody explain to me how 2 graphic cards change something ?
They're an overkill, especially since you're using only a 1080p screen. The only change you will notice is an extra 400$ or so taken out of your wallet.

Have you tried such a setup? Can you please explain to us why 2 7950s are overkill at 1080p and why you won't notice a difference?

AvoK95

Yes they do make a difference. You get 30% to 40% more performance and it would be very very close to a $1000 Titan or 7990. A 7950 can be overclocked to be faster than a 7970, which is already faster than a 680. Games have become more and more demanding. My 7970 is doing 45FPS on some games like FarCry 3. It even dropped to 20FPs in Crysis 3! A second card will solve this problem. Metro Last Light is still tough even on a Titan! let alone a single 7950.

yasamoka

AvoK95 wroteYes they do make a difference. You get 30% to 40% more performance and it would be very very close to a $1000 Titan or 7990. A 7950 can be overclocked to be faster than a 7970, which is already faster than a 680. Games have become more and more demanding. My 7970 is doing 45FPS on some games like FarCry 3. It even dropped to 20FPs in Crysis 3! A second card will solve this problem. Metro Last Light is still tough even on a Titan! let alone a single 7950.

30% to 40% over what? 2x7950s is almost 80-100% over a single 7950. More than 40% over a single 780, especially when OCed. When OCed, you might come close to 50-70%.

A single OCed 7950 beats stock 680 and OCed (maybe not heavily) 680.

ramy58

If I take 2 gpus should I worry about the heating ?
Or the power supply ?

yasamoka

850W would do the job admirably for 2 OCed GPUs.

The heating, you need to make sure you have a slot of free space between the two. You need a motherboard that has more than 1 slot between the 2 PCI-Express x16 slots.

ramy58

AvoK95 wroteGet this:
i7 3770/k
2x4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Kingston HyperX RAM
2TB HDD
128GB Kingston HyperX SSD
Cooler Master SCOUT 2
XFX P1-850S-NLB9 850W PSU
Get a decent gaming keyboard and mouse and a 1500VA+ UPS
2x Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 Vapor-X OC With Boost in Crossfire
MSI Z77A-G43 GAMING Z77
LG IPS234V Wide 23" LED
DVDRW

The 3820 is slower than the 3770, and the X79 platform is for high end workstations and aren't actually made for gaming.
Don't get anything else besides these. 2TB WD doesn't mean that it's the same drive listed, there are 4 types of WD drives.
Avoid Thermaltake products, they're not that great with quality and pricing. 4GB 680 is a waste of money, get a 7950 (Faster than a 680 and half the costs) and put 2 in them and now you have blazing fast graphics configuration. You don't need a 1050W PSU, newer hardware require less and less power, your system can even run on a 650W PSU, but we're going to use 850W just for headroom and durability.
16GB of RAM is a waste. 8GB is actually overkill for anything. Get Kingston HyperX and avoid cheap-o RAM. Don't settle for anything else then Kingston, they're the best in the business.

Also, avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid STORES! I can't stress this enough! NEVER EVER buy from stores!

Yasamoka do you agree with what he said?
Sorry It's just that I need two opinions

yasamoka

Definitely! Make sure the primary HDD is fast (7200RPM). The SSD is small so you might not fit many games there.

mmk92

@yasamoka

I usually game on a LAPTOP variant of the 660 GTX with high graphics at 1080p on mos recent games. The laptop GTX 660 barely equates to a desktop 640 GT, a lot of people compare the 7950's performance to the GTX 680 which is light years ahead from the 640. So logically a single 7950 is an overkill (I have also tried it btw), now imagine how much of a waste having both those cards would be under the same intensity settings, also most games either don't support multiple graphics cards or are not optimized well enough to utilize the full performance of both. Using both would make sense in a 3 monitor gaming rig which would equate to a (1920x3)x1080 resolution(assuming they're all full hd)

yasamoka

What framerates do you get with that GTX660M on high graphics at 1080p, and in what games?

most games either don't support multiple graphics cards or are not optimized well enough to utilize the full performance of both.

Really? Do tell me more...

PowerPC

yasamoka wrote
AvoK95 wroteYes they do make a difference. You get 30% to 40% more performance and it would be very very close to a $1000 Titan or 7990. A 7950 can be overclocked to be faster than a 7970, which is already faster than a 680. Games have become more and more demanding. My 7970 is doing 45FPS on some games like FarCry 3. It even dropped to 20FPs in Crysis 3! A second card will solve this problem. Metro Last Light is still tough even on a Titan! let alone a single 7950.
30% to 40% over what? 2x7950s is almost 80-100% over a single 7950. More than 40% over a single 780, especially when OCed. When OCed, you might come close to 50-70%.

A single OCed 7950 beats stock 680 and OCed (maybe not heavily) 680.

Can you point me to a benchmark that shows an OCed 7950 beating an OCed 680?
i'm not doubting here, but i am actually genuinely interested as i haven't come across one.

AvoK95

PowerPC wrote
yasamoka wrote
AvoK95 wroteYes they do make a difference. You get 30% to 40% more performance and it would be very very close to a $1000 Titan or 7990. A 7950 can be overclocked to be faster than a 7970, which is already faster than a 680. Games have become more and more demanding. My 7970 is doing 45FPS on some games like FarCry 3. It even dropped to 20FPs in Crysis 3! A second card will solve this problem. Metro Last Light is still tough even on a Titan! let alone a single 7950.
30% to 40% over what? 2x7950s is almost 80-100% over a single 7950. More than 40% over a single 780, especially when OCed. When OCed, you might come close to 50-70%.

A single OCed 7950 beats stock 680 and OCed (maybe not heavily) 680.
Can you point me to a benchmark that shows an OCed 7950 beating an OCed 680?
i'm not doubting here, but i am actually genuinely interested as i haven't come across one.

The 7970 beats almost every game at 4K next to the Titan. (These were before the 770/780 launched..

Check LinusTechTips on YouTube for tons of benches.

yasamoka

PowerPC wroteCan you point me to a benchmark that shows an OCed 7950 beating an OCed 680?
i'm not doubting here, but i am actually genuinely interested as i haven't come across one.

No official benches, but some users benched over here:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=374698

Check out the 3DMark graphics scores for 680s and Pill Monster's 7950.

This is just one example, multiple times 7950 users have compared their scores with 680 OC scores and state that their OCed 7950s beat OCed 680s (they post the scores they get, too).

It makes sense since a 7950@1200MHz or so matches or beats a 7970@1100MHz, and generally OCed 680s cannot catch up to OCed 7970s (not heavily, mind), as 6xx cards do not scale as well with OC as 79xx cards.

Here's a 680 vs 7970GHz Anandtech bench, at stock:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/768?vs=772

Those benches are at more realistic resolutions, however. At 1600p and higher, there is a further lead to the 79xx cards, and then another lead in CrossFire scaling. Check this out, for example.

Nvidia's 770 was a good move against the 7970GHz, BTW.

Gamer

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780/

You'll find cold hard specs in the slide deck, of which the most important are probably the following (vs. the GTX 680):

Standard memory config: 3GB of 384-bit GDDR5 (vs. 2GB of 256-bit GDDR5)
Base clock: 863MHz (vs. 1,006MHz)
TFLOPs: 4.0 (vs. 3.54)
CUDA cores: 2,304 (vs. 1,536)
Wattage: 250W (vs. 195W)

GTX 780 cards should be in stores from today with MSRP of $649 in the States, £549 (inc. VAT) in the UK and 539 euro (exc. VAT) in Europe. As usual, Maingear and Origin PC are also already offering the upgrade in their ready-made systems.

ramy58

This is my first time using crossfire. Do you have some useful tips because I really don't know anything about this and I didn't understand anything in the crossfire and sli topic.