Talk me out of building a budget AMD gaming rig?

a3venom said:
There is no such thing as "Intel Fanboy" when there is only one company who makes CPUs that people can actually buy.
A lot of people agree that FX line is as garbage as it can get in terms of a chip, but they are still eagerly waiting for zen so they can upgrade their 2500k/2600k.

It has put AMD in such a bad shape, primarily because of their incompetitive product. Fanboyism can exist when there are 2 companies who compete, it cannot exist when one company has a product that was a massive failure and even the people who always bought their products were forced to switch.

And i have owned 1 AMD CPU and 1 Intel CPU, and knew nothing about how they compare even after I bought the intel one.
I just get bored and read forums/ watch tech videos and they have all pointed to what I am saying.
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Then you must understand that a great deal of the info on forums is false or rather what they believe to be true, not necessarily fact. There have been many tests over the years pitting both against each other in a blind test. MOST could not tell the difference. The only time I would say, well not only time but the easiest to make the statement, Buy Intel is when it is for a work related task where time is money. For the majority of gamers My lists above are more than adequate.

You unfortunately epitomize the typical poster in a forum, you believe everything you read from others. Beware and read everything. Try to understand the criteria and use before making blanket statements.
 
Joining OP with an AMD build, but mine is the ultimate budget box. See below for hardware specs:

AMD FX-6300 - bought used for $70 (includes an Asus mATX AM3 board)
MSI 970 Gamer - bought Monday from Frys for $32 AR
Powercolor 7970 3GB video card - re-use from existing rig
Vertex 4 128GB SSD - re-use from existing rig
1TB Seagate 7200 HDD - re-use from existing rig
8GB G.Skill RipJaws (2x4GB DDR3) - re-use from existing rig
Corsair TX850m PSU - re-use from existing rig

Total for the CPU and board purchase is $102. The existing rig's MSI 790 board and PhII 965BE will be sold off, and I'm dropping an Athlon X3 450 (unlocked 4th core) into the Asus mATX board that comes with the 6300.

I'm helping a friend build an Intel Z97/4790 rig, and hardware envy set in. I wanted to keep my budget around $100, and that I did. I hope to sell both board combos listed above for maybe $175 locally, so I'd all but clear $75 profit and gain 2 cores, a few hundred mhz (@ 3.6 with the 965) and get SATA6 and USB3 added to the mix.
 
Make sure you don't get a shitty motherboard. Many 970 boards are known for VRM failure. Look for a 6 phase VRM at minimum.
 
It is simple..
Do you use single thread? The answer is yes so dont touch AMD. Do you play any games that are aibgle thread? Virtually all rts. Most fps that arent new and mainstream. These will loose fps and you wont be qble to max them with out the beat cpu especially at high res. If you plan on gaming at 1440p or higher dont touch anything but the fastest single thread cpu. On pgone so cant elaborate but i can probably come up off head head 10-20 programs/ daily use things that need high single thread and several 100 games
 
Walkintarget said:
Joining OP with an AMD build, but mine is the ultimate budget box. See below for hardware specs:

AMD FX-6300 - bought used for $70 (includes an Asus mATX AM3 board)
MSI 970 Gamer - bought Monday from Frys for $32 AR
Powercolor 7970 3GB video card - re-use from existing rig
Vertex 4 128GB SSD - re-use from existing rig
1TB Seagate 7200 HDD - re-use from existing rig
8GB G.Skill RipJaws (2x4GB DDR3) - re-use from existing rig
Corsair TX850m PSU - re-use from existing rig

Total for the CPU and board purchase is $102. The existing rig's MSI 790 board and PhII 965BE will be sold off, and I'm dropping an Athlon X3 450 (unlocked 4th core) into the Asus mATX board that comes with the 6300.

I'm helping a friend build an Intel Z97/4790 rig, and hardware envy set in. I wanted to keep my budget around $100, and that I did. I hope to sell both board combos listed above for maybe $175 locally, so I'd all but clear $75 profit and gain 2 cores, a few hundred mhz (@ 3.6 with the 965) and get SATA6 and USB3 added to the mix.
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You got it for pretty cheap cant argue against that.
Right now 6 core xeons from old dell servers are up on ebay, 100s of them.
can be bought for $100, and a compatible mobo more or less $100, that is a really great cheap starting point for a gaming PC and is almost as good in fps as an i7
 
a3venom said:
You got it for pretty cheap cant argue against that.
Right now 6 core xeons from old dell servers are up on ebay, 100s of them.
can be bought for $100, and a compatible mobo more or less $100, that is a really great cheap starting point for a gaming PC and is almost as good in fps as an i7
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Oh, I got the info for you, my friend. Check out this post on what those $15 Xeons can accomplish:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37556796&postcount=88

That destroys my el cheapo build, but the key to that build is finding a cheap X58 board. It's such a cheap freakin' build that I almost feel obligated to buy a Xeon and then start the search for an X58 board for no reason other than to build it for under $150.

My MSI 970 Gaming gets delivered today, but I'm trying to do an in-place board swap from my current AMD 790 board to the 970 board - should provide hours of entertainment and hair pulling !
 
Walkintarget said:
Oh, I got the info for you, my friend. Check out this post on what those $15 Xeons can accomplish:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37556796&postcount=88

That destroys my el cheapo build, but the key to that build is finding a cheap X58 board. It's such a cheap freakin' build that I almost feel obligated to buy a Xeon and then start the search for an X58 board for no reason other than to build it for under $150.

My MSI 970 Gaming gets delivered today, but I'm trying to do an in-place board swap from my current AMD 790 board to the 970 board - should provide hours of entertainment and hair pulling !
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Well, as long as you are setup with AHCI, it should go well. However, if you are setup as an onboard raid, good luck. I have a MSI 970 Gaming board here at work and the thing works great. (Replaced a failing Asrock 990FX Extreme 4 board.) If you do a UEFI GOP boot, the usb initialization still takes place during post so if slows down the boot a little bit depending on what you have connected.

Otherwise, I am running my FX 8350 at 4.2Ghz with stock voltage and 32GB of ram at 1333 speed. It is a good solid, attractive looking board but, it is not a extreme overclocking board.
 
I have my 32GB of ram running at 1866. :) Only messing with ya. I know you use that PC for work.
 
cageymaru said:
I have my 32GB of ram running at 1866. :) Only messing with ya. I know you use that PC for work.
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:D Yeah, I have 1333 and 1600 ram speeds because that is what they shipped my back in January. (Bought 1333 speeds from Sapphire on clearance but they shipped 1600 as well.) Stability just does not go well if I try to run them all at 1600 speeds though. ;)
 
SomeGuy133 said:
If you plan on gaming at 1440p or higher
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Eh, it's actually the opposite: bottlenecks are much worse at lower resolutions and higher framerates. If you ran your monitor at 3840x2880 or 4096x3072 @ 48-60Hz, you wouldn't have much of an issue, even with a 980 (Ti) and an 8xxx CPU. Wheras if you wanted 240FPS at 1280x960, you'd have problems.

I have a dual-core AMD CPU in an HTPC, so I have issues going above 50FPS. I just play at really high resolutions where the bottleneck isn't much of an issue, as it wouldn't get much over 50 either way (2560x1920, etc). But if I want to drop resolution for a higher framerate, I can't do that, because even at 1280x960, it'll not want to go over 50-70.
 
rabidz7 said:
Eh, it's actually the opposite: bottlenecks are much worse at lower resolutions and higher framerates. If you ran your monitor at 3840x2880 or 4096x3072 @ 48-60Hz, you wouldn't have much of an issue, even with a 980 (Ti) and an 8xxx CPU. Wheras if you wanted 240FPS at 1280x960, you'd have problems.

I have a dual-core AMD CPU in an HTPC, so I have issues going above 50FPS. I just play at really high resolutions where the bottleneck isn't much of an issue, as it wouldn't get much over 50 either way (2560x1920, etc). But if I want to drop resolution for a higher framerate, I can't do that, because even at 1280x960, it'll not want to go over 50-70.
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Nope. Try running half life source or RCT3 on max settings and large maps. 20-60fps with a 4.2 ghz IB for rct 3. Half life source had issues on a 920xm at 3.3ghz and my IB at 4.2 even. It had serious issues if you dare to use bots plus more
 
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