Hi I will be upgrading to a PC soon (after years of using a laptop with Radeon HD 4570 mobility). My budget is £600. I was considering the XPS 8500 on Dell. I was wondering if you think this will run rfactor 2 well with good fps (usually I use higher graphical settings during practice and reduce them a little when racing on a large grid). Here are the specs: 3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7-3770 Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB) Windows 7 64-bit 8GB3 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz 1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm) NVIDIA® GeForce GT 640 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card Thanks, Sauber
You can build a MUCH better PC yourself. If you don't know how, try and find a friend or fellow rfactor racer close by that can build you one, or at least help you assemble and get your operating system up and running. Dell will flaunt a Core i7, but everything else inside of that PC will be very cheap. You will not be disappointed if you go this route, any PC person by trade or profession that has torn down a Dell, HP, etc....can tell you they lack serious quality internally.
The graphics card sucks i'm afraid, the rest is ok. This is about 40% the performance of a GTX 660 (which is a medium performance card in today's standard). If you've played bf3 before, with the GT 640, you can run 1080p with everyone on lowest setting and only just manage an average 30fps. I'd urge you not to settle with such a card and take Tim's advice.
[COMMENT][/COMMENT]Thanks very much guys for the advice. I'm slightly confused though because the GT 640 benchmark is weak but on youtube you see people using it to play games like crysis 2 and bf3 on max settings getting 30-50 fps (sometimes using the XPS 8500 unit, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqcAqDmVBA).
have to agree the graphics card is not good enough. go for anything you can afford from a gtx 660 up with as much memory buffer as you can. EG: 2 gig or more. if using 3 screens you will need something like a gtx 680 4 gig. i only use nvidia.
I'd drop the processor to an i5 (3750K if you can) and put the difference towards the better video card.
12 months warranty for hardware only. 3 years costs you over 840 quid. You build yourself you can select better parts that have longer warranty ( 3-5 years to life) Graphs in the build project below will show you GT640 performance relative to others. http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/ar...ft-ii-heart-of-the-swarm-pc-for-less-than-450
With that budget you could consider to use a Solid State Drive as primary disk, and HDD for data such as movies. Also, as mentioned, you don't need a six core cpu.
This is true, Dell, HP, etc, cut corners and costs absolutely everywhere. Build it yourself, just set a budget and ask people to help you spec something, it will be much faster and you have total control over aesthetics and noise levels.
Hey Sauber. Try change 640 on 650Ti (for optional your budget). I never seen 640 with GDDR5! It's maybe renamed oldest Nvidia videocard. I know only 640 with GDDR3 (it's so slow).
Check here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/toms-hardware-bestconfigs-build-a-pc,3453.html. There you can find the best advise for the most bang for youre dollar.
Hi build your own is your best bet If your in south uk try novatech they can do some good deals and help with building
I don't really know what to say other than show you what made me say those performances... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gt-640-review,3214-3.html I wouldn't use crysis 2 as a benchmark tho since it was an incredible easy game to run well at the time of release, unlike crysis 1. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gt-640-review,3214-7.html Perhaps this is because of the GDDR3 vram in these benchmarks, i'm not sure, i'll have another look. edit: After looking for a GDDR5 version, i must say it is possible that the performances that guy was getting in BF3 is possible. When you compare the 640 GDDR3 version to my GTX 670 (GDDR5) you see pretty much all the specs (e.g. stream processor count, ROP's, etc) are around 3.5x less (with the exception of the memory bandwidth due to the GDDR3 which is over 6x slower...quite a severe bottleneck) . The bf3 video you posted, the guy running ultra gets around 30fps and this is about 3.5x less than what i can get on ultra. If you then compared it to a 640 with GDDR5, the memory bandwidth is back in proportion with all the other spec performances compared to my card (3.5x less), so it is very plausible that the performance represented in the video is true and accurate. sorry for the long winded answer, in summary i think i misjudged the card given what i know.
An i5 3570 would be plenty quick. A hyperthreaded i7 would be great if you love to run some massivly intense stuff like video editing, etc. For just gaming and general use, I feel they are a bit OTT. Saw a test where they had brought a 3570K up to the same clocks as one of the top i7's, and weirdly, it was faster in actions that weren't using the extra threads. Which is almost every game XD 8GB of RAM is a nice spot to be, pushing up to 16GB isn't going to net you great gains currently, neither will RAM faster than 1600mhz. Technically it is faster, but you are talking fractions in real world performance. Not something to go blow an extra $70 on, which could be better spent on the GPU or something else. GPU, definatly need better than that. A 660Ti or 7950 would be my pick ATM. If you have spare cash and it won't cost much to jump up a model, definatly go for it. The GPU in most cases will be the thing that nets you the biggest gains in game performance. The other "style" would be to stick with a mid-high model like the 7950 and overclock it. You can net yourself some pretty nice gains without having to splash more money around. Just have some wits about it though XD If you can, I'd recommend an SSD for your OS and apps. Personally, while they may cut down loading times in a game, I find it to not be a massive hindrance, especially in a game where you have to wait on the server to start playing. But for the OS and all your normal apps, the snappyness is bloody great. I just feel you would "use" it more and notice the difference whenever you are puttering round the OS, vs when you load a level and play for a couple of hours without finding another loading screen. You may be able to go with a 128gb size, but you would have to be careful how much data ends up on it. If you can keep it to 50-70% full, that is ideal for the wear levelling and longevity. Trouble is system drives slowly tend to swell over time, especially if you don't format often. I'd be waiting for the 256GB models to drop a wee bit more, thats IMO the sweet spot. Enough room for OS/programs plus a couple of your favourite games. There are things like Motherboards, and PSU's to look at. There isn't a huge deal to pick through with them. Group roundup tests will give you what you need to know. Asrock LGA1155 Extreme 4 would be a good price range and model. PSU...well...650 watt...750 watt...modular cables... You may have to push your budget a teeny bit, or really shop around and get some good deals. If you need to buy screens, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc, then the cost would be a bit different too. I'd say 700-800 quid would certainly cover you for a very bloody good PC. I just pieced one together on Amazon UK, and it came to 746 quid, excluding a case. You should easily be able to get cheaper than that, I was just being quick and dirty. CPU: i5 3570K GPU: Sapphire 7950 Vapour-X MoBo: Asrock Extreme 4 RAM: Corsair 8GB Vengeance 1600 PSU: Corsair Builder Series 750 Modular HDD: WD 1TB Caviar Black DVD: A bloody Samsung one... Total was 746. Need a case. It is a ****load quicker than the Dell POS above, and for just a teeny bit more. Course you have to put it together, but if you played that game as a kid, where you put the triangle block through the triangle hole, square in the square hole....you get my point hopefully, just a matter of plopping the pieces in the places that they will fit into XD
Ah...windows. Cant talk bout that here... Case, yeah I said that. Thats a proper personal choice. Doe he want it to be a flat looking box, or look like megatron crossed with a fridge?
No problem DrR1pper. Thanks for the graphs and information though. I looked at Novatech (thanks Jason Kinchington) and found this rig: Novatech Black NTA12 AMD FX-6 6300 (3.5ghz and 6mb) 8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz Memory 2TB SATA Hard Drive ATI Radeon HD 7770 1GB Graphics I know this the 7770 not as good as the 650 TI but wanted your thoughts on its performance level? I will look more into building from scratch as well.
I was using an HP dv7 laptop with an ATI Radeon Mobilty 6490HD gfx card. Was only able to get consistent 60fsp by reducing alot of the graphics settings. Upgraded to a Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 with SLI nVidia GT 650M cards. Now I can run everything full (shadows medium, track high) and get consistent 60fps WITH vsync on. Loving rf2 now!
7770 is about 40-45% the performance of a gtx 660Ti, pretty much identical performance to a gtx 460. I had two of them a month ago and I had tried running just one and you can run the game but everything rather low to be smooth.
640 is a lower end card from the 6 series. The middle number being the indicator. In some cases a 5 series with a high middle number will be better than a 6 series with a low number, like the 640.
