New computer

**Ironside** · 04-14-2011, 14:30

Since my old one sadly got a motherboard breakdown and needing quite a bit of replacements to be fixed, I'm looking for a bit of update parts. I'm a bit annoyed, the old bugger had 1-2 years more left in it.

I was thinking for a decent gaming computer but not that expensive. If something can be downgraded for a minor quality loss it's worth it.

Something like quadcore processor around 3 ghz. i5 compares to i3 how? Any other producer is good?
8 gig RAM (4x2). Nothing special here I assume?
Graphic card. I understand nVidia is best here? I prefer a cheap 2 gig one, but a decent 1 gig is ok. I never got hang of what other data you look for on these.
A motherboard that works with the stuff.

The rest is scavanged from the old comp.

**Lemur** · 04-14-2011, 14:44

If you're looking in the i5/i3 range, you owe it to yourself to also check out the AMD offerings in that price range. As Xiahou noted in another thread, AMD can't compete at the high-end, but in the mid- and low-end they rock pretty hard.

As for Nvidia v. AMD, I don't think either company has a real advantage right now, certainly not in the mid-range. I think it boils down to Nvidia having better compute support (for apps that use the GPU for computation, such as engineering and science apps)[1] versus lower power usage for the AMD cards[2].

You mention "the rest" being scavenged from the old PC. Power supply, probably okay. RAM probably not okay, no matter which platform you choose. Old HD will probably make the transition, although newer drives are fast and cheap. Case is probably okay.

---------

[1] If you’re into GPU-compute applications, Nvidia still has the edge here. While newer applications are moving toward multi-vendor standards like DirectCompute and OpenCL, a large library of applications exists for Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA GPU-compute architecture, including the recently released Adobe Premiere Pro CS5’s Mercury Playback Engine.

[2] Nvidia’s made some substantial strides in improving power efficiency, but cards using AMD GPUs still tend to consume less power. If you can save $50 a year in electricity, that could mean an additional game you can buy.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 04-14-2011, 16:14

Your preference in graphics cards suggest you want to use the graphics card for engineering/science workloads (which can make use of raw storage but don't need fancy texture processing units and so on), rather than games (for which much the opposite applies).

**Ironside** · 04-15-2011, 08:14

"Grumbles a bit about having full selection to go through" Thank you Lemur.

Yep the RAM is needing replacement. The ones on the old comp is the old standard. That's why I mentioned it. Harddrives is more than enough, the dvd burner is new.

Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

Your preference in graphics cards suggest you want to use the graphics card for engineering/science workloads (which can make use of raw storage but don't need fancy texture processing units and so on), rather than games (for which much the opposite applies).

Ah, see this is the kind of stuff I'm completely lost about. Thinking about it, the card needs to handle textures well, but I got a small screen so no need for super high resolution. Don't care much about graphics outside textures. Ugly water is survivable. Most important is to avoid lag when the card reaches it's twillight years. 2 gig is more what I would prefer to upgrade to according to my "upgrade scale", not a demand.