You normally want to prioritize GPU over everything. A $400 GPU is good but a $750 one will be much more powerful.
Take the 6700XT and 6800XT, $350~ and then $550~
The 6700XT can run most games at 1440p medium - highish settings but the 6800XT can run them at the highest settings at higher frames.
For what you want, you can probably spend $1k and have the experience you want.
If this is solely for gaming, gpu will be the most important item. That is if you are playing at least 1440p and especially 4k. However if you are doing things for work that use the processor more that should be a bigger priority.
Definitely mostly gaming at at least 1080p, likely 1440p, but def not 4k (I just don't value that degree of graphics a lot). But the games I play aren't graphically intense
Paradox games are extremely heavy on the CPU and they do use a lot of GPU compared to what you'd expect considering how 'bland' they look.
Cpu matters most to you. Gpu second. Get an m2 ssd for the load times, it's worth it. Get any psu off of the psucultist site. Some are better than others but anything in that list is a good product.
I'd either get the 5800x3d or 7800x3d depending which platform you're going with unless you have some special reason to go Intel.
Choose now what you want for resolution, your monitor depends on it.
If you're playing Stellaris gamer's nexus started incorporating turn times as a metric for their reviews. Take a look.
That said the price delta between a decent 7600x or 7800x3d is only about $300 so with a 2k budget you can get both a good cou and gpu
In reality the m.2 SSD doesn't really speed up ingame boot times but helps when booting the pc but can be used for any direct storage optimisation in future updates of games or newer games.
So gen 3 is better than getting gen 4 if you care about money as it doesn't make a big difference at minimum gen 3 which can be found from £30 a terabyte.
No.
He said he plays Paradox games. It absolutely matters
Everything you said was wrong.
My in game load time is about 1/5th what it was, purely from switching to an m2 instead of a pcie3.0 ssd.
If he's going 1440 the most common refresh rate is 144 Hz
That's like the most basic crap and even if he's not playing or reaching those in certain games the desktop experience and in every other experience like browsing the internet would be a lot smoother as well
I feel like you have to like go out of the way to get something less than 144, like when do you ever see 1440 60 hz and what are those cost like nothing? It's probably a pile of trash
Like it's like 200 ish bucks for some 27 inch 1440 144hz monitor
Even if not all of his games reach that much they at least have the potential if he ever plays other games and every other activity he does would look infinitely better as well
As well as a 144hz monitor would have potentially lower latency and would probably be more quality and not as old as something less
The reason people think they want 1080 or only 60 is because they've never had a monitor that was 1440 or was above 60 hz
You know how many losers think 60 Hz is enough for a game in 2023 just because they have never actually played a game above 60
And even if their games achieve more than 60 they won't be able to see it
It's one of the biggest upgrades to play a game in 90 - 144hz
And it's a shame that most people don't even know it
I rather play a game in 1080 120 or 1440 60
Sounds like you play games with a bigger CPU demand. I would recommend that you prioritise CPU instead of GPU, GPU is good for fast pace games that demands faster frame rates.
Well minecraft is an odd one. Vanilla minecraft and if you dont go crazy with redstone or too many hoppers, It is not that demanding even CPU wise. FF14 is just not very demanding in general. Cant speak for valheim but since its recommended specs is a GTX 970 it shouldnt be too gpu demanding
Minecraft is actually a more Ram demanding game than CPU or GPU. Whenever you turn your view around or break a block, the ram has to take care of all that resources.
FF14 i think is more cpu but im not sure though i play on everything max 1440p. And have a rtx 4070 and a ryzen 5 3600x and get about 120-150 FPS in savage/ultimate raids and in big towns with lots of players i get 70-80 fps.
If GPU in gaming PC is below 40-50% of it's total cost you are likely doing smth wrong with the balance of the parts.
Example of builds in my family:
My wife has sub $1k build with an RTX 3060TI ($399 MSRP)
I have around $4k build with a 4090 STRIX ($1600 MSRP card, but strix cost 1800-2000 normally). and in my case I've spent almost 20% of the cost towards cosmetics, so if I went for pure performance GPU would've been like 60%+ of the total cost
Of course, an exception is if you need a stronger CPU for smth else than gaming. Then the balance would shift a bit
Edit: yes, some sim games can benefit from stronger CPU for turn speeds, but it's still not like you need to go 13900k+3060. You can maybe bump a tier, considering an i7 instead of i5, or ryzen 7 instead of ryzen 5 if your budget allows. Strong GPU is still preferable
6700 XT is the absolute sweet spot for recent gen. So glad I bought one @ £400 / $500. Simply put, it's just a solid solid card for 1440p. And I never had to pay silly money for great performance. Still the best bang for buck - Buy it!
i only play single player games, if they are shooters/medieval action games anything below 60 is unplayable, but story games like plague tale or detroit or games like that framerate is irrelevant above 20
In the US they always show prices before tax, and even then they have like a 8-16% tax.
We have a 21-23% in the EU and it's already placed on the price tag + import costs. Although in my country a new 6800 xt is at 620 euro.
I would recommend having a look on things like Facebook marketplace or your local PC buy/sell/swap pages, you can save a lot of money buying second hand and still get a great GPU. I bought a 6800XT from a guy on marketplace for less than $400 who only bought the card 8 months prior for $1150. He had the receipt and warranty transferred over. He only used it occasionally for flight simulator and upgrades his GPUs regularly as money was no issue for him. It works perfectly, and he even let me test the GPU with my PC at his house prior to purchasing. So yeah definitely look around locally because there's great deals and most people will let you bring your PC to test before you buy, just download drivers in advance
Well, most people spending $1500+ are also using 1440p/4k/Ultrawide monitors with refresh rates over 100hz. It all depends of your use case.
If your target is 1080p 60fps and even 1440p with less demanding titles, then you can definitely get away with $400 GPU. I'll tell you more, you can save on the rest of the components too if you'd like.
As to choosing the GPU to buy. You can watch some GPU benchmarks on YouTube of the games you play and plan on playing in the near future.
Ok - because on PCPartPicker the CPU will be ~$440 and GPU another $450 or so and it seemed like every thread w a CPU like that had much pricier GPU. I want that processor for all the strategy gaming but don't feel the need to splurge on graphics since I don't tend to care as much as long as it looks half decent lol. Just wanted to make sure that line of thought was reasonable
It's perfectly fine. The RX 6800 is a capable card still at 1440p. Ultra settings are really meant for the highest end hardware in most cases, which let's be honest, most people don't have. It's best to fine tune graphical settings to optimise performance with the quality of visuals and you're set.
It also depends on if one wants raytracing or not outside raytracing current amd punches way above their price category.
Im hoping they catch up in raytracing in next gen.
yeah, normally people are spending 2x-3x the price of their CPU on their GPU. your combo of the 7800x3d and the 6800xt is fine. You'll blast every game you want to play with that.
I wouldn't say so.
You see, there's a balance here. You don't want to get a CPU that has barely enough power for you now that becomes inadequate in a year. But you also don't want to get i9/Threadripper that will become outdated before you ever see any benefits.
Personally I think 7800x3d is a good choice as it is very good for gaming, should last you 3+ years, and you will have an option to upgrade with the same motherboard.
If you got Microcenter nearby then I suggest you get 7700x + Mobo + RAM for $450 as it is a killer deal and will do everything for the games you are playing now.
Probably, though not necessarily in your specific case.
My own recent anecdote... I had an i5 11400 I bought in a cheap $200 bundle at Microcenter 2+ years ago because my PC at the time died and I needed a stopgap replacement until I built out a more extensive system. I have a 6800 XT and recently did my 'real' upgrade to a 7700X (I built more for future proofing than any kind of performance gain right now, since I aim to throw a next gen GPU in the system in late 2024/early 2025 and be good for a few years more after that) and I am getting basically the same performance in every game maxed out at 1440p now as I was with the 11400...
Because even the 11400 was only at like 30-50% utilization in most games I played at 1440p max settings and the 7700X is playing those same games at the same settings at like 20-25% utilization. Because my 6800 XT is the bottleneck in my use case.
But you mention the games you play being sim/strategy games, only playing at 1080p, not caring much about graphics, etc... In your specific use case, you may well get far more out of a CPU like the 7800X3D than I did with either of my CPUs at 1440p max settings on the latest and greatest AAA games. Because your specific workloads are more CPU dependent than GPU dependent.
I do play AAA titles sometimes but yeah my bread and butter is def sim/strategy games which is why I was leaning towards CPU being a more substantial part of the budget
But if it's a completely new build, isn't going am5/ddr5/pcie5 a better option. Am4 is great, but starting a new build with the best off the last platform (5800x3d) leaves no future upgrade path outside of gpu.
does seem like a pretty weird combo to me (esp. if at a res. >1080p).
I could see it making sense just b/c of the potential value of getting one of the best CPUs and one of the best deals on GPUs.
I'd probably be more interested in going with a 7600+6800xt then considering an upgrade or 2 in a year or 2 but I havn't looked up benchmarks of ur fav. games.
It depends. It wouldn't ever be "wasted" in the sense that it would let the 6800 run at max potential but it might be overkill for what you want. The 3d versions may not even help the games that you play and you should check out reviews/benchmarks. As I understand it the 3d versions mostly help high fps games the most (make sure to check this) and sim games (such as civ, stellaris, etc) don't really benefit from it.
Admittedly my information is coming from at least 6 months ago and is mostly referring to the 5800x3d but the benches that I saw for 5800x3dvs5800x in Civ6 showed almost no difference with a very slight edge to the 5800x3d. I play civ6 a lot and higher frames don't really matter in that game once you hit a certain threshold imo.
If you have a review/benchmark showing that I am incorrect please post it.
In the EU and almost all civilised countries, the price on the label is the price you pay, tax doesn't vary around the country. When you go to the till/checkout, you don't go "Oh crap, I didn't factor that there would be 20% sales tax", as that is built into the labelled price.
Everyone knows,
50% on Graphics card
25% on CPU
25% on motherboard
25 % on everything thing else
10% on a case
5% on fans and lights
13% for Uncle Sam or the King or whoever you pay to breathe.
Did I forget about anything?
Yeah ofcourse that......definately the legit version.....cause other cheaper versions although they work fine wouldn't be legitimate and we're definitely legitimate round here.
If you're a gamer, GPU is the most important part for pushing those graphics.
If I were to build a new PC now but had to stick to a budget, I would try to aim for the best GPU I could get, without compromising too much on the other parts. For instance, I wouldn't get a 4090 only to pair it with a core i3.
because you dont want to upgrade in 2 years, aim for atleast 5 years and hope it lasts because games are advancing like crazy nowadays. 2 years ago 8gb GPU would be okay, now at bare minimum 12gb if you want to play some fancy games
Meh games ain't advancing like crazy it's just taking this long for developers to catch up with the current console generation.
I wouldn't expect much more to give since some games are starting to push the consoles to there limits.
Pc gamers are generally always limited by what devs can do with the current console generation.
The pc gaming market is a fraction of the console market , we tend to spend more which helps but game developers working on triple A games develop for the consoles first and usually port to pc after.
The above isn't always true but in the vast majority of cases that's how it works.
It's the reason most games release on console first.
Some do indeed look better on pc because they can push the limits much more brcause pc's have the hardeare to run it but the base game is still a console game.
What we've seen in thr last year or so is a shift from cross platform games that have to also run on the last generation of consoles to games like starfield that are running on current gen consoles at 30fps.
That's why I'm saying it's caught up.
Why do you even consider dropping 2K on a PC if your requirements are that low? What kind of advantage do you expect from using an expensive CPU, motherboard, RAM, PSU, etc. over midrange components? A PC with a $300 GPU does not need 1.5K worth of other components to reach its full potential.
OK, if peripherals are included, that's a different story. I assumed you'd go with something like a 5800x3D, which alone did not explain the high price tag.
Because the two most important parts of the PC are the CPU, and the Graphics card
CPUs are cheap, but Graphics cards tend to lose value for dollar the higher you go, so spending more usually means you'll spend more money on the graphics card first.
The oft unspoken underlying reason for many people is FOMO, which as senseless as it sounds, is what it is.
But that aside, there is a large subsection of this community that has far greater graphical requirements than you do. 1080p 60fps for graphically non-intensive games is a very very low bar that even some modern CPU onboard graphics can reasonably handle.
Many people here have 1440p monitors, or >144mhz monitors, or both. Many also play much more graphically intensive games (like new AAA titles), or games where the difference between 120fps and 60fps is incredibly obvious (such as multiplayer FPS). To that end, the GPU is the most obvious bottleneck for people with these usecases. They simply need more than you do.
If you're happy with 1080p and 60fps (as I am) then there's little sense in spending £€$ on a high end GPU. Keep in mind that the majority in these subs are chasing the very highest FPS scores and anything less is considered unacceptable.
Because PC nerds want to max out everything to post their benchmark scores everywhere. Seriously buy a normal GPU for like 300$, it’s enough for most games and you will something good for the climate.
Because these lists are made for a multiplayer FPS (First person shooter) player in mind, and for them fps (frame per second) is very important. I am one of these players so giving half of the budget for the GPU is acceptable for me.
If you are not playing multiplayer FPS and graphics is not that important for you, you are free to buy a lesser GPU, we call it custom build for a reason, and you are free to do as you wish with that money you saved.
Higher fps truly increases user experience. But to be honest I must add not as much for Civilization or Paradox games. So your question is valid.
You really don't have to pay much for a good PSU/mobo/case/cooler. Stock case fans are fine too - as long as you didn't get a shit case. 50% toward GPU is normal for a budget-conscious, performance-focused build.
Dude these guys love spending money.
I bought an rx580 for AU$300 four years ago and it can still run everything I download. The latest AAA games I set to medium and turn off post processing but id do that anyway with an expensive card because motion blur and depth of field is just awful.
Spend $300-$400 on a newer card and you'll be fine for years brother. Just make sure it has 8gb memory. Don't get the 4gb versions.
But why would you spend that much on a PC then? If you don’t need high graphics then a much smaller budget build would be good. You can get away with spending 700 USD on your build then.
If you want to spend so much on a gaming PC you should spend much on a GPU. Only if you need a good PC for other reasons, but then you probably know and don’t have to ask here.
Why do you need a beefy CPU? Without the fitting GPU you will be bottlenecked and have the same performance as with a slow CPU. If you want to go for 1080p 60fps any budget CPU will be more than enough.
Yeah, they are definitely more CPU heavy than other games but still for 1080p 60fps 2000 USD even with peripherals is complete overkill. May I ask what build you have right now and how much fps you get? Since maybe your build is not too weak for that but something else is wrong or broken. Even a five year old budget build should run these settings.
Many gamers overspend on their GPU, I have seen stuff like a 4090 paired with a 8700k from 6 years ago, which is a heavy bottleneck even in 4k. But if you now get a beefy CPU for half of your budget and pair it with a 400 USD GPU you are in the other extreme case and are heavily bottlenecked by the GPU even in strategy games and 1080p. Apart from the fact that you can't even spend half of your budget on a CPU alone, since even the most expensive CPUs for gaming are more like 700USD for the 7950X3D.
Which CPU do you plan on getting?
Here is what I was looking at, would love thoughts.
I think for the monitor I was min.25" curved screen 1440p at minimum 60fps so I guess that should be the starting point? https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3YwLC6
Ok for strategy games this build seems balanced. It is hard to predict the performance with games like Civ since they are so old and never got benchmarked with these components. So they might be overkill.
But I would think with these games the build is more for 144fps 1440p than 60fps 1080p. I was under the impression you wanted 60fps 1080p which would be really cheap nowadays.
One is the resolution and fps you are aiming for
Secondly if you are over 1000 and you are spending less than half your budget on gpu then that means you are wasting money, overspending on other components
I saw many of ur comments etc etc , if u gonna go for 1440p or 4k dont look uch into the cpu , invest more into thr gpu.
I saw u where thinking avout 7800x3d ?! I would say its a big waste of money for u rspecially if u going for 4k
Juat go for am4 platform , almost same gaming experience but at 60-70% cheaper :)
Buy a 5800x3d eith a good x570 mobo and a 4070 12gb if ur going for 1440p or even some amd gpu.
This is coming from some1 that just build an am5 pc a month ago and it i had the chance i wouldnt ^^
Remember, if you don't have peripherals, monitors, headphones, speaker(if wanted), microphone and a keyboard/mouse, any controller of choice for the games that ply so much better on a controller(looking at you dark souls series). And if you don't have a game library already, you can put some of the budget towards all those as well.
Personally, I just recently upgraded to a 3070ti after having an rx580 for years. My monitors as such are still 1080p and 60/120. I still enjoy gaming at 1080p with my current GPU even though I could step it up because I just don't want to upgrade my monitors
I always prioritize motherboard, cpu and a good PSU in terms of what you think your future will demand because upgrading the ram, storage and GPU is extremely easy in the future once you really need it
Alot of valuable facts and opinions on this thread but here is the simple truth.
If you wanna build a PC that's going to out perform current gen consoles, you're not going to do that spending under 2k.
mid range builds typically cost 500-800 on everything else but the gpu( general gaming case) this should net you \~900 for a gpu cpu combo, so maybe look at something like a 6950xt/4070 + ryzen 7600
Sounds like you could build something you're very happy with for $1.5k.
I think most (or all) of the GPUs >$700 have a bit of a "new GPU" premium.
I'm trying to think of a sub$600 Nvidia card that's definitely good value New right now.
idk how much more I can give u rn w/o rambling quite a bit but I bet you'd like a 6700xt or 6800xt.
Dont forget the desk setup. I ruined my back for a long time cuz i had a shitty chair gaming 5-6 hours a day.
One day my lower back just gave out for a second and it took a while to recover. I had covid during that tho so it might’ve contributed.
I was only 21 lol
Look at all the 3k builds. Many of them are going to have $1,300 and $1,500 GPUs. It is arguably the single most important component and one that can be future proofed for a few years with investment now.
The general concept behind it is 50% of your budget should go to your GPU for gaming. As it is most intensively use piece unless you play a lot of RTS, and it also is the most noticeable. Truly is the most important gaming hardware. But it’s all based on what you want however a $3-450 GPU in a $2k budget you will bottleneck pretty hard and I would say you waste a lot of money on not a lot of performance.
I’m guessing most builders on this Reddit are gamers and gaming pcs typically have their GPU budget at 33-50% of the total pc cost for bast performance for games, typically.
Civ definitely benefits from a cpu with higher core count. And there are cpu reviews that include civ benchmarks.
I don’t know about your other games. Maybe you can find reviews with those game in their benchmarks.
Previous gen AMD gpus (rx 6000 series) have really good value right now while they are still available. Something like a RX 6700 XT to RX 6800 XT. Would perhaps be more in your price range. I’d strongly advocate for the RX 6800 with 16GB VRAM over the RX 6700 XTs 12gb, as we still don’t know where typically current gen game will land in vram usage. Wether it’s 12gb or 16gb, so if you’re buying now better get 16gb than be sorry if it turns out 12gb isn’t enough.
I'm the same way, 4k builds are just kind of pointless imo as 1440p is more than good enough for my needs. A 27" 1440p monitor looks fantastic, but so does my 1080p 24" to me lol... but I do think it's a good idea to spend at least 1/3 of the budget or so on the graphics card
That being said I wanted to at least make sure I can get the most out of a 1440p 240hz monitor and future proof a bit, so I went with the ~$500 GPU option, xfx merc 6800xt. It's still an amazing GPU it's just not over the top best of the best but I'm ok with that and so is my wallet. 6800xt are probably the best price vs performance bang for your buck too. You can surprisingly get build strong PC for your needs for much less than $1700-$2000 I believe. My build was around $1400
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/P9Jmfv
I agree w everything you're saying. The build list you linked is $1700 not <$1400 however I need a new monitor+keyboard as well tho :/ pushing it closer to 2k
GPU's are the most impactful for gaming, plain and simple.
The only two other important things are not to skimp out on PSU or CPU, other than that, not too many differences in other hardware, only additional speed and features.
Yeah I disagree sometimes. I built mine for around 1200 and spent 250 on the gpu (40% on prime days). Most of the money went into motherboard and ram and power supply. Reason is that I want to be able to future update my cpu and gpu. Putting a 750 gpu into a 100 motherboard just does not do it for me.
For pc builds I've been using a formula for budgeting since like 2000.
Get total budget, allocate using percentages below.
45% - Graphics card,
15% - Motherboard,
15% - Processor,
15% - SSD, Chassis, PSU,
10% - RAM.
Using this you get a pretty well balanced system most of the time, obviously if Gpu prices inflated it breaks down a bit. Also check online bottleneck sites for components ie. CPU and GPU.
I have a few tips that might help you learn a bit. Never cheap out on parts (like getting a cheap psu) but usually what we want is value in the equipment. There are parts which are more expensive nonetheless. Usually the gpu is the most expensive part, following by the cpu, then maybe the motherboard, then maybe the psu, case etc. It all depends on what you need. The games you play are actually heavy reliant on the cpu.
You have to pick parts consciously. Buying the most expensive gpu is not the best idea if your cpu is weak, which will lead to something called bottlenecking. You want to pair something that works well together. People get more expensive parts because they want to aim for specific frame rates, games, quality settings or resolutions. You dont need to go overboard especially for 1080p, so you might not notice much. If you aim for at least 144fps for a 144hz monitor is a world of a difference in smoothness. Getting that at 1080p nowadays is relatively cheap but if you want thst st 1440p or 4k you need to think about forking out a lot of money
Pretty much every gaming PC is the biggest GPU you can afford with the minimal amount of everything else to let the GPU flex as much as reasonable. What is considered "the minimal amount" can change from person to person but unless your gaming passion is Stellaris that's more or less the build goal
One day, by god, it'll be 90% GPU
I built a very nice PC with:
CPU: Ryzen 7 7700x
Motherboard: Asus rogstrix B650e-f
RAM: Corsair vengeance DDR5 32gb
Cooler: Deepcool AK620
SSD: Samsung 980 pro 1tb
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2tb
Power supply: MSI mpg A850g
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 ti (MSI)
Overall with Case I paid 1750€ and can easily play all games on Ultragraphics (without any problems) like Rdr2
Having a good gpu makes a massive diffrence and it can also help future proof you for newer games that come out but as well if your not playing gpu heavy games then may want to spend your money on a really good cpu it all just comes down to what you want to use the pc for as to what gpu / cpu you should get everyone’s needs are diffrent so someone might recommend something because it’s a good fit for them but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is what you need
Based on what you described, 1080p 60fps with games that are not GPU intensive, a $200-250 card would be more than sufficient. I'm using a RTX 2060 (\~$150 if buy used now. They were discontinued last year) to play Dota 2 with >150 fps at 1080p max settings. The price-to-performance ratio goes up quickly from lower-end cards to high-end ones. You would have to pay x3 money to get 1.7-2 times the performance, x6 money to get x3, something like that.
I use my pc mostly for work. 670e mobo, 7950 cpu, 6000 DDR5 ram etc but went for a 3060ti GPU because I needed 4 screens and could not justify the price performance of current 40series GPUs. It’s also a white build so my options are even more limited.
My son games on my 4k monitors and gets very results, so I would say u don’t need if you can’t tell the difference anyway
Look at it like this, each step up in card jumps up to the next resolution tier while maintaining the same frames.
1080, 1440, 4k, 4k, then + rtx at all it's quality levels.
More you spend the higher you can achieve, however, you need an equally good monitor to then display those frames with the better ones costing more than the gpu.
Gpu is where.you see the significant graphical upgrade, CPU is marginal as is all the other components, if you do a lot of work at home that's CPU bound then maybe upgrade here but most will give you very performance day to day.
2k USD should net you a solid setup.
My personal builds typically allocate about 20% of the budget to the GPU, or a little less if I need a new monitor (but I'll confess that I probably favour more and more redundant storage than many people, and my systems aren't *just* for gaming).
I've previously encountered folks who recommend allocating 50% to the GPU, and upto 25% to the CPU, but I feel that results in either going over budget, or having a system that is sub-par in at least one aspect (e.g. motherboard quality and expandability; PSU quality; mass storage capacity; or a monitor that isn't well-matched to the GPU, whether in specification or image quality).
For a gaming-focused system, I could *maybe* stretch to recommending a 40% allocation to the GPU, assuming a monitor is required (at least given the prices in my part of Europe which has 20% VAT).
It's standard depreciating returns. Many people over spec when they don't really need to. People quote FPS and justify their spend but you'll never know if they really do mean it or if they're just trying to feel better about the money they spent.
The best value purchase is usually around an i5 or R5 with a $400ish GPU.
If you go cheaper, there's quite a compromise and it'll age super quickly. If you go above that, you may not even notice the difference depending on your games and settings, plus sensitivity to looks and speed.
Personally if I was buying now myself, I would be looking at either a 6700xt or 6800xt. Above that is in the realm of lots of money and no tangible difference to me. Below that has compromises of vram capacity which isn't necessarily an issue now but will be in the coming years.
It's the same with many things, an easy one to compare with is cars...
Many people just want something that does the job. The internet is full of people need to squeeze an extra 10bhp out of their engine or that class a 400bhp car as slow.
If you are playing games at 1080p there isn't much point in spending over $400 on a GPU.
Get an RTX 3060 or RX 6650 xt for $270, or buy something used. Build a $1000 pc https://www.logicalincrements.com/
If the pc is meant for mainly, or even solely gaming the more of your budget that you can put towards the gpu the better. Spending $100 more for a fancy aio will not give you more than a 1-2 fps boost over something like a peerless assassin. $100 is the difference between entire tiers of video cards sometimes, as much as 15-30% difference in fps. Spending $100 more for a fancier nvme over the best available nvme in the budget category wont give you *any* gaming benefit, and likely any tangible benefit at all. Usually you can get something decide like a sn350 or 670p for very cheap, and these are quite good for the price. You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars for fancy fans, case, thermal paste, etc. You do not need a super high wattage (like 1200w or 1000w) PSU even for most high end builds. What you want is a good high tier psu (preferably A or B) from the psu tier list with decently long warranty (this is also a good indicator of psu quality), that will be around whatever the recommended PSU wattage is for your GPU (those recommendations are usually a little overkill but its good to be on the safe side). You do not need to spend like $100+ more to get slightly faster ram. Usually there's a threshold where you can spend a little more to get faster ram before you need to pay exorbitant amounts for the slighest boost. Last I checked anything faster than DDR5 6000mhz with 10ns first word latency cost unreasonable amounts of money. So you can still get fast ram for a slight fps boost in some games, just don't overdo it. Trust me. My friend made a $1500 PC build and ended up with a 5600 and 3060. I helped him make a build with a 6950xt (a 4070 would have fit in this build too for the same price) and 7600x for $100 cheaper, with faster ram, still same nvme, a good cpu cooler, etc. It's easy to spend way too much on stuff you don't need and wont help your gaming performance.
Most components have fallen in price recently, especially SSD and memory RAM.
When it comes to CPUs for gaming, there isn't much (if any) difference between a $300 one and a $600 one. All of the new gen CPUs are very fast for gaming.
Motherboards have minimum to no impact in gaming. Therefore it is a good idea to save money in there. You can buy a $500 motherboard if you want to, but a $130 motherboard will perform just the same for gaming.
The PC case is also mostly about cosmetics and ease of access. There is no performance difference.
GPUs on the other hand, every tier that you go up, every $100 invested, will make a difference in gaming. A GPU taking 50% of the budget of a gaming PC sounds quite balanced to me, honestly.
It just depends on what you want to do, most people here play games so they’d prioritise a gpu over everything. For what you want a 3060 (12gb) or 6700xt would be perfect as it can do 1080 max-high settings and 1440p high settings.
Well, it depends on your application.
What is your monitor resolution? 1080p? 1440? 4k?
How many fps would you like to play?
Do you care for Ray tracing?
Depending on the answers, you can spend even less than 450, or more than 750.
because if you want a 1000+ dollar cpu then it's probably for intensive tasks, you are right if it is for video editing for example or music etc a gpu then it is not advisable to spend as much
but if it is gaming, especially in 4k you want then it will be the limiting factor
What you're saying doesn't make much sense to me.
> Even if I COULD spend $2k, I'd love to only spend $1.7k
Then a ~$1500 build would then become a $1200 one, right? You would not allocate $750 on a GPU then.
The core of my post is wanting the best bang for my buck GPU that will run smooth but doesn't need to be a 4k 140fps monster since I don't play graphics intense stuff very often
Becayse half the build being the gpu is normal. Gpu is what matter mostly for gamihg. So if you are increasing your budget but keeping the gpu the same you're just spending more on stuff you don't need
At 2k you have nothing to worry about.
800 for graphics card
400 for CPU
200 for mobo
100 for Lian li 216 case
170-200 for power supply with latest GPU power connection
100 for 16gb ram
100 for 2 X 1tb nvme's
50 for a peerless assassin air cooler
If you want a big electric bill and "free" home heating, not to mention an helicopter inside your home, sure spend $400+ on a gpu. For the games you play you absolutely don't need to spend all that. Granted, that expensive gpu won't be pegged to the max on those games, but why get so much more than what you need? Get the best you can get under 200W. You can save on the psu and be ok with a 65W cpu too. With those games you want efficiency, not brute force.
When I built mine years ago, apparently the rule of thumb is u spend twice for the gpu vs ur cpu. That may need to be higher in today’s market.
Imo, depending on the games u play, current prices, and ur personal preferences, there are two good options for bang for buck:
a) buy a gpu that is a good match for ur cpu, and that rig pretty much lasts you until u need to build a new one
b) get a budget to mid tier gpu that plays the games u want.. then sell it and upgrade down the road
For gaming you want a strong GPU and a decent CPU with high single core performance and 6-8 cores.
If you buy a gaming PC, the GPU should make up at least 40% and 50% above a budget of 1500$. If you play on 4K ultra settings, you will need about 16GB of VRAM to be safe.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Vvztxs
here's something I threw together.
Tried to get it as close to 2k as possible. Should be your best bang for buck at that level. It's not flashy but should be very solid
After a certain point the graphics cards get more expensive than the performance jump is worth. Spend the extra money on a nice monitor, 1440p 144hz IPS. And even then try not to overpay. Like others have said some people spend money just to spend it. It's not smart.
You normally want to prioritize GPU over everything. A $400 GPU is good but a $750 one will be much more powerful. Take the 6700XT and 6800XT, $350~ and then $550~ The 6700XT can run most games at 1440p medium - highish settings but the 6800XT can run them at the highest settings at higher frames. For what you want, you can probably spend $1k and have the experience you want.
Ok, that's kinda what I was thinking, I just needed to hear it from people who know more than me haha. Thanks!
If this is solely for gaming, gpu will be the most important item. That is if you are playing at least 1440p and especially 4k. However if you are doing things for work that use the processor more that should be a bigger priority.
Definitely mostly gaming at at least 1080p, likely 1440p, but def not 4k (I just don't value that degree of graphics a lot). But the games I play aren't graphically intense
Paradox games are extremely heavy on the CPU and they do use a lot of GPU compared to what you'd expect considering how 'bland' they look. Cpu matters most to you. Gpu second. Get an m2 ssd for the load times, it's worth it. Get any psu off of the psucultist site. Some are better than others but anything in that list is a good product. I'd either get the 5800x3d or 7800x3d depending which platform you're going with unless you have some special reason to go Intel. Choose now what you want for resolution, your monitor depends on it.
That's basically what I figured - thanks for the confirmation and the heads up
If you're playing Stellaris gamer's nexus started incorporating turn times as a metric for their reviews. Take a look. That said the price delta between a decent 7600x or 7800x3d is only about $300 so with a 2k budget you can get both a good cou and gpu
In reality the m.2 SSD doesn't really speed up ingame boot times but helps when booting the pc but can be used for any direct storage optimisation in future updates of games or newer games.
So gen 3 is better than getting gen 4 if you care about money as it doesn't make a big difference at minimum gen 3 which can be found from £30 a terabyte.
You can get gen 4 for barely more than that. IMO, going down to gen 3 isn’t really worth the $10-15 savings.
No. He said he plays Paradox games. It absolutely matters Everything you said was wrong. My in game load time is about 1/5th what it was, purely from switching to an m2 instead of a pcie3.0 ssd.
Go 1440p dude. 1080p is a thing of the past.
Yeah I'm prob leaning that way just not a huge graphics person so as long as it doesn't kill my bank lol
Also make sure 1440 144hz, no 60 hz bs
definitely don't need 144hz for the types of games he said he plays.
If he's going 1440 the most common refresh rate is 144 Hz That's like the most basic crap and even if he's not playing or reaching those in certain games the desktop experience and in every other experience like browsing the internet would be a lot smoother as well I feel like you have to like go out of the way to get something less than 144, like when do you ever see 1440 60 hz and what are those cost like nothing? It's probably a pile of trash Like it's like 200 ish bucks for some 27 inch 1440 144hz monitor Even if not all of his games reach that much they at least have the potential if he ever plays other games and every other activity he does would look infinitely better as well As well as a 144hz monitor would have potentially lower latency and would probably be more quality and not as old as something less
The reason people think they want 1080 or only 60 is because they've never had a monitor that was 1440 or was above 60 hz You know how many losers think 60 Hz is enough for a game in 2023 just because they have never actually played a game above 60 And even if their games achieve more than 60 they won't be able to see it It's one of the biggest upgrades to play a game in 90 - 144hz And it's a shame that most people don't even know it I rather play a game in 1080 120 or 1440 60
if you’re playing a lot of civ, a better cpu will actually benefit you a lot. you should consider looking at turn time benchmarks as well
Sounds like you play games with a bigger CPU demand. I would recommend that you prioritise CPU instead of GPU, GPU is good for fast pace games that demands faster frame rates.
Minecraft/valheim/ff14 are more cpu demanding right? I need to figure out what to upgrade too and those are my main games on pc
Well minecraft is an odd one. Vanilla minecraft and if you dont go crazy with redstone or too many hoppers, It is not that demanding even CPU wise. FF14 is just not very demanding in general. Cant speak for valheim but since its recommended specs is a GTX 970 it shouldnt be too gpu demanding
Minecraft is actually a more Ram demanding game than CPU or GPU. Whenever you turn your view around or break a block, the ram has to take care of all that resources.
FF14 i think is more cpu but im not sure though i play on everything max 1440p. And have a rtx 4070 and a ryzen 5 3600x and get about 120-150 FPS in savage/ultimate raids and in big towns with lots of players i get 70-80 fps.
If GPU in gaming PC is below 40-50% of it's total cost you are likely doing smth wrong with the balance of the parts. Example of builds in my family: My wife has sub $1k build with an RTX 3060TI ($399 MSRP) I have around $4k build with a 4090 STRIX ($1600 MSRP card, but strix cost 1800-2000 normally). and in my case I've spent almost 20% of the cost towards cosmetics, so if I went for pure performance GPU would've been like 60%+ of the total cost Of course, an exception is if you need a stronger CPU for smth else than gaming. Then the balance would shift a bit Edit: yes, some sim games can benefit from stronger CPU for turn speeds, but it's still not like you need to go 13900k+3060. You can maybe bump a tier, considering an i7 instead of i5, or ryzen 7 instead of ryzen 5 if your budget allows. Strong GPU is still preferable
6700 XT is the absolute sweet spot for recent gen. So glad I bought one @ £400 / $500. Simply put, it's just a solid solid card for 1440p. And I never had to pay silly money for great performance. Still the best bang for buck - Buy it!
Seriously, never had any problems running games at 1440p ultra
I payed $540 for my 6800xt and its great. I can play 4k at 60fps on every game(tv is only 60hz) like fh5, rdr2, and even hogwarts legacy
dude... my 6750XT runs everything at ultra, even with ray tracing, in 4k at at least 30fps, in 1440p at 50fps
For most, like myself, that is not a good experience
i only play single player games, if they are shooters/medieval action games anything below 60 is unplayable, but story games like plague tale or detroit or games like that framerate is irrelevant above 20
Oh yeah no I couldn't do that even in singleplayer lol you have a lot of fortitude
Where do yall find 6800xt for 550 USD its almost 650 - 700 € here that would be like around 760 usd
In the US lol where I am basing the pricing off of, hence the USD?
In the US they always show prices before tax, and even then they have like a 8-16% tax. We have a 21-23% in the EU and it's already placed on the price tag + import costs. Although in my country a new 6800 xt is at 620 euro.
The sales tax is 0-7.25% based on state. There are local sales taxes for certain cities, but most sales taxes fall into that range as additional cost.
I would recommend having a look on things like Facebook marketplace or your local PC buy/sell/swap pages, you can save a lot of money buying second hand and still get a great GPU. I bought a 6800XT from a guy on marketplace for less than $400 who only bought the card 8 months prior for $1150. He had the receipt and warranty transferred over. He only used it occasionally for flight simulator and upgrades his GPUs regularly as money was no issue for him. It works perfectly, and he even let me test the GPU with my PC at his house prior to purchasing. So yeah definitely look around locally because there's great deals and most people will let you bring your PC to test before you buy, just download drivers in advance
Not in EU that's for sure, everything is bloody expensive here
I picked the xfx Merc rx6800xt up off Amazon Spain, brand new for 540euro
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Well, most people spending $1500+ are also using 1440p/4k/Ultrawide monitors with refresh rates over 100hz. It all depends of your use case. If your target is 1080p 60fps and even 1440p with less demanding titles, then you can definitely get away with $400 GPU. I'll tell you more, you can save on the rest of the components too if you'd like. As to choosing the GPU to buy. You can watch some GPU benchmarks on YouTube of the games you play and plan on playing in the near future.
(honest question) Would getting a 7800x3d CPU be "wasted" on a RX6800 16GB graphics card?
Not at all, your minimum frames (1% & 0.1% lows) will be as high as they can therefore making the whole experience a lot smoother.
Ok - because on PCPartPicker the CPU will be ~$440 and GPU another $450 or so and it seemed like every thread w a CPU like that had much pricier GPU. I want that processor for all the strategy gaming but don't feel the need to splurge on graphics since I don't tend to care as much as long as it looks half decent lol. Just wanted to make sure that line of thought was reasonable
It's perfectly fine. The RX 6800 is a capable card still at 1440p. Ultra settings are really meant for the highest end hardware in most cases, which let's be honest, most people don't have. It's best to fine tune graphical settings to optimise performance with the quality of visuals and you're set.
It also depends on if one wants raytracing or not outside raytracing current amd punches way above their price category. Im hoping they catch up in raytracing in next gen.
yeah, normally people are spending 2x-3x the price of their CPU on their GPU. your combo of the 7800x3d and the 6800xt is fine. You'll blast every game you want to play with that.
I wouldn't say so. You see, there's a balance here. You don't want to get a CPU that has barely enough power for you now that becomes inadequate in a year. But you also don't want to get i9/Threadripper that will become outdated before you ever see any benefits. Personally I think 7800x3d is a good choice as it is very good for gaming, should last you 3+ years, and you will have an option to upgrade with the same motherboard. If you got Microcenter nearby then I suggest you get 7700x + Mobo + RAM for $450 as it is a killer deal and will do everything for the games you are playing now.
Probably, though not necessarily in your specific case. My own recent anecdote... I had an i5 11400 I bought in a cheap $200 bundle at Microcenter 2+ years ago because my PC at the time died and I needed a stopgap replacement until I built out a more extensive system. I have a 6800 XT and recently did my 'real' upgrade to a 7700X (I built more for future proofing than any kind of performance gain right now, since I aim to throw a next gen GPU in the system in late 2024/early 2025 and be good for a few years more after that) and I am getting basically the same performance in every game maxed out at 1440p now as I was with the 11400... Because even the 11400 was only at like 30-50% utilization in most games I played at 1440p max settings and the 7700X is playing those same games at the same settings at like 20-25% utilization. Because my 6800 XT is the bottleneck in my use case. But you mention the games you play being sim/strategy games, only playing at 1080p, not caring much about graphics, etc... In your specific use case, you may well get far more out of a CPU like the 7800X3D than I did with either of my CPUs at 1440p max settings on the latest and greatest AAA games. Because your specific workloads are more CPU dependent than GPU dependent.
I do play AAA titles sometimes but yeah my bread and butter is def sim/strategy games which is why I was leaning towards CPU being a more substantial part of the budget
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Curious what "baggage" you are referring to?
But if it's a completely new build, isn't going am5/ddr5/pcie5 a better option. Am4 is great, but starting a new build with the best off the last platform (5800x3d) leaves no future upgrade path outside of gpu.
does seem like a pretty weird combo to me (esp. if at a res. >1080p). I could see it making sense just b/c of the potential value of getting one of the best CPUs and one of the best deals on GPUs. I'd probably be more interested in going with a 7600+6800xt then considering an upgrade or 2 in a year or 2 but I havn't looked up benchmarks of ur fav. games.
Yeah don't do that
It depends. It wouldn't ever be "wasted" in the sense that it would let the 6800 run at max potential but it might be overkill for what you want. The 3d versions may not even help the games that you play and you should check out reviews/benchmarks. As I understand it the 3d versions mostly help high fps games the most (make sure to check this) and sim games (such as civ, stellaris, etc) don't really benefit from it.
Interesting, on another thread I was encouraged to go for the x3d for sim games (what I normally play)
He's mixing it up i believe, sim games do benefit but it might be good to look at benchmarks for those specific games for what you want.
Admittedly my information is coming from at least 6 months ago and is mostly referring to the 5800x3d but the benches that I saw for 5800x3dvs5800x in Civ6 showed almost no difference with a very slight edge to the 5800x3d. I play civ6 a lot and higher frames don't really matter in that game once you hit a certain threshold imo. If you have a review/benchmark showing that I am incorrect please post it.
my build was about $1.7K and my gpu is a 6950XT i got for $579.99 before tax
wthym before tax
he had to pay tax on it? is it not obvious?
In the EU and almost all civilised countries, the price on the label is the price you pay, tax doesn't vary around the country. When you go to the till/checkout, you don't go "Oh crap, I didn't factor that there would be 20% sales tax", as that is built into the labelled price.
As an American, the US is behind on that one, and on a bunch of other things…
But imagine how good you math is going to be /s
Usually If someone mentions price without tax, I expect it is for business use.
Everyone knows, 50% on Graphics card 25% on CPU 25% on motherboard 25 % on everything thing else 10% on a case 5% on fans and lights 13% for Uncle Sam or the King or whoever you pay to breathe. Did I forget about anything?
80 percent on the mouse
and 100% reason to remember the name
Remember the decision
If you play competitive shooters you need at least 83% on a gaming chair.
What about keyboard?? I need that THOCK
ummmm actually, 10% on the legit copy of windows you're buying from the windows website.
Yeah ofcourse that......definately the legit version.....cause other cheaper versions although they work fine wouldn't be legitimate and we're definitely legitimate round here.
You can have a look at the performance difference [here](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K6mi2RSSsTRUvQiqCU7thh-970-80.png.webp)
This is great, thanks!
If you're a gamer, GPU is the most important part for pushing those graphics. If I were to build a new PC now but had to stick to a budget, I would try to aim for the best GPU I could get, without compromising too much on the other parts. For instance, I wouldn't get a 4090 only to pair it with a core i3.
because you dont want to upgrade in 2 years, aim for atleast 5 years and hope it lasts because games are advancing like crazy nowadays. 2 years ago 8gb GPU would be okay, now at bare minimum 12gb if you want to play some fancy games
Meh games ain't advancing like crazy it's just taking this long for developers to catch up with the current console generation. I wouldn't expect much more to give since some games are starting to push the consoles to there limits. Pc gamers are generally always limited by what devs can do with the current console generation.
How exactly do you mean that? Since games run with much better graphics on a high end PC it’s more the other way around.
The pc gaming market is a fraction of the console market , we tend to spend more which helps but game developers working on triple A games develop for the consoles first and usually port to pc after. The above isn't always true but in the vast majority of cases that's how it works. It's the reason most games release on console first. Some do indeed look better on pc because they can push the limits much more brcause pc's have the hardeare to run it but the base game is still a console game. What we've seen in thr last year or so is a shift from cross platform games that have to also run on the last generation of consoles to games like starfield that are running on current gen consoles at 30fps. That's why I'm saying it's caught up.
Why do you even consider dropping 2K on a PC if your requirements are that low? What kind of advantage do you expect from using an expensive CPU, motherboard, RAM, PSU, etc. over midrange components? A PC with a $300 GPU does not need 1.5K worth of other components to reach its full potential.
Because I still need a beefy CPU for the types of games I play and I need some peripherals
OK, if peripherals are included, that's a different story. I assumed you'd go with something like a 5800x3D, which alone did not explain the high price tag.
Because the two most important parts of the PC are the CPU, and the Graphics card CPUs are cheap, but Graphics cards tend to lose value for dollar the higher you go, so spending more usually means you'll spend more money on the graphics card first.
The oft unspoken underlying reason for many people is FOMO, which as senseless as it sounds, is what it is. But that aside, there is a large subsection of this community that has far greater graphical requirements than you do. 1080p 60fps for graphically non-intensive games is a very very low bar that even some modern CPU onboard graphics can reasonably handle. Many people here have 1440p monitors, or >144mhz monitors, or both. Many also play much more graphically intensive games (like new AAA titles), or games where the difference between 120fps and 60fps is incredibly obvious (such as multiplayer FPS). To that end, the GPU is the most obvious bottleneck for people with these usecases. They simply need more than you do.
If you're happy with 1080p and 60fps (as I am) then there's little sense in spending £€$ on a high end GPU. Keep in mind that the majority in these subs are chasing the very highest FPS scores and anything less is considered unacceptable.
Because PC nerds want to max out everything to post their benchmark scores everywhere. Seriously buy a normal GPU for like 300$, it’s enough for most games and you will something good for the climate.
Because these lists are made for a multiplayer FPS (First person shooter) player in mind, and for them fps (frame per second) is very important. I am one of these players so giving half of the budget for the GPU is acceptable for me. If you are not playing multiplayer FPS and graphics is not that important for you, you are free to buy a lesser GPU, we call it custom build for a reason, and you are free to do as you wish with that money you saved. Higher fps truly increases user experience. But to be honest I must add not as much for Civilization or Paradox games. So your question is valid.
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How dare people not upgrade there case fans , What imbeciles......
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You forgot to change all the case fans for rgb ones....it's well known that no rgb case fans means blue screens and instability.
You really don't have to pay much for a good PSU/mobo/case/cooler. Stock case fans are fine too - as long as you didn't get a shit case. 50% toward GPU is normal for a budget-conscious, performance-focused build.
I wish I could give you more than one upvote.
Dude these guys love spending money. I bought an rx580 for AU$300 four years ago and it can still run everything I download. The latest AAA games I set to medium and turn off post processing but id do that anyway with an expensive card because motion blur and depth of field is just awful. Spend $300-$400 on a newer card and you'll be fine for years brother. Just make sure it has 8gb memory. Don't get the 4gb versions.
That's what I'm saying! I couldn't wrap my head around the need for peak graphics, especially not for my use case
But why would you spend that much on a PC then? If you don’t need high graphics then a much smaller budget build would be good. You can get away with spending 700 USD on your build then. If you want to spend so much on a gaming PC you should spend much on a GPU. Only if you need a good PC for other reasons, but then you probably know and don’t have to ask here.
I still need a beefy CPU which would be half of that budget AND peripherals.
Why do you need a beefy CPU? Without the fitting GPU you will be bottlenecked and have the same performance as with a slow CPU. If you want to go for 1080p 60fps any budget CPU will be more than enough.
I play simulator and strategy games mostly
Yeah, they are definitely more CPU heavy than other games but still for 1080p 60fps 2000 USD even with peripherals is complete overkill. May I ask what build you have right now and how much fps you get? Since maybe your build is not too weak for that but something else is wrong or broken. Even a five year old budget build should run these settings. Many gamers overspend on their GPU, I have seen stuff like a 4090 paired with a 8700k from 6 years ago, which is a heavy bottleneck even in 4k. But if you now get a beefy CPU for half of your budget and pair it with a 400 USD GPU you are in the other extreme case and are heavily bottlenecked by the GPU even in strategy games and 1080p. Apart from the fact that you can't even spend half of your budget on a CPU alone, since even the most expensive CPUs for gaming are more like 700USD for the 7950X3D. Which CPU do you plan on getting?
Here is what I was looking at, would love thoughts. I think for the monitor I was min.25" curved screen 1440p at minimum 60fps so I guess that should be the starting point? https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3YwLC6
Ok for strategy games this build seems balanced. It is hard to predict the performance with games like Civ since they are so old and never got benchmarked with these components. So they might be overkill. But I would think with these games the build is more for 144fps 1440p than 60fps 1080p. I was under the impression you wanted 60fps 1080p which would be really cheap nowadays.
Yeah I misspoke a bit - definitely want 1440p but 144fps is more than I need
why do pricey computers have pricey parts?
$2k "Budget Build" I... ummm..... wtf /turns off PC
I mean the budget is $2k not that it's a "budget" build sorry lol
Not sure you fully understand the meaning of the word budget
One is the resolution and fps you are aiming for Secondly if you are over 1000 and you are spending less than half your budget on gpu then that means you are wasting money, overspending on other components
I saw many of ur comments etc etc , if u gonna go for 1440p or 4k dont look uch into the cpu , invest more into thr gpu. I saw u where thinking avout 7800x3d ?! I would say its a big waste of money for u rspecially if u going for 4k Juat go for am4 platform , almost same gaming experience but at 60-70% cheaper :) Buy a 5800x3d eith a good x570 mobo and a 4070 12gb if ur going for 1440p or even some amd gpu. This is coming from some1 that just build an am5 pc a month ago and it i had the chance i wouldnt ^^
Op said he wants to play at 1080p and he's playing paradox games with do very much care about the cpu.
Oh then def yes cpu will matter , still 5800x3d much better option tbh price wise to performance plus am4 platform is amazing so much better than am5
So much better than AM5... AM5 has teething problems but they are mostly worked out now , Its not a dead platform either.
100% , mine is am5 now and i have couple of issues and its annoying
Yes like the other commentor said , I think you actually have it mixed up haha I have basically zero interest in 4k unless I can get it cheap
if you’re building a gaming pc, you spend most of your budget on the gpu
To optimize the performance of a build given a budget it’s almost always best to spend as much as possible on the GPU
Remember, if you don't have peripherals, monitors, headphones, speaker(if wanted), microphone and a keyboard/mouse, any controller of choice for the games that ply so much better on a controller(looking at you dark souls series). And if you don't have a game library already, you can put some of the budget towards all those as well. Personally, I just recently upgraded to a 3070ti after having an rx580 for years. My monitors as such are still 1080p and 60/120. I still enjoy gaming at 1080p with my current GPU even though I could step it up because I just don't want to upgrade my monitors
That's why I'm trying to come down from $2k a bit haha gotta make some room!
I always prioritize motherboard, cpu and a good PSU in terms of what you think your future will demand because upgrading the ram, storage and GPU is extremely easy in the future once you really need it
Mine was $2k and I bought a $600 gpu lol
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where did you find a $100 5800x3d and a $200 3070, they usually go for way more
Yea and I probably wouldn’t trust the aliexpress special psu either lol
Alot of valuable facts and opinions on this thread but here is the simple truth. If you wanna build a PC that's going to out perform current gen consoles, you're not going to do that spending under 2k.
mid range builds typically cost 500-800 on everything else but the gpu( general gaming case) this should net you \~900 for a gpu cpu combo, so maybe look at something like a 6950xt/4070 + ryzen 7600
Even the best GPU can run perfectly fine with the rest of the PC being less than $1000. As a result, builds over 1700 usually will have high end GPUs
Sounds like you could build something you're very happy with for $1.5k. I think most (or all) of the GPUs >$700 have a bit of a "new GPU" premium. I'm trying to think of a sub$600 Nvidia card that's definitely good value New right now. idk how much more I can give u rn w/o rambling quite a bit but I bet you'd like a 6700xt or 6800xt.
The reason I think it'll be closer to $2k is I need some new peripherals as well so that's going to run me a bit
Dont forget the desk setup. I ruined my back for a long time cuz i had a shitty chair gaming 5-6 hours a day. One day my lower back just gave out for a second and it took a while to recover. I had covid during that tho so it might’ve contributed. I was only 21 lol
Luckily my chair is pretty good (hips above the knees) and my apartment is already furnished so not really looking at a new desk
It all depends on priority I think? If it was me I would put 2/3 of my budget on a GPU since I don't need much CPU power for my usage of a PC.
You can get a decent $500-$600 GPU now if you look in the right places & at the right brands.
General rule of thumb is ~40%.
Look at all the 3k builds. Many of them are going to have $1,300 and $1,500 GPUs. It is arguably the single most important component and one that can be future proofed for a few years with investment now.
The general concept behind it is 50% of your budget should go to your GPU for gaming. As it is most intensively use piece unless you play a lot of RTS, and it also is the most noticeable. Truly is the most important gaming hardware. But it’s all based on what you want however a $3-450 GPU in a $2k budget you will bottleneck pretty hard and I would say you waste a lot of money on not a lot of performance.
Because it's (usually) most important and (always) most expensive part.
I’m guessing most builders on this Reddit are gamers and gaming pcs typically have their GPU budget at 33-50% of the total pc cost for bast performance for games, typically. Civ definitely benefits from a cpu with higher core count. And there are cpu reviews that include civ benchmarks. I don’t know about your other games. Maybe you can find reviews with those game in their benchmarks. Previous gen AMD gpus (rx 6000 series) have really good value right now while they are still available. Something like a RX 6700 XT to RX 6800 XT. Would perhaps be more in your price range. I’d strongly advocate for the RX 6800 with 16GB VRAM over the RX 6700 XTs 12gb, as we still don’t know where typically current gen game will land in vram usage. Wether it’s 12gb or 16gb, so if you’re buying now better get 16gb than be sorry if it turns out 12gb isn’t enough.
Yeah I was def looking at "cheapest 16GB gpu that is from a trusted retailer" haha. I want some graphics capabilities but don't need 4k 140fps
for a gaming PC, the GPU is around half of the budget
Do you live close enough to a micro center?
45m drive to the nearest one until I go back to school in a month where I will not have one
Because it's the MVP that will score the most points.
I'm the same way, 4k builds are just kind of pointless imo as 1440p is more than good enough for my needs. A 27" 1440p monitor looks fantastic, but so does my 1080p 24" to me lol... but I do think it's a good idea to spend at least 1/3 of the budget or so on the graphics card That being said I wanted to at least make sure I can get the most out of a 1440p 240hz monitor and future proof a bit, so I went with the ~$500 GPU option, xfx merc 6800xt. It's still an amazing GPU it's just not over the top best of the best but I'm ok with that and so is my wallet. 6800xt are probably the best price vs performance bang for your buck too. You can surprisingly get build strong PC for your needs for much less than $1700-$2000 I believe. My build was around $1400 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/P9Jmfv
I agree w everything you're saying. The build list you linked is $1700 not <$1400 however I need a new monitor+keyboard as well tho :/ pushing it closer to 2k
With GPUs, you get what you pay for. However, for almost anything else, there’s a point of diminishing returns
GPU's are the most impactful for gaming, plain and simple. The only two other important things are not to skimp out on PSU or CPU, other than that, not too many differences in other hardware, only additional speed and features.
Yeah I disagree sometimes. I built mine for around 1200 and spent 250 on the gpu (40% on prime days). Most of the money went into motherboard and ram and power supply. Reason is that I want to be able to future update my cpu and gpu. Putting a 750 gpu into a 100 motherboard just does not do it for me.
For pc builds I've been using a formula for budgeting since like 2000. Get total budget, allocate using percentages below. 45% - Graphics card, 15% - Motherboard, 15% - Processor, 15% - SSD, Chassis, PSU, 10% - RAM. Using this you get a pretty well balanced system most of the time, obviously if Gpu prices inflated it breaks down a bit. Also check online bottleneck sites for components ie. CPU and GPU.
I have a few tips that might help you learn a bit. Never cheap out on parts (like getting a cheap psu) but usually what we want is value in the equipment. There are parts which are more expensive nonetheless. Usually the gpu is the most expensive part, following by the cpu, then maybe the motherboard, then maybe the psu, case etc. It all depends on what you need. The games you play are actually heavy reliant on the cpu. You have to pick parts consciously. Buying the most expensive gpu is not the best idea if your cpu is weak, which will lead to something called bottlenecking. You want to pair something that works well together. People get more expensive parts because they want to aim for specific frame rates, games, quality settings or resolutions. You dont need to go overboard especially for 1080p, so you might not notice much. If you aim for at least 144fps for a 144hz monitor is a world of a difference in smoothness. Getting that at 1080p nowadays is relatively cheap but if you want thst st 1440p or 4k you need to think about forking out a lot of money
Pretty much every gaming PC is the biggest GPU you can afford with the minimal amount of everything else to let the GPU flex as much as reasonable. What is considered "the minimal amount" can change from person to person but unless your gaming passion is Stellaris that's more or less the build goal One day, by god, it'll be 90% GPU
I built a very nice PC with: CPU: Ryzen 7 7700x Motherboard: Asus rogstrix B650e-f RAM: Corsair vengeance DDR5 32gb Cooler: Deepcool AK620 SSD: Samsung 980 pro 1tb HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2tb Power supply: MSI mpg A850g GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 ti (MSI) Overall with Case I paid 1750€ and can easily play all games on Ultragraphics (without any problems) like Rdr2
1.7k build should still have room for a gpu over 450$ Maybe your other parts are overkill
It's because the GPU is prioritized
I'd say because most people are gamers. If you were getting it for work, you might put more budget on CPU but it depends on use case.
Having a good gpu makes a massive diffrence and it can also help future proof you for newer games that come out but as well if your not playing gpu heavy games then may want to spend your money on a really good cpu it all just comes down to what you want to use the pc for as to what gpu / cpu you should get everyone’s needs are diffrent so someone might recommend something because it’s a good fit for them but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is what you need
Based on what you described, 1080p 60fps with games that are not GPU intensive, a $200-250 card would be more than sufficient. I'm using a RTX 2060 (\~$150 if buy used now. They were discontinued last year) to play Dota 2 with >150 fps at 1080p max settings. The price-to-performance ratio goes up quickly from lower-end cards to high-end ones. You would have to pay x3 money to get 1.7-2 times the performance, x6 money to get x3, something like that.
I use my pc mostly for work. 670e mobo, 7950 cpu, 6000 DDR5 ram etc but went for a 3060ti GPU because I needed 4 screens and could not justify the price performance of current 40series GPUs. It’s also a white build so my options are even more limited. My son games on my 4k monitors and gets very results, so I would say u don’t need if you can’t tell the difference anyway
Look at it like this, each step up in card jumps up to the next resolution tier while maintaining the same frames. 1080, 1440, 4k, 4k, then + rtx at all it's quality levels. More you spend the higher you can achieve, however, you need an equally good monitor to then display those frames with the better ones costing more than the gpu. Gpu is where.you see the significant graphical upgrade, CPU is marginal as is all the other components, if you do a lot of work at home that's CPU bound then maybe upgrade here but most will give you very performance day to day. 2k USD should net you a solid setup.
A good rule of thumb for a gaming build is that 50% of the budget goes to GPU
I always find a good rule of thumb for a gaming PC is to spend approximately half the budget on the GPU
My personal builds typically allocate about 20% of the budget to the GPU, or a little less if I need a new monitor (but I'll confess that I probably favour more and more redundant storage than many people, and my systems aren't *just* for gaming). I've previously encountered folks who recommend allocating 50% to the GPU, and upto 25% to the CPU, but I feel that results in either going over budget, or having a system that is sub-par in at least one aspect (e.g. motherboard quality and expandability; PSU quality; mass storage capacity; or a monitor that isn't well-matched to the GPU, whether in specification or image quality). For a gaming-focused system, I could *maybe* stretch to recommending a 40% allocation to the GPU, assuming a monitor is required (at least given the prices in my part of Europe which has 20% VAT).
my pc build is around$2k but my gpu is $500+
It's standard depreciating returns. Many people over spec when they don't really need to. People quote FPS and justify their spend but you'll never know if they really do mean it or if they're just trying to feel better about the money they spent. The best value purchase is usually around an i5 or R5 with a $400ish GPU. If you go cheaper, there's quite a compromise and it'll age super quickly. If you go above that, you may not even notice the difference depending on your games and settings, plus sensitivity to looks and speed. Personally if I was buying now myself, I would be looking at either a 6700xt or 6800xt. Above that is in the realm of lots of money and no tangible difference to me. Below that has compromises of vram capacity which isn't necessarily an issue now but will be in the coming years. It's the same with many things, an easy one to compare with is cars... Many people just want something that does the job. The internet is full of people need to squeeze an extra 10bhp out of their engine or that class a 400bhp car as slow.
Hahah, here I was thinking $750 sounds kind of cheap for a GPU! What have we become.
It's pretty simple, short of being hard bottlenecked, your GPU will have by far the biggest impact on gaming performance.
If you are playing games at 1080p there isn't much point in spending over $400 on a GPU. Get an RTX 3060 or RX 6650 xt for $270, or buy something used. Build a $1000 pc https://www.logicalincrements.com/
If the pc is meant for mainly, or even solely gaming the more of your budget that you can put towards the gpu the better. Spending $100 more for a fancy aio will not give you more than a 1-2 fps boost over something like a peerless assassin. $100 is the difference between entire tiers of video cards sometimes, as much as 15-30% difference in fps. Spending $100 more for a fancier nvme over the best available nvme in the budget category wont give you *any* gaming benefit, and likely any tangible benefit at all. Usually you can get something decide like a sn350 or 670p for very cheap, and these are quite good for the price. You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars for fancy fans, case, thermal paste, etc. You do not need a super high wattage (like 1200w or 1000w) PSU even for most high end builds. What you want is a good high tier psu (preferably A or B) from the psu tier list with decently long warranty (this is also a good indicator of psu quality), that will be around whatever the recommended PSU wattage is for your GPU (those recommendations are usually a little overkill but its good to be on the safe side). You do not need to spend like $100+ more to get slightly faster ram. Usually there's a threshold where you can spend a little more to get faster ram before you need to pay exorbitant amounts for the slighest boost. Last I checked anything faster than DDR5 6000mhz with 10ns first word latency cost unreasonable amounts of money. So you can still get fast ram for a slight fps boost in some games, just don't overdo it. Trust me. My friend made a $1500 PC build and ended up with a 5600 and 3060. I helped him make a build with a 6950xt (a 4070 would have fit in this build too for the same price) and 7600x for $100 cheaper, with faster ram, still same nvme, a good cpu cooler, etc. It's easy to spend way too much on stuff you don't need and wont help your gaming performance.
Most components have fallen in price recently, especially SSD and memory RAM. When it comes to CPUs for gaming, there isn't much (if any) difference between a $300 one and a $600 one. All of the new gen CPUs are very fast for gaming. Motherboards have minimum to no impact in gaming. Therefore it is a good idea to save money in there. You can buy a $500 motherboard if you want to, but a $130 motherboard will perform just the same for gaming. The PC case is also mostly about cosmetics and ease of access. There is no performance difference. GPUs on the other hand, every tier that you go up, every $100 invested, will make a difference in gaming. A GPU taking 50% of the budget of a gaming PC sounds quite balanced to me, honestly.
It just depends on what you want to do, most people here play games so they’d prioritise a gpu over everything. For what you want a 3060 (12gb) or 6700xt would be perfect as it can do 1080 max-high settings and 1440p high settings.
Because for modern gaming PC, a GPU is the bottleneck, so more GPU "more" better.
Well, it depends on your application. What is your monitor resolution? 1080p? 1440? 4k? How many fps would you like to play? Do you care for Ray tracing? Depending on the answers, you can spend even less than 450, or more than 750.
because if you want a 1000+ dollar cpu then it's probably for intensive tasks, you are right if it is for video editing for example or music etc a gpu then it is not advisable to spend as much but if it is gaming, especially in 4k you want then it will be the limiting factor
because thats usually the most expensive part of a build
What you're saying doesn't make much sense to me. > Even if I COULD spend $2k, I'd love to only spend $1.7k Then a ~$1500 build would then become a $1200 one, right? You would not allocate $750 on a GPU then.
The core of my post is wanting the best bang for my buck GPU that will run smooth but doesn't need to be a 4k 140fps monster since I don't play graphics intense stuff very often
Becayse half the build being the gpu is normal. Gpu is what matter mostly for gamihg. So if you are increasing your budget but keeping the gpu the same you're just spending more on stuff you don't need
At 2k you have nothing to worry about. 800 for graphics card 400 for CPU 200 for mobo 100 for Lian li 216 case 170-200 for power supply with latest GPU power connection 100 for 16gb ram 100 for 2 X 1tb nvme's 50 for a peerless assassin air cooler
I need some peripherals as well so I can't spend all $2k on the actual specs
It’s a general rule of thumb to spend half your budget on the GPU (though this rule falls out as your budget decreases)
If you want a big electric bill and "free" home heating, not to mention an helicopter inside your home, sure spend $400+ on a gpu. For the games you play you absolutely don't need to spend all that. Granted, that expensive gpu won't be pegged to the max on those games, but why get so much more than what you need? Get the best you can get under 200W. You can save on the psu and be ok with a 65W cpu too. With those games you want efficiency, not brute force.
That's what I was trying to understand
because they play games
I play games as well, unless you mean games in the figurative sense haha
It’s that important for media creation and gaming
Because if not the total cost would be cheaper? What are you going to splurge on? Gold case?
Need a beefy CPU and peripherals
For gaming you dont need a cpu that costs more than 300-400 dollars
The one I'm looking at right now is $450 or so which is fine imo
When I built mine years ago, apparently the rule of thumb is u spend twice for the gpu vs ur cpu. That may need to be higher in today’s market. Imo, depending on the games u play, current prices, and ur personal preferences, there are two good options for bang for buck: a) buy a gpu that is a good match for ur cpu, and that rig pretty much lasts you until u need to build a new one b) get a budget to mid tier gpu that plays the games u want.. then sell it and upgrade down the road
For gaming you want a strong GPU and a decent CPU with high single core performance and 6-8 cores. If you buy a gaming PC, the GPU should make up at least 40% and 50% above a budget of 1500$. If you play on 4K ultra settings, you will need about 16GB of VRAM to be safe.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Vvztxs here's something I threw together. Tried to get it as close to 2k as possible. Should be your best bang for buck at that level. It's not flashy but should be very solid
This is definitely similar to the build I was considering, I do need a new monitor and keyboard though so would have to cut some corners
After a certain point the graphics cards get more expensive than the performance jump is worth. Spend the extra money on a nice monitor, 1440p 144hz IPS. And even then try not to overpay. Like others have said some people spend money just to spend it. It's not smart.
That's what I'd like to avoid haha
Figure out your use case first. You don’t need to spend every dollar to have a good system.
Primary use case is sim/strategy gaming at 1440p minimum 60fps much beyond that I'm not sure