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Ars Technica has published a new "Bargain Box Guide" for April 2014. As I'm looking through this I poked my nose over at Tom's hardware System Builder, Q1 2014: The $750 Gaming PC. Am I completely off my rocker? How do either of these qualify as a "budget build?"
I can consistently build systems (without monitors or OS) for far less that these systems and get a quality build that will work for several years of service. Am I just cheap or have I just been broke for too long and can't fathom the expense?
Do you still build systems or have you only purchased factory built units? How would you approach your design differently?
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You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Monday April 07 2014, @04:09PM
I get the distinct feeling that both Ars and Tom's have a Intel bias, and if you look at the number I can kinda see why. but then i get the feeling that Intel is doing something to rig the results; the difference between an Intel and AM id too much to believe.
Now I'm biased too. I walked away from Intel when they started to serialize (store a serial number) on the chips. tho- i wouldnt be surprised if AMD and the rest of them do the same at this point. But for what it is worth I have always gotten enough power out of AMD. and dollar for dollar I think i'm getting a decent deal for the processor.
That Tiger deal is pretty damn fine for the cost - certainly fitting in my definition of "budget". Sure once you throw in a graphics card you are now into the $400 range; but if you have to postpone that you can run with the onboard graphics for web and whatnot.
(Score: 1) by emg on Monday April 07 2014, @05:46PM
"I get the distinct feeling that both Ars and Tom's have a Intel bias"
Yet the very article linked to from here says in the fourth paragraph that their bargain PC last year used an AMD CPU.
The reason they picked an i3 over an AMD was probably that the i3 typically beats it in games, and runs on less power. Most games today don't use many threads, so less cores running faster beat more cores running slower.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Monday April 07 2014, @06:44PM
I get that feeling because i get a plethora of Intel ads on both pages.
Tom's has pretty frank reviews of processors. and I am happy to see they like AMD on the low cost end.
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Monday April 07 2014, @09:11PM
I haven't been following CPUs closely for a while now*, but my impression is that intel chips are considerably faster per core, while AMD chips give you a lot more cores for your dollar. Since most games still don't really take advantage of multi-core CPUs that gives Intel an advantage.
* Hey, what can I say? My mainstream gaming mostly moved to the Wii where the new interface allows for a nice change of pace. Meanwhile resource-intensive PC games these days are mostly all prettier rehashes of Doom, and after a couple decades that's just not interesting enough to justify buying a gaming PC for anymore. Maybe once a prettier rally racing game with high-fidelity physics comes out I'll consider upgrading, but Richard Burns Rally is still the high-water mark of the genre, and runs just fine on my ancient gaming rig. Really I think it'll be VR that makes me upgrade.