will all this work well together

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bevo

bevo

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My buddy got a 6770 GPU and he still cant run diablo 3. I'm trying to put together the cheapest possible upgrade for him, that will perform well and not bottleneck the 6770. Will this do it, and still give him some room to upgrade his GPU later if he wants.
I'm not real familiar with AMD, but I know it's a ton cheaper, and I think this Athlon II X4 645 is suppose to be more then enough for gaming. That is literally all he will be using it for. There will be no time in the future that he has any other plans for his PC other then gaming and web browsing. Unless i can get the build really cheap, he won't get it.

GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard Item #: N82E16813128521Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$89.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL Item #: N82E16820231428Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
$46.99

AMD Athlon II X4 645 Propus 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX645WFGMBOX Item #: N82E16819103885Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
$109
 
The Athlon is not enough. It will be a bottleneck. Other than that, the build will work. I'd recocmend him getting a Pentium or a cheap i3.
 
What about one of these then? Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition Deneb 3.6GHz

AMD is just so much cheaper, and leaves so much more room to upgrade later with their MOBOs.
 
I'd say about a 6950/GTX 560. After that, theres a serious bottleneck. But bottlenecks can happen with any CPU, its serverity only varies.
 
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NissanSkylineN1
I'd say about a 6950/GTX 560. After that, theres a serious bottleneck. But bottlenecks can happen with any CPU, its serverity only varies.
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Yeah but I know a 2500k likely won't bottleneck with any consumer card. I just don't know anything about AMD processors.
 
Umm...

Yyeeaaa... seriously though, the Athlon would be fine up till a 6850.

A Phenom will run higher than a 560 as well, I've seen systems with Phenoms having dual 570's in crossfire (Overclocked and all)...

Remember, games are mostly GPU bound these days. Your problem with not being able to run Diablo 3 is the actual GPU itself. Pick up a Phenom X3 or X4, and a high end GPU you'll be right. A CPU upgrade will do nothing with the 6770, it will only help if you upgrade your GPU as well.

Sorry Skyline :P
 
Skyrim is CPU heavy. You can't categorize all games into one resource basket. The general rule is to spend at as much or more as you do on your GPU on your CPU (fixed!). This will prevent any bottlenecks.

You can see clear performance differences between those two CPUs (965 and 635 since the 975 and 645 are not benched):
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/59
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/342
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/50
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/47
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/49
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/48
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/336

The two CPUs in comparison are both tested on te same system with a GTX 280.


TL;DR, there will be a noticable ~20 FPS increase with the Phenom II X4 over the Athlon.
 
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tlowr4
Umm...

Yyeeaaa... seriously though, the Athlon would be fine up till a 6850.

A Phenom will run higher than a 560 as well, I've seen systems with Phenoms having dual 570's in crossfire (Overclocked and all)...

Remember, games are mostly GPU bound these days. Your problem with not being able to run Diablo 3 is the actual GPU itself. Pick up a Phenom X3 or X4, and a high end GPU you'll be right. A CPU upgrade will do nothing with the 6770, it will only help if you upgrade your GPU as well.

Sorry Skyline :P
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I can't imagine his 6770 not being able to run diablo 3. My laptop with the lowest level 555m is running it high and medium settings with AA. My laptop does though have, and good intel quad core, and more ram then his desktop.

His desktop is only a dual core, and I can't imagine my 555m being better then his 6770. A 6770 should be able to run any game out there, even if it is at low settings. I know the 6770 runs BF3 so you would think it would be able to run diablo pretty easy. It doesn't look all that impressive, but I do imagine it is pretty CPU intesive for a game. It even has one physics settings that is just for taking strain off of the CPU, and that setting helped him out the most by putting it on low.
 
I have a 6770. It runs Skyrim on high settings. I cannot imagine it not running Diablo 3. I have a 2500K paired with it at stock clocks. it must be the CPU holding him back. The 6770 is a great chip, so great that its infact 3 generations old (6770=5770+firmware update) and is still running games at 1080P at high settings. (I love my OC'd 6770. Ask Nick09, he used to have a 6770 too, loved it.)

The Athlon is also not going to be good for buying now, as in a few years, your buddy will want a new CPU for gaming. Its better to spend the extra $50 now than to spend another $100-150 in a few years. Also, I wouldn't reccomend pairing it with anything higher than the 6770, since you mentioned upgrading in the future. The 975 is also a Black Edition, meaning it can overclock well and easily compared to the 645, saving you even more in the long run.
 
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I'm going to try and get him to get the 975 and some faster ram. He doesn't care what settings the games run at, as long as they run. I talked to him a little while ago though, and it sounds like he doesn't want to spend the money on it. I was really looking forward to diablo and another RPG he was wanting to get, but I won't get them either if he's not. I would feel bad if he can't play them too.

I might check out some other forums and see if i can get him a deal on some used parts to get him going.

How about this deal used. http://www.overclock.net/t/1246591/...-a880gz-motherboard-whs-2011-bundle-available

Seems like it might work. All he would need would be some decent RAM. He could be going for well under 200$.
 
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NissanSkylineN1
... You can't categorize all games into one resource basket.
Click to expand...

I didn't. I said userally that is the case. Read my post.

NissanSkylineN1
...The general rule is to spend at as much or more as you do on your CPU on your GPU. This will prevent any bottlenecks.
...
Click to expand...

Where the HELL did you get that from. Mate, that's...that's...

I'm speachless... I've never heard something so silly in my life, no offence, but whoever told you that is absolutely...UGH.

EDIT: Either way, if you're both going to go jumping up and down at what I said, so be it. Just don't come crawling back when you realize that :P
 
tlowr4
Where the HELL did you get that from. Mate, that's...that's...
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Woops, typo. Its the other way around. Thanks for notifying me. (About time I got a new keyboard... 10 year old Compaq Multimedia keyboard has had its days) :P


And bevo, the RAM you currently have on your list is perfectly fine.
 
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Couldn't you try a Quad core FM1 A8-3870K setup? That APU comes to $139 and a motherboard to use comes at $79. These two parts come to $210. And I'd also had to the notation to keep the HD 6770. It will play just about every game if he does not care about higher settings. Also, 8GB of RAM is not needed at all. Your friend can live with 4GB quite comfortingly(or if you really want a little extra do a 4GBx2GB installation) to save some money. I'd hardly see the reason why to use the 8GB since games these days don't even use more than 3GB of ram these days. Even when I'm multitasking with firefox and two virtual machines(both were Windows Server 2008 R2) it never went past 3.8GB.
 
tlowr4


EDIT: Either way, if you're both going to go jumping up and down at what I said, so be it. Just don't come crawling back when you realize that :P
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I wasn't trying to jump all over you. I was just saying that a 6770 is a pretty decent GPU. I've seen it used it bencmark tests for alot of the new games. It should be able to run diablo 3. His GPU is only showing around 30-50% usage most of the time in diablo, so it has to be a bottleneck somehwere other then the GPU. I did though fail to mention that earlier. Plus it's running games like that new MMO super hero game at max settings. Diablo must just be pretty cpu and ram intensive.

I still appreciate your input on my thread, I just didn't agree with the GPU needing upgraded first.
 
bevo
I wasn't trying to jump all over you. I was just saying that a 6770 is a pretty decent GPU. I've seen it used it bencmark tests for alot of the new games. It should be able to run diablo 3. His GPU is only showing around 30-50% usage most of the time in diablo, so it has to be a bottleneck somehwere other then the GPU. I did though fail to mention that earlier. Plus it's running games like that new MMO super hero game at max settings. Diablo must just be pretty cpu and ram intensive.

I still appreciate your input on my thread, I just didn't agree with the GPU needing upgraded first.
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Yeah no problem man. It's your, and your friend desision in the end. It was just a bit overwhelming to see about 5 posts of walls of texts trying to prove me wrong when I checked the thread again :P Sall good.

Curiosity question, what's his current CPU?
 
tlowr4
Yeah no problem man. It's your, and your friend desision in the end. It was just a bit overwhelming to see about 5 posts of walls of texts trying to prove me wrong when I checked the thread again :P Sall good.

Curiosity question, what's his current CPU?
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It's an E2180 dual core, he's wanting to upgrade to another 775 dual core which is an E6600. I told him I didn't think it would make much of a difference and it would be a waste of 80$, but I could be wrong.
 
The E6600 a good CPU, but I think that the AMD would do better. The thing is that he would save money on the motherboard, but not be able to use DDR3.
 
Here is what he has now

Asus P5N73-AM Motherboard
- 585W Power Supply
6770 gpu
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180
His ram is 800 MHZ
 
I would say these are his best options, cheapest to most expensive.

1) Overclock his current CPU.

2) Get a 45nm Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. I think something like the E7300 for $50 should be enough and overclock that to 3GHZ or slightly more. Remember to upgrade bios beforehand. Also you can then sell the E2180 to offset some of the cost.

3) Get a cheap Sandy Bridge motherboard and CPU, should cost like $130 plus whatever for the ram. Then he can upgrade to Ivy Bridge CPU when he wants or you could always get a cheap Ivy Bridge motherboard and either cheap Sandy Bridge CPU or entry level Ivy Bridge processor when it comes out. This is the best option for getting a potentially very powerful system for not much more. You can get Z77 motherboards for $110 or less depending on if you need ATX or MATX motherboard. It is essentially about $160 with a cheap Sandy Bridge dual core plus whatever for ram. That price should go down in a month to slightly less as Ivy Bridge parts becomes more mainstream and Sandy Bridge parts go down in price. Not good news for AMD that is for sure.
 
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bevo
It's an E2180 dual core, he's wanting to upgrade to another 775 dual core which is an E6600. I told him I didn't think it would make much of a difference and it would be a waste of 80$, but I could be wrong.
Click to expand...

If you're going for an E6600, may as well hunt down a Q6600 (SLACR - the G0 stepping version - can be ridiculously OC'ed). One hell of a chip for the money.
 
bevo
GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard Item #: N82E16813128521Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$89.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL Item #: N82E16820231428Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
$46.99

AMD Athlon II X4 645 Propus 3.1GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX645WFGMBOX Item #: N82E16819103885Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
$109
Click to expand...

Do you/he have a Microcenter near you?
 
What about these 2 together 128$ with tax for both of them together? 118$ if he does the rebate.
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P Socket AM3+ 760G mATX AMD Mo...

AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7GHz Six Core Socket AM3 ...
SKU: 200873
 
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Best DDR3 RAM that mobo supports is 1333(though may not be a con since I think the CPU's only supported it this fast). Otherwise it's a great deal and you should snatch it if you can.
 
nick09
Best DDR3 RAM that mobo supports is 1333(though may not be a con since I think the CPU's only supported it this fast). Otherwise it's a great deal and you should snatch it if you can.
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I'm thinking for free though 1333 ddr3 is pretty good. It would at least get him to buy something. His now is ddr2 800 mhz.
 

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