DSB's Dirt Cheap PC Build

[derspiess]

On the minus side, I just brought this monster to $350.  On the plus side, I was able to snag a Radeon HD 6850 for about $100 from Newegg.  Goodbye, hacky recompiled drivers for U12.10, hello being able to play my sandbox games on Wine.

Would that also be a good graphics card for Windows, in terms of bang for the buck?  I'm having some minor annoyances with my 4650 on Windows 8 and think it's time to move up.

[DontSayBanana]

Would that also be a good graphics card for Windows, in terms of bang for the buck?  I'm having some minor annoyances with my 4650 on Windows 8 and think it's time to move up.

It'll hold its own for a little while longer, but it really depends on whether you're planning on sticking with a budget card or looking for a little more horsepower for gaming.  If you're looking more for a budget card, you can pick up a 6450 for about $50, which is about half what I'm paying for the 6850.

I usually start brainstorming by looking at Passmark's current index of video cards: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

One of the nice things about the site is that if the card's commonly available, they'll list the average price you can expect to pay for the card, as well as posting the ratio of performance to price.

[derspiess]

Would that also be a good graphics card for Windows, in terms of bang for the buck?  I'm having some minor annoyances with my 4650 on Windows 8 and think it's time to move up.

It'll hold its own for a little while longer, but it really depends on whether you're planning on sticking with a budget card or looking for a little more horsepower for gaming.  If you're looking more for a budget card, you can pick up a 6450 for about $50, which is about half what I'm paying for the 6850.

I usually start brainstorming by looking at Passmark's current index of video cards: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

One of the nice things about the site is that if the card's commonly available, they'll list the average price you can expect to pay for the card, as well as posting the ratio of performance to price.

Really looking for a budget card, so I'll check out the 6450-- thanks!

[DontSayBanana]

So, turns out after much bug-chasing that the Biostar board was a dud.  Lesson learned: once in a while, a bad rep on the Internet is actually deserved.  Picked up an ASUS M5 A97 R2.0 on sale from Newegg for $95- I figure I'm off the "getting the damn thing working" stage and starting to put in good parts.  What I'm gaining:

Support for an FX processor down the line
Going from 8GB to 32GB max supported memory
USB 3.0
An actual PCIe 2.0 x 16, so my 6850 won't be quite so throttled.

[DontSayBanana]

And my second worst fear was realized.  Stabilized the computer today by replacing the refurb Sapphire 6850 with a new VisionTek 6850.  At least it wasn't the CPU.

[DontSayBanana]

Welp, starting to consider upgrading some parts in Frankenstein's monster here.  At present, I've got a Phenom 945 in here, and knowing the board compatibility, wondering if it would be worth it for me to bump it up to an FX-8350.  On paper, going from 4C @ 3.1GHz to 8C @ 4GHz is a no-brainer, but I'm wondering if the board would just bottleneck that processor to where I'd be better off swapping both the motherboard and the CPU.

[Vricklund]

For gaming I think your 6850 is more of a bottleneck than your 945.

[DontSayBanana]

For gaming I think your 6850 is more of a bottleneck than your 945.

No.  That card's only just dropped out of the top 50 because of the latest 7-series cards; it's still within the top 100.  For some reason, AMD gave the 6850 far more horsepower than other cards in the line: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6850&id=45

The CPU, on the other hand, is ranked 350.  And now that I'm looking at it, notice what CPU's sitting pretty right at the top of the list for the lowest dollars-to-hertz ratio?  And is sitting almost 300 spots above my current CPU? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8350+Eight-Core&id=1780

I've got the most ground to gain on the CPU, but again, while my ASUS M5A97 R2.0 supports FX processors, I have to wonder whether it can fully take advantage of an ultra-high-end CPU like that- after that, the video card will be the bottleneck: my PCIE bus is 2.0, so I'm going to hit diminishing returns at the top end of the video cards.

[Vricklund]

Depends what kind of games you're playing I guess.

I still think you could use a 7-series without your CPU being a significant bottleneck. For the same price as the 8350 I would get a 7850. To get the last drop out of the 945 I would possibly OC it slightly.

But then again, as you say, all upgrades are a case of diminishing returns, so it all comes down to how much you're willing to spend.

[DontSayBanana]

*sighs* I'm back on the stick again.  My Steam and Origin libraries are getting so huge that I'm putting an additional 2TB drive into my PC today.

[viper37]

For gaming I think your 6850 is more of a bottleneck than your 945.

No.  That card's only just dropped out of the top 50 because of the latest 7-series cards; it's still within the top 100.  For some reason, AMD gave the 6850 far more horsepower than other cards in the line: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6850&id=45

The CPU, on the other hand, is ranked 350.  And now that I'm looking at it, notice what CPU's sitting pretty right at the top of the list for the lowest dollars-to-hertz ratio?  And is sitting almost 300 spots above my current CPU? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8350+Eight-Core&id=1780

I've got the most ground to gain on the CPU, but again, while my ASUS M5A97 R2.0 supports FX processors, I have to wonder whether it can fully take advantage of an ultra-high-end CPU like that- after that, the video card will be the bottleneck: my PCIE bus is 2.0, so I'm going to hit diminishing returns at the top end of the video cards.

IIRC, the 6850 has lower performances than the 5850.  You would be much better off with a 7850, if you can still find one, AMD has replaced their cards with the newest R-prefix&numbers, it's a little confusing for now, and they're essentially the same, albeit overclocked, as that 7xxx series.

[viper37]

*sighs* I'm back on the stick again.  My Steam and Origin libraries are getting so huge that I'm putting an additional 2TB drive into my PC today.

Why not install 2-3 games at a time only?

[DontSayBanana]

*sighs* I'm back on the stick again.  My Steam and Origin libraries are getting so huge that I'm putting an additional 2TB drive into my PC today.

Why not install 2-3 games at a time only?

Because a significant chunk of that is Sims expansion packs (around 50GB).  The kicker is I have uninstalled some of the bigger space hogs (my EU3/CK installs, etc).  Even with the 2TB drive, if I kept all of it installed at a time, it'd be damn near full.

[Syt]

*sighs* I'm back on the stick again.  My Steam and Origin libraries are getting so huge that I'm putting an additional 2TB drive into my PC today.

Why not install 2-3 games at a time only?

Because a significant chunk of that is Sims expansion packs (around 50GB).  The kicker is I have uninstalled some of the bigger space hogs (my EU3/CK installs, etc).  Even with the 2TB drive, if I kept all of it installed at a time, it'd be damn near full.

WTF, dude? I have 124 Steam games installed, including Sims 3 with expansions, and stuff like the latest Wolfenstein that's like 40+GB, and I'm only at 750 GB. Plus other non-Steam games I still have 450 GB free on my 1.5TB drive.

[DontSayBanana]

It's a combination of my Steam library, my Origin library, and a metric fuckton of non-Steam, non-Origin games that I've gotten through Humble Bundle, GoG, etc.  I've had to chill with obtaining games because I was getting them faster than I could get to them.  I've got the digital version of Money's boardgame collection.