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Message
re: Build the Best Gaming PC Your Money Can Buy: A Detailed Guide (Updated Sep 2014)
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:09 am to ILikeLSUToo
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:09 am to ILikeLSUToo
------------------------
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Video Card
You probably know the two big players in gaming graphics: AMD and NVIDIA. They’re constantly at war, and it’s definitely not one-sided. Both companies continue to edge each other out with each new release.
The never-ending war and the uncertainty of future game requirements make it difficult to choose a side. It also doesn’t help that video card specs are among the most confusing of all PC components, even for some enthusiasts. In addition to GPU and memory frequency, there’s texture rate, pixel rate, shaders, texture mapping, memory bus, floating point, memory bandwidth, and so on. Making a decision based on those specs is complicated and unnecessary. On top of that, there are various product lines meant for different levels and types of use, and those product lines have their own models and submodels. The goal in this section will be to simplify the decision-making process as much as possible. The only question that really needs to be answered is this: How well do these video cards perform in actual games?
And on that note, let’s talk about the settings that drive performance.
====///====In-Game Graphic Settings====\\\====
When you first launch your shiny new PC game, the next thing you’ll want to do is optimize your visual experience by changing the in-game settings. Some games will try to detect your hardware and automatically adjust the settings based on that, but those auto settings are too conservative at best, and way off base in many cases. Here are some of the common settings you’ll want to check:
====Resolution====
If you have a 1920x1080 monitor, you need to be playing at 1920x1080. Some people recommend lowering resolution so that you can turn up other settings. If you’re building a gaming PC and you aren’t able to run games at your native resolution, you should not have built a gaming PC.
====Antialiasing====
If you’ve ever looked at a curved or straight object in a game and noticed that the edges appeared to be made up of small staggered squares making the edge look jagged, you’ve witnessed what’s called “aliasing” (commonly referred to as “jaggies”). This occurs because what you are seeing on your screen is only a sample of the 3D data being processed by your GPU. The resolution of your monitor limits the number of pixels your GPU is able to show you. Pixels are square, not round, so the more pixels you have, the less aliasing you will be able to perceive. The image below shows an example of aliasing. Notice the jagged edges on every object.
Particularly, the jagged power lines are a quite noticeable side effect of aliasing. Image borrowed from tweakguides.com
This is where the antialiasing feature comes into play. This takes those jagged lines and resamples them (once, twice, as much as eight times depending on your settings) to blend them with the rest of the displayed textures.
A simple visual example of what antialiasing does to edges:
The results can be quite noticeable, as shown in the example below:
Image borrowed from tweakguides.com
The size of your monitor can affect your perception of aliasing. The pixel count on a 1080p monitor is the same at 27” as it is at 22”. The larger the monitor, the larger the pixels. Depending on viewing distance, the smaller monitor will provide a perceptively clearer, less jagged image. Antialiasing in general requires more RAM and GPU power compared to other settings. How much is a difficult question to answer because it depends on the game, your GPU, your drivers, and the type of antialiasing being used—and there are quite a few, ranging from GPU- and memory-intensive brute force multi/super sampling antialiasing (MSAA/SSAA) to software-based types such as fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA), the latter being less effective but causing little or no performance loss.
Because of the immense variables here, it’s difficult to plan a PC with the expectation that it will handle every game with maxed out antialiasing. In fact, MSAA/SSAA is the first thing you should reduce or eliminate if your in-game frame-rate is suffering.
As I said above, the size of your monitor can affect how noticeable aliasing is, which gives an added benefit to 1440p monitors. A 27” 1440p monitor will have more pixels than a 27” 1080p monitor, of course. More pixels per inch means smaller pixels, and smaller pixels means less noticeable aliasing. It makes 1440p a more viable option if you’re interested in a larger screen for more immersive gameplay—while you’ll ideally need a powerful GPU for that resolution, you can greatly reduce or disable antialiasing in modern games with no significant reduction in visual quality, and that gives you plenty of headroom to max out other settings.
The topic of antialiasing options can be a guide in itself. For an in-depth look at the types of antialiasing options and how they affect performance, read this page from tweakguides.com: LINK, as well as this comparison guide from benchmark3d.com: LINK
====Anisotropic Filtering====
While antialiasing improves edges, anisotropic filtering (AF) improves surfaces. 3D objects in a game contain 2D textures, which can vary in appearance depending on view angle and distance. In short, AF alters the filtering pattern of textures to make them less blurry at a distance or at an angle. I won’t spend much time on this because it’s generally an easy setting to keep enabled or at its max sampling rate. It usually does not cause nearly as much performance loss as hardware-based antialiasing.
====Texture Quality====
This is by far the most important setting in the game. I think this image pretty much sums it up:
Cropped screenshot from Skyrim: High and Low Texture Quality.
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Video Card
You probably know the two big players in gaming graphics: AMD and NVIDIA. They’re constantly at war, and it’s definitely not one-sided. Both companies continue to edge each other out with each new release.
The never-ending war and the uncertainty of future game requirements make it difficult to choose a side. It also doesn’t help that video card specs are among the most confusing of all PC components, even for some enthusiasts. In addition to GPU and memory frequency, there’s texture rate, pixel rate, shaders, texture mapping, memory bus, floating point, memory bandwidth, and so on. Making a decision based on those specs is complicated and unnecessary. On top of that, there are various product lines meant for different levels and types of use, and those product lines have their own models and submodels. The goal in this section will be to simplify the decision-making process as much as possible. The only question that really needs to be answered is this: How well do these video cards perform in actual games?
And on that note, let’s talk about the settings that drive performance.
====///====In-Game Graphic Settings====\\\====
When you first launch your shiny new PC game, the next thing you’ll want to do is optimize your visual experience by changing the in-game settings. Some games will try to detect your hardware and automatically adjust the settings based on that, but those auto settings are too conservative at best, and way off base in many cases. Here are some of the common settings you’ll want to check:
====Resolution====
If you have a 1920x1080 monitor, you need to be playing at 1920x1080. Some people recommend lowering resolution so that you can turn up other settings. If you’re building a gaming PC and you aren’t able to run games at your native resolution, you should not have built a gaming PC.
====Antialiasing====
If you’ve ever looked at a curved or straight object in a game and noticed that the edges appeared to be made up of small staggered squares making the edge look jagged, you’ve witnessed what’s called “aliasing” (commonly referred to as “jaggies”). This occurs because what you are seeing on your screen is only a sample of the 3D data being processed by your GPU. The resolution of your monitor limits the number of pixels your GPU is able to show you. Pixels are square, not round, so the more pixels you have, the less aliasing you will be able to perceive. The image below shows an example of aliasing. Notice the jagged edges on every object.
Particularly, the jagged power lines are a quite noticeable side effect of aliasing. Image borrowed from tweakguides.com
This is where the antialiasing feature comes into play. This takes those jagged lines and resamples them (once, twice, as much as eight times depending on your settings) to blend them with the rest of the displayed textures.
A simple visual example of what antialiasing does to edges:
The results can be quite noticeable, as shown in the example below:
Image borrowed from tweakguides.com
The size of your monitor can affect your perception of aliasing. The pixel count on a 1080p monitor is the same at 27” as it is at 22”. The larger the monitor, the larger the pixels. Depending on viewing distance, the smaller monitor will provide a perceptively clearer, less jagged image. Antialiasing in general requires more RAM and GPU power compared to other settings. How much is a difficult question to answer because it depends on the game, your GPU, your drivers, and the type of antialiasing being used—and there are quite a few, ranging from GPU- and memory-intensive brute force multi/super sampling antialiasing (MSAA/SSAA) to software-based types such as fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA), the latter being less effective but causing little or no performance loss.
Because of the immense variables here, it’s difficult to plan a PC with the expectation that it will handle every game with maxed out antialiasing. In fact, MSAA/SSAA is the first thing you should reduce or eliminate if your in-game frame-rate is suffering.
As I said above, the size of your monitor can affect how noticeable aliasing is, which gives an added benefit to 1440p monitors. A 27” 1440p monitor will have more pixels than a 27” 1080p monitor, of course. More pixels per inch means smaller pixels, and smaller pixels means less noticeable aliasing. It makes 1440p a more viable option if you’re interested in a larger screen for more immersive gameplay—while you’ll ideally need a powerful GPU for that resolution, you can greatly reduce or disable antialiasing in modern games with no significant reduction in visual quality, and that gives you plenty of headroom to max out other settings.
The topic of antialiasing options can be a guide in itself. For an in-depth look at the types of antialiasing options and how they affect performance, read this page from tweakguides.com: LINK, as well as this comparison guide from benchmark3d.com: LINK
====Anisotropic Filtering====
While antialiasing improves edges, anisotropic filtering (AF) improves surfaces. 3D objects in a game contain 2D textures, which can vary in appearance depending on view angle and distance. In short, AF alters the filtering pattern of textures to make them less blurry at a distance or at an angle. I won’t spend much time on this because it’s generally an easy setting to keep enabled or at its max sampling rate. It usually does not cause nearly as much performance loss as hardware-based antialiasing.
====Texture Quality====
This is by far the most important setting in the game. I think this image pretty much sums it up:
Cropped screenshot from Skyrim: High and Low Texture Quality.
This post was edited on 3/20/14 at 3:33 pm
1
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:09 am to ILikeLSUToo
------------------------
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
Above all else, texture quality should be as high as possible, and with a properly configured gaming PC using the budgets defined in our sample builds, your video card should have no problems contending with high or ultra texture quality in most games.
====Shadows====
This allows you to set the smoothness of the shadows cast by objects in the game. Higher = smoother, and can even be disabled completely for low-end systems. Shadows are notorious for being performance hogs, but this isn’t the case in every game. There’s generally not much of a loss in quality by turning this down a notch, especially in high-resolution displays (or smaller 1080p monitors).
We’ll stop there, but there are quite a few more settings you might find in games. For more details about these settings, I recommend reading the Game Settings Guide over at Reddit (r/buildapc): LINK
Not every game allows you to change these settings individually. In fact, most games don’t, and some will roll all of these settings into a few auto presets from which to choose, such as Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Ultra setting generally enables mild-to-high anti-aliasing and most other things maxed out.
====///====Choices, Choices====\\\====
As I said earlier, the two big players in the GPU market are AMD and NVIDIA. Here’s a brief rundown of the companies and their current lineup.
====AMD====
Building upon the ATI brand (which AMD bought in 2006 and retired in 2010), AMD has traditionally offered the Radeon series of gaming video cards—specifically, the “Radeon HD” product line. These AMD cards were released with a 4-digit model number. The first digit indicates the generation/chipset used by the card. For example, AMD released its 7000-series cards in late 2011, with the “Southern Islands” chipset. The other digits indicate performance level. For example, the 7900 series outperforms the 7800 series. The 7870 outperforms the 7850. The 7970 outperforms the 7950. And then there’s the 7990, which features dual GPUs. Performing equivalently to two 7970s in crossfire, it’s currently AMD’s fastest video card, and well beyond the sample budget we’re working with. However, a 7990 (or two) would be something to consider for a high-resolution/high frame rate gaming experience.
In September 2013, AMD released its newest line of video cards, and with them came a new naming convention. Instead of a 4-digit model number as described above, the model will start with the letter R, followed by a number. This newest release includes the R7 and R9 series cards. The R7 represent mainstream, lower performing video cards, while the R9 series include the high-end video cards. The R# naming scheme is followed by three more numbers, which indicate performance similarly—higher is better. In order of performance (worst to best), the new cards are the R7-240, R7-250, R7-260X, R9-270X, R9-280X, and R9-290X.
Honestly, we should only be interested in the R9 cards if we’re building a PC whose primary goal is gaming performance. It should also be noted that the only truly “new” card of this list is the R9-290X, which is based on the “Volcanic Islands” architecture. The rest of the cards are updated, optimized versions of existing architecture found on the 7000 series cards. Given that, the 7000 series cards are quickly disappearing from the market as vendors sell out their stock. However, it’s not out of the question to find a good deal on a used 7970, which will perform about the same as its beefed-up twin brother, the R9-280X.
====NVIDIA====
Competing directly with AMD’s Radeon HD is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX series. NVIDIA’s model numbers define GPU performance in a manner similar to AMD, but use three digits instead of four. The first digit indicates the generation/chipset. In late spring 2013, NVIDIA released its 700 series, with a refresh of the “Kepler” architecture. The cards include a 760, 770, and 780. As I’m sure you guessed, the 780 is the most powerful of the three. In addition to the 700 series, NVIDIA offers another single-GPU card known as the GTX Titan, a $1,000 card that currently outperforms all single-GPU cards on the market, except for the $550 AMD R9-290X, which actually trades blows with the Titan pretty well.
====How to Make the Decision====
There are several ways to choose between NVIDIA and AMD:
> You can ask some people on a forum, and start a debate. One side will grow tired of the argument, the other will claim victory, and you’ll have your decision.
> You can look at benchmarks all over the Internet and see which one comes out ahead most often between two cards at similar price points.
> You can see which company is offering the best free game bundle.
> You can make a list of all the games you play and Google “AMD vs. NVIDIA [insert game title]” for all of them.
> You can look at the marketing jargon that each brand uses for their product features and decide which ones have better names.
> You can pick whatever brand you’ve heard about the most.
A lot of those above options sound silly, but people make decisions based on those criteria every day without regret. As long as you buy a video card capable of achieving acceptable performance on your display of choice with reasonable settings, there are very few scenarios where you’ll truly regret your purchase. Regardless of the brand you choose, there will be someone to say, “You should’ve gone with [brand].”
The chart below aligns NVIDIA 700 series cards with equivalent performing AMD cards and describes the general performance level to expect. This chart is based on gaming performance only, and does not take into account power consumption, heat, or noise, which vary widely across models. I’ve stuck to the basic card model numbers, but it should be noted that it’s always advisable to look for factory overclocked versions of any of the below mentioned cards, especially if they have good coolers, but only if the price is close enough to stock-clocked models (e.g., only 20% more, $30 more, etc. Use your best judgment). For the moment, this chart will include both the AMD 7000 series models and the newest R9 series models, until the 7000 series cards become obsolete or too difficult to find.
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
Above all else, texture quality should be as high as possible, and with a properly configured gaming PC using the budgets defined in our sample builds, your video card should have no problems contending with high or ultra texture quality in most games.
====Shadows====
This allows you to set the smoothness of the shadows cast by objects in the game. Higher = smoother, and can even be disabled completely for low-end systems. Shadows are notorious for being performance hogs, but this isn’t the case in every game. There’s generally not much of a loss in quality by turning this down a notch, especially in high-resolution displays (or smaller 1080p monitors).
We’ll stop there, but there are quite a few more settings you might find in games. For more details about these settings, I recommend reading the Game Settings Guide over at Reddit (r/buildapc): LINK
Not every game allows you to change these settings individually. In fact, most games don’t, and some will roll all of these settings into a few auto presets from which to choose, such as Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Ultra setting generally enables mild-to-high anti-aliasing and most other things maxed out.
====///====Choices, Choices====\\\====
As I said earlier, the two big players in the GPU market are AMD and NVIDIA. Here’s a brief rundown of the companies and their current lineup.
====AMD====
Building upon the ATI brand (which AMD bought in 2006 and retired in 2010), AMD has traditionally offered the Radeon series of gaming video cards—specifically, the “Radeon HD” product line. These AMD cards were released with a 4-digit model number. The first digit indicates the generation/chipset used by the card. For example, AMD released its 7000-series cards in late 2011, with the “Southern Islands” chipset. The other digits indicate performance level. For example, the 7900 series outperforms the 7800 series. The 7870 outperforms the 7850. The 7970 outperforms the 7950. And then there’s the 7990, which features dual GPUs. Performing equivalently to two 7970s in crossfire, it’s currently AMD’s fastest video card, and well beyond the sample budget we’re working with. However, a 7990 (or two) would be something to consider for a high-resolution/high frame rate gaming experience.
In September 2013, AMD released its newest line of video cards, and with them came a new naming convention. Instead of a 4-digit model number as described above, the model will start with the letter R, followed by a number. This newest release includes the R7 and R9 series cards. The R7 represent mainstream, lower performing video cards, while the R9 series include the high-end video cards. The R# naming scheme is followed by three more numbers, which indicate performance similarly—higher is better. In order of performance (worst to best), the new cards are the R7-240, R7-250, R7-260X, R9-270X, R9-280X, and R9-290X.
Honestly, we should only be interested in the R9 cards if we’re building a PC whose primary goal is gaming performance. It should also be noted that the only truly “new” card of this list is the R9-290X, which is based on the “Volcanic Islands” architecture. The rest of the cards are updated, optimized versions of existing architecture found on the 7000 series cards. Given that, the 7000 series cards are quickly disappearing from the market as vendors sell out their stock. However, it’s not out of the question to find a good deal on a used 7970, which will perform about the same as its beefed-up twin brother, the R9-280X.
====NVIDIA====
Competing directly with AMD’s Radeon HD is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX series. NVIDIA’s model numbers define GPU performance in a manner similar to AMD, but use three digits instead of four. The first digit indicates the generation/chipset. In late spring 2013, NVIDIA released its 700 series, with a refresh of the “Kepler” architecture. The cards include a 760, 770, and 780. As I’m sure you guessed, the 780 is the most powerful of the three. In addition to the 700 series, NVIDIA offers another single-GPU card known as the GTX Titan, a $1,000 card that currently outperforms all single-GPU cards on the market, except for the $550 AMD R9-290X, which actually trades blows with the Titan pretty well.
====How to Make the Decision====
There are several ways to choose between NVIDIA and AMD:
> You can ask some people on a forum, and start a debate. One side will grow tired of the argument, the other will claim victory, and you’ll have your decision.
> You can look at benchmarks all over the Internet and see which one comes out ahead most often between two cards at similar price points.
> You can see which company is offering the best free game bundle.
> You can make a list of all the games you play and Google “AMD vs. NVIDIA [insert game title]” for all of them.
> You can look at the marketing jargon that each brand uses for their product features and decide which ones have better names.
> You can pick whatever brand you’ve heard about the most.
A lot of those above options sound silly, but people make decisions based on those criteria every day without regret. As long as you buy a video card capable of achieving acceptable performance on your display of choice with reasonable settings, there are very few scenarios where you’ll truly regret your purchase. Regardless of the brand you choose, there will be someone to say, “You should’ve gone with [brand].”
The chart below aligns NVIDIA 700 series cards with equivalent performing AMD cards and describes the general performance level to expect. This chart is based on gaming performance only, and does not take into account power consumption, heat, or noise, which vary widely across models. I’ve stuck to the basic card model numbers, but it should be noted that it’s always advisable to look for factory overclocked versions of any of the below mentioned cards, especially if they have good coolers, but only if the price is close enough to stock-clocked models (e.g., only 20% more, $30 more, etc. Use your best judgment). For the moment, this chart will include both the AMD 7000 series models and the newest R9 series models, until the 7000 series cards become obsolete or too difficult to find.
This post was edited on 3/20/14 at 3:34 pm
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