Upgrade Help

[Tanks]

Hello!

At the moment I was about to buy an AMD Phenom ii x4 965 which I was planning to use with an ASUS 7850 with 8GB mushkin RAM on a ASRock 760GM-GS3 for my new system, to game with. Although I was about to purchase these when I did some final research and the common theme was that an i5 2500k is a lot better choice over the AMD for gaming and the cost to get it, I can afford. But I was mainly concerned about whether the set up above will be able to play WoW mainly and BF3 on ultra/max graphics. If not the alternative to achieve this would be using a i5 2500k and a sapphire 7950 with 16GB corsair vengeance, to step it up a lot. However this im thinking is a bit overkill, so im hoping the first one will run everything at max? Or if there is a middle ground in terms of hardware I could use? I am currently playing on a 27" screen 1080p.

[Dudejoss]

what is you max budget? for the new parts and are you reusing some parts from a old pc?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Why not use a mix of the two builds, and use an i5 and the HD 7850?

[Tanks]

Well, the i5 2500k, 7950 and 16gb ram set up is max i would want to spend so about $900. im using a 750w PSU from the old computer and the drives and all that just replacing the mobo, cpu, gpu, cooler and ram. Just wanted to know which could run WoW and BF3 on max settings, if the cheaper build with the AMD phenom and 7850 would run it then I would go with that 1 or if the more expensive build is worth the upgrade in price for the uses i need it for.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($102.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($223.16 @ NCIX US)
Total: $685.12
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-07-25 08:35 EDT-0400)


As opposed to

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock 760GM-GS3 Micro ATX AM3 Motherboard ($44.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($102.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($223.16 @ NCIX US)
Total: $520.12
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-07-25 08:36 EDT-0400)

They would both run those games well, but the former would do so much better.

[izayoi92]

For gaming, the Intel processor is better than the AMD (I myself got the AMD 965 BE OC at 4.2ghz, and a intel 2600k runs smoother than mine)

Think of it this way - The more you spend now, the longer it will take before you need to replace it.

(I got the 7970 AMD card, 8gb ram, 650W PSU and Amd 965BE.) and I run BF3 on max settings (some on ultra) with 50-80fps (vsync off).

Remember to change the stockcooler if you are planning on clocking a processor.

[vesseblah]

R7950 will be faster on BF3 than 7850 on ultra settings, but wont make night and day difference played on a single monitor.

In 10man raids and smaller content AMD is just as good in daily use, but 25man raids in WoW are easily 30-40% faster on i5-2500K than PhenomII x4 965 regardless of which graphics card you pick.