I never played games on PC.

Now - I would like to build a Gaming PC.

On it I would like to play all available games - and near future games which will come (so next 2 to 3 to 4 or 5... years?).

PC games use multithreading (so a 4 core/8 thread CPU is better than a 4 core CPU?)?

This time, primary gaming, secondary SETI... (during or betweeen gaming SETI crunching)
What you would recommend?

CPU: AMD or Intel (which model)
GPU: AMD or nVIDIA (which model)

There is no price limit... ;-)
(But I thought this time just 1 VGA card... - FuryX or 980Ti - maybe. Or 2 cards in SLI/CrossFireX?)

I thought 4k (Ultra HD) should be the minimum.

Thanks.

(Yes... - I have already four FuryX in one PC - but it's a pure crunching machine ;-)

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Hi Dirk,
Some modern games like the Witcher 3 can really push a good PC, So building to last 5 years might be a challenge in gaming.

Something like this Skylake (Intel) build might pull off a few years https://youtu.be/R8v9CpUK2K8 . Could be some other ideas on that channel (Jayz2Cents)

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

On it I would like to play all available games - and near future games which will come (so next 2 to 3 to 4 or 5... years?).

Not really possible.
Games push graphics hardware to their absolute limits. While the current latest & greatest video cards will be able to play the latest release in 5 years, it won't be at very high detail or resolution settings. Especially when you consider that even the current latest games at full detail/resolution settings can bring current video cards to a crawl.
Playing the latest games at maximum settings, generally you will get 1-2 years out of the current extreme high end video cards; you should be able to play latest releases in 5 years time on current hardware, but at greatly reduced settings.

PC games use multithreading (so a 4 core/8 thread CPU is better than a 4 core CPU?)?

In 90% of cases 2 fast cores are better than 4 slower cores. There are some games where a 4 core CPU does give performance benefits; and many more games with the extreme high end video cards/multiple card systems where more cores are needed to feed those cards. Real cores always perform better than virtual ones.
As DirectX12 comes along, the CPU will be less important than it is now; although I'm sure over time developers will push things back up to their limits again.


When it comes to CPUs, and high end video cards, no matter what video card you use (AMD or NVidia) Intel CPUs give the best performance with the high end GPUs/multi GPU systems.


As for the GPU the leader changes every few years. Even then, it depends on the games you want to play as to what make of video card gives the best performance as the different game engines have always done better/worse on certain architectures.

At present the Nvidia GTX TitanX/ GTX980Ti hold the performance crown. In the games they perform best in, they lead the R9 Fury series by a good margin. Those they trail in, they're pretty close to the R9 Furys.
And they use a lot, lot less power than the R9s.
And given the prices, the GTX 980Ti is considerably cheaper than a TitanX, and only a few % slower than the TitanX.

Also, you will need to move to Win10. It's the only OS with DirectX12 (until Win10s successor comes along). And DX12 will give a big boost to game quality/performance when compared to many of the previous release of DirectX.
Current games are still DX11, but all current & new hardware is DX12 and that's what the game companies are now mostly developing for.

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Grant
Darwin NT

For my gaming machine I normally go with high mid grade hardware. This is my current gaming machine with a R9 390x & a 480GB Sandisk SDD.
As I don't play a lot of FPS intensive games & only have a 1080p monitor this setup works pretty well for me. The newest game I'm playing now is Fallout 4. Which my 390x is happy to run on ultra settings at a near constant 60fps in 1080. There are some sections of the game where I see the fps into the 40's, but that could be my CPU limiting me. I need to do some testing with my CPU overclocked & if that doesn't improve things it could be the i5 limiting me. As they do suggest an 8 core CPU for best performance. However in looking at CPU logs while playing I never see more than 2 cores maxed.

Also I'm considering GTA V for my PC instead of replacing my PS3 with a PS4 for the new game content they have added recently. When released earlier this year they indicated that a minimum of dual top end GPUs would be required for 4k 60fps game play.

Depending on the games you like I would same 2-3 years isn't an unreasonable time to expect a new setup to last. Beyond that I imagine new GPUs may be needed to play bleeding edge games. The rest of the machine will likely be OK. Unless something drastic changes in gaming. I imagine my i5-4670K will keep my gaming system up to snuff for several more years.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

This is my gaming machine. I have no problems running most games on it.

The second card is a GTX-760.

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On the video card, an EVGA GTX 980 Ti Hybrid, the cards gpu is water cooled, the rest of the card is air cooled, mostly maintenance free.

The motherboard, an Asus MAXIMUS VIII EXTREME, with an Intel i7 6700K cpu.

I'd look at an NZXT tower case, I have an NZXT Switch 810, great case, hard to come by now, but NZXT has the 820 and a few others to choose from.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

On the video card, an EVGA GTX 980 Ti Hybrid, the cards gpu is water cooled, the rest of the card is air cooled, mostly maintenance free.

The motherboard, an Asus MAXIMUS VIII EXTREME, with an Intel i7 6700K cpu.

I'd look at an NZXT tower case, I have an NZXT Switch 810, great case, hard to come by now, but NZXT has the 820 and a few others to choose from.

To round out My earlier suggestion, I'd get the following:

The NZXT Switch 810 case can be found new still, but only in limited quantities and only in White, I have an 810 in Matte Black and that was hard to get, but worth every penny.

For a psu I'd go with a Corsair 1000w psu or an NZXT 1000w psu, either psu has 83.3 amps and is good enough for 3 cards and such.

Also a Samsung Pro 1TB SSD.

16GB Corsair DDR4 ram.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

My rig; Around $1500 with the OS, case and fans....

AMD FX-8350 at 4100mhz, water cooled
16gigs of G-Skill Ripjaws RAM at 1600mhz
2-Powercolor R9 280Xs 1030/1500mhz
Gigabyte GA970-UD3 MOBO
Samsung EVO 850 SSD
EVGA Supernova P2 1200W PSU

This rig will run just about anything at high res. All components are at least two years behind the curve...

I haven't tried any of the latest games. Hawken, Titanfall and Mass Effect 3 all run at max....

My point; you don't necessarily need the latest greatest to enjoy your games.

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My rig; Around $1500 with the OS, case and fans....

AMD FX-8350 at 4100mhz, water cooled
16gigs of G-Skill Ripjaws RAM at 1600mhz
2-Powercolor R9 280Xs 1030/1500mhz
Gigabyte GA970-UD3 MOBO
Samsung EVO 850 SSD
EVGA Supernova P2 1200W PSU

This rig will run just about anything at high res. All components are at least two years behind the curve...

I haven't tried any of the latest games. Hawken, Titanfall and Mass Effect 3 all run at max....

My point; you don't necessarily need the latest greatest to enjoy your games.

HHMmmmm... just broke 50K RAC... that might tell you something....

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Thanks to all.

I would go with an AMD FX-9590 with FuryX, or 'better' with a i7-6700K with GTX980Ti. I would pay ~ €2,000 for a whole PC...

Then maybe a UHD 4k PC screen, additional ~ €600 for at least 30".

Soon, latest in the mid of 2016, if the new series comes out, I will buy a Samsung UHD 4k LED TV, at least 40".
It's possible to play games on this TV (but it should have HDMIv2 for 4k right?), or the reaction times (ms) are too high (not a 'good game feeling'?)?
So I must go with a UHD 4k PC screen?

What will happen if I don't like to play games... - just SETI will profit from this PC... ;-)


Maybe I should test 'gaming' with my old hardware - is it possible with the following? Matching hardware would be...

I have inter alia two Zotac GTX285 AMP! (1GB VRAM each), which would work in SLI.

And then two mobos for selection (each with 4x2GB DDR2-1066 CL5 system RAM):
Intel Core2 Extreme QX6700 4x3.14GHz O/C with Intel D975XBX2 mobo, system RAM @ 944 MHz O/C.
If two VGA cards connected both PCIe x16 slots run @ PCIe 2.0 x8.
Or:
AMD Phenom II X4 940 4x3.0GHz with MSI K9A2 Platinum mobo, system RAM @ 1066 MHz.
If two VGA cards connected both PCIe x16 slots run @ PCIe 2.0 x16.

AFAIK, Win7 would be possible with both mobos.


I could play games with it (with which resolution and fps?)?
Currently I have a 22" LG E2240 LED screen with 1920x1080 and VGA and DVI connector.


Primary I would like to start to play 'World of Tanks'.
A family member play this game, so we could play together online.
On their homepage they say:
Minimal
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10
CPU: 2.2 GHz mit SSE2-Unterstützung
System-RAM: 1.5 GB für Windows XP, 2 GB für Windows Vista/7/8/10
VGA card: GeForce 6800 mit 256 MB RAM/ATI HD X2400 XT mit 256 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c
Sound: kompatibel mit DirectX 9.0c
Free space: 16 GB
DSL: 256 Kbps

Recommended
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 - 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i5-3330
System-RAM: 4 GB (oder mehr)
VGA card: GeForce GTX660 (2GB) / Radeon HD 7850 2GB, DirectX 9.0c
Sound: kompatibel mit DirectX 9.0c
Free space: 30 GB
DSL: 1024 Kbps or more (für Sprachchat)


I could play this game with GTX285 SLI (with which resolution and fps?)?


BTW.
I could go with a XBOX1 or PS4 - if I like gaming...
Or is gaming on PC much better?


Thanks.

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I saw now, both boards don't support SLI, just CrossFireX.
So GTX285 SLI don't work.

And a HD7990 (dual GPU) would be too fast for the old hardware, or?


If I play games in SLI or CrossFireX, after BOINC take over the control, SLI or CrossFireX will be switched off automatically?

The 'micro stutters' are still happen with the new drivers (AMD/nVIDIA) (at old (not longer at new?) hardware?)?

If I test games on my old hardware, after I see the hardware is too old, I can install the games then later on a new PC also, or the games are like new Microsoft OSs tied to hardware?
(I could imagine the games work just on one PC, because otherwise I could give the games to friends and they could play the games also - without to buy it.)

Thanks.

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Hi Dirk,
don't pay much attention on SLI or Crossfire. With luck VR gaming could revive it. The support for SLI or Crossfire doesn't get better.

The games are not tied to the hardware.
Steam for example is tied to your Steam-account only. You can use your account nearly worldwide.

Spending so much money at one time is not the best way.
Spend not 1000 euro in one GPU, spend only 500 now and 500 in 2 years.
The rest of the computer has a bigger life span.


P.S. We could talk in german too, if this helps more.

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Regards from nothern Germany
Roman

SETI@home classic workunits 207,059
SETI@home classic CPU time 1,251,095 hours

SLI is not disabled by SETI@Home, it is not used and does have an adverse impact on the performance of the SETI@Home.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?