Guru3D PC Buyers Guide Winter Edition 2016

I'm surprised to find that I pretty much entirely agree with this whole list. Though, I do find one conflict with "The Bit" build. I understand the benefit of the Athlon considering it is an Excavator part and therefore as a CPU is better than many of the APU offerings. I also understand the build was supposed to have some flexibility if you chose the Pentium route. But, considering this is meant to be a gaming PC, I think a better budget build would involve one of the APUs crossfired with a compatible discrete GPU. I figured doing that would get you a lot more performance with a minimal price difference.

 

I disagree, I think that even on a pure budget pc that you're better off with a discrete graphics as you're better off in the future upgrading the gpu if you have an excavator rather than a slower CPU which will not keep up when you upgrade the gpu. I think igpu are better left for non gamers as every pc needs some form of gpu but not enough to warrant an extra 120$.

 

I understand what you mean, but remember who the target demographic is here. This is meant for people who can't afford something better. Many people in this price range may go as much as 7 years unable to afford any major upgrades. By the time they can afford one, the rest of their PC could be a bottleneck. That being said, if you want the best bang for your buck, crossfiring with an APU is the way to go, especially considering you don't have to get the discrete GPU immediately if funding is really tight.

Another thing to keep in mind is APUs are already pretty capable at modern gaming. If you have a HD display (which many people in this price bracket would be limited by), you can play a lot of modern games at acceptable frame rates with mostly high details. Many of us here tend to forget that 2K+ screens at 60FPS or higher is a privilege most people don't have.

 

I agree with everything in this article except one thing, The 6850k for the high end pc is a bad idea. I think the premium you pay over the 6800k just for and extra 12 lanes of PCI-e is not worth it. I doubt that you'll see any performance difference if you run your SLI with 8x rather than 16x and even if there was a difference, it would be incredibly minor.

 

I agree - I wasn't really paying attention to that. The price difference between the 2 CPUs is pretty huge too. Since they're both K models, clock speed shouldn't really matter much.