First I'll start with the Tower itself: 500W PSU (No idea 'bout the brand) Kingston 1600 MHz 4GB HyperX Blu DDR3 Modules (2 of 'em) * 500GB Seagate 3.5 SATA * AMD A10-6800K (Richland) * Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-HD2 Rev 1.0 Hitachi-LG DVD-RAM drive NVidia GTX 650 GPU * For everything else: A nice slim (Mac-like) keyboard Logitech M100R Mouse Samsung S16A100N 1366 x 768 Monitor Philips SBC-HP250 Headset Those with an * are parts that isn't with me yet. Will this rig work with something like say Hitman Absolution on High with AF and AA set to 0 or maybe 4x tops with the res of 1366 x 768?
Should be fine. My only recomendation is to go for a GTX 660 instead of the 650.. It's a much better card and can be had at almost the same price.. Newegg has manufacture refurb EVGA GTX 660's for $144, and that's a pretty common price point for GTX 650's.. Either of those video cards require a healthy power supply that supplies a lot of amps to the 12V rail. Be sure yours has what it takes
I agree. I got the GTS 250 way back when and it has been 'adaquate', but not great, except the deal that I got on it at the time. Newegg had it for $100 on sale, just the time I needed one
My goal for this rig is to work with smooth PS2 Emulation without scrapping my current FM2 board and the other stuff. The GTX 660 is double the price of the GTX 650 and if I get a refurbed one from NewEgg its still going to cost me a fortune to get it shipped to where I'm living (Philippines). The Hitman Absolution part was the top of the line and re-viewing the system requirements it needed more power than I estimated.
if u do get refurb.. try to get square deal insurance for it... warranty limited on refurbs. PS2 emu.. wow i havent tried that in 6 yrs... used to be all viruses
PCX2 works ok, tho it's not perfect. I can run it smooth and my systems not all that powerful. Plenty of games just plain do not work. Compatibility list is a joke. If the game is able to be brought to the point it can be played even with major screen glitches that make it basically unplayable, it goes green in the compatibility list.. I've only been able to get a few games to work.. I think the best PS2 compatibility for a PC would be an old TV tuner card with A/V inputs.. EPSXE does work great for PSX games tho. Never had one glitch and I play them right off the CD As far as the 650 vs 660. The 650 is still a decent card and should do what you want. I'd wonder if you could locate something like a 560 TI tho. It's a bit better card, tho going back a generation
Out of those, I would go for the HD7770. It's the best card for gaming on that list. Powercolor is the cheapest brand producing AMD cards but the AX770 GHZ edition from them seems to get good reviews on them... If you need something for hardware video editing, than get the EVGA GTX 650 as the Geforce cards have a better capability for doing that.
Now for the big one, will my PSU hold out. Is 500W enough power for both the A10 and the 650 (since I'm going to be rendering videos) along with the other stuff?
It depends on how many amps to the 12v rail.. 500W is AMD's listed requirement for the 7770. Anandtechs benchmarks suggest the card can use 240W under load, so that would translate to roughly 20A needed on the 12v rail.. You'll have to check the schematic on the side to see if it's got at least 20A on a 12v rail.. Some Power supplies designed for workstations have multiple 12v rails but do not supply enough amperage. This is why they make the PCI-E power adapter connectors with 2 molex connectors, so that if you had 2 12v rails, you could connect power to the connector from each rail and get enough amperage to run the card.. Many of those cards have 18A or so per rail, so you would have enough power in that case
If discrete is not an option due to my low-end PSU, will the A10-6800K be able to do a PCSX2 emulation smoothly on its own?
Some games, but not many.. PCX2 really takes a computer with a good video card to make it work right. There are some speed hacks that can be enabled in the settings that can double the speed. Basicly what you get ( have you ever used it? ) is a game running 1/2 speed with a system not powerful enough. Because of the way that PS2 games work, they need to run at 60 FPS, even tho a PC game can remain playable below 30 frames, the PS2 games actually run in slowmo, as well as sound and speech... I can get mine to play a couple games smooth, but it does take putting the slider on the right in the settings all the way to the #3 setting, which it says not to do, but it's the only way I can get 60 frames