Building first PC...

[Speed of Darkness]

I haven't had a PC I used primarily for gaming since I was in middle school (Redguard FTW)... So I am a little rusty but my 360 is shot and I want to go back to computers.
I have read quite a few threads on here and a few other places for the last few months and this is what I came up with on tiger direct as a starter. I really don't want to spend much more than 5-600s starting if I can help it. I would use my laptop for any office/work/school related things so this would be a pure gaming computer.

*won't let me post the link*
ASUS M597A LE 2.0
AMD FX-4300
Corsair 4GB DDR3
Galaxy GeForce GTX650GC
LG 24x multi-drive
650W (Kingwin)

^All that and a case fro 419 (after rebates of course)- barebone kit on tiger direct

As for games, like I said I have been away from most PC games for a while so it would depend on which new ones peak my interest. Maybe Skyrim, definitely Morrowind with a few mods, and possibly ESO when it comes out (never played an MMO). The others I would play I could no problem on my "school computers" so I won't worry about listing those.

Thoughts?

[Andere]

Well, everything running AM3+ is a sturdy motherboard. You can go nitpicking about details, and you will always head against Intel fanatics who claim AMD is dump, whilst all of us AMD people know it works just fine.

The best to be found at the lowest cost possible is actually a theoretical issue. It's like buying Ferrari qualities at a standard family Ford version. Won't work.

From the list you provided, I'd say it's a rather balanced one. Even the Power Unit seems to be adequate. And, there shouldn't be any problems palying TES games, even Skyrim.

[Moeboid]

Just my thoughts on AMD: It depends on what you want to use it for. Some games only use one or two threads, and often this creates a bottleneck. Oblivion is a perfect example of this, and if you intend to install Morrowind Graphics Extender and push Morrowind's view distance right up, you'll run into the same problem there as well. This is where Intel beats AMD. AMD processors are cheap and they offer a lot of processing power, but it's spread out over a number of cores/threads. The processor you mention, the FX-4300, has 4 cores with 2 threads per core. The Intel i3 3240 is just a little less powerful than the FX-4300, but it only has 2 cores with 2 threads per core. What that means is that despite being less powerful, the i3 3240 will actually significantly out perform the FX-4300 in quite a few games. In games like Oblivion, you might get 75% higher frame rates. Of course, that Intel processor is also a fair bit more expensive than the AMD one. In applications that can make use of 8 threads, the AMD processor is easily a better choice; it offers slightly improved performance for a fair bit less money. But personally, I value performance per core over performance overall for the simple fact that too many games don't make full use of multi-core processors. Just something to think about.

[Speed of Darkness]

So for most games I would wast less cores/threads in a processor?

And as far as cost goes I know I will "get what I pay for" but having 4 *more* years of school coming hopefully this fall I don't want to over spend because when I am done I can buy a much better one and anything I have now will be outdated anyways.

[Archea47]

Games that don't make use of multiple cores will typically be low-enough demand of resources that you'll still have FPS greater than your monitor displays (like with oblivion). Dual core > quad core was more of a 2009 discussion, on outdated architectures and before many people had real-time antivirus and tens of browser tabs open or streaming video while gaming

[Speed of Darkness]

So I would just have to deal with some loading on "older" games if I went with the setup I listed?

[Archea47]

So I would just have to deal with some loading on "older" games if I went with the setup I listed?

I doubt it

[Moeboid]

Games that don't make use of multiple cores will typically be low-enough demand of resources that you'll still have FPS greater than your monitor displays (like with oblivion). Dual core > quad core was more of a 2009 discussion, on outdated architectures and before many people had real-time antivirus and tens of browser tabs open or streaming video while gaming

Because it (pretty much) only uses one thread, you still can't get constant 60 fps in Oblivion even with the best of today's hardware. Even an i7 3770 would still drop off a few frames in places like towns. OP didn't mention that he'd be playing Oblivion, but he mentioned Morrowind and Skyrim so one can only assume. Oblivion isn't the only CPU bottlenecked game around either. Starcraft II is another one. There'd be others.

Also, I just noticed that there isn't actually much of a price difference between the i3 3240 and the FX-4300. An i3 3220 is cheaper than the FX-4300 and only slightly slower than the i3 3240. Here's a comparison of the i3 3220 and the FX-4300: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/677?vs=700. Unfortunately it doesn't show many games, but you can see how far ahead it is in applications that only use a single thread.

[Speed of Darkness]

I haven't been able to find/ put together a kit (which I am hesitant to do based on my lack of knowledge) that was less than the kit they had already put together, so I will probably stay with AMD and if I don't like it I will go Intel in the future.

Thanks for all of the help from everyone!

[Andere]

I'm somewhat sick and tired about this AMD versus Intel debate. It's like arguing about Porsche versus Ferrari. There are some definite numbers to use, but mainly it's very much about how you feel and think - and, highly about one's values, and how one uses the apparatus.

If anyone can give me one definitely superb technical app in any field, please do so.

I consider AMD to be superior to Intel as related to efficiency versus price.