Advice for Basic Gaming and Development Setup

[edwbal]

I'm looking for advice on specs for a setup that can handle gaming and development. I've got a budget of around £1500, including a monitor.

Games I play include Baldur's Gate 3, DayZ, Minecraft, Total War Warhammer, Bannerlord.
Development wise I'm mostly using Godot for game Dev and native android (android studio).

I was thinking about getting a MacBook for dev, (I already have a work one, but need my own hardware for personal projects if I monetize), but if I'm going to spend £1500 I'd rather get something I can game on too!

Thanks in advance.

 

[TonyCarter]

What monitor (make & model, or resolution and refresh rate)?

£1500-£1600 will currently just about get you an 1080p PC (components are expensive at the moment).

If you're looking to drive a 1440p/4k monitor for gaming then you're looking at considerably more.

 

[edwbal]

Currently not got any ideas on a monitor so I'm open to suggestions, I'm happy with 1080p I think, mostly play games on my Xbox series s so it's what I'm used to anyway.

Out of curiosity, what would a PC capable of running 1440p cost at the moment?

 

[TonyCarter]

Out of curiosity, what would a PC capable of running 1440p cost at the moment?

Minumum of:

• £1500+ 1080p
• £2000+ 1440p
• £2500+ 4k

 

[Diem]

Looking through a few pages of threads, the consensus GPU recommendations appear to be 7600XT for 1080p, and 7800XT / 7900GRE for 1440p (I skipped all the 4k builds since outside my price range ).

What are the downsides / impacts of having a lower card and trying for a higher resolution (e.g. 7600XT for 1440p or 7800XT for 4k)? Is it causing the cards to work harder, stressing the components and providing more heat? Or is it noticeable that something is awry when gaming (stuttering or something else)?

Tom's Hardware charts suggest those cards would give 60fps at "Ultra" levels, but I'm not clear what that means in practice and would appreciate the education.

 

[TonyCarter]

Don't forget that for a lot of modern AAA games, 60FPS may not be enough...and in games like Black Myth Wukong, 60FPS at 1080p ultra would be impossible...below is the ultra/cinematic setting with 67% scaling (so really 720p).

The 8 games (vs the geomean charts which say 19 games,. but doesn't lost them) that Tom's Hardware say in their intro that they ran their GPU tests at, may not be the most modern or demanding...

The eight games we're using for our standard GPU benchmarks hierarchy are Borderlands 3 (DX12), Far Cry 6 (DX12), Flight Simulator (DX11 Nvidia, DX12 AMD/Intel), Forza Horizon 5 (DX12), Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12), Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulkan), Total War Warhammer 3 (DX11), and Watch Dogs Legion (DX12). The fps score is the geometric mean (equal weighting) of the eight games.

 

[Martinr36]

a higher resolution (e.g. 7600XT for 1440p or 7800XT for 4k)? Is it causing the cards to work harder, stressing the components and providing more heat? Or is it noticeable that something is awry when gaming (stuttering or something else)?

Stick an original fiat 500 engine (500cc,2 cylinder air cooled) into a modern Fiat 500 and you'll have your answer 😂😂😂

 

[Diem]

Stick an original fiat 500 engine (500cc,2 cylinder air cooled) into a modern Fiat 500 and you'll have your answer 😂😂😂

Haha thanks - so I'd be able to get around town as long as I lived somewhere flat, but would need a tailwind to get up to a decent speed on a dual carriageway?

@TonyCarter interesting, thanks. What's the line you'd draw for acceptable framerate - 60? (in which case even the 7900GRE falls short)

 

[TonyCarter]

@TonyCarter interesting, thanks. What's the line you'd draw for acceptable framerate - 60? (in which case even the 7900GRE falls short)

Well, only in the specific case of Black Myth Wukong, where a really fast framerate is not really needed, but 60FPS average (without any frame gen tech) would be my minimum requirement.

But if you're playing Fortnite or competitive COD then you may want 120FPS min?

Depends on the gaming requirements really...and the only way to see what you'll get is to find a benchmark for the specific CPU/GPU/game you want to check out.

 

[Martinr36]

Haha thanks - so I'd be able to get around town as long as I lived somewhere flat, but would need a tailwind to get up to a decent speed on a dual carriageway?

@TonyCarter interesting, thanks. What's the line you'd draw for acceptable framerate - 60? (in which case even the 7900GRE falls short)

I think the duel carriageway would need to be going downhill

 

[Diem]

Well, only in the specific case of Black Myth Wukong, where a really fast framerate is not really needed, but 60FPS average (without any frame gen tech) would be my minimum requirement.

But if you're playing Fortnite or competitive COD then you may want 120FPS min?

Depends on the gaming requirements really...and the only way to see what you'll get is to find a benchmark for the specific CPU/GPU/game you want to check out.

Thanks. Just trying to work out how one interprets these charts - the bare numbers aren’t helpful without the context of what’s good / bad / average

 

[TonyCarter]

As I said, it totally depends on the game (and monitor to an extent). MSFS 2020/2024 looks fine at 30FPS...but Forza looks 'jerky' below 60FPS (although even a 7600XT will get you more than that at 1080p).

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks. Just trying to work out how one interprets these charts - the bare numbers aren’t helpful without the context of what’s good / bad / average

It is challenging as every game engine, every asset library, different genres, they all challenge the system differently.

So RPGs that have a lot of real time simulations like civilisation games or the SIMs or something like that, they’ll tend to be more CPU loaded, whereas others tend to rely more on GPU

then you have to factor in resolution, as you scale up from 1080p, the gaming load shift more from the cpu to GPU, that’s why any benchmarks tend to be done at 1080p, as the cpu is heavily in use and you can see big swings between different cpus, whereas at 4k, theyll mostly perform roughly the same

Theres so many factors to each individual game.

I’d recommend watching some GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed game reviews as they always give visual examples of areas where specific games struggle so you start to understand why.

 

[Diem]

Thanks for the pointers all, much appreciated