Hi,
I am currently looking for a new PC or laptop under the budget of 1,000 dollars. It should be good for game development and it should play any game above 60 fps. Let me know any good websites or parts I can build it myself if I have to.
Thank You
It is huge difference between performance and the price tag.
You need first specify, which you need. PC or laptop. If laptop, then why?
Sadly you picked the worst time to build a new computer. Between the recent boom in cryptocurrency, the recent shortage in computer chips, and the pandemic graphics cards are nearly impossible to obtain right now and when they are available they’re typically triple the MSRP.
Laptops and pre-built desktops are available with the cards in them but there have been markups for both of those beyond what they should be. If you want to “play any game above 60 fps” you’re simply not going to get that your budget.
Getting most games above 60 FPS can be reasonably done with a 60 series card but you might have to lower some of your settings. A 70 series card can definitely do it. Below are two pre-built machines from no-name brands as all of the other brands are either sold out or way more expensive.
https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali479/p/N82E16883360074 - 3060 pre-built - $1,300
https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali479/p/N82E16883360074 - 3070 pre-built - $1,700
… so apparently a prebuilt PC can cost less than its GPU bought separately? Those are fun times.
You didn’t specify resolution. My aging desktop’s GTX 980 (non-ti) from 2014 can run any game at 60 FPS no problem, but that’s with 1080P res.
You can find a GTX 980 graphics card used on ebay for around $160 - $200, and I think it is actually a good stop gap card if you’re building a new computer but can’t find a new graphics card. Performance is on par with a new GTX 1650 Super, at around a 1650 Super MSRP, but without the scalper pricing.
As far as laptops, last July I bought an MSI Bravo 15 for $1k. It has a Ryzen 4800h, and an RX 5500M. The CPU is bad ass, and the 5500M has similar performance to my desktop GTX 980. Basically the graphics is fine even though nothing special, and runs AAA games at 90+ FPS with appropriate quality settings (1080P again). Great laptop for the money, but if you need better graphics you’ll have to pay more than $1k today.
Which graphical setting do you typically run?
On that desktop, with a 1080P 60hz display, most games I have graphics settings all the way up. Newer AAA games though now use more than 4GB vram at higher settings, so for those I have to turn things down. So for example, PubG, Civ 6, CS:GO, EU4, all with max settings. COD Cold War low - medium settings.
On that laptop, it has a 120hz display, so I usually run pretty low settings because I like to keep the frame rate above 100.
As mentioned previously, right now is not a great time to build a PC. Tariff-related shenanigans are causing massive GPU pricing issues. Especially in the US.
“Play any game over 60 FPS” is a pie in the sky requirement for 1000 or less. I guess if you play on the lowest settings possible, then 60fps is achievable in all games on that kind of rig. But if you want good quality 60+ fps, that is not achievable on some of the most taxing games at that price point. And even if it could play all the top games at reasonable quality and 60+FPS right now, it will not be able to for very long; that price point will not be very future proof. I guess my point is, expect that some taxing games will play less than 60fps at some medium/medium-high settings on that kind of rig.
With the market the way it is now, you may want to seriously consider a used PC. Although a lot of goobers out there try to sell their used PC at near-new prices. So if you go with used, research what the value of the components are and judge if the used PC price makes sense based on the used part values. You could get yourself a much more powerful used, but fairly new, PC for the price range you are looking at.
This is why I noped out of upgrading my crappy low-mid ryzen 5 laptop this weekend, I looked at what bang I was getting for my buck and thought “screw this”.
Like laptops that have even a slightly good GPU are getting priced at crazy prices. I just want a damn 20/3070 in a laptop, I dont want to pay a literal arm and a leg to get it though
That’s because 1080p is heavily CPU dependent, and takes a proportionally high load off of the GPU compared to 4k. Having a powerful CPU at that resolution makes a powerful GPU unimportant in a large number of cases.
This reminds me though OP, if you are getting a sub $1000 computer, and want to play at 1080p resolution and get 60+ FPS, look for a machine with a good CPU that is less focused on number of cores, and more focused on single-core performance. Also, the CPU should have higher L3 caches for best results.
Most games at current year do not effectively use multiple cores, and may not use them at all. So a CPU with 12 cores and 2.8 ghz is not likely to be as useful for a gaming PC as a 6 core CPU with 3.4ghz and a larger cache. At 1080p, a solid middle of the road GPU is sufficient. But you will not be able to achieve good results playing on 4k with this device if you skimp on the GPU.
Some really interesting research came out of Hardware Unboxed today that is relevant here. Apparently the CPU overhead for Nvidia graphics drivers is significantly higher than Radeon drivers. For CPU bound games, especially using budget CPU’s or just older CPU’s with lower IPC, you’ll see surprisingly higher frame rates from Radeon GPU’s than Nvidia, and not just with the latest batch of graphics cards.
For example, with CPU bound gaming on a Ryzen 1600, an RX 5600XT can out perform an RTX 3090 with the same settings. For the RTX 3090 to beat the RX 5600XT you have to change the settings to move more work over to the GPU, to go from a CPU bound scenario to a GPU bound scenario - you do that and the Nvidia cards pull ahead closer to where you’d expect a current gen flagship to land against a last gen mid range card.
Something to consider with any budget PC build it seems.
edit: I originally wrote 6900 instead of 3090, corrected
I’m not surprised and if I had to guess it’s likely due to a combination of all the features they’ve added to GeForce Experience as well as how they optimize for individual games with each driver release.