Will this computer fit my needs?

[SmokeGnome]

Hi, I'm still not very good with computers, you can call me a geek in learning. I'm looking to get a new computer. While originally thinking about saving money and building my own, I am not ready for that yet. I might help if I say...

1) I need a computer that can eeasily handle standard 3d creation software such as blender.

2)Can handle the games I want, (Just civilization 5, because if it can handle that, it can handle everything else.

3) is in my price range, (less then 700 dollars. If need be, I'm willing to go further.)

I've been looking at best buy, and found both an expensive and cheap one. (my expensive could be your cheap)

The cheap one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pa...rive/2670319.p?id=1218343206257&skuId=2670319

The expensive one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pa...rive/2670355.p?id=1218343210789&skuId=2670355

If you know of a better place to buy computers, or if I should choose gateway over hp, please say so.

 

[warpus]

The expensive one you list doesn't come with a good enough video card, I don't think. It doesn't look suitable for gaming to me, except maybe "light" gaming.. something like WOW.. not sure about civ5

 

[SmokeGnome]

...And the cheap one does? Huh. Well, these are ones that I chose from a quick glance. I can go for a deeper search to find a better computer. It'd be nice if I could have/find the graphic card requirements.

 

[tokala]

From what little I know about 3d rendering you will need lotsa cores/threads for that, video card will be almost irrelevant.

For CiV (and most games) you will need fewer but faster Cores and a good video card.

For $700 it is pretty unlikely that you can get top performance in both departments.

Two suggestions that will likely give a very good price/performance ration for rendering while still be decent for gaming:

$600: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229256
$750: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229257

The second will have about 50% more performance for rendering and about 50% more performance for GPU-bound gaming.

 

[civ_king]

Go with an i5-2500k based system and over clock.

 

[GoodGame]

The expensive one you list doesn't come with a good enough video card, I don't think. It doesn't look suitable for gaming to me, except maybe "light" gaming.. something like WOW.. not sure about civ5

Yeah I'd be skeptical of the video card power if it says "integrated graphics". It's basically a card for watching animation and movies in High Def, but not focused on 3D. It's better than old "tv cards" and will probably run games even out this year (EDIT: if they are Direct X 10 and probably only on the lowest settings).

Also note that the Civ5 recommends a:

Operating System: Windows® Vista/7
Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 11

The cheaper one's video card doesn't even support Direct X 11. You can run Civ5 in v.9 mode, but I think you'll be disappointed in the cheaper system if your heart is set on Civ5 as your main fun reason for the computer.

For graphics processing, quad-core is the way to go. Note if you really want a workstation for animation, there's video cards for that, which are better suited than 3D gamer cards., at least in terms of support packages, supposedly. Check Newegg/Toms Hardware for more info.

The more expensive system's video card's specs:

Spoiler :

625-750 MHz engine clock
512MB-1GB DDR3/GDDR5 memory
533-800 MHz DDR3 (1.066-1.6 Gbps) or 800-900 MHz GDDR5 (3.2-3.6 Gbps) memory clock
8.5-12.8 GB/s (DDR3) or 25.6-28.8 GB/s (GDDR5) memory bandwidth
200-240 GFLOPS Single Precision compute power
TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture

160 Stream Processing Units
8 Texture Units
16 Z/Stencil ROP Units
4 Color ROP Units

GDDR5/DDR3 memory interface
PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
DirectX® 11 support

Shader Model 5.0
DirectCompute 11
Programmable hardware tessellation unit
Accelerated multi-threading
HDR texture compression
Order-independent transparency
OpenGL 4.1 support
Image quality enhancement technology
Up to 12x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive anti-aliasing
Morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA)
16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
128-bit floating point HDR rendering

AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology1

Native support for up to 3 simultaneous displays
Up to 4 displays supported with DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport
Independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
Display grouping
Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display

AMD App Acceleration2

OpenCL 1.1
DirectCompute 11
Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling2,5
UVD 3 dedicated video playback accelerator
MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
VC-1
MPEG-2 (SD & HD)
Multi-View Codec (MVC)
MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid)
Adobe Flash
Enhanced video quality features
Advanced post-processing and scaling
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Dual-stream 1080p playback support
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support

AMD HD3D technology4

Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support
Blu-ray 3D support
Stereoscopic 3D gaming
3rd party Stereoscopic 3D middleware software support

Cutting-edge integrated display support

DisplayPort 1.2
Max resolution: 2560x1600 per display
Multi-Stream Transport
21.6 Gbps bandwidth
High bit-rate audio
HDMI 1.4a with Stereoscopic 3D Frame Packing Format, Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
Max resolution: 1920x1200
Dual-link DVI with HDCP
Max resolution: 2560x1600
VGA
Max resolution: 2048x1536

Integrated HD audio controller

Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI or DisplayPort with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

If the only difference is a video card, then remember that's a pretty easy install. You might try to opt-out of a piece of the package for a refund/gift card, and then buy a video card more suited to you and have it installed, if warranty allows it.

 

[civ_king]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.679762
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500206
full computer, overclocking quad core, GTX 560

$732

 

[GoodGame]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.679762
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500206
full computer, overclocking quad core, GTX 560

$732

That's a DIY bundle. The OP said no DIY.

 

[Maniacal]

Its easier to put together a computer than a 1000+ piece puzzle (depending on the puzzle). Though at the very least you may need to buy the graphics card separately, but they are basically plug in and play and anyone with even half a brain can do it.

 

[GoodGame]

Its easier to put together a computer than a 1000+ piece puzzle (depending on the puzzle). Though at the very least you may need to buy the graphics card separately, but they are basically plug in and play and anyone with even half a brain can do it.

True, but for some people that argument always fails.