Budget Gaming

[sayers6]

I have about $850 from graduation and I want a decent gaming desktop for once in my life. I have no idea what to look for, but I want something that can run BF3 or similar on at least medium settings and support for 2-3 screens. I would really prefer to not try to build one from parts, seeing that with my luck, I'll ruin it. The most I can do is add a new graphics card. Any help?

[ARTgames]

I want to get something clear. Do you want to be able to run BF3 on all three screens or just on one? Also do you have a system you can upgrade?

[sayers6]

I just need it to be able to run on 1 and I would enjoy being able to run three screens of Office/Chrome/basic applications. And no, the only desktop I have is very old.

[ARTgames]

Do you already own the peripherals? Or in other words can the budget go into the box?

[sayers6]

I have a screen I can use for now, I'm planning on buying new ones one by one, so all the money is for just the tower.

[ARTgames]

You could probably shop around and get a better deal for premade pcs then these two but it will give you a mark as what you will get for that price.
http://www.amazon.com/CyberpowerPC-GUA260-FX-6100-HD6450-64-Bit/dp/tech-data/B005TJKH5A/ref=de_a_smtd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b7u7gSnXkg

http://www.amazon.com/iBuyPower-Gamer-Power-A955i-Desktop/dp/B0051U0MKC/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1339525861&sr=1-6
http://youtu.be/C_N7U_4Ykj4

The youtube video that I placed under the link are the videos I got when I googled the graphics card name and bf3 so you could get a idea of what the performance would be on the system. GPU is going to be your main bottle neck so this should be a good scale for you.

[Meiun]

I haven't personally bought from this site (I tend to stick with laptops mostly), but a few people I know have and were satisfied:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

Allows some really good customization and fairly good deals without you having to actually build anything yourself. If your going for gaming, a good graphics card is gonna be the most important component. A lot of people tend to focus too much on the CPU and not enough on the GPU.

[Mr Pwnage]

I haven't personally bought from this site, but a few people I know have and were satisfied:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

Allows some really good customization and fairly good deals without you having to actually build anything yourself. If your going for gaming, a good graphics card is gonna be the most important component. A lot of people tend to focus too much on the CPU and not enough on the GPU.

That's where I got my badass desktop 5 years ago. Still yet to have any problems with it, and it runs everything great. They have good warranty plans and I find stuff cheaper on there than I do many other places. If i ever buy another desktop (b/c I just bought a brand new laptop for college) I would definitely recommend looking at them first.

[sayers6]

I have a question about graphics cards on a similar note, how important is an extra GB, when it's the same graphics card otherwise? Like how much of a performance bump would I see?

[Meiun]

I have a question about graphics cards on a similar note, how important is an extra GB, when it's the same graphics card otherwise? Like how much of a performance bump would I see?

It would really depend entirely on the game you were running. If what your running doesn't need the extra memory, it won't do a thing. I don't believe I know of many games that can currently benefit much from more than 1GB of video memory, but it likely won't be long before that changes. Either way, I know that if I personally had a choice between an extra GB of video RAM and a slightly better card with the same amount of memory, i'd go for the slightly better card. But others may disagree.

[sayers6]

Well I have a laptop I'm considering with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, but for just another GB it's another $100. When I could upgrade to an i7 processor rather than the i5, or upgrade the ram from 6GB to 8GB instead.

[Mr Pwnage]

Well I have a laptop I'm considering with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, but for just another GB it's another $100. When I could upgrade to an i7 processor rather than the i5, or upgrade the ram from 6GB to 8GB instead.

Well performance wise, I think you'd see the best improvement upgrading your processor.

[ARTgames]

I have a question about graphics cards on a similar note, how important is an extra GB, when it's the same graphics card otherwise? Like how much of a performance bump would I see?

I agree with what Meiun said but I will also add more video memory is good for running games off multi monitor setups. Thats if you use the other screens to expand the game. But not really only relevant on desktops pcs.

Well I have a laptop I'm considering with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, but for just another GB it's another $100. When I could upgrade to an i7 processor rather than the i5, or upgrade the ram from 6GB to 8GB instead.

If its the same GPU with 1 GB more of vram than go with the better CPU. If its a better GPU then that's a different story. 6GB of ram is fine.

I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M with a I3 setup for my laptop and when it comes to games my GPU is my main bottleneck.

[Meiun]

Well I have a laptop I'm considering with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M, but for just another GB it's another $100. When I could upgrade to an i7 processor rather than the i5, or upgrade the ram from 6GB to 8GB instead.

That one is sort of up to you. I have an i7 processor in my laptop, but honestly haven't really been able to justify it much over the i5 (at least not in terms of gaming). The main difference between i5 and i7 is that while both tend to be quad cores, the i7 does hyperthreading on each of its cores, making it act like 8 virtual cores. You will have a hard time finding many games that actually sees any benefit from this. Heck, there are some games that might even work better if it didn't do this. Basically, unless the game distributes it's workload onto different threads to a reasonable extent (which many games don't do very much, particularly the older ones), you will only be able to really use about half of one of your 4 cores on the program (1/8th of your theoretical processor capability).