Well the time has come: time for a new rig. Starting mostly from scratch, any advice is greatly appreciated and will be ignored.
Some kind of
i7 processor or AMD equiv., I'd say. I ain't really been super-hip on newer processors (as my i7 950 is holding up now, but you can do much better than that now). Some games flat-out require a i7 (i.e. Wolfenstein: TNO); or actually recommend it (i.e. Wolf: TOB). Me, I've always preferred Intel over AMD, in most instances.
Decent number of watts on PSU. Just in case you SLI/Crossfire later or buy a very beefy video card, pay attention to what you buy - you might want more. I have 800W myself (which is overkill here), but just in case I catch a sick deal and want to take a shot at SLI'ing. My 4GB 960 card only wants 400W for a minimum. You want to be above the min. by a fair deal. Some of the newer AMD cards are quite power-hungry + watt-hungry (i.e. see
8GB R9 380x) - so, keep that in mind if you are headed down the AMD route.
RAM - I have 16GB DDR3 memory. It's fine, for now. But you'll probably want more than that, since you're starting fresh w/ new build.
Aim for a vid-card with 3GB to 4 GB of VRAM or more!
This raw power of having bigger amounts of VRAM is just going to be needed. It's a growing trend, like it or not.
It doesn't help that PC ports - especially from AAA companies - can wind-up being undercooked, lazy, basic, not much optimizing put into it, and things of that sort...which have led to the high-end VRAM requirements of games like AC: Unity, The Evil Within & Batman AK at even 1080p. We'll get into that a bit, momentarily.
Most of the above stuff are multi-platformed games for PC + consoles. This is a problem for PC versions on multi-platformed games. PS4 is out-selling the X1, so you can expect more companies leaning towards building around PS4 hardware (since that's the new-gen console leader). Also, most games on consoles + PC have dropped even making PS3 + X360 versions - so, the increase spike of PC requirements is inevitable b/c they are not using those old systems as the lowest common denominator anymore!
So, here's more problems: the shared 8GB DDR5 RAM on the PS4 seems to be a problem dev's are complaining about that are doing multi-platforming of their games -
see here, from Avalanche on PS4 vs. PC and why PC games need more VRAM (this is an old article, but you might get the detailed reasoning better there if you want the detailed explanation). B/c the PS4 RAM's shared, the dev's can just often just dump stuff wherever w/out too much of a care (especially since it's a fixed-box + can run on the metal w/out much getting in the way). PC needs that crap allocated somewhere + quickly; and then there's the DirectX API that is not currently at a low-level layer (i.e. DX11 and below), so this can get in the way a bit of performance. Basically, more VRAM on the PC side for your GPU is just necessary to handle this mess.
I constantly see my 4GB GeForce 960 card eating up anywhere from 2-4 GB VRAM on any modern PC titles, depending on the settings I'm running it at. At 1080p on my PC - Watch Dogs, Batman AK, Witcher 3, Far Cry 4, AC Unity, The Evil Within - these are all eating up ridiculous amounts of VRAM.
Where you go - your call. NVidia 960 (4GB option only there), 970, 980, Titan; or AMD's 280x, 380x, 390 - take your pick. Pick something for you at 3-4 GB VRAM or more. Depends on what you're used to and what you prefer, for whether AMD or Nvidia. Some prefer AMD for the bang-for-buck performance; some often prefer NVidia for stability + drivers.
it, no one will look at it but you. If you think a super cool diamond level PSU is important, then get one, if not, just get a cheap, reliable one that'll run your system.
k
