Performance

With everything together, I was curious how things would perform. I mean I’ve tested the video card and the CPU independently but both are tested in the best possible situation using a 1080Ti on the CPU and with a high-end CPU on the video card. How do things work when paired up though?

Honestly, the scores weren’t as far off as I expected them to be. In 3DMark the scores were within a few hundred from the original scores with the faster CPU and in PCMark 10, for example, the overall score was 500 off from the 1080Ti paired with the 1200.

Now if you are looking at this combination for VR performance you are going to need to step up to the GTX 1060 or an RX 580 if you can find one. The GTX 1050 Ti didn’t do too bad with an average FPS in the orange room benchmark but the target FPS is 109. It is within the Oculus Rift minimum spec though.

Then for CPU specific benchmarks, I tested in Passmark for the overall and individual scores to allow you to compare to your current rig. Download it and see what you get, you can actually do the same with all of the tests I’ve done so far. Then I also tested using the ever popular Cinebench R15 in all three tests but I was mainly focusing on the CPU and CPU Single Core tests. I was curious if the scores would be any lower with the single channel of memory with our one stick of memory but they were on point with my R3 1200 review tests.

So I did all of the other tests just for comparisons, my main concern was with actual in game performance. So I tossed a few of my favorite benchmarks on this build to test and then I also installed a few of the top played games to see what you can expect. I did all of my testing at 1080p I don’t think anyone building a rig like this at anything higher than this normally, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would still be at 720p as well.

Anyhow in the demanding games like Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Ghost Recon Wildlands, I had to keep turning down the settings to try to find better playable settings. In Wildlands it was decently smooth at the high setting but it wasn’t until the low setting that I reached up over 60 FPS. In other words, the really demanding games are going to require a little tweaking to get to that sweet spot but they are all playable at some of their highest or near highest settings. The “esports” games like League of Legends and CS:GO were a lot more forgiving allowing up to mid to high 140’s at their highest settings so if that is your cup of tea a budget build like this is going to do everything you need. I also slipped in PUBG because of its popularity as well and as you can see, it is playable but you need to turn things down if you plan on being in the cities or if you want over 60 FPS.

Overall I was actually really happy with this build. The performance was solid though I do wish GPU prices would calm down as a GTX 1060 would have been the better pick here. Coming in at under $600 with a good looking case with tempered glass and room to expand in the future is awesome. Running AM4 means you can sell the R3 1200 later and jump up to any of the Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 CPUs later, full support for a full sized GPU, and room to expand both storage and memory if your budget and needs change. 

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.