Is this PC good for games like Crysis 3 BF3 and some call of duty games maybe even for Arma2 or 3

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/hewlett-packard-hp-envy-phoenix-800-desktop-computer-intel-core-i7-4770k-2tb-hdd-12gb-ram-windows-8-800-089ca/10257519.aspx?path=23f3e7d5601fb9140d9d7724d010d316en02

Edit: i am planning on upgrading it later on once i get a bit more money

Second Edit: also how many frames would i get on minecraft (FTB)(Feed THe Beast)

GTX 645 is a pretty limited card and wont run it very well.

Have you considered building your own ? For that price you could build a much better system.

@ikilledthedj: I would rather buy for now and like i said in my edit "i am planning on upgrading it later on once i get a bit more money"

I would definitely not spend $1400 on a machine like that. You could get a lot more for that price if you build it yourself!

http://www.logicalincrements.com/ is a great place to start and work out what kind of pc you should be getting for whatever your budget is

@trexabull: Totally understandable that you want to upgrade later but for the price you are paying a GTX645 is not built for gaming and you will fast be disappointed. Aim for at lest a GTX660 at the minimum. just my 2c

@caska: the Extremist on that one website, would it be a hard build. also @ikilledthedj

Short answer: lol

Long answer: You need at least a 660 in there if you want to play anything at a reasonable setting, either get the 660 and upgrade again in less than 1.5 years or get a high end card and have that last for 2-3 years....OR just build it yourself from scratch like @caska: said and have the better card in there and probably pay less than you would on this thing.

Oh and you're going to have all of the frames in Minecraft.

That's not a graphics card you want for gaming at all.

@dfl017: Hey is the Extremist on http://www.logicalincrements.com/ a hard build lol i am kind of scared to try a build cuz i fried my last motherboard

Im not sure what site your speaking of but any computer will be no harder to build than another.

@dfl017: What tier would you recommend from http://www.logicalincrements.com/ I also upload a lot of videos so i need a computer that can process videos quickly and i want to get into more high res games

Check out Cyberpowerpc.com, can spend that amount of money on there and get a top of the line PC custom built for you. Free delivery in the USA I think, its pretty nice. When I built my PC off there I saved like $800 on stuff because it was a back to school sale at the time, not sure what they've got going on right now.

I'm sure there's lots of other good sites that are similar or better if you look around, but definitely don't go buying a PC from a generic bigbox retailer like that. You get ripped off hard.

@trexabull like people have said, the graphics card in that thing is not meant for gaming.

The cpu in that thing is state of the art however.
The amount of ram is funny, 12 GB is asymmetric. it should be 8 or 16, depending on how they set up the sticks, this could hamper performance.

In an ideal scenario, disregarding the premium that HP are charging for this, you could dump a killer graphics card into this machine and have a gaming pc, at an unneccesarily high price, of course.

But, if we are to be realistic, the power supply is probably not dimensioned for anything more power hungry than the little dwarf gtx 645 that comes with the computer from the store.
Meaning you will be shelling out about $100 for a new powersupply ontop of the 2-300 bucks you will be spending on a graphics card companion that the cpu actually deserves.

Then when you have bought it, you might find out that the case is too small for your new big graphics card, which means you might have to gut it all, buy a proper case for about $100 and refit every single component into it, basically building a computer from scratch, whilst having payed a premium for the HP brand.

Question would be how you managed to do that.

Cause building a computer is easy. just think.. and read the manual when in doubt.

1. Motherboard
2. RAM
3. CPU
4. GPU
5. PSU
6. storage (SSD or HDD)
7. case

These are the components of which a regular computer consists of, not that many.
You just click those together like expensive lego. the extremist has some added complexity, it has an aftermarket cooler, multiple storage devices and two grapics cards instead of one.
Which pretty much means some extra cables to connect.

But for a first ever build, i would suggest skipping the aftermarket cooler and multiple graphics cards, for the initial build.
Build a computer with just stock cooler, and one graphics card first.

It's not top of the line, and definitely over priced, but it would run games fine. Not great, just fine.

Consider yourself warned, though. That is over priced.

If you're not sure how to build a computer yourself you can also look into places that give you more fine detail on what hardware you pick. Although that would still run you more than if you build it your self. Not everyone can, though, which is why there are so many places to buy a PC these days. Some you can play with it enough to make it cheap to get a base then get a better graphics card (for example) without losing to much money on the build.

I guess what I'm saying is; just shop smart.

Get someone to help you if you want to be safe. It is a lot of money to spend and most computer minded people will help you for fun, I would.

Thank you@dfl017, I will most likely build the outstanding one with a price of around 1300

@trexabull: The i7 processor with a really good graphics card works wonders with video encoding. Most of it is actually done in the GPU so the RAM doesn't highly factor into it either really (only a little bit).

I actually have an older video card, a Geforce GTX 560 ti. It works fine recording, encoding, or ripping video fairly quickly and easily. You can get better now, though. Just giving an example. It would also be determined by what software you use as some are better than others.

If you don't want to build your own, get this one it's very good, if not a bit overpriced.

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/cyberpowerpc-cyberpowerpc-slrc200-intel-core-i5-4670k-2tb-hdd-16gb-ram-windows-8-english-srlc200/10260852.aspx?path=83fdbc4af33c3f8edc9387eb2f4b454fen02

edit: the one I linked to you 3 months ago is even better and $300 cheaper, don't worry about Cyberpower, they may be lower tier in terms of quality gamer PCs, they are heads and tails above HP/other general use PCs, the reason people talk shit about gaming PC builders is because it's always significantly cheaper to build your own if you are so inclined.

I wouldn't buy anything by HP, regardless.

With a new generation of consoles upon us (like it or not they dictate the standard for what the PC can expect), I would hold off sinking money into a new machine until we get a better idea of what this next wave of games is going to require. At least that's what I am doing. If you cannot, or don't want to, I would use Battlefield 4 as a measuring stick. Frostbite 3 is what most, if not all, EA games will use going forward. As far as engines go I don't think they'll get much more demanding in the coming years. Craptek aside.

Personally I currently have an i7 930 running at 2.8ghz, which is stock. 12GB DDR3 memory and a Radeon 6950. It obliterates Battlefield 3 on ultra and holds up pretty well when I tried the Battlefield 4 beta back in September. In other words, you could probably be served just fine with an i5 quad core and put the CPU/motherboard savings towards a better graphics card. I have never seen any game seriously push my 930, so I'm not sure an i7 would make much of difference. Other people might want to correct me on that. I also wouldn't waste my money on a solid state drive (SSD). The performance difference isn't worth the increased cost. Other people might want to correct me, but I would take those savings and roll them into a better graphics card.

For some ideas check out NCIX.

Building a pc is actually pretty simple to do now no matter what you buy and you'd be hard pressed to actually break any parts if you follow the directions. If you don't want to take the chance though you should put some effort into finding a store around you that sells individual computer parts and for an extra hundred or so they might be able to put it all together for you (This might actually work in your favour too since most people that build computers at stores like that know what they're doing and use cable ties!).

If you are just looking to play games make sure you invest in a good case and power supply! Most people think they can just get away with the bare minimum but it never ends well.... A good case and power supply now also means you won't have to even think about upgrading them later since they'll still be going just fine.

@bawlzinmotion Have you used an SSD yet? I'd have to say it was well worth the investment for me and I'd recommend it to anyone building a new pc. Loading anything is essentially instant and you especially notice it when booting up your pc. I've gotten so used to it now that if I use someone else's pc then I find myself getting annoyed straight away because the small things you take for granted now just take a lot longer. Things like booting from shutdown should only take a few seconds, booting a game should happen straight away, loading between levels should barely give you enough time to read whatever tooltips are on display. Things like that for me make an ssd worth every cent :)

I get that you are saying 660 hopefully because they don't sell many of the old generations anymore in most places (or you mean just '660 level'), but that still sounds dumb.

My 470 played Witcher 2, BioShock Infinite, BF3 and more on ultra at 1080P at 50-60 FPS, or well, it did before it died on me. Saying at least a 660 to play anything at a reasonable level just sounds like pure hyperbole, as even a 660 is going to play nearly everything at ultra way over 30 FPS. (I don't include MSAA because it's an FPS killer and looks only slightly better than free FXAA)

tl;dr, the 470 twin frozr was is a fucking amazing card. Best bang for buck purchase ever.

@sooty: A 470 would still be in the same range as a 660, that's not surprising. 660's are cheap now and unless the OP is going to find a 70 or 80 level card of any previous gen card then a 660 is his best option considering that any other card in the 600 line below a 660 simply won't be good enough.

My suggestion is to have a weaker card now for a couple years (a 660 could reasonably last that long) and then a high end card later that should be able to stay in that PC for the rest of the generation and play those games at high settings.

Don't try to start pointless arguments for the sake of arguing.

I just bought a 660 and at most I can play battlefield 4 on high and maybe Ultra if I do a little bit of overclocking. Most other games I've been able to run on Ultra with ease. Only game I've run issues with so far have been Call of Duty Ghosts and I read some where that's its not really optimized on PC. 660 will get you some pretty decent gaming but if you want to play stuff like maybe Watchdogs going forward you might look towards buying one of the higher end gfx cards on the market like a 770. Main reason I bought the 660 was that it was 200 bucks, came with 2 games free (splinter cell blacklist and assassins creed IV) so just cut an additional 100 off the price, it was an upgrade over my previous gfx card, and probably during the spring I'll buy one of the new consoles when some of the newer games come out. Now is a good time then ever to upgrade a gfx considering black friday is around the corner and at the moment the cards come with free PC games.

I wasn't, I was just saying that the way you worded it could have been taken as saying you need a 660 or higher, so therefore a 560 or 460 would be incapable. I know it's annoying because of the way Nvidia brand their cards, but a lot of people do forget that 480s and stuff are still relevant and someone that doesn't know a lot could have certainly taken it that way.

@sooty: True

If you are still looking to have one prebuilt, me and some other friends have ordered laptops from xoticPC, and though the brand of my laptop has caused some disappointment for me (never again, sager, never again) these people have been pretty good as far as helping me out.

They also sell desktops, and it looks like for 1400 you could get a system with a hell of a lot better specs than that one. Unlocked core i5, and an R9 280x probably being about as high as you can go without crossing the 1400 dollar mark. It doesn't come with windows, so you would have to either add that on to the purchase or buy it separately, but everything else is name brand components (corsair PSU, Asus motherboard, etc) which is probably more than you can say for most other prebuilt systems.

Don't buy this. This is pretty overpriced. My PC (custom built) is less than $850 and I have a 660. Although my CPU is slower, 3.3Ghz, I could upgrade it past what's in the PC you linked for far less money.