Best quad cores on a budget.

BurningSkyline

BurningSkyline

New Member
I know that Athlon II X4's are nice, but What about gaming performance? I don't plan on playing crysis, but I do want nice benchmarks on new games.
And by budget, I really just mean Performance/Cost
 
The only really bad deal on the egg right now is the i7 960. Double the price of the i7 930 for a marginal advantage. One could also argue that the 6 core i7's are a bad deal in price/performance, but there really isn't anything else on the market that matches them in power, so you've really got no choice if you want one. The 6-core Phenom chips, however, are both fairly good deals now that they've knocked the prices down a bit. The comparably-priced i5 quads still beat them in most current games, but newer games with more multithreading capability will do better on the Phenom chips.

You should also avoid the C2 AMD chips, but for different reasons. The C3 ones are more stable when used out-of-spec, which includes using really fast RAM. (the only C2 quads on the egg right now are the 620 and 630, anyway...)
 
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Well i ordered a 630 and got a 635, but it was a C2 revision. perfectly stable at 3.6ghz, my RAM i had to manual set the proper speed/timings/voltage as always (1.65v/1600mhz/cas9)

Oh, and i do play crysis. Crysis is really gpu dependant but because it only uses 2 cores a higher clocked dualcore will beat a stock quadcore. Same with benchmarks really, they all like clockspeed rather than the number of cores you have.

Crysis 2 should be supporting up to 8 or 12 cores i hear. can't wait either way :)
 
The Athlon II X4s are pretty nice. They're very directed towards budget-users, but they should be able to keep up with a decent GPU during gaming.
 
2048Megabytes said:
If you are limited on cash I would take a look at the following processor and motherboard:

AMD Phenom II 955 Black Edition Deneb (3.2 gigahertz) Quad-Core C3 Stepping - $155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808

GIGABYTE GA-890XA-UD3 Motherboard Socket AM3 - $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=gigabyte_ga-890xa-ud3-_-13-128-438-_-Product

If you wanted to spend $44 more you could get the Phenom II 1055T Thuban Six-Core Processor.
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How do the Thubans stack up against the i7s? I don't plan to overclock though.
 
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BurningSkyline said:
How do the Thubans stack up against the i7s? I don't plan to overclock though.
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I think you are asking the wrong question. The Core i7 Processors may give you better performance, but they cost more. I think the Phenom II 955 Quad-Core or the Phenom II 1055T Thuban Six-Core can handle about any present video game well when combined with the right parts.

Get the right video card, combined with a Phenom II Quad or Six-Core Processor and other parts you need and you will be quite satisfied.
 
I asked in the video card part of the forums here and this looks like a great video card. I was reading reviews on it and some people are complaining about problems with a two monitor setup for this particular video card. If you are using a single monitor with your system this would be a good video card in my opinion.

GIGABYTE GV-R583UD-1GD Radeon HD 5830 1 gigabyte 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Video Card - $208
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3952373&SID=4gldpkgxoi
 
2048Megabytes said:
I asked in the video card part of the forums here and this looks like a great video card. I was reading reviews on it and some people are complaining about problems with a two monitor setup for this particular video card. If you are using a single monitor with your system this would be a good video card in my opinion.

GIGABYTE GV-R583UD-1GD Radeon HD 5830 1 gigabyte 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Video Card - $208
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3952373&SID=4gldpkgxoi
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For a single video card on an AMD setup, the GTX 460 1GB is the better option. The 5830 i would only suggest if someone wanted to go crossfire on an AMD setup, as single card, and especially in SLI(near 100% scaling with fermi), the 460 flies.
 
bomberboysk said:
For a single video card on an AMD setup, the GTX 460 1GB is the better option. The 5830 i would only suggest if someone wanted to go crossfire on an AMD setup, as single card, and especially in SLI(near 100% scaling with fermi), the 460 flies.
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That, and I found a 9600GT at a garage sale for $25, works fine. Might use it as a PhysX card. I would be willing to go either way. Out of curiosity, does CUDA help with gaming and video rendering? or things like CAD?
 
BurningSkyline said:
That, and I found a 9600GT at a garage sale for $25, works fine. Might use it as a PhysX card. I would be willing to go either way. Out of curiosity, does CUDA help with gaming and video rendering? or things like CAD?
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CUDA can help with certain video rendering programs, its a GPGPU algorithm. Many programs are going with OpenCL though, which is compatible with both AMD and nVidia GPU's.
 
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