I know the i3's are better in everyday home/office use, but is the Phenom II X4 965 a better CPU for gaming e.g Battlefield 3? Because that's a game that uses all those 4 cores. I won't be running other programs while gaming.
While a dual core will still be fine for most of the titles out now, this is not expected to continue to be the case. We saw this when the Piledrivers were benchmarked by Logan - there is a trend toward more and more new titles taking advantage of greater numbers of cores.
If it were me, I would go with more cores as the budget allows (if that means going AMD, then go AMD, though if you see an i5 2500k or 3570k for a good price then jump on it). The budget is the important part here though, as it is always the GPU that is the biggest factor in gaming. Get yourself a middle shelf quad core or better, and use the remaining money on a good GPU.
QUADDDDDDDDDDD.
No but really heres what you want. A FX6300. Phenoms are starting to get a little dated.
I agree with Toast. FX-6300s seem to benchmark reasonably well for the price and are decent overclockers.
FX 6300 doesn't fit my budget, and is way overkill for what I'm going to be doing. Right now I have a crappy Core i5 2410M, which is a worse performer than a Pentium desktop processor. So the Phenom is a really good purchase.
How much are you hoping to spend? And where in the world? We can help you do some digging for a good deal. You can get good deals on most of the Phenom II lines - including the 980, so let's see what we can find you if you want to go that way!
Well, I live in the Netherlands. And over here everything is much more expensive than in the US. In the US you can get a FX6300 system for 500 bucks. With 500 bucks in Holland, you can buy a Phenom II system. (Fuck the European currency, and those Greek bastards). I'm willing to spend 420 EUROS, good sites to look for are Alternate.nl, Afuture.nl, and the Tweakers pricewatch. And from what I know, the Phenom II X6 line is not longer available in Holland, only the X4 955 and 965.
Intel has stronger per-core performance. AMD has more cores. Games are beginning to be optimized for more cores, making dual-core processors dated. Ideally, you would get a six-core Intel, but the cheapest one, the 3930k, is bigger than your entire budget. I would look into the FX6300 and FX4300. If you go AMD, which your budget us demanding, stick with socket AM3+, and hopefully a 990FX board.
I know that feel Masterdome - I'm in Australia and things are much more expensive and harder to get than in the States as well.
You are right looking at those sites - it seems the 965 is all that is around without jumping up to ~120 Euros.
Are you opposed to ordering from overseas? You may be able to get your hands on a higher clocked x4 or an x6 from the UK.
That being said, if you spend a little extra on an aftermarket cooler you should be able to wind a 965 out to close to 4Ghz.
Either which way, the 965 is a sound gaming CPU, I mean it's clocked higher and has two more cores than the Phenom II x2 555BE that I had in my old rig, and that rarely struggled in gaming situations.
[IMG]http://i837.photobucket.com/albums/zz294/Inschrijving/afuture.png[/IMG]
I was planning on placing this order at the end of the month. Looks quite solid right? And by the way, the X4 965 is only 85 euros, not 120.
I'll be adding a second 4GB stick of identical memory later. (4GB RAM costs 36 US dollars over here)(FUCK EUROPE, I WANT TO MOVE TO THE STATES)
I made this list on Afuture.nl, which is about the cheapest webstore for pc components
Yeah the build looks fine to me. It will do nicely in pretty much any gaming situation.
When I was discussing the 120 Euro mark I meant moving up to the FX CPUs; sorry I may not have been clear (it's late here). This being said, I don't think the Bulldozer/Piledriver quads are much better than the Phenom II generation ones anyway (there are those that will argue that the Phenom IIs were actually better), so the 965 seems like a decent deal.
That's about the same that we pay for RAM here in Australia. I just forked out $125 AUD (which is about $125 USD as well, dollars are similar) for 16Gb of pretty average RAM for my current build.
Here in the states, that much got me 16GB (2x8GB) of 2400mHz memory.
I think you might be able to get away with a 450W psu. might be saving some money.
450W really? The power in our house is quite dirty and every 15 minutes or so the light will dim 0.3 of a second for no reason. So the extra wattage may come in handy.
in that case, stick with the 550W
Get dual channel sticks and a phenom.
Yes, that was my plan. However, i'll buy a second 4GB stick later.