Phenom II 965 seems faster in some games than I7 920

Have you read any of my recent posts?

As I said the difference is less then $100. Compare the numbers, not to mention not all 555 can be unlocked. Go read some newegg reviews. So take the gamble and hope your dual core unlocks to the full quad core.

OR

Get something that really is a quad core and sold as a quad core :) Remember they are binned 965 so that does not guarantee it will be fully functioning or even unlockable.

Like I said earlier, people have done that with video cards and pipes. Not everyone worked, and a few that did work. You ran into additional problems with artifacting.

I guess the debates comes down to comparing a muscle car to a ricer. Yes the ricer can try to out perform the muscle. But risk damaging it more by pushing it harder when the muscle is already there at stock =)

So back to the money and my so called math problem. Last time I checked $180 + $85 vs $199 + $160 (numbers provided above) is less than $100. Maybe you need to go back to school? Your math is off a bit sir.

Personally I stick with the muscle car and never ever had a problem. Cannot say that for ricers I have owned and will never own again. Amen.

You keep on talking about yourself. I get that you don't want it. That's fine, I'm not telling you to buy one. Some people make the trade and it works out well for them. A few get burned. Some of us will take the risk, and it's reasonable especially on a budget.

My math is clear: I'm adding up the 555 + mobo. Good 785G DDR3 mobos are down to $80 on Newegg so I updated the price. Criticize my hardware recommendations if you want but the math is fine. $180 vs $360.

1. Looking at Newegg, the 965 is back up to $190 shipped, so I'd say the X4 955 Black is currently a better deal since it'll OC just as high or nearly so. That puts the price difference above your magical $100 line without sacrificing any significant performance.

2. It's true that ACC doesn't always work, although I'd argue that by this stage yields are probably excellent and they're mostly just filling demand with good chips. They just killed off ACC in the 890GX chipset so I guess they're tired of selling 'em off so cheap. Good thing the 890GX has very little to recommend it for most people: slightly better onboard graphics and SATA3 = meh.

Still, if it doesn't work you've still got quite a capable processor and you can either keep using it since most games don't give a hoot about quad core anyway, or you can Craigslist it for $10 less than you paid and someone will snap it right up. No biggie either way.

Maybe it'll help to put this in absolute terms: say your CPU+mobo budget is $200ish. What do you get that provides better value than a 555+785G? Don't say 'save up another $160' because a lot of people just don't care enough to blow that much on a few extra fps.

You can barely squeak by with an i3 530 + H55 and certainly get better dual-thread performance than a 555, but you lose the budget multicore.

And yes, it's a ricer. Know why people like ricers? Because you can get them for $10k instead of $60k. Note that I'm pulling numbers out of my *** here - I drive a factory Yaris hatchback with a stick shift and it's everything I want in a car. Considering the current situation though, I'd say a more apt analogy would be the 555 = a Civic with V6. It's still factory parts operating within easily viable specs. A 920 = commuting across town on a Mustang. Those crazy 0-60 times are really impressive when the speed limit is 40mph and there's a stoplight every few blocks. Crappy gas mileage and you'll be making fat payments long after I've paid off the car. You might save 5 minutes getting to work by gunning it and beating a light here and there, but so what?

Alright, car analogies don't add anything here. Let's can that idea.

I spend my spare change on kayak trips and martial arts and fixing my parents' house and paying off student loans. That $180 difference between a 555 and a 920 is about what a kayak trip costs, or about 3.5 private lessons, both of which I'd enjoy far more than an overkill processor.

There. You have a case for why I don't want a 920. Let's agree that it cancels out your case for why you do want one. Now can we get back to the original argument? It makes sense FOR SOME PEOPLE. You aren't one of them. End of story.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17906/1/

Hahaha UCC chip means the 890GX has an automatic unlocker too, even on entry-level boards.

Oh yeah, and there's always the Athlon II X3 435 for $75 if you don't plan on overclocking as far. At this rate my grandma's getting a quad core :p

Abandon hope all ye who enter!

Seriously, thanks for trying, Nukefault and Learux.

Nukefault wrote: "My platform will perform just about as well as yours for half the price. The saved money buys a much better graphics card."

My exact sentiments. My original purpose behind starting this thread was to draw attention to the relative unimportance of the CPU at this point compared to the much greater importance of the GPU to gaming performance, giving those of us gaming tweakers on a budget the opportunity to take the money saved on an unlocked AMD cpu to put that extra money into the GPU. The downside? It might take 7mins for DVD shrink to compress a movie I`m burning instead of 6mins. Big deal, since I can run other programs at the same time and keep working anyhow, or go make some tea and come back. For us, it`s maximizing frames per second within a tight budget - everything else is secondary.

Nater and Collosus either cannot see this, or just stubbornly refuse to admit they are wrong. No matter. Those of us who went the AMD route see the proof of the wisdom of our choice everytime we use our machines and run our favourite games. To me that`s what really counts.

Admin, might as well close this thread.

In the end, it all comes down to, "what's the minimum amount of money you can spend on your machine to do the things you want to do on it?" for most of us. My apps aren't very demanding: Starcraft, Dawn of War 1, D&D Character Builder (yup, I'm a DM... laugh it up), and light work in Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Therefore I get along very happily with a $520 laptop.

I know you'll all feel humiliated and emasculated when you hear that I game on an integrated Radeon 4200 :D

I bet if someone took 2 cases and 2 24" monitors that were exactly the same and made one with a i7 @ 3.6 and one with a x4 @ 3.6 with the exact same video card and had everyone single one of us play the same games without knowing which box had what, none of us would be able to tell the difference between the two. at all. same with desktop applications.

I bet if you did the same exact thing and used it for medium to heavy multimedia/workstation 'stuff' that you would be able to tell a big difference.

Am I missing something here?

If I did more than just some encoding using freaking nero9 than a i7 would most definetly be in my sig. but i dont and this chip costed me $110 and i bet someone with a i7 and a gtx275 gets around the same fps numbers I do. I also bet the same guy can encode a h.264 1.5gig rip to mpeg2 using nero9 faster than 21 minutes lol.

I see valid points on both sides.

I'm real glad to have AMD around for some competition.

Haven't used an AMD CPU since they slipped on a banana peel after a beautiful run with those early Athlons, but if they ever really get back in the game I would jump back on their wagon.

I sure do like those AMD GPUs now though.

It's been established that CPUs really don't mean anything in gaming anymore. If you've got enough CPU power to not choke your GPU, you have enough.

As someone who does heavy duty Photoshop work and rips hundreds of DVDs (soon to do BD too), I'd be crazy not to buy the better performing intel processors.

The only processors from AMD that really interest me are the 6-core desktop chip and the 12-core Opteron. I could build a nasty video ripping machine with the 12-cores, but I'd probably have to run ESXi with multiple copies of Windows to utilize 12-24 cores.

I believe SupCom 1/2 and a few flight sims can still make a good quad worthwhile. Don't quote me on that though :p

And yes, for most heavy workloads Intel is the way to go. I only defended AMD for the low-end value proposition and budget gaming. If I was doing anything intensive I'd have already upgraded to an i3 laptop. Lucky for me, the chances of me ever having to deal with a workload that demands a desktop are near zero.

I thought Win7 could use some insane number of cores, 256 if I remember right? Also, whatever happened to AMD's dual-CPU boards? I'd think with them pushing core count so heavily they'd be more than happy to let you double the core count for triple the price. ;)

SupCom 1 pretty much requires a quad core. I honestly don't see why anyone would bother with a dual core for a gaming machine these days. Unless, of course, they have a specific game that they want to play and it works fine with one.

It can use a quad but it hardly requires one. It runs fine at medium-high settings on a friend's E6300/4GB/HD4850 512MB at 1280x1024, especially with a unit cap at <500 (if I remember right... it's the medium setting... haven't run it in a long time).

Apart from that, there are very few games that couldn't care less if you have a quad. And that tends to be all the popular ones. No Blizzard title is quad-aware including SC2 and even iD hasn't said anything about quad support for Rage as far as I know.

Like I said, the only games that care are SC1, a few flight sims, and probably something I'm forgetting... but quad is still a niche thing for gaming and it will be for a long time.

Dice's latest title BF, bad company, needs a quad core to run smooth. Anyone building a gaming machine should look into at least a triple core CPU.

Times are changing quick, I agree with nater.

I've recently ran into this question too as I'm building myself my 1st gaming rig. At first I was told just to do an i5. But nowhere else anymore (2 months later) do I even here about the i5's. Is it time to just settle on an i7? Financially I'm fine with that but if I don't have to then heck why do it? And then I went and looked at the AMD's and see that they are just fine too. So wtfudge batman what should I do? My gut says the i7, but my brain says AMD so I can spend my money on other things.
edit: Okay nevermind. Found this Intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz LGA 1366 Quad-Core Desktop Processor Model BX80601930 $230.

If you're building a whole new system and you're going to spend a grand or more, I really don't see why you'd go AMD. I could maybe see AMD if you were STRICTLY gaming. A scenario where you have another machine for doing any sort of CPU intensive work. If you don't, then get intel.

Buying an AMD processor in 2010 makes about as much sense as buying an intel processor in 2005 for 90% of performance situations.

As for the i5, the i5 750 is a fine processor. Clock for clock they smoke anything the competition has and they overclock quite well. They probably don't overclock quite as good as the LGA1366 i7s (this applies for all LGA1156 CPUs, not just the i5) but they're still capable of 1GHz of additional clock speed.

For gaming purposes an i7 has little advantage over the i5 (quad) architecturally, they only add in SMT. That's great for highly threaded applications, but games by and large aren't highly threaded.

I am not very productive behind my comp, internetting and gaming is all I do.

AMD was the logical choice for me.