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Budget Upgrade: x4/6870 or x6/6850?

SithSolo1

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
My brother is looking to upgrade his gaming system and wants to spend around $300. He'd really like to be able to play BF3 and ME3 but is ok with not having all the eye candy turned on.

Currently has:
C2D E7500
s775 mobo
4GB DDR3-1600
1gb 4850
Corsair HX520 psu
1680x1050 LCD

We live near both a Frys and MC so I was looking at the MC AMD bundles.

He can get a AM3+ board(GA-78LMT-S2P) and a x4 965 for $119 or the same board with a x6 1090T for $169. Knowing that he probably won't upgrade again until 2013 would he be better off with the x4 and a 6870/GTX 560 or the x6 and a 6850?

I figure we can reuse the ram and PSU and he'll be keeping the monitior/case, he also has a copy of Win7 64 he got from the student deal.
 
Clock for clock, the Phenom IIs are only about equal to Core 2. Essentially, you're just getting a few more cores by "upgrading" to an X4 or X6, and I don't know if BF3 or ME3 will be optimized for quad cores (there aren't many games that are).

The first thing you should do is upgrade the graphics card.

EDIT: Hmmm... I came across this and it does look like BF3 will like a tri-core or better CPU. However, I'm still rather reluctant to even suggest "upgrading" to any Phenom II, especially the X6 (more than 4 cores is just pointless for gaming purposes). Then again, it doesn't look like you have much choice, since the cheapest SNB i5 would mean you won't have a budget left for a decent video card.
 
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If you are upgrading you will need DDR3 ram too. So figure another $35 or so for that. A 6870 1Gb can be found for around $150 and a 560 ti for $230.

The x6's are fast but they eat power for breakfast while gaming (1.45V vs 1.25V).
 
Tell us about your motherboard... you could very easily run that CPU at 3.6 ghz and get a GTX 570 or 6970 and probably have the most performance for your dollar, and the video card can migrate to future builds.
 
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superccs said:
If you are upgrading you will need DDR3 ram too. So figure another $35 or so for that. A 6870 1Gb can be found for around $150 and a 560 ti for $230.
Click to expand...

He's got 4GB of DDR3 atm so thats fine.

alyarb said:
Tell us about your motherboard... you could very easily run that CPU at 3.6 ghz
Click to expand...

Even overclocked that CPU is gonna be weaker in BF3 than a stock clocked 3.4Ghz quad-core and I don't know if it would be enough to push a GTX 570 or 6970. I try to find out what the mobo is though.
 
OP are you sure he's currently running DDR3? It's certainly possible buy S775 boards with DDR3 are somewhat rare. Back on topic:

I don't really believe a Phenom II is a worthy upgrade over the C2D. You're probably better off investing in a decent cooler, doing some overclocking, and spend the rest of your money on a decent video card.
 
Well that's good that he has DDR3, but the cores in the Phenom II are simply too weak to recommend as an upgrade. It would be an overpriced sidegrade IMO. The E7500s are good overclockers and the ASUS P43 definitely has what it takes to get the chip beyond 3.6 GHz. I would say 4 GHz is a definite possibility. Consider these benches, particularly the gaming tests at the bottom to see how an aggressively clocked wolfdale compares to Phenom II. With a good OC, the wolfdale remains substantially faster (and without the OC they are too close to warrant any big spending to switch), so it's a bit ludicrous to say a wolfdale would hold back a GTX 570 and a Deneb would not.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/81?vs=54
 
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Anyone who says games aren't optimized for more than two cores hasn't played a game released in the past year. The argument that overclocking to 4GHz takes care of the lack of cores just doesn't hold water.

OP - you will indeed get a boost from going to a Phenom II. Is it the best technology out there? No, but it will come in under your budget. And I'd definitely go quad/6870 over hex/6850. Note that the 6870 and 6850 are very close in price.

Here's a benchmark of the BF3 beta to give you some idea of performance: http://www.techspot.com/review/448-battlefield-3-beta-performance/page7.html

Here are a few more recently released game benchmarks to give you more to think about: http://www.techspot.com/review/436-deus-ex-human-revolution-performance-test/page7.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/440-hard-reset-performance-test/page6.html
 
Its gonna be a month or so before he buys anything. BF3 should be out by then and hopefully we will have some good comparisons out. If an OC' dual core can pass muster I don't think he'll have a problem sticking with it and spending more on the card.
 
Acquiring a secondhand q9450/Q9550 would be much better than wasting $250 on a Phenom II and board. People who don't experience intel and K10 on a regular basis really should not stop the guy from OCing first before he decides to waste money that would otherwise go to a GPU. He already has everything he needs to at least test the bounds of the chip.
 
alyarb said:
Acquiring a secondhand q9450/Q9550 would be much better than wasting $250 on a Phenom II and board.
Click to expand...

Just for clarification, the x965 with the motherboard is $120 total. Not $250. I haven't looked much but I figure a used C2D Quad will run more than that as the socket is a dead end.

Basically what is boils down to is this:

Keep the C2D Dual, overclock it hopefully to 3.6, and spend $300ish on a video card

or

Get the x965 Quad, overclock it to 3.8, and spend $180ish on a card.

He's down with either but until the game is actually out its all a guessing game. That said I'm grateful for all the input thus far. I kinda figured from the start the x6 wasn't worth it but I wanted to be sure. I wasn't aware of how well the E7500 overclocked so it was an option we hadn't considered.

My only other thought with getting an AM3+ board is that maybe sometime down the line he could move to a Bull Dozer refresh but A) there is no guarantee that the refresh will be on AM3+ and B) there is no guarantee the refresh would be that much better.
 
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SithSolo1 said:
Its gonna be a month or so before he buys anything. BF3 should be out by then and hopefully we will have some good comparisons out. If an OC' dual core can pass muster I don't think he'll have a problem sticking with it and spending more on the card.
Click to expand...

alyarb said:
Acquiring a secondhand q9450/Q9550 would be much better than wasting $250 on a Phenom II and board. People who don't experience intel and K10 on a regular basis really should not stop the guy from OCing first before he decides to waste money that would otherwise go to a GPU. He already has everything he needs to at least test the bounds of the chip.
Click to expand...

Makes sense - he could certainly get the 6870 right now (probably won't go down in price between now and the end of the month), and see what overclocking does. While the 6870 is in theory 2x faster than the 4850, based on my experience with an e8400, it will be very hard to get all of that benefit with a dual-core, but you'd still get some. For instance, my e8400 with a GTX460 is definitely faster in games than it was with an 8800gt.

By the way, the OP is not talking about wasting $250 on a Phenom II and board. At MicroCenter, I think he can get the equivalent of a q9550 (say a Phenom II 955), with a motherboard, for less than a used 9550.
 
I'm also in the "neither" camp. Grab a $200-250 GPU like a GTX 560 Ti or 6950 2GB and push the C2D to its limits. Then, save up another $100 and get an i3 2100 (or IB equivalent if it's out) and $60 H61 mobo.
 
SithSolo1 said:
His sole source of income atm is Birthdays, it would be Fall '12 before he could buy something else.
Click to expand...

Well, IB will certainly be out at that point! :awe: I still stick by the recommendation of getting on a yearly CPU/GPU/other cadence. That way you can get something pretty decent every year and won't be continuously trying to find a stopgap solution that covers everything.
 
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