Gaming Rig. E2160 or E8400?

[mharr7]

Well i'll be building a gaming rig here soon....Gaming only.

I'm holding out to see what the new Nvidia cards are gonna do....I have approx. 4 months before I can even build it.

Wondering if its worth it to get the E8400 with a small/mild overclock(3.75-4ghz) or go with the cheaper E2160/2180, good cooler, and overclock the heck outa it(~3ghz?).


The extra money I save on the processor will most likely go towards a better GPU.

Opinions?

Thanks guys.

 

[Jax Omen]

From what (limited) research I've done, unless you're an RTS-heavy gamer (read: you absolutely love SupCom), the CPU doesn't make nearly as much of a gaming impact as the GPU. I'd say get the 2160 and OC it and buy a better GPU.

 

[ch33zw1z]

IMHO, splurge for the 8400.

 

[mharr7]

I'll be looking to play Warhammer online, maybe Age of Conan, Farcry 2, Vegas 2...and beyond that, not really sure.

I jes kinda play whatever looks like its a good game, last game I was really into was WOW...been outa that for almost 2 years now, so havent had a need for an upgrade till now. But Warhammer looks like its gonna be a good one.

Now i heard WOW was very CPU dependant....wondering if Warhammer will be the same?

 

[Roguestar]

WoW will run on pretty much anything, it's a really old, ugly and under-complicated (and terribly overrated imo) game. Integrated graphics and a pentium 3 will do provided you haven't got a bad internet connection.

However, between the E2160 and E8400 for newer games, I'd probably say the E8400. For posterity.

 

[DSF]

I'm going to make an assuption here, and that is that your budget is limited to the extent that saving on the CPU will allow a significant increase in GPU performance.

If that's the case, I would buy the cheaper chip and overclock it to 3 GHz. That'll be fine for any game for a while, and would allow you to open up better graphics. If the amount of money you can spend on the GPU is unrelated the CPU you buy, then you might want to go for the E8400.

 

[jterrell]

general rule of thumbs is on gaming machines skimp on cpu and max out the vid card.

however if you can find and afford an e8400 it should be a card with serious lasting power.

if you are budget-strapped the e2160 will perform quite well for gaming.

 

[jterrell]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
WoW will run on pretty much anything, it's a really old, ugly and under-complicated (and terribly overrated imo) game. Integrated graphics and a pentium 3 will do provided you haven't got a bad internet connection.

However, between the E2160 and E8400 for newer games, I'd probably say the E8400. For posterity.

ixnay that.

WoW players usually run a ton of addon/macro stuff and the game itself becomes highly memory dependent. It will run on old systems but run like crap.

How do I know? Because I just upgraded and found the game had graphics I didnt even know about, roffle coming from playing on an old 7950 GT the 4 GB memory and 9600GT made a huge difference. MY internet is the same but I have to see any lag that I used to blame on my connection.


I do think the game is overrated and has gotten boring to me.
Then again, most games suck after 1 month and WoW has dominated for a couple of years. But it's time is probably past.