Need some advice on a gaming platform

[konakona]

Anand's latest benches in the phenom II article kinda caught me off guard; I was still under impression that CPU performance is largely irrelevant for gaming past a certain threshold (say, 2.4ghz c2d). Then there were those benches on Crysis Wars that clearly showed benefits of quad cores. I am into MMORPGs and some of the players their attest that CPU performance matters quite a lot. Maybe the time is finally ripe to seriously consider quads over duals for gaming.

Here is the situation I am in: I am used to having two computers, until I gave my primary one (E7200@3.7 + HD4850) to my cousin. The secondary rig is still quite decent (E6420@3.2 + 9600GSO) for my CRT where I am free from native rez limitation.

Now that I have spare parts (case, monitor, kb, mouse, etc) except cpu/mobo/ram/vid, I am thinking of putting up another inexpensive gaming rig. My budget is quite stretchable, but I don't want something just for bragging rights. As long as it plays games well enough, nothing else really matters. Never have I encoded anything, I don't do any work on my desktops anyway.

At first I was going to get me a cheap P45 board (or that x38 foxconn for lil over $100) with a E5200 and OC the hell out of of it, but phenom II sounds mighty interesting with the talks of them having great bang for buck. I have been a bit out of the loop sorta, as I had got my E7200 and became a happy camper ever since.

I see some great deals out now, but would it be better to hold out just a tad longer? I am not in a huge rush at the moment, I could wait another month or two if needed. If otherwise, is there some significant benefit of phenom IIs over cheap wolfdales (for gaming, and gaming only)?

Cost of CPU+mobo for
C2D: $68.88 + $110.72
Phenom II $180 (920) or $220 (940) + $114.38

Overclocking is no news for me, performance at stock speeds is irrelevant.

 

[krnmastersgt]

It's situational. For the vast majority of fps/rpg style games, a dual core is more than enough. For large AI based games (mainly huge rts games like SupCom) or mmorpgs where there are hundreds to thousands of players moving about there are advantages to a quad. It depends on your gaming style. It also depends on how the game is coded, GTA4 for instance was coded to run very well on a quad system, but even the most advanced dual core set-ups struggle to run it. While many developers are moving to quad core optimization, dual-core is still the most common since it is what the majority of people (who've bought a pc recently) own. It's bad business to make games that the majority of people can't play (Crysis excepted, it made a name for itself with it's "advanced" physics which I would assume is just poor coding).

 

[konakona]

yeah, I am aware different games have different requirements for CPUs. That being said, I was quite happy with my dual core CPUs with that MMORPG I am playing. With imminent price cuts and phenom 950 launch and all, would this be a good point to get a system timing-wise? I know it is always to wait longer, but you know there have been some exceptions like radeon 9700...

 

[krnmastersgt]

You won't see any major price cuts in quad-cores till next Jan or so, depends on how you're doing in this sort of economy I suppose if you must decide on when to buy. Waiting usually yields much saved money, if you check the hot deals section regularly you might one day find the CPUs you've been looking at for a nice price. Up to you really, I'd wait if you aren't having problems with your current rig, when you decide you need to upgrade the quads should be cheaper (at least by a tad).

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: konakona
Anand's latest benches in the phenom II article kinda caught me off guard; I was still under impression that CPU performance is largely irrelevant for gaming past a certain threshold (say, 2.4ghz c2d). Then there were those benches on Crysis Wars that clearly showed benefits of quad cores.

Did you happen to notice where a stock E8500 at 3.16ghz is faster than a Core i7 920, core 2 quad q9550, Phenom II 940, and a c2q Q6600?

Not to mention it overclocks higher with more margins than all 4 of these processors too

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: konakona
Anand's latest benches in the phenom II article kinda caught me off guard; I was still under impression that CPU performance is largely irrelevant for gaming past a certain threshold (say, 2.4ghz c2d). Then there were those benches on Crysis Wars that clearly showed benefits of quad cores.

Did you happen to notice where a stock E8500 at 3.16ghz is faster than a Core i7 920, core 2 quad q9550, Phenom II 940, and a c2q Q6600?

Not to mention it overclocks higher with more margins than all 4 of these processors too

No, I guess I missed that part, plus the comments seem to address quads being better. oh well

some crazy clockspeeds in your sig there...

 

[f111]

Well for dual core I wouldn't go past an e7300. I don't think you will get that much performance trade-off overclocking an e8500 to 4.4Ghz or something, vs. an e7300 running at 3.8 or 4.0

Just get a good cooler like a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 -- its just $37 but its reviewed as the second best cooler by silentpcreview.com -- its best for the value.

I think judging from what you're saying you don't really want a quad-core yet. I say stick with the 7300 until the new i7 1066 chipset comes out and prices drop on the quad.

 

[Denithor]

PhII 920 + Biostar 790GX combo $255 - $10MIR ($15 coupon code might work, not sure)
Corsair Dominator 2x2GB DDR2-1066 $74 - $30MIR

Right now games are just begining to support quads (SupCom, GTA4, UT3) but I think this trend is going to accelerate over the next year as new games are released. Keep in mind it typically takes at least a couple of years to fully develop a game so stuff released in the last year was created while duals were predominant. In the last year quads have been used more and more (even by the OEM builders) so game devs are going to keep that in mind when designing their latest & greatest.

At the high end right now, for both Intel & AMD, quad-core processors are the only option. Neither makes a dual or triple core version of their newest architecture (PhII & i7).

Also, you have to consider that the game devs often target their games to the consoles & port over to PC afterwards. Both serious consoles feature multi-core cpus (XBOX 360 with a triple-core Xenon and PS3 with seven-core Cell) so that is going to be the direction taken in the future.

EDIT: Based on the reviews, you can expect to hit around 3.6GHz or so with the PhII 920. That's a ton of processing power for such a small price.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: konakona

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: konakona
Anand's latest benches in the phenom II article kinda caught me off guard; I was still under impression that CPU performance is largely irrelevant for gaming past a certain threshold (say, 2.4ghz c2d). Then there were those benches on Crysis Wars that clearly showed benefits of quad cores.

Did you happen to notice where a stock E8500 at 3.16ghz is faster than a Core i7 920, core 2 quad q9550, Phenom II 940, and a c2q Q6600?

Not to mention it overclocks higher with more margins than all 4 of these processors too

No, I guess I missed that part, plus the comments seem to address quads being better. oh well

some crazy clockspeeds in your sig there...

i think you were referring to the farcry2 benchmark. quad cores are noticeably faster in that one.

 

[konakona]

yep jared, I stand corrected. S1283 is awesome, in fact that was the HS included in that comp that sits at my cousin's house now.
I have heard E5200 are the way to go for straight up bang for buck... but then I did note some reports on E7200/7300s being better overlockers.

Denithor, thanks for posting that deal; now that makes it only about $65 difference there, much more tempting; I am not so keen on AMD's schedule/pricing for future releases of newer chips, however.
To reiterate, I either wanted a cheapie machine, or something that would last me a bit at a slightly higher cost.
According to the benches on the current crop of games, a 3.6ghz Ph II (a safe bet) would be slower than a wolfdale at the same clock speed right?
I wonder if that difference is really appreciable though for those games. If not, then Ph II sounds a bit more futureproof due to its quad nature.
Does the biostar mobo OC well enough?

Also, would you prefer the Dominators to Ballistix (a tad bit cheaper)?

 

[Denithor]

People have had major problems in the last year with Ballistix burning up due to the 2.2V they are suggested to run at.

Get this G.Skill 4GB DDR2-1066 2.0V kit for $45 shipped instead of either of those. No rebates to mess with FTW!!