Phenom II X4 830 (Quad Core, 2.8 Ghz, 6 MB) Processor - OEM - $49.99 Microcenter

[reallyscrued]

In store only. Pretty cheap for a quad core with full L3 cache.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0375737

 

[MacLeod1592]

That's a steal! Yeah its no Sandy Bridge but its still a capable proc and would be great for a midrange rig.

 

[lavaheadache]

I almost picked one up a week ago!

 

[reallyscrued]

That's a steal! Yeah its no Sandy Bridge but its still a capable proc and would be great for a midrange rig.

I'm quite surprised it wasn't already on the forums; I was reluctant to post it because I thought it'd be a repost. I'm away from home at college (where there is no Microcenter) so I asked my father to pick one up for me back in my hometown. I'll be back for a week during Thanksgiving break and can't wait to see how it will improve my Battlefield 3 performance.

(Running a PII X2 550 BE @ 3.6 Ghz, task manager shows both cores at 100% while playing)

I think giving up clockspeed for more cores is finally making sense.

 

[msi1337]

nice deal.. sadly it says out of stock for me

 

[TwiceOver]

Mine is further than that. Wish I coudl pick one up.

 

[formulav8]

Its a 6 core with 2 cores disabled or am I confusing with another cpu model... :\

 

[SithSolo1]

Its a 6 core with 2 cores disabled or am I confusing with another cpu model... :\

That would be the 960T

 

[formulav8]

Your right. Sorry

 

[gevorg]

Hot deal. Melting hot for anyone with existing AM3 mobo and dual-core/budget CPU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't think that this model has L3 cache, sorry to say.

Edit: Hmm, Cpu-world says it does have L3 cache. Which is the 800-series Phenom that lacks L3 cache? The 840?

 

[msi1337]

I am gonna pick one up tomorrow

 

[reallyscrued]

I don't think that this model has L3 cache, sorry to say.

Edit: Hmm, Cpu-world says it does have L3 cache. Which is the 800-series Phenom that lacks L3 cache? The 840?

Correct. The 840 is a Propus, this is a full fledged Deneb. Neither is it a 6 core with 2 locked. Lots of misinformation in this thread.

 

[Obsoleet]

Nothing wrong with this CPU. A great upgrade for a lot of people as the market is really stale right now. If I didnt have the rig I build a few years ago, I'd def pick this up. The 955 Black I built recently is a beast, all I would need..

 

[severus]

Is this an upgrade from 3.5ghz e6750? Pretty much just using it for some games like BF3 which really taxes out my cpu, and the occasional corel or photoshop session.

 

[reallyscrued]

Is this an upgrade from 3.5ghz e6750? Pretty much just using it for some games like BF3 which really taxes out my cpu, and the occasional corel or photoshop session.

That's a pretty high overclock; the answer is would be yes and no. In my opinion yes, and I'll tell you why.

BF3 CPU scalability on frequencies are zero to nil (see first chart: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html)

My only issue with that first chart is that it is a quad core they are overclocking and quads are never at 100% utilization during BF3, meaning that it's pretty obvious extra clock speed won't help performance wise. (see: First comparison of task manager screenshots)

But even then, considering that BF3 is so hungry for cores, I'm willing to bet even with your high overclock, BF3 still maxes your CPU and being able to process two more threads on hardware would free up a lot of resources regardless of a drop in clock frequency. BF3 has a lot of complex geometries and your minimum framerate is where you will see the most improvement, which is what you want anyway.

I'm sure that Photoshop works better and takes advantage of multiple cores so that's a win there, but I can't find any information on Corel and it's behavior with more than 2 cores. Anyone got any ideas on that one?

The kicker is, with such a high overclock on your C2D, older games that don't take advantage of multiple cores might see a drop in maximum and minimum framerates compared to the AMD chip at 2.8 ghz. I'd get a good overclocking motherboard and RAM that you know has some headroom so you can bump up the FSB so the main clock speed is 3.2 ghz+ where it would be more on par with your current configuration on legacy apps.

 

[reallyscrued]

Newegg's listing for the chip can be found here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103993

Check out the feedback tab for reviews. The rebranding is fairly new though, there are a lot more reviews for what it used to be called which is here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103656

 

[GotIssues]

Tempting...

 

[Roland00Address]

Edit nvm, thought you were comparing 830 vs 920 instead of 830 vs 925

 

[jjj807]

just threw a new X4 840 from MC for 60 dollars in an old am2+ plug rig. huge performance boost, plays bf3 now

 

[MrVeedo]

picked one up a while ago. chugging along nicely at 3.6, 1.4 volts.

 

[kmmatney]

Damn! I bought the X4 849 for $59 a few weeks back for my WHS. This is a better deal with the L3 cache. Oh well... At stock, I think the X4 840 is probably still a little faster (3.2 Ghz versus 2.8 Ghz), but this cpu will be much once overclocked.

 

[severus]

Well, I'm not exactly an extreme gamer. But as you can tell with my sig I haven't upgraded in almost 4 years. If I can get 3.6 out of this I think it'd be more than powerful enough for everything I play at 1440x900. I mean, I was originally going to buy a i5 2500k and an expensive msi motherboard, but for what? Most benchmarks are synthetic or time demos and don't give a real feel for online play. I think this should be more than adequate for 64 player bf3 online? The only other games in my foreseeable future are CS:GO, GW2, and MAYBE skyrim or witcher 2 which a quad is definitely enough for.


Saying that, I think I'm going to scoop this up as well as a ~ $120 am3+ motherboard and 8 gigs of ram. Should hold me over for another 2 years?

 

[reallyscrued]

Well, I'm not exactly an extreme gamer. But as you can tell with my sig I haven't upgraded in almost 4 years. If I can get 3.6 out of this I think it'd be more than powerful enough for everything I play at 1440x900. I mean, I was originally going to buy a i5 2500k and an expensive msi motherboard, but for what? Most benchmarks are synthetic or time demos and don't give a real feel for online play. I think this should be more than adequate for 64 player bf3 online? The only other games in my foreseeable future are CS:GO, GW2, and MAYBE skyrim or witcher 2 which a quad is definitely enough for.


Saying that, I think I'm going to scoop this up as well as a ~ $120 am3+ motherboard and 8 gigs of ram. Should hold me over for another 2 years?

This would definitely be enough for those titles, and yes, it'd be fine for the next two years. (overclock a little?) Maybe longer if consoles don't come with more than quads the next generation.

Also you may not need to invest even that much in a motherboard. For $100+shipping, there are Asus boards on Newegg that come with the AMD 970 chipset. UEFI and everything. Even cheaper if you want to go ASRock.

EDIT: Just realized you were probably lumping the cost of RAM into your figure. D'oh.

 

[Caveman]

What would be a good video card to pair with this? Looking for a card "balanced" to it's performance so I'm not overspending...