Should I get an AMD CPU for gaming?

[coolpurplefan]

Most modern PC cases has a large opening in the backside that lets you access the socket holes, the Hyper 212+ for AM3 socket needs the bolt screws and are a PITA on tight cases, in one particular case I had to stick thermal paste on the bolts and press them against the plate to install the heatsink in my old case (the opening was small) because I wasn't in the mood to remove the whole motherboard. Kind of like how pit crew in NASCAR puts glue on the tip of tire nuts, it worked out well.


Yes the Intel mounts for the Hyper 212 is simple, I wish the AMD mounts was the same, but they require screw & nuts.

HOLY CRAP! I completely didn't think about that. lol

Thanks for letting me know about a trick I didn't know (EDIT: or didn't realize).

At the same time though, I still wouldn't take a risk with a very large heatsink because if you're moving, all it takes is hitting one pothole in a vehicle and I'd be asking myself if I cracked my motherboard. haha

 

[HumblePie]

If the question is, "Should I get a used AMD CPU for gaming?," then I will definitely agree that the case becomes a lot easier to make. So I do accept your point.

But getting hung up on price points is at the heart of these AMD/Intel price/performance debates, so I still believe that it is helpful to the readership to either link to reproducible purchasing scenarios, or use commonly available retail prices. To do otherwise risks going from being helpful in a general sense to merely bragging about what a great deal one person was able to get that no one else might be able to replicate.

Except I didn't buy used? The prices I paid are pretty close to the current retail prices off newegg. I just paid the sale price I found about a month ago when I was buying the parts. The only real difference is that the 7850 is no longer on the market. I could go with a 260 and be close those in price and performance of what I previously go.

Is it the best? Hell no. I ran 3d mark vantage on his and my pc just recently. I was at 34K and he was at 16K. Still he's not dropping before 25 fps in WoW on ultra settings with what he has and he's happy. Before a couple of different raids were making the game as a slide show for him even on the lowest graphic settings running at 1920x1080.

 

[crashtech]

Except I didn't buy used? The prices I paid are pretty close to the current retail prices off newegg. I just paid the sale price I found about a month ago when I was buying the parts. The only real difference is that the 7850 is no longer on the market. I could go with a 260 and be close those in price and performance of what I previously go.

Is it the best? Hell no. I ran 3d mark vantage on his and my pc just recently. I was at 34K and he was at 16K. Still he's not dropping before 25 fps in WoW on ultra settings with what he has and he's happy. Before a couple of different raids were making the game as a slide show for him even on the lowest graphic settings running at 1920x1080.

I was responding to Terry.

But I did congratulate you earlier on how well you did.

The X4 740 is definitely a viable alternative for those who know its strengths and shortcomings. Like all current AMD offerings, it gets killed in single-thread by Intel CPUs of similar price, yet triumphs over these same CPUs in multi-thread. Everyone will analyze their usage pattern in a different way. I happen to think that single-thread and IPC still matter, since much of the everyday computing experience still depends on fast cores for speed. Others stress the crop of modern games that can utilize more cores, or perhaps transcoding which is heavily multithreaded, or any other compute-heavy app.

It's up to each user to research where the slowdowns lie, and how best to address them within a given budget, which usually breaks down to: More, slower cores, or fewer faster ones. Pick a flavor.