What is the best gaming CPU?

[DrMrLordX]

It definitely looks like Zambezi will never hit AM3. So, Thuban is the best you can get for that socket.

Still no slouch though!

 

[evolucion8]

So a person who wants a new computer from September 1, 2010 to Q1 2011 (which can be March 31, 2011), is supposed to use what? The slower 965 AM3 system?

That makes no sense. 1156 Core i5 750/750/860/870 are still better performance than any Phenom 2 955/965 rigs you can build today. Did you see GTA4, Far Cry 2 or Starcraft 2 benchmarks... you already know that Phenom II can't touch Core i5/7s with a 10 foot pole - http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gaming_the_core_debate,3.html

Aigo, you do realize you can grab a Core i5 750/860 and a $100-130 board that will mop the floor with an AM3 setup when overclocked right? Core i7 is about 20% faster per clock compared to Phenom II. Therefore, Bulldozer will have to be at least 20% faster per clock than Phenom II, yet all the info we got points to 12.5-15% performance increase. Even then, Bulldozer will have to overclock to 4.0ghz since Core i7s can clock to 4.0ghz today. Bulldozer isn't coming out until way into 2011. Might as well grab the i5 750 system now and sell it in 12 months if faster speed than 4.0ghz i7 is required.

Plus, I am not even sure if Bulldozer will work in AM3:

Words from AMD
When we initially set out on the path to Bulldozer we were hoping for AM3 compatibility, but further along the process we realized that we had a choice to make based on some of the features that we wanted to bring with Bulldozer. We could either provide AM3 support and lose some of the capabilities of the new Bulldozer architecture or, we could choose the AM3+ socket which would allow the Bulldozer-base Zambezi to have greater performance and capability.
The majority of the computer buying public will not upgrade their processors, but enthusiasts do. When we did the analysis it was clear that the customers who were most likely to upgrade an AM3 motherboard to a Bulldozer would want the features and capability that would only be delivered in the new AM3+ sockets.


Keeping all that mind, I'd probably sell the E8400 and grab a used 9550 for now if your board can support it. They can overclock pretty well. Otherwise, I would upgrade the videocard. Wait until HD6000 series are released to see what happens to prices.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quad-core-cpu,2499-8.html

Gaming performance between CPU's isn't much different between architectures, only exotic multi-GPU setups shows a difference. Far Cry 2 for some reason always ran slower on AMD than Intel, code crippling anyone?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=109 << Not a great difference in gaming performance to be noticeable and allowing to raise the eye candy.

So just get the best that you can get and don't think too much about futureproof, always something faster will come, but software can't keep up with hardware. So enjoy your gaming performance of your new buy (Doesn't matter if its an Phenom II X4 965 or a Core i5 750)

 

[scrubman]

Great topic OP! This thread has helped me decide to wait on upgrading my Q6600 and spend my money on a new GPU for this winters gaming!

I would definately recommend sticking with your current CPU platform that you wisely invested in. If you are not overclocking that would be the only thing I would look into right now and possibly upgrade video if you even need to since FPS is not critical with your type of gaming.

 

[amenx]

i5 750 vs i7 920

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/109?vs=47

 

[scrubman]

Great benchys! Now change out the i7 920 for the E8400 which is the CPU that the OP is using and you will see that for gaming it is almost identical!! Interestingly with one exception being Far Cry!

 

[MrK6]

The lesson is that anything with the Core 2 architecture or newer and three or more cores (physical or logical) is more than sufficient for gaming once overclocked. Whatever deficiencies an older architecture has can be compensated for with a clock speed increase. If your CPU can't clock, it might be worth it to upgrade, especially if you're going for high framerates (120Hz, etc.). If you're building new, you should definitely get at least a quad core as that's where things are headed. All that said, I thoroughly enjoy my i5 750, and might wait until the Sandy Bridge refresh before I upgrade.

 

[RussianSensation]

Great benchys! Now change out the i7 920 for the E8400 which is the CPU that the OP is using and you will see that for gaming it is almost identical!! Interestingly with one exception being Far Cry!

...and GTAIV, BF:BC2, Arma2, World in Conflict, Resident Evil 5, Starcraft 2, Dragon Age Origins. Also, AT never shows minimum framerates in games, where an i5/i7 will be faster than the E8400. While it's probably not worthwhile to upgrade from an E8400 at this point with Sandy Bridge around the corner, to imply that Core i5/i7 are almost identical in gaming to a C2D/Q is false. For example, my Q6600 @ 3.4ghz was 42&#37; slower in RE5 at 1920x1080 8AA, and that was only on a Radeon 4890, not GTX470.

 

[Axon]

The lesson is that anything with the Core 2 architecture or newer and three or more cores (physical or logical) is more than sufficient for gaming once overclocked. Whatever deficiencies an older architecture has can be compensated for with a clock speed increase. If your CPU can't clock, it might be worth it to upgrade, especially if you're going for high framerates (120Hz, etc.). If you're building new, you should definitely get at least a quad core as that's where things are headed. All that said, I thoroughly enjoy my i5 750, and might wait until the Sandy Bridge refresh before I upgrade.

This is correct. Given anything above a 4870 GPU, even my old now two year old E8500 @ 4.0 crushes virtually every game I throw at it (1920x1080 res), save for the rare game that fully utilizes four cores (Dragon Age Origin being the only one I play, and even then, I can't see any issues with my frame rate).

RS knows what he's talking about though - the more modern games prefer the modern, quad-core CPUs. Still, I really cannot tell the difference between my I7 920 @ 3.6 and my AMD x4 B55 @3.8 in SC2, unless I'm doing that Aiur mission where's there are literally 700 units on the screen at once. Certainly in multi-player neither machine ever chugs.

 

[jacktesterson]

I vote for what I'm using, the 965 X4 AMD.

Not due to bias, but its what I chose after self research. High Clock speed, lots of cache, and outperforms X6's right now until Games are optimized for them at stock speeds.

Save the $100, get the 965 X4, and get a good video card. thats more important overall.

I wanted a i7 920, but for my level of gaming, and no intention of SLI/Crossfire, I did not want to spend $250 on a motherboard.

I got a $90 motherboard and a $170 CPU and a $280 video card and can play whatever I want at max or near max at 1080p in any game I've wanted to play. I went this way as I already had the Ram too which helped me go AM2+. If your buying all new, go with a DDR3 board though!

My 2 Cents

 

[pctweaks]

If you're planning on playing MMo's, take 6 gigs of ram, a radeon 58XX, and a phenom II with a decent 800 mobo, you'll be able to upgrade to bulldozer after, so it'll last pretty long.

 

[busydude]

you'll be able to upgrade to bulldozer after, so it'll last pretty long.

No, bulldozer(Orochi) is not AM3 compatible. It will use a new socket, AM3+ possibly. AM3+ is backward compatible with AM3 chips but not vice-versa.

 

[dguy6789]

Im going to argue the longevity, AM3 is just as dead as 775 now.



http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...rocessors_Will_Require_New_Platforms_AMD.html

Agreed. Saying "No don't get 775 it's dead" and suggesting AM3 at the same time is a joke. 775 still has more powerful CPUs than AM3. More over, while Bulldozer may work on AM3(could be AM3+), it will not work on any current motherboard, it will require a completely new chipset, this has already been confirmed.

 

[busydude]

Saying "No don't get 775 it's dead" and suggesting AM3 at the same time is a joke.

We have to factor in the price to make that decision. A 555 at $89 is far cheaper and comparable in performance with a $195 E8500.

Granted, you can buy used for cheap, which goes both ways, but that is not the point of this discussion.

The reason many think that AM3 is not dead, which obviously isn't, is because there are new processors being released and AMD will release until we see Bulldozer chips in the market.

A $200 Thuban is a much better value than a comparable $200 Intel 775 part.

In the present conditions its absolutely fair NOT to recommend a 775 when compared to AM3. Future proofing is nothing but an urban myth when it comes to computers.

 

[RussianSensation]

the more modern games prefer the modern, quad-core CPUs.

:thumbsup:, and clock speed to boot.

Core i5 750 often bottlenecks the GTX480 even at 1920x1080 4AA. So you can imagine E8400 at stock speeds would be even slower than the 750. I mean look at the minimum framerates disadvantage to the faster i7 in STALKER: Cop, Modern Warfare 2, etc.

 

[Concillian]

AMD X4 965 (get the new stepping) $165 dollars
2 x 2gigs of DDR3 1600mhz C8 timings ~ 100 dollars
Giggy AM3 board ~ 150 dollars.
After market air sink ~ 50 dollars.
GTX 460 ~ 200 dollars.
Thermaltake TPG-750M Toughpower Grand GOLD 750W ATX ~ 150 dollars.
(get at least a 600-700W series, and go with a gold standard if possible.)

You wont get anywhere close to that price on an Intel system period.

and 1156 / i5-750 is right in the same pricerange ???

I dont think a 1156 is worth it over a AM3 at this point, because AM3 gets Hexcores, while 1156 is SOL.

He's talking MMO's which have abysmal track records at adapting to new technology. I've read things about SOE customers having issues with games not working because they didn't have DX9 (because they were on DX11 with Win7), they were telling customers to download and install a DX9 redist rather than patch a game (a game they were paying monthly fees for) to recognize that DX10 or DX11 will mean it supports DX9. Don't expect most of these games to work well with hexes and quads anytime soon.

WoW, we know only really makes use of 2 cores, don't know how many others get better performance from more cores.

Telling an MMO gamer they should go to a platform because they can get a hexcore is just plain bad advice. 2 strong cores now is what they need. i5-750 delivers that with easily the best single threaded performance. in most cases an i3-530 at stock speeds will outperform a 1090T stock in WoW, and in all cases an i5-750 will beat the 1090T. Overclocked, there is no contest, even an i3 is better than a hexcore.

Let the numbers speak. And Anandtech has the numbers.
See for yourself. Go to www.anandtech.com. There is a big button called "Bench" in the right upper corner. Click it. You get 3 options: CPUs, SSDs and GPUs. Click CPUs.

Now you can select 2 things. 1) Select "games". And option 2) let's you see the numbers on 8 different games. Check the numbers for all 8 games one by one, and look at the FPS for cpus like the i5 750, the AMD cpus, etc. Almost all benchmarks have numbers for the E8600 and the E8500. Your E8400 is not gonna be much slower. The E8600 and the E8500 make a 1-3&#37; difference in most games. So your E8400 will be another 3% slower max.

Some examples:
WoW: E8600 = 85.6 fps, i5-750 = 92.3 fps, i7-920 = 85.5 fps
Fallout: E8400 = 87 fps, i5-750 = 86 fps, i7-920 = 84 fps
Crysis: E8400 = 79.8 fps, i5-750 = 83 fps, i7-920 = 82 fps

Really, the difference are not big enough to justify spending money on a new cpu, mobo and ram. That's $400 wasted. I think the best thing would be to wait. That is what I am doing. Hopefully next year some new cpus come out that will be significant upgrades for gamers.

Here's the thing about WoW benchmarks:
There's no way to bench what really matters... performance in a raid. AT WoW benchmarks are done running around in the open world, this does an okay job of looking at graphics performance, but it tells you nothing of what really matters for CPU. With the right GPU I get great FPS on my wife's e5200 underclocked and undervolted if I'm randomly running around the outside world. But in raids, logging via recount, performance is garbage on that machine. I have to turn off recount to have any chance of playing well. My machine (i3-530 @ 4.0GHz) is great in the same circumstances. CPU matters for MMOs. It's not easily quantified, but it definitely mattters.

Due to the core scaling issues, processors with better single threaded performance are vastly superior. e8400 is not bad in this respect. An AMD x4 at the same clock is a sidegrade at best in most cases. i5 750 is the smallest meaningful upgrade due to it's very good single threaded performance. When these games finally do catch up to the rest of the world and implement strong multicore support, it will still perform pretty decently compared to the AMD hexcores, in the meantime, the i5 is vastly superior. Who cares about futureproofing if in the here and now he ends up with a processor that is no better than what he has in the games he plays?

Is an i7 even better than the i5 at single threaded performance? Sure is. Is it worth it? That's something the OP needs to decide. I think the price of entry is quite a bit steeper with 1366 being more expensive + another stick of RAM + the processor price. I'm not sure it's worth the extra. i5 is the clear sweet spot for price / performance in this case, but as usual i7 is the clear performance at any cost king.

 

[OCNewbie]

As a Q9550 owner (my main/only rig), I'll put another vote in for either sticking with your E8400 (and overclocking it if you haven't already, and if you can with your current mobo) or getting a Q9550. Take advantage of gamers that feel the need to shell out hundreds of dollars every 6 months for a ~10&#37; increase in performance, and pick up a used Q9550 or something similar, if you can find one.

 

[rgallant]

- What is the best gaming CPU?

-if over clocked--[meaning the benches of a stock 920 and a i7 860 with turbo on = joke]
-it still comes down to the 920-930
-4-8 cores
-6 gb ram
-c/f-sli- big + for gaming with ati-nv going back and forth.- + the most pci-e lanes
-will last to 2012-13
-will sit @ 4.0-4.2 24\7 with the right cooling
-and if it at some point in time , if it dosen't meet your cpu needs, the other options would have crapped out long before the i7 920-930 will.

-just my .02

 

[Gikaseixas]

best gaming cpu: Intel i7

 

[Grooveriding]

While the difference between a lower end CPU and a higher end CPU is nothing like the amount of difference seen between a lower end GPU and higher end GPU when gaming, if your question is what is the best CPU for gaming.

Would have to say an X58 based i7 overclocked.

 

[amenx]

AT 1920x1200 the difference between CPUs is much smaller than at 1280x1024. At 2560x1600, a q6600 will be about the equal of an i7 920.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Would have to say an X58 based i7 overclocked.

Fact: a P55 based i7 owes nothing to a X58 one, unless you have more than one GPU