What qualities do you most look at on a modern day CPU?

[Regs]

I know most of us look for a balance between all answers but what I am asking is what attracts you the most to a particular format.

I am a gamer and I really don't care for encoding and decoding. Though I say this with the general knowledge that a modern day processor could do both but not as good as another particular format.

 

[potato28]

Performence, then price. Dont wanna get ripped off.

 

[Ninjak]

Warranty!!! I voided mine about two seconds after I opened the box.

 

[justly]

A stable platform to use it in, followed by a balance of price, general performance and low noise/heat output.

 

[Kromis]

Games games games...need I say more?

 

[harpoon84]

Scalability - I love overclocking, in fact I rarely get CPUs that won't O/C at least 25%.

There's just something cool about running a 2GHz CPU @ 3.5GHz...

 

[Skott]

Mostly desktop gaming performance. If it plays games fast/great then it'll do pretty much anything else just as good IMO. I do have laptop but desktop is more core to my uses. Pricing also comes into play but its more secondary than primary consideration.

 

[Munky]

Scalability wins in the end, as long as the cpu has decent performance all around. Obviously, I wouldnt want a PD805 no matter how well it OC'd, but I'd easily pick a e6300 over a e6600 if the former can OC almost as high as the latter. And for games, video card is still #1 prority, so basically it comes down to how well the cpu can OC.

 

[Maximilian]

A mixture:

heat/power usage
scalability
performance (gaming mainly as a PII 450 can give me satisfactory desktop performance)
price

Also one other thing that isnt listed, its not as relevant as it used to be, but strength. I would take a P4 northwood over ANY athlon XP or socket 370 PIII as theyre way more suceptable to breaking. AXP more than PIII for some reason.

 

[Furen]

Price with no consideration to marginal performance losses. I usually look for the best balance between price and performance (the mythical sweet spot) and go for that.

 

[n7]

Scaleability is what i voted for.

But what i really look for is whatever CPU will OC to the same or better levels of performance as the best CPUs out there, but for the cheapest possible price.

What drives my desire for that?

e-penis length.

Nah seriously, my primary intensive uses are gaming & video encoding.

 

[cmdrdredd]

For people who say Games...what for? Most every game performs the same on a x2 4800+ and a C2D E6400 @ 3.2Ghz. Only a few fps difference. It's your GPU that makes the difference for gaming.

I say scalability. However I look more at overclocking and value. The E6300/6400 offer super value being able to overclock to 3Ghz+ without much trouble at all which is why i bought one.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
For people who say Games...what for? Most every game performs the same on a x2 4800+ and a C2D E6400 @ 3.2Ghz. Only a few fps difference. It's your GPU that makes the difference for gaming.
.

Eh, well programming of a game or in any applications is one of those variables outside the scope of this pole.

 

[Brunnis]

Primarily power consumption versus performance. The peak power consumption that I find acceptable for a CPU is 50-60W.

 

[Rottie]

Performance > Game > Encode/decode is what I care.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
For people who say Games...what for? Most every game performs the same on a x2 4800+ and a C2D E6400 @ 3.2Ghz. Only a few fps difference. It's your GPU that makes the difference for gaming.

I say scalability. However I look more at overclocking and value. The E6300/6400 offer super value being able to overclock to 3Ghz+ without much trouble at all which is why i bought one.

Not exactly. GPU limited games perform the same, CPU limited games will scale with faster CPUs.