Which CPU offers the most bang for the buck ?

[Tweakin]

Bang for the buck today is/could be a bad buy in two weeks with current pricing wars...

I was also amused to see that the E8400 took most of the hits...at it's current price point I wouldn't even put it on the poll....

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Bang for the buck today is/could be a bad buy in two weeks with current pricing wars...

I was also amused to see that the E8400 took most of the hits...at it's current price point I wouldn't even put it on the poll....

It's probably picking up a lot of votes because the OP doesn't state no overclocking (although he does later on in the thread).

 

[TheJian]

Originally posted by: hnzw rui
I'm curious which benchmarks using SSE4 you're referring to. An article I read featured *huge* gains for DivX encoding, but subsequently learned that a very unoptimized/brute-force code was used just to put SSE4 in a very positive light. From x264 developers' comments, actual benefit of using SSE4 would seem to be very minimal.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=3137&p=5
I'm not sure if that was the one I'm thinking of or not. But I'm pretty sure I've read many with large gains. Of course they're showing a best case scenario. But my point is that SSE4.1 could be big later (as they all have been eventually, mostly for encoding, Photoshop etc filters and more). It costs nothing in performance to have it just sitting there waiting to be used

http://www.tomshardware.com/20...air_cooling/page4.html
Another with tmpeg pre-release with SSE4 support. No doubt better now 5+ months later. 30% improvement isn't bad for a pre-reslease version.

The anand one is even better, 133%! "The total performance increase from QX6850 SSE2 to QX9650 SSE4 in this test is an incredible 133%. Obviously, this is not going to be the norm in many other applications, but there's definitely some potential for meaningful optimizations in certain applications." That's pretty huge. Even if we can expect some 30-50% gains in a bunch of stuff say, a year or two from now that would be a nice boost about when we all start thinking our chips are starting to suck That might allow a lot of people to stay in their systems for a while longer.

 

[JPB]

If the CPU isn't a good choice to start with, what do you all recommend ?

 

[Extelleron]

As others have said, buying one peice at at time is not a good idea - put your money in a savings account for the 2 months or so it will take you to accquire the funds, then make your purchase.

It's hard to say exactly what will be the best buy in 2 months... if you are looking for an AMD setup, then the best then will be Phenom 9850, 2.5GHz QC. E8400 will probably be more available by that point and 45nm quads will most likely be available too.

 

[TheJian]

Originally posted by: JPB
If the CPU isn't a good choice to start with, what do you all recommend ?

Cut the second 3870 and forget SLI. Now add more to the first one making it a MSI 8800GT OC edition (pick one, I took MSI even though I didn't like the warranty it was tough to beat the price and 10% performance boost because OC out of the box). IT's barely under a GTS version for $184 after rebate at newegg. Next year buy whatever is $150 or so and have a spare card laying around. By next year for $150 you'll beat 2x3870. One 8800GT should play almost everything at 1680x1080. I'm running mine on a 24in Dell in 1920x1200. There aren't many I can't play at that res (crysis comes to mind).

Now you don't need an SLI motherboard and you can dump the PC Power and Cooling PSU. Your current one should work fine. Because of the $120 savings on 2nd card, and $150 on PSU you can build it now Get an Arctic Freezer pro 7 for $26 (newegg) and an E3110 for $229 at excaliberpc.com. Overclock to 3.6ghz and laugh about it. Bump it up some more the following year when you upgrade the vidcard.

Don't get me wrong PCP&P is the best. PERIOD. My family owns 2, I had one also but accidentally left it in Oregon when I moved...ROFL. But with 26amps (12v)I think you can get by at least until you prove it won't fly with the current psu. You can change PSU's later at any time when your budget allows. But you get to enjoy the PC NOW instead of 2-3 months away.

If you MUST by a part now, buy whatever you can actually use in your current system. If it's PCIE then get a vid card. Maybe just one of the two. Buy the second when you get the rest of the system. IF you have a DDR2 AM2 board you could also get the memory now and use it, replacing whatever amount you have now. You might find a new vid and 4GB memory allows you to wait for a few months for 45nm to come out in mass quantities.

E6750 is $200 boxed, I say get an E3110 for $229. You get SSE4.1, an extra 333mhz per core, lower power, easy OC to 3.6 without exotic cooling (just a freezer pro 7, hell even it's little brother Alpine 7 for $14 is better than retail hsf). Just some stuff to ponder.

 

[wbynum]

The only way buying "piece-meal" is worth it is if you are getting an exceptionally hot deal. FAR stuff like cases, HSF, etc. Also, low end video cards that are very cheap after rebate are worth buying if all you want is a basic video card. If you are just going to Newegg and the other mail order houses and choosing the one with the cheapest price then "piece-meal" is not worth it. Save your money until you can buy it all at once.

 

[JPB]

I think you all may have a good idea. I plan on now setting the money to the side. Thanks for the advice, as that really didn't cross my mind. And when I build it, I would prefer to have time left to return if anything was DOA.

Anyway, the CPU is decided on though, and it is the Intel E8400 or the Xeon variation.

 

[boomhower]

Good choice. It should serve you well. I am going to through my thoughts out there anyways since it may help for some perspective for others who may be having the same questions.

Wait on buying the CPU. The current market conditions will be better in a month. If you will absolutely not OC I would go with the E8400 once the price drops back down to reality. If you are willing to OC I would go with the Q6600 after the price drop in April. The quad OCed will give very respectable gaming performance. A higher clocked dual will ultimately give better performance in most games but if you tend to have other processes running while gaming the quad might benefit you. I personally like to encode on two cores while gaming on the other two. I am not a hardcore gamer by any means. 40FPS or 60FPS is all the same difference to me so keep that in mind. However if you will not OC the stock clocking of the quad is to low for your use IMHO and you would be better off with the dual. But at ~$220 after the price drop it has a ton of bang for the buck.