Which is the better processor in...

[Thor_Odinson]

a gaming sense:

Athlon II X3 450 (3.2ghz)
or
Phenom II X2 555 BE (3.2ghz)

Extra core or extra cache, among other things? Common sense tells me that a game utilizing more than 2 cores would benefit more from the former, while the inverse holds true with the latter. But that would bring me back to square one.

Which one would you choose and why?

-- btw, the cost for both is roughly the same ($78 and $80)

 

[Ben90]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=189

 

[jvroig]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=189

Due to the way AT updates the CPU Bench, it is not useful in this scenario, there are only 3 games. This means the gaming suite components of the first CPU only intersected with 3 games from the gaming suite components of the second CPU - the 555BE is a much newer processor and so it was benched using different games.

Which one would you choose and why?

It won't be a half-bad idea to get the Athlon II X3 paired with a decent but non-expensive motherboard and give it a decent overclock - anywhere from 3.6- 3.8 should be easy on most boards (200->240 HT ref clock, 20% OC), but this is only anecdotal from my experience and what I've been able to read online. 3.6-3.8GHz, while not guaranteed to be achievable, seems a mostly reasonable target.

 

[aigomorla]

tri core..

Reason... while most games cant use more then 2 cores, it leaves 1 reserve for your background OS processes, and allows 2 cores to be completely dedicated to the game.