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Best CPU for a gaming rig?
Kryogenic
Member Posts: 663
I talked my wife into letting me build a comp from the ground up instead of buying a prepackaged deal and I'm looking for some CPU advise?
What processor should I go with?
I've got a Radeon 9550 and a Creative SB Audigy (WDM)in this comp and was thinking of using them in my new comp.
Are Dual Cores better than AMDs? Does it matter or should I just be looking at the Ghz?
Any advice and help would be great.
Comments
Mostly you wanna keep your eye on the Cache sizes, 128 isnt bad for l1 but l2 you want something from 1mb to 2mb range, whether it single or dual core. That helps with speed.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html
This is a good place to get the general differences between different CPUs and their issues. After that you can search by particular models that interest you. Don't forget too look at motherboard options also, not all CPU options have great motherboard options for the different GPU and HDD options you may want (semi-rare, but a PITA when it happens).
However if you're playing 1 game at a time, a regular CPU is better. Like I have a 3.5ghz processor and it runs fine.
Very smooth
If you are also going to multi task I'd go with dual core.
Intel Dual Core Duo 2
As for the CPU, go dual core, the Intel Core 2 Duo(LGA775) or the AMD Athlon 64 X2(look for AM2, avoid 939). Avoid the Pentium D. Go Intel Core 2 Duo if you can, as for which model depends on your budget. And get a nice 965 chipset motherboard to got with it.
No reason to go single core unless you're on a extreme tight budget. If you are, get an Athlon 64, go for AM2 over 939. The Pentium 4 is not even worth the look.
Get 2 gigs of RAM at least, especially for MMOs. Depending on what CPU you choose would affect the RAM type. DDR2 or DDR.
And never gimp on the power supply.
I would go for Intel Core 2 duo 6600 over anything out there atm.
1. It's cheap
2. Dual core is getting better benchmarks than quad core atm
3. 6700 and 6800 are more expensive which isn't justified seeing as u can overclock the 6600 to more than them speeds.
Tbh Go with the 6600 core 2 duo, it's cheap but with all the power.
I'd also reccomend the gigabyte DQ6 Motherboard if your going ATI GPU.
I like AMD/ATI myself. Everytime I put an Intel or Nvidia product in my machine, I feel like I am signing a contract with the devil like playing an SOE game. Like seeing the BlueMan group advertise it, or seeing flatout lies in advertisement "Intel Core 2 Duo, The Most Powerful Processors in the World." In reality its the Cell Processor. Also Nvidia's sponsorships on games to make ATI cards work worse on them.
I say it really depends on your tastes since technology right now is flip-floping on the most powerful. Like before April 2006 it was AMD64, but now its Intel Core 2 Duo. This April it will probably be AMD who is on top again with AM3 processors with backwords compatible motherboards for easier upgrades. Its doubtful Intel will be able to make use of a more powerful processor with a socket LA775 board. However, when we are talking about Server/Workstation Boards. AMD is the best. Xeon doesn't hold a candle to Opteron. Also the ghz rating can be misleading. Pay attention to the cache, and get atleast 2.0 ghz.
Also Dual Core is not actually as great as everyone makes it out to be. Its great for Video Production, like Rendering 3D images or doing compositing. For the average home user its unneeded, and for the gamer its pretty much useless. Unless something has changed in the last year, there aren't any or atleast many multi-CPU or 64 bit support Games, maybe DirectX 10 will change that. Also isn't the processing power half of what it will be in games?
Same with Video Cards. Usually ATI is a generation ahead in Shader Support. And real graphical power comes from your ram, not so much your video card since its more cost effective. 1GB system ram costs as much as a 128MB video card. Video Ram processes graphics better, but cost too much. I recommend getting a cheap brand of ATI. Like an ATI X1650, then buy like 4 GB ram. Right now the Nvidia 8800 is showings its bells and whistles with a $500 price tag for the cheapest one. It will probably be shot down in a few months when ATI releases its X2000 series with better shaders.
Firstly it really helps if we have some idea of what your budget is.
As already mentioned, forget about using your 9550. Slow and obsolete format.
For CPU's AMD provides the best bang for the buck. Not only are the CPU's a little less expensive but so are the equivalent motherboards. Since CPU cost goes up exponentially with CPU speed, the lower speed ones are a better value and usually better overclockers. Video card cost, on the other hand, tends to increase linearly with speed. For a fixed budget I usually suggest a lower clock speed CPU with the best video card that the budget allows.
Something like an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ or 4200+ with an ATI X1950pro or nVidia 7900GS would be a good start for an entry level gaming rig.
dual core beats quad core in games for the moment.
Nvidia sponsorship on games is a promotional tool for there brand... ATI does this too, Half life 2 etc... just that Nvidia has a better marketing team or has more capital to do this, maybe AMD will change this.
AM3 won't be on the horizon till late 2007 or early 2008 and its only pure speculation that K8L will be better than Conroe.
LGA775 already support quad core CPUs(Kentsfield) and more superior CPUs are on the way, Yorkfield for example. Something AM2 can only dream of at present and with AM3 comming i wouldn't bet against AM2 having a shorter life than socket 754. Granted AM3 CPUs will be backward compatible with AM2 but its going to come with a peformance hit and a feature lost. Just a gimmick in my book.
Right now the Opteron can't hold a candle to Xeon, you seem to have missed out Woodcrest, anyway its the same story of what Conroe is to K8.
Dual Core is great for multitasking, thats whats so great about it. One can be running a virus scan, browsing the net, listening to music and having a game running in the background without too much hassle. While a single core would crawl in this scenario.
Something your right on, as for pure gaming performance. Currently games are far too GPU limited for dual core to make a difference. As you pointed out this is of course where DX10 comes in and is hoped to remove GPU performance as the limithing factor for games. Future games such as Alan Wake will only run on multicore systems since it'll most probably be too multithreaded intensive for a single core CPU to handle. Im only speculating that this is when we'll see the extra processing power kick in for games. Multicore is the future, its currently the most feasible way to increase processing power, you can already see the difference with software that takes advantage of this, 100% in some cases.
As for the shader race, for the last few generations Nvidia has been ahead of ATI. Only time i remember ATI being ahead was SM2.0, with the Radeon 9500/9700. Geforce 6 was the first to support SM3.0, and Geforce 8 to support SM4.0.
If you know where to look, one can get a 8800GTS for under $400 much better value than a X1950XTX for $350.
And real graphics processing power comes from the GPU not the RAM, the GPU does the graphic rendering, the RAM just hold the data where the game sit. Having enough RAM prevent needless accessing of the hard drive for game data which can slow games down. Getting 4 gigs to run games on XP is a joke, i doubt any game today would utilise more than 1.5 gig alone and thats pushing it. Vista is another story, but investing in a Vista gaming rig today is just silly.
On a related note, I upgraded from a single core AMD 2.x Ghz processor (a 3000+ I think it was) and am now running an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400. This is the model with 2 MBs of cache. The performance improvement in games has been significant.
In EQ2's tree city of Felwith, for example, I was able to go from chugging along on a graphics setting of "Balanced" to moving around comfortably on "High Quality". (Someone once posted that EQ2 relies heavily on the processor for the calculation of shadows, so perhaps that's where the improvement came from.)
My system is using the same graphics card (6800 GT) and RAM that it was using prior to the upgrade. The only thing that changed was the motherboard and processor.
I'm a hug AMD fan, but buying this Core 2 Duo is the best thing that I could've done for my computer. Do not hold yourself back due to fanboism. I am very disappointed that Intel is such a heavy performer at the moment, but I'm not going to gimp my experience at my computer because of that.
Unrelated to games, playback of high def videos has become flawless. Over all system performance has also improved, though that's largely in the area of multi-tasking.
Do not buy a single core processor. I am even plotting an upgrade path to a quad core based system.
~Mysk
Like many who have already posted I am also a big supporter of AMD, but I can't ignore the fact that everywhere I have looked and read people who are far more informed than I am are saying the Intel Core 2 Duo is the only option for CPU's right now.
I'm also an ATI fan but I'm not sure I can honestly say I believe they have an edge in the video card wars right now.
Fortunately for me I'm still very happy with my AMD 3200+ and ATI-driven Sapphire X850XT.
My general advice to anyone buying a computer is DO NOT cheap out on the motherboard (which is one reason I will never buy a prepackaged computer)!
And RAID 0 rocks for reducing load times.
My .02
Yup listen to you, I goofed on my response. I forgot to look at the benchmarks for the Woodcrest. Still AMD hasn't had a chance to show its true colors yet with the new technology. They only rescently got access to the 65nm chips, while intel has had it for 9 months before AMD. Granted its first chip showing isn't all to quite up to the current Core 2 Duo's power, but niether was Intels first. Waiting till Q2 2007 could show a major market shift again that Intel doesn't get out of for 3 years until they get another tidbit of new technology.
On the Dual/Single Core I guess I am too used to playing a game on its own to bother using its actual power. But when you think about it. However, a Dual Core has a limited dedicated amount of processing power to a single task, which is why its not so hot for gaming. You would have to dedicate the same processing power to background tasks as you would to the game your currently playing. Not to mention the cost of a 2.4 ghz and up gets pretty expensive; although overclocking a cheap on is an option.
When your talking about games, the graphics all comes down to the ram to see how much textures it can hold. Most of todays games run at 200-300k triangles drawn at any time, 500k stretching it. Even the bargain brand video cards can churn out a million triangles. The real need for the ram comes from the textures. There are the officianado's who get the 4096 texture replacements to get even more detail and this is the real need for ram. Although I don't know where I came up with 4 GB, shoulda been 1 GB. The need for GPU comes for rendering; and the power in the 8800 really is only necessary in 3D video production. Granted it will get you a pretty smooth mousing around in a 3ds max in a high poly screen. At $400 you might as well start getting the dedicated workstation cards. I think I shoulda saved my shader judgement.
I'm still gonna wait till April to really think of Intel as the returning King to CPUs, jumping on the gun for the newest flashy technology without the competition can do can lead to me getting a Pentium 4 with RD ramm again.
IN ernst you shouldn't trust any single source of information. Careful study of the Intel ad benchamrks reveals their flaws, but you also learn of the AMD benchmark "issues" once you look close enough.
Sites such as I posted are good for narrowing down you options though (due to pricing and if an issue is common place). After taht start searchign for data by model number. Researching is of worth learning or most fields of your life.
Yup listen to you, I goofed on my response. I forgot to look at the benchmarks for the Woodcrest. Still AMD hasn't had a chance to show its true colors yet with the new technology. They only rescently got access to the 65nm chips, while intel has had it for 9 months before AMD. Granted its first chip showing isn't all to quite up to the current Core 2 Duo's power, but niether was Intels first. Waiting till Q2 2007 could show a major market shift again that Intel doesn't get out of for 3 years until they get another tidbit of new technology.
On the Dual/Single Core I guess I am too used to playing a game on its own to bother using its actual power. But when you think about it. However, a Dual Core has a limited dedicated amount of processing power to a single task, which is why its not so hot for gaming. You would have to dedicate the same processing power to background tasks as you would to the game your currently playing. Not to mention the cost of a 2.4 ghz and up gets pretty expensive; although overclocking a cheap on is an option.
When your talking about games, the graphics all comes down to the ram to see how much textures it can hold. Most of todays games run at 200-300k triangles drawn at any time, 500k stretching it. Even the bargain brand video cards can churn out a million triangles. The real need for the ram comes from the textures. There are the officianado's who get the 4096 texture replacements to get even more detail and this is the real need for ram. Although I don't know where I came up with 4 GB, shoulda been 1 GB. The need for GPU comes for rendering; and the power in the 8800 really is only necessary in 3D video production. Granted it will get you a pretty smooth mousing around in a 3ds max in a high poly screen. At $400 you might as well start getting the dedicated workstation cards. I think I shoulda saved my shader judgement.
I'm still gonna wait till April to really think of Intel as the returning King to CPUs, jumping on the gun for the newest flashy technology without the competition can do can lead to me getting a Pentium 4 with RD ramm again.
You seem to be confused, going to a smaller fab process doesn't mean a new CPU architecture.
Brisbane isn't shining because its still using the K8 architecture, its still a Athlon 64 at heart. So its going to pale in comparison to Core 2 Duo performance wise. Similar reason why Intels first 65nm offering wasn't too hot, since it was a Pentium D/Pentium 4 based on the old NetBurst architecture. Advantages of die shrink saves manufacturing cost, reduces power consumption, lowers heat dissipation and of course yield higher clock speeds. Intel being on 65nm fab for months is becuase they're ahead in R&D and will soon be heading to 45nm fab offering higher clocked Core 2 Duos.
AMD won't have a chance to be competitive performance wise until they release their new architecture "K8L" to combat Intels latest "Conroe" and K8L isn't expected till late 2007 or early 2008. K8L is still on paper and its performance is per speculation, theoretical at best. And its not even a totally new architecture built from the ground up, more like a improved more efficient K8.
Yes a dual core CPU have a limited dedicated processing power, thats pretty obvious but its nonetheless would offer twice the processing power as a single core CPU in a multithreaded situation. How much processing power is dedicated to a task depends on the load of the task, same with a single core CPU, but a dual core CPU has two cores to play with. So it can handle more task at once with ease. Making it far more versatile and handle far more load at once better than a single core. And i don't know what point you're trying to make here, since a dual core CPU would play a game just as well as a single core CPU if not better.
Ok i'm confused if you're on about system memory(RAM) holding the textures or the video memory(VRAM), whenever possible it'll be the video memory holding the textures since it'll be the fastest for the GPU to access. Second resort would be the system memory if the video memory buffer isn't enough, the last resort would be the hard drive if the system memory is saturated.
The 8800 is a games card not a workstation card, it has its place for those that demand it, to play games at high resolution with high graphic filtering(aka high graphics)...and still maintain high playable frame rate. Get a workstation card to play games? Whats the point, be a waste of money and the 8800 would play the games better.
If you can wait, then wait till Q3 2007-Q1 2008, thats when AMD is going to have their new offering, K8L/AM3 that supports DDR3 RAM. Until then Intel has the best CPU for gaming, no doubt.
radeon 9550 is nuttin.
best cpu for gaming and reccommended is amd athlon FX-62 dual core. get radeon x850xt/pe for a hundred bucks if u only play current games that use shader 2.0 such as world of warcraft, D&Donline, final fantasy 11 etc.... its a great card and fast and great for the money! but if u planning to play gods and heroes, gothic 3, vanguard etc.... get atleast x1800xt/7800gt.
in a mmorpg.... the crucial-est part is the ram! mmorpg needs lots of ram! although video card bo0st up frame rates but it wont stop from sudden chunk of choppy-ness.... mmorpgs has thousands of player in each server and it may lagg especially when plenty in ur screen.... to reduce the chunk of sudden choppy-ness get as much ram as posible..... 4gig of ram is superb! but 2gig is go0d!
Shhh..... it will hear, ive managed to convince mine to play most of the new titles, yes I know its not supposed to be able to but it seems as long as i dont tell it and fiddle with a few memory hog settings it just gets on with it.
Shame on you being mean to a senior citizen graphics card.
Shhh..... it will hear, ive managed to convince mine to play most of the new titles, yes I know its not supposed to be able to but it seems as long as i dont tell it and fiddle with a few memory hog settings it just gets on with it.
Shame on you being mean to a senior citizen graphics card.
any card can run a game.... but be ready to set to the lowest settings and get no eye candy with below average frame rates and yeah jus like u said
Shhh..... it will hear, ive managed to convince mine to play most of the new titles, yes I know its not supposed to be able to but it seems as long as i dont tell it and fiddle with a few memory hog settings it just gets on with it.
Shame on you being mean to a senior citizen graphics card.
any card can run a game.... but be ready to set to the lowest settings and get no eye candy with below average frame rates and yeah jus like u said
I suggest you upgrade yourself with Sense of Humour V.2.0.
Love to stay and chat but my 9550 needs it meds and some help round the garden with its walker