• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

CPU catchup?

Z

z0dd

n00b
Joined
Nov 1, 2004
Messages
58
I've been out of the PC building scene for ~4 years and need to upgrade. Is there an article to catch up on the latest CPU trends, benchmarks, price points, etc?

I'm looking for the best bang for my buck, no overheating issues or requires a wind tunnel to cool, I won't be overclocking and I prefer to keep the CPU cost under ~$350. I'm a gamer, but I mostly play MMOs (WoW, WAR, etc) right now, with the occasional other title thrown in every now and then.

Lastly, from what little I've read so far there doesn't seem to be much of a need for the quad cores, yet. Any comments on whether I should consider a quad core?
 
With 350 you can get yourself a quad core and put the savings towards another component..however they generally will need some overclocking. You should really set a budget for the entire build instead of only allowing so much money for each component because you *will* come under budget in this area and you may be required to go over budget in another.

As for quads being utilized properly, it is true that most software out will not take advantage of the extra cores offered. What else did you plan on doing with your computer? If we only consider games, as long as the quad is overclocked it will perform on par with the faster clocked dual cores. Since you're not overclocking, I'd lean towards an E8400 to get the most out of your stock clocks for your dollar.
 
Thank you gwai lo.

I would like to keep the cost of the entire upgrade, on the parts listed below, to under $1200. Here's what I'd like to buy (the items in parenthesis are what I've decided on already):

  • Motherboard
  • 4-8g RAM
  • Case & PS
  • Video board (Radeon HD 4870, ~$279)
  • CPU
  • CPU fan
  • Hard drive
  • OS (Vista 64)
  • DVD burner (Blu Ray burner affordable?)

I would greatly appreciate suggestions on the (many) items I haven't decided on yet. As I approach ~$1200, the Blu Ray burner would be the first upgrade that would go. Again, I will not overclock, and prefer stability over performance and headaches. The system will mostly be under stress for gaming only, as I don't care how long it takes me to encode something (I'll leave it on overnight for that).

EDIT: Added 4-8g RAM
 
For the board, I would go with any of the P45's depending on the features you want.

Cases are mostly personal opinion, for the power supply I'd lean towards the TX750 unless you want modular cabling. It is more wattage than you need, but it's priced very well. I think it's the cheapest here:
http://www.buy.com/prod/Corsair-TX-750W-ATX-12V-Power-Supply/q/loc/101/206178325.html

Processor, as stated earlier..E8400 here. I wouldn't bother with aftermarket cooling because you're not overclocking. If you're concerned about noise, give the thing a try first and then if it's too loud then buy something. Either way, you're getting the stock cooler..so the worst case scenario leaves you with a noisy computer for a few days. On the other hand, it may be 30-40 dollars saved if you're fine with the stock cooler.

Hard drive..I'd check out this site when you purchase. The WD6400AAKS has been tested and has proven to be a very good performer for its price. Seagate's got a similar offering at the same size and it looks promising from a few HD Tune numbers. However, WD's is currently the cheapest.
 
Thanks again. I forgot to mention my noise preferences. Some time ago I moved all of my ULTRA NOISY desktops into the basement and ran the I/O cables through the floor into my "office". noise isn't a major issue now, neither is ambient room temperature, but I'm sure I could still hear, and be aggravated by, those buzz saw sounding video board and huge CPU fans.

I'm still desperately searching for a recent CPU roundup article. I can't find one, even on my "go to" hardware sites (Sharky's, Tom's, Anand, Tech zone). The long list of available Intel CPUs is staggering, and I don't know which does what. I'm reading some wiki articles, but these don't cover benchmarks or performance. :)

Is it safe to assume the best (in my range) performing CPU brand right now comes from Intel? I won't upgrade again for 3-4 years, at least, so should I opt for a quad core?
 
Intel's got most of the price points covered pretty well especially when the chips are overclocked.

The major families of chips to look at right now are the dual core Wolfdales (E8x00's), quad core Yorkfields (Q9xx0's), and the E21x0's for the budget budget end. In various places between those families are the venerable Q6600 and the budget Wolfdale, the E7200. I know you're looking for one of those big round up articles, but I haven't seen a recent one. Techreport's got one but it's a few months old, so it won't include the top and low end E8x00's and the E9xx0's, but they're not too different from these chips.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14756
Xbit's also got an article that hits the high end E8x00's, Q6600, mid end Q9450 (you can just guesstimate the Q9550's performance as it's just a bump in the mulitplier, and the low end Q9300.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e8600.html
 
For the cost of the Q6600 I don't think you could go wrong with it. And, yes, even though "most" software is not multi-threaded Windows itself will utilize all 4 cores. It's been that way since NT 4.0. Not saying the E8400 is a bad choice, because it's not. It's a hell of a cpu for an awesome price. Either way, at stock speed, they'll perform about the same. You won't see any difference in games like WoW. Hell, I didn't see a difference in WoW going from an Opteron 165 to my Q6600. But the Q6600 does have 2mb more cache and more collective processing power for $20 more.

To Quad or not to Quad is entirely up to you.
 
The xbit article linked above by gwai lo shows a significant performance improvement in Unreal Tourney 3, which is optimized for more than 2 core CPUs. Yes, it's something to consider. I'm debating between the E8600 and the Q9650.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top