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Max Settings Videocard for <$200?

R

Ravien

n00b
Joined
Aug 27, 2012
Messages
63
[H],

I've come to that point in my computer's life where everything sucks and I hate life. Anotherwords, my video card isn't cutting it anymore. Then again, it's also my CPU, but we'll not talk about that too much. But to start this all off, I have to tell a story. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to hear about my love affair with a video card.

Three years ago I bought this card, a nice shiny GTX9800+ for $125USD. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500088 , and this card continued to provide me with beautiful, max setting gaming for years to come. Specifically, until about 3 months ago, when I bought The Witcher 2. Sure I had frame spikes down into 20's from time to time in games like Skyrim and Mass Effect 3, but that's because of the bottleneck on my 2.7ghz AthlonX2, but I was fine with everything until GW2 came out on Saturday. The game is barely playable (~20 av fps) for me at medium settings, and this is unacceptable. Strangely, I can still play Diablo 3 60+ Max. *shrug*

So my question becomes, is it possible to get a card around the same price point that will give me great gaming performance for the next 3-4 years? And is my card actually still good, and I just need to get my CPU upgrade? AMD/NVidia, I'm not racist. Recommendations?
 
Ravien said:
Strangely, I can still play Diablo 3 60+ Max. *shrug*
Click to expand...

So can the computer you threw out when you got your current one 3 years ago lol. That game was designed to appeal to the widest audience possible, and that meant making sure the graphics were really, really simple.

Ravien said:
So my question becomes, is it possible to get a card around the same price point that will give me great gaming performance for the next 3-4 years? And is my card actually still good, and I just need to get my CPU upgrade? AMD/NVidia, I'm not racist. Recommendations?
Click to expand...

Are you willing to buy used? If not, the card you want to be looking at right now is the AMD Radeon 7850 IMO. While they start at $200, I'm fairly sure you can find one (new) for less with a bit of bargain-hunting. Admittedly, it's more than the $125 you spent 3 years ago. Your other choices are either 7770/7750, or last gen stuff. (Nvidia's cheapest card this gen is $300). I can't really help you WRT to last gen stuff.

Good luck!
 
First question - at what resolution are you playing at?
Second - What PSU do you have? Manufacturer and wattage.

Secondly, you will not be getting much of an increase in performance for anything around $200 without first upgrading that CPU - which also means upgrading that motherboard.

Basically, you are at the point that a single GPU upgrade will be bottlenecked by the rest of your system, and thus simply upgrading 1 part will not yield better results. The reason why you can play Diablo 3 is cause the game is based off of graphics from the N64 - at leas that's what they look like anyways (of course I'm kidding people).

In short, yeah, you are going to have to upgrade everything slowly. I would recommend starting with the GPU - You can grab an HD 6950 and unlock it to a 6970 for around $175 here on the forums and that will be the BEST bang for your buck ANYWHERE. While this will be SEVERELY bottlenecked by your current setup (and you might have to upgrade your PSU depending on which one), it will still show you a nice increase in FPS. Next I would muster up another $200 and get yourself an i3 cpu with a cheap p67 board. This one should last you for a while.
 
Athlon X2 ? 2.7ghz. is that a kuma? They can overclock to like 3ghz on stock heatsink probably. then you could buy a used GTX 470 for around $85 , i know someone selling a pair too.

Some games you will be able to play excellent and others you will be choked by CPU. I still think the majority of games are dual core optimized, but thats starting to change. Id take your $200 and buy a motherboard / processor / ram. I recently got an AMD 1045T with a gigabyte board for $99 after rebate. In your case id go for the phenom II 965 because you will benefit from the extra clock speed vs two cores of 1045t.

Then with $30 you can get 4gb ddr3 1600. then check your sofas and car for spare change and try to get a used GTX 470. They are power hungry and tend to run hot, but mine scores 4550 in 3dmark2011 about 5% faster then a 6870 which is also more expensive.
 
SBSuperfly said:
:confused:

Is that a socket 939 motherboard? Time for a new build. No upgrade you do will make modern games much more playable.
Click to expand...

Hah. No, actually, I built the machine as an upgrade from a Socket 939 motherboard that I couldn't put a new video card in because it was a boxed gateway machine with a BTX motherboard and the x16 on top. Anotherwards, if you want a double slot, you'd have to rip out your sound ports and put some tin snips on the case.
The current machine is a socket AM2

Phishy714 said:
First question - at what resolution are you playing at?
Second - What PSU do you have? Manufacturer and wattage.

Secondly, you will not be getting much of an increase in performance for anything around $200 without first upgrading that CPU - which also means upgrading that motherboard.

Basically, you are at the point that a single GPU upgrade will be bottlenecked by the rest of your system, and thus simply upgrading 1 part will not yield better results. The reason why you can play Diablo 3 is cause the game is based off of graphics from the N64 - at leas that's what they look like anyways (of course I'm kidding people).

In short, yeah, you are going to have to upgrade everything slowly. I would recommend starting with the GPU - You can grab an HD 6950 and unlock it to a 6970 for around $175 here on the forums and that will be the BEST bang for your buck ANYWHERE. While this will be SEVERELY bottlenecked by your current setup (and you might have to upgrade your PSU depending on which one), it will still show you a nice increase in FPS. Next I would muster up another $200 and get yourself an i3 cpu with a cheap p67 board. This one should last you for a while.
Click to expand...

I play at 1920x1080, downscaled to 1804x1014 (depends on how the current NCP feels like working) with an Apevia 680w psu, iirc. I know I have an Antec 750w in the old system it replaced that I could use too, since that system is only running a single slot hd 4850 right now. As for my CPU, I'm planning on upgrading that too, as I do realize its a terrible bottleneck. I plan on shelling out for an 8-core bulldozer, but i'm holding out a bit until the trinitys come out - because either way, it's a full redo for me, since in order to upgrade to even an AM2+ I have to move from DDR2 to DDR3. How much do you think it would help my bottleneck if I overclocked the CPU? I remember reading people were getting around 3.2 and higher with stock volts.

Sn0_Man said:
So can the computer you threw out when you got your current one 3 years ago lol. That game was designed to appeal to the widest audience possible, and that meant making sure the graphics were really, really simple.

Are you willing to buy used? If not, the card you want to be looking at right now is the AMD Radeon 7850 IMO. While they start at $200, I'm fairly sure you can find one (new) for less with a bit of bargain-hunting. Admittedly, it's more than the $125 you spent 3 years ago. Your other choices are either 7770/7750, or last gen stuff. (Nvidia's cheapest card this gen is $300). I can't really help you WRT to last gen stuff.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

What does WRT mean? (srry, n00b)
 
buttons said:
Athlon X2 ? 2.7ghz. is that a kuma? They can overclock to like 3ghz on stock heatsink probably. then you could buy a used GTX 470 for around $85 , i know someone selling a pair too.

Some games you will be able to play excellent and others you will be choked by CPU. I still think the majority of games are dual core optimized, but thats starting to change. Id take your $200 and buy a motherboard / processor / ram. I recently got an AMD 1045T with a gigabyte board for $99 after rebate. In your case id go for the phenom II 965 because you will benefit from the extra clock speed vs two cores of 1045t.

Then with $30 you can get 4gb ddr3 1600. then check your sofas and car for spare change and try to get a used GTX 470. They are power hungry and tend to run hot, but mine scores 4550 in 3dmark2011 about 5% faster then a 6870 which is also more expensive.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is the Kuma. That, and it doesn't have the stock heatsink, I took the stock heatsink off a newer phenom, so it's even better. I plan on doing a full upgrade soon, so this is just a stopgap measure, in all reality, trying to put off upgrading the mainboard until the next series comes out.
 
Ravien said:
I play at 1920x1080, downscaled to 1804x1014 (depends on how the current NCP feels like working) with an Apevia 680w psu, iirc. I know I have an Antec 750w in the old system it replaced that I could use too, since that system is only running a single slot hd 4850 right now. As for my CPU, I'm planning on upgrading that too, as I do realize its a terrible bottleneck. I plan on shelling out for an 8-core bulldozer, but i'm holding out a bit until the trinitys come out - because either way, it's a full redo for me, since in order to upgrade to even an AM2+ I have to move from DDR2 to DDR3. How much do you think it would help my bottleneck if I overclocked the CPU? I remember reading people were getting around 3.2 and higher with stock volts.
Click to expand...

Overclocking the CPU will help for sure, but a full redo upgrade would honestly be the best way to go. If this is a gaming computer - and not something used for multi-thread applications - then I would stick with Intel cause those 8-core bulldozers get beat by Phenom II's.
 
WRT = with respect to. I meant that I don't know a ton about last gen. The 6950 unlocked to 6970 the other guy mentioned seems like a decent plan but I wouldn't know.

If you want to overclock, it will help, but GW2 is still going to EAT your system pretty much no matter what you do until you upgrade.
 
Brand new, the gtx480 is the strongest you can get for 200 bucks, in terms of raw power. Psu needs to be taken into consideration though... As for hd6950 unlocking, I believe you could only do that with the early editions before it was "fixed", not 100% sure though. Cpu concerns, as mentioned above.
 
Ravien said:
Yes, it is the Kuma. That, and it doesn't have the stock heatsink, I took the stock heatsink off a newer phenom, so it's even better. I plan on doing a full upgrade soon, so this is just a stopgap measure, in all reality, trying to put off upgrading the mainboard until the next series comes out.
Click to expand...

I had a kuma for myself and built one for my father. Not good overclockers regardless of what heatsink you use. 3.0ghz was pretty easy, anything over that i had to fight for. I ran mine at 3.15ghz i think, left my fathers at 3.0ghz. any dual core optimized game should run fine. other titles like Battlefield 3 or some of the console ports like Grand Theft auto will not.

I say overclock what you got, and wait for piledriver FX 8350 reviews. If its not a lot better then the 8150, i still say go for a phenom II 965 because I think it offers great value. Even if you dont have a microcenter around you, i saw compusa selling a crap case, psu, then a AM3+ 970 motherboard 4gb of ram, phenom II 965 for $209

On a budget 965 is a solid choice, my last one overclock to 4.3ghz with corsair H60.
 
Jorona said:
What is your mainboard? You might be able to drop a Phenom 2 in it.
Click to expand...
It's an Asus M4A78+ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131381
I think I might be able to drop a phenom 2 with a bios update. What would you recommend?

Phishy714 said:
Overclocking the CPU will help for sure, but a full redo upgrade would honestly be the best way to go. If this is a gaming computer - and not something used for multi-thread applications - then I would stick with Intel cause those 8-core bulldozers get beat by Phenom II's.
Click to expand...

I've never cared for intel because it's always been way too high on prices, and terrible for upgrades because they flip their socket on its head every other quarter. So are phenom 2's real good for gaming?

So most people here are recommending AMD 6k/7k or NV 480. I have to admit, I'm kinda out of touch with the current state of graphics cards. how would a 550TI fit in the picture? it looks like they're selling at right around the same price point as the 9800 I have in the system currently was when I got it, so how would they compare to either of those cards on performance?
 
buttons said:
I had a kuma for myself and built one for my father. Not good overclockers regardless of what heatsink you use. 3.0ghz was pretty easy, anything over that i had to fight for. I ran mine at 3.15ghz i think, left my fathers at 3.0ghz. any dual core optimized game should run fine. other titles like Battlefield 3 or some of the console ports like Grand Theft auto will not.

I say overclock what you got, and wait for piledriver FX 8350 reviews. If its not a lot better then the 8150, i still say go for a phenom II 965 because I think it offers great value. Even if you dont have a microcenter around you, i saw compusa selling a crap case, psu, then a AM3+ 970 motherboard 4gb of ram, phenom II 965 for $209

On a budget 965 is a solid choice, my last one overclock to 4.3ghz with corsair H60.
Click to expand...

To be completely honest, while value is a moderate concern, not having to replace it for another 3-4 years is more important to me. Still stick to the 965? Also, strange thing about the machine, it lags in the games I mentioned above, but gets 30+ fps on max in BF3.

Another important question: how important is memory bit size? my old card is 512mb 256bit GDDR3... and it seems most of the budget cards run with 128bit gddr5 1gb... does the bit rate make a big difference?
 
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Jorona said:
Any Phenom will drop into that board. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M4A78_PLUS/#CPUS

Get a GTX460/470/560/ti/ti 448 used and drop a Phenom 2 in there and it will be a whole different animal.
Click to expand...

God that's awesome. So top tier Phenom IIs outclass bulldozers? Will I lose any performance by not upgrading to a full AM3 motherboard? How much worse off will I be with DDR2 and not DDR3?

Could someone explain to me the architecture of naming conventions for NVidia and ATI? I know back in the day it used to be Radeon XYZ0, X being generation, Y being 6-budget, 7-middle, 8-high, and 9-dualgpu, and I never understood Z too much. And well, last time I was current on NVidia was before the GTX series, so nothing makes sense to me. And from generation to generation, how does it transfer over? Like is a 480 better than a 560?
 
I swapped out an x2 6000+ for a 975 phenom II in my rig, and I'd say it's worth it. I have a 7970 running Skyrim at 2560x1440 and it really cuts down the number of times the frame rate tanks. I did have to replace the bios so the chip was recognized.
 
There was very little difference between the Deneb (Most x4s) DDR2 and 3 memory performance. Thuban (some x4s, all x6s) was a much more significant improvement going to DDR3, but still only 10-15%. The top Tier Phenoms match Bulldozers in some loads. I wouldn't say outclass though.

ATI Radeon was XYZ0 X-Generation Y-Core and Z-Class. 4830, 4850, and 4870s all used the same GPU, but had different Clocks and memory configurations.
AMD Radeon bumped out the dual core from being a core designation and moves everything up one. So now 9 is enthusiast rather then dual GPU.

Nvidia is Prefix XY0 Suffix X-Generation Y-Class. Prefix G for general, GT for Performance, and GTX for Enthusiast. Suffix is basically Ti means a mid step (Instead of making the GTX565, they made the GTX560Ti) there are also Core versions, that have more shaders unlocked then the original version, like the GTX260-216 core version.

Yes, the GTX480 is faster then a 560. Its also faster then the 560ti. The 560ti 448 edition is very similar though and uses less wattage. A rough rule of thumb is (and don't flame me with exceptions, there are some) Go up a generation, go down a Class. A GTX480 is very similar in performance to a GTX570. A GTX460 is very similar in performance to a GTX275. A HD4870 is very similar in performance to a HD5770. So on and so forth.
 
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Jorona said:
There was very little difference between the Deneb (Most x4s) DDR2 and 3 memory performance. Thuban (some x4s, all x6s) was a much more significant improvement going to DDR3, but still only 10-15%. The top Tier Phenoms match Bulldozers in some loads. I wouldn't say outclass though.

ATI Radeon was XYZ0 X-Generation Y-Core and Z-Class. 4830, 4850, and 4870s all used the same GPU, but had different Clocks and memory configurations.
AMD Radeon bumped out the dual core from being a core designation and moves everything up one. So now 9 is enthusiast rather then dual GPU.

Nvidia is Prefix XY0 Suffix X-Generation Y-Class. Prefix G for general, GT for Performance, and GTX for Enthusiast. Suffix is basically Ti means a mid step (Instead of making the GTX565, they made the GTX560Ti) there are also Core versions, that have more shaders unlocked then the original version, like the GTX260-216 core version.

Yes, the GTX480 is faster then a 560. Its also faster then the 560ti. The 560ti 448 edition is very similar though and uses less wattage. A rough rule of thumb is (and don't flame me with exceptions, there are some) Go up a generation, go down a Class. A GTX480 is very similar in performance to a GTX570. A GTX460 is very similar in performance to a GTX275. A HD4870 is very similar in performance to a HD5770. So on and so forth.
Click to expand...

This helps me so much, thank you.

how much does GDDR3 vs GDDR5 matter? Is it a huge difference?
 
Yeah definitely grab another Phenom II. That is a great suggestion and you should be able to find some good deals on used ones.

For video cards, you could get another 9800 GTX+ for about 30-50 bucks. The performance should be similar to a single 6950. Worth checking into if your mobo and PSU can support it.
 
Ravien said:
This helps me so much, thank you.

how much does GDDR3 vs GDDR5 matter? Is it a huge difference?
Click to expand...

Pretty much all the cards right now use GDDR5. Think of GDDR3 as DDR2 for Video Cards and GDDR5 as DDR3 for video cards. Depending on how wide the memory bus is there cound be a huge to very little difference between GDDR5 and GDDR3. It really depends on the card.

MrKlingon said:
Yeah definitely grab another Phenom II. That is a great suggestion and you should be able to find some good deals on used ones.

For video cards, you could get another 9800 GTX+ for about 30-50 bucks. The performance should be similar to a single 6950. Worth checking into if your mobo and PSU can support it.
Click to expand...

His mobo was listed earlier and its not SLi capable. Also SLi 9800gtx's is no where near the same performance as a 6950, aswell as lacking DX11. You may want to do some more research before you start suggesting things to other people.
 
Jorona said:
Pretty much all the cards right now use GDDR5. Think of GDDR3 as DDR2 for Video Cards and GDDR5 as DDR3 for video cards. Depending on how wide the memory bus is there cound be a huge to very little difference between GDDR5 and GDDR3. It really depends on the card.



His mobo was listed earlier and its not SLi capable. Also SLi 9800gtx's is no where near the same performance as a 6950, aswell as lacking DX11. You may want to do some more research before you start suggesting things to other people.
Click to expand...

Obviously I was referring to a 6850, which SLi 9800 GTX+ should be on par with or ahead given that they are at a single 4850X2/GTX 280/GTX 460 performance level. Secondly DX11 is a subset of DX10 and if you knew anything about the API or programming in general you would know that DX10 uses the same render paths as DX11 while doing without a few DX11 features, namely tessellation, otherwise they are exactly the same. Thanks for taking the time to lay a giant turd of a reply like the troll you are though.
 
MrKlingon said:
Obviously I was referring to a 6850, which SLi 9800 GTX+ should be on par with or ahead given that they are at a single 4850X2/GTX 280/GTX 460 performance level. Secondly DX11 is a subset of DX10 and if you knew anything about the API or programming in general you would know that DX10 uses the same render paths as DX11 while doing without a few DX11 features, namely tessellation, otherwise they are exactly the same. Thanks for taking the time to lay a giant turd of a reply like the troll you are though.
Click to expand...

There is a big difference between the 6850 and the 6950... You can't hardly blame him for thinking that you had no idea what you were talking about. Not to metion the 45 days your account has been active. Lets not call each other names and get back to helping this poor guy find a suitable machine for cheap.
 
MrKlingon said:
Obviously I was referring to a 6850, which SLi 9800 GTX+ should be on par with or ahead given that they are at a single 4850X2/GTX 280/GTX 460 performance level. Secondly DX11 is a subset of DX10 and if you knew anything about the API or programming in general you would know that DX10 uses the same render paths as DX11 while doing without a few DX11 features, namely tessellation, otherwise they are exactly the same. Thanks for taking the time to lay a giant turd of a reply like the troll you are though.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately that not what you wrote. Regardless of subset, it still wouldn't be capable of DX11. Dx10, yes. Dx11, no. I'd still prefer the single card solution as to avoid synchronization issues with the SLi setup. You are correct that a 6850 would be on similar ground as SLi 9800GTXs though. I'd worry about vRam limitations though as the 9800s would only have 512mb compared to the 6850s 1gb.

I assure you, If I wanted to lay a giant turd, I would have. I simply informed you that you should do a little more research before you try to help people. Your suggestion would have wasted the OPs money and time for no reason. The applicable information had already been divulged. If I wanted to call you an imbecile, I would have. I chose to give you advice. Don't call my character into question.

Ravien, anything else you need?
 
Phishy714 said:
There is a big difference between the 6850 and the 6950... You can't hardly blame him for thinking that you had no idea what you were talking about. Not to metion the 45 days your account has been active. Lets not call each other names and get back to helping this poor guy find a suitable machine for cheap.
Click to expand...

Jorona said:
Unfortunately that not what you wrote. Regardless of subset, it still wouldn't be capable of DX11. Dx10, yes. Dx11, no. I'd still prefer the single card solution as to avoid synchronization issues with the SLi setup. You are correct that a 6850 would be on similar ground as SLi 9800GTXs though. I'd worry about vRam limitations though as the 9800s would only have 512mb compared to the 6850s 1gb.

I assure you, If I wanted to lay a giant turd, I would have. I simply informed you that you should do a little more research before you try to help people. Your suggestion would have wasted the OPs money and time for no reason. The applicable information had already been divulged. If I wanted to call you an imbecile, I would have. I chose to give you advice. Don't call my character into question.

Ravien, anything else you need?
Click to expand...

So... SLi would be a good choice, if it were available... what about crossfire? My board supports dual x8 crossfire, and I could easily get another 4870 (I have one in a secondary system), and throw it in crossfire.

(Actually, scratch that. While it sounds nice, and I would like to know about hte performance of that, GW2 has random force system halts that require a power supply disconnect in order to fix if you run it in crossfire [father's system has this issue])
 
If your main issue is playing Guild Wars 2 with good performance then I advise that you forget about crossfire and SLI with older gen technology. Get the best most up to date single video card that you can afford. And just to reiterate the above advice, a cpu upgrade is necessary to prevent bottlenecking.

As far as DDR2 memory vs DDR3 goes. I'm really not sure about the performance difference. I just know that it had to be done when I went from an Athlon X2 + 939 Mobo to an i7 plus x58 motherboard. I'm sure there's some difference, but I think mainly the architecture and the cpu itself made the most difference in performance.

The Athlon Phenom 965 can be found as low as 98 bucks from Buy.com with free shipping.
http://www.buy.com/prod/amd-phenom-...12kb-l2-cache-6mb/212624936.html?listingId=-1

So you're looking at about $100 upgrade on your cpu and probably $150-200 for your gpu. In all under $300 is not bad for the bump up in performance.
 
The big things that you need to know about DDR2 and DDR3 are power usage and price, DDR3 use less power than DDR2. Currently, you can get 4GB DDR2 ram for about $50, for that same amount you can 8GB of DDR3, another thing is capacity, most newer systems support more than 8GB of ram. Not sure if you'll ever need it, but its nice that its there. If you have a micro center near you, check out the store in your area, they usually have some nice prices on processors. As far as video cards, whether radeon hd 6850/geforce gtx 560 or better video card, will suit your needs just fine. I just want to make one note, if your going to use lots of AA and eye candy make sure you get a video card that has a 256-bit memory interface or higher, slimmer memory interfaces don't really like those things and will usually lead to big drops in framerates.
 
Hilmar said:
The big things that you need to know about DDR2 and DDR3 are power usage and price, DDR3 use less power than DDR2. Currently, you can get 4GB DDR2 ram for about $50, for that same amount you can 8GB of DDR3, another thing is capacity, most newer systems support more than 8GB of ram. Not sure if you'll ever need it, but its nice that its there. If you have a micro center near you, check out the store in your area, they usually have some nice prices on processors. As far as video cards, whether radeon hd 6850/geforce gtx 560 or better video card, will suit your needs just fine. I just want to make one note, if your going to use lots of AA and eye candy make sure you get a video card that has a 256-bit memory interface or higher, slimmer memory interfaces don't really like those things and will usually lead to big drops in framerates.
Click to expand...

Well, I already have 8gb DDR2, so I think I'm good on that. And my board supports up to 16 iirc, so I'm good there too. And I like max settings, so yeah :)

DarkTower said:
The new 660 non ti versions. Thats your best bet for a ~$200 card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130826
Click to expand...

Got any benchmarks on those that aren't nvidia biased?
 
Ravien said:
Well, I already have 8gb DDR2, so I think I'm good on that. And my board supports up to 16 iirc, so I'm good there too. And I like max settings, so yeah :)



Got any benchmarks on those that aren't nvidia biased?
Click to expand...

HD7850 is the best card for less than $200.

Hardocp just posted a review of the GTX660 (~$240) comparing it to the HD7870 and HD7850.
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/09/13/asus_geforce_gtx_660_directcu_ii_video_card_review/1

Main points:
- HD7850 is a tad slower, but cheaper and overclocks well, < $200.
- HD7870 and GTX660 are similar in performance and price, but the HD7870 is a tad faster, > $200.
- GTX560ti is the slowest of the bunch, < $200.
- GTX570 new is not worth its cost when compared to the GTX660 or HD7870, > $200.
 
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7850 hands down

it overclocks like a beast and power consumption is very low


imo best bang for the back atm
 
Phishy714 said:
Overclocking the CPU will help for sure, but a full redo upgrade would honestly be the best way to go. If this is a gaming computer - and not something used for multi-thread applications - then I would stick with Intel cause those 8-core bulldozers get beat by Phenom II's.
Click to expand...

Thats is wrong. Overclock the new fx chip and you leave the older AMD behind even if the phenom in overclocked the 8120/8150 will clock alot higher.
 
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