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defaultluser
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2006
- Messages
- 14,398
I'm doing a World of Warcraft build for a friend for about $500 (OS/Mon not included, all new parts), and this leaves me around $100-130 to spend on the processor. Unfortunately, the best-value processors in this price range are excellent at multi-threaded loads, but are marginal at single-threaded loads.
Every benchmark I've seen says that WoW doesn't scale beyond 2 cores, so I'm wary of wasting build money on a 3 or 4 core setup. That leaves me with a very short list of questionable choices:
Core 2 Duo - fast, but the socket is dead.
Phenom II X2/X3 - from the benchmarks I've seen, it's a step behind anything Intel.
Core i3 - fast but overpriced, questionable memory performance and there's no Turbo Boost in my price range.
Now, because I don't actually play WoW, I can't really infer much from the sparse benchmarks available. So, if anyone could tell me how playable WoW is on a given low-end processor, I would appreciate it. I mean, all my worries are moot if the poor performance I've seen from the Phenom is still "good enough."
I don't want to depend on overclocking the machine because this guy is a complete newbie at computer building, so that's something for way further down the line. He also lives a couple hours away from me, so I'm not in driving distance if his machine suddenly has stability problems from the overclock.
Of course, if anyone can magically build me a Core i7 750/4GB system for $500 shipped with a 5670/GT240 or better, no MIRs, this would all be easily solved - but unfortunately, it's more in the $600 range
Every WoW benchmark I've seen shows the i7 750 destroying everything else below $200.
Every benchmark I've seen says that WoW doesn't scale beyond 2 cores, so I'm wary of wasting build money on a 3 or 4 core setup. That leaves me with a very short list of questionable choices:
Core 2 Duo - fast, but the socket is dead.
Phenom II X2/X3 - from the benchmarks I've seen, it's a step behind anything Intel.
Core i3 - fast but overpriced, questionable memory performance and there's no Turbo Boost in my price range.
Now, because I don't actually play WoW, I can't really infer much from the sparse benchmarks available. So, if anyone could tell me how playable WoW is on a given low-end processor, I would appreciate it. I mean, all my worries are moot if the poor performance I've seen from the Phenom is still "good enough."
I don't want to depend on overclocking the machine because this guy is a complete newbie at computer building, so that's something for way further down the line. He also lives a couple hours away from me, so I'm not in driving distance if his machine suddenly has stability problems from the overclock.
Of course, if anyone can magically build me a Core i7 750/4GB system for $500 shipped with a 5670/GT240 or better, no MIRs, this would all be easily solved - but unfortunately, it's more in the $600 range
Every WoW benchmark I've seen shows the i7 750 destroying everything else below $200.
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