Athlon II x4 630 worthy upgrade?

[gamer282]

Hi, I have an AMD 5200+ 2.7gig with 3 gigs of DDR 2-800. My GPU is the 9800gtx+ which seems to do a pretty decent job @ 1280. Now my question: I'm on a really tight budget and need to justify spending this amount of money (Which I shouldn't be due to savings etc), will the Athlon II x4 630 supply me with enough power to justify upgrading from the 5200+? My main reason for upgrading would be the fact that GTA 4 runs poorly with my current cpu( Have not finished it because of this) and Bad Company 2 will tear my dual core to pieces. So it would be for future games to come that require quad core too and the general performance increase in all other games. Thanks

 

[enzo matrix]

Yeah I would say so. The Athlon II will also perform better clock per clock so even if you were to get a 620 at 2.6GHz, each core would outperform one of your current cores. Not by much but still by a bit. I ran the CPU portion of the benchmark on my old 3200+ single core at 2.6GHz and on one core of my athlon IIx4 at 3.3GHz. This is 27% higher clock speed. but it performed 38% better.
If you overclock, get the 620 instead. They overclock about the same. stock settings 3.2GHz stable. If not, the 630 is a good choice. May I also suggest the athlon IIx3 440. In most games it's shown that 3 cores will perform the same as 4 at the same clock speed and the 440 is at 3GHz stock speed. Though I believe GTA4 would prefer the 4 cores.

 

[ronss]

the new cpus from amd are quite a bit faster, espicallly if you jump on a x3 or 4....yes....it would be a great upgrade. the x4 630 runs about like the q6600 intel quad.

Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu,2545-7.html

 

[blackjellognomes]

If you overclock, get the 620 instead. They overclock about the same.

They OC about the same, but the difference is still there. The 620's limitations are not the same as the 630's.
And the 630 is only $4 more on Newegg ATM.

 

[ronss]

the athlon II 630 runs equal to intel,s q8200, at a cost of 60% less

$99 here with free shipping-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103704&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Processors+-+Desktops-_-AMD-_-19103704

 

[enzo matrix]

I'd say it runs better. 466MHz is more than enough to make up for the IPC deficit and the lack of L3 cache.

 

[gamer282]

Thanks for the replies guys. Unfortunately I was going to swop my current motherboard for my mates one which is AM2+, but now my motherboard is giving issues so it won't be happening . Can you guys recommend a decent motherboard to go along with the x4 630? Cheapest but not nasty

 

[ronss]

this motherboard has most everything one needs..unless you going to run crossfire or sli-

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128376

newegg has sold a ton of em