Best budget gaming cpu

[bnot]

Hi all, I have been looking to start my new build and for a budget gaming pc obviously amd is the way but which one? I want to overclock (never done it before ). I was thinking either AMD Athlon II X4 620 or AMD Phenom II X2 550 black edition (great to overclock I hear)

Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P

Budget for CPU - £70 - 80 ish

 

[o1die]

I've never tried any of the black editions, but the 620 overclocked easily for me by changing the cpu fsb to 240 and the ram ratio to 1:1.66 on a low end msi board. Or you can try to enable the 2 disabled cores on the 550, but often they won't run stable.

 

[saaiello]

Well for that price range you are limited. I would say go for the Phenom it will outperform the athlon in most games. IMO I would look into the Phenom II x3 720BE also a great overclocker and you might even be able to unlock the 4th core but even if you cant the x3 will give you a little more wiggle room for performance in games even though most games only use 2 cores at least you will still have the 3rd core there to do background processes.

 

[Raidur]

Phenom II X2 will be a lot easier to OC like you heard and you'll be able get it a bit higher. You also have a chance of unlocking 4 cores and getting a cheap quad core (make sure your mobo can unlock them). Just know its only a chance, there is usually a good reason it has 2 cores disabled. The L3 helps in games as well.

Another thing to look at is what games you play / want to play. Most games are only dual core optimized and would actually run better on the X2 550 even if it was down-clocked to match the 620, however games that are quad core optimized well (which more new games are) they will probably see the 620 performing better.

So the Phenom II X2 will probably be faster in most games, but later on the 620 could come out on top.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3638&p=8

As you can see the quad core keeps up in the multi-threaded games, but falls behind in the single/dual threaded.

 

[SV_Bubbles]

I'd also look into a PII x3 720BE. It's the best of both worlds - overclocking and multi-threaded games with a touch of future proofing and a dash of 6mb of L3 cache at a nice price. This was a pitch btw.

 

[sanchz]

The price of the Athlon II X3 435 make the 720 obsolete since the 720 is much more expensive yet slightly faster. The best budget overclocker would be the x4 630 since it has a high multiplier.

 

[sparkle_ftw]

Newegg has a 720 oem for $106, if you want to overclock, oem is the way to go, you save money that way.

I have a 550BE, with 2 cores unlocked, it is pretty sweet. I would have honestly gotten the 435 if it was that cheap when I was buying though, great deal without the risk.

 

[marco324]

live near a microcenter good sale on cpu's and 30.00 off a motherboard good prices
720 retail $ 99.00 scroll down the bottom page in store pickup only
http://www.microcenter.com/