Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

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This is for those who don't know what a cluster core is.....Windows 7 and 8 doesn't officially tell you how many cores you have for AMD FX Series. FX Series is using cluster cores. Cluster core are multiple cores within a processor. FX-8350 will show 4 cores on Windows 7 pro.....but remember, each core has 2 cores. 4 cluster cores(bulldozer) x 2 native cores/per cluster = 8 cores.
 


What Xeon are you talking about? There might be as many as thousands of them going back at least as far as the Netburst years. Furthermore, several of the current Xeons have integrated graphics.
 

They're called modules, not cluster cores.
 

yet the overclockable intel chips are ranked higher then the non-overclockable chips. it's a valid question, when an FX 6300 can be overclocked easily within a whisker of stock i5-2500k performance numbers why it's rated lower; especially since no one buys an
AMD with the intention of using it at stock speeds.


ugh... when HT translates into more then 20%-30% improvement in performance over a single non HT core in ALL applications (as it famously usually results in poorer per thread performance in most gaming situations) we can start to talk about a 4 core intel CPU with 8 threads.

As it stands right now an i7 is basically a 4(5)... 4 core CPU with 5 full thread performance in some aps.



you're not helping in any way.


+1
 


The overclocking chips are not ranked higher than the non-overclocking CPUs in the hierarchy chart unless there's more of a difference than the overclocking itself. The overclocking CPUs in the recommendations list are only in there because at their point, overclocking is the only way to get a realistic performance gain over the previous non-overclocking recommendation.

It really isn't a valid point to interpret this in any other way than what it is. If you wanted to ask for a similar article that's truly based on overclocking and that the top overclocking CPUs be moved from this list to it, then that would be a valid suggestion/recommendation. However, in the article's current state, those CPUs are where they should be.
 


It just seems strange to see a review claiming the i3 is a great buy at the price of an FX6300, which when overclocked (which the i3 can't do) will not only easily match the i3 but nearly pace the "gaming value king" i5-3570k and in multi-thread optimized games beat a stock one.

thats value which should be represented somewhere. this has long bugged me, as since xmas, when the price of the fx6300 came down a large number of people in the private computer consulting industry have been building low priced gaming rigs with fx6300 cpus, because of the insane value/performance you get. Its a nice overclocking monster... and while there are intel chips better, when you're building a system to match a 600-800 budget it gets hard to justify the premium paid for the i5 parts... and the i3 simply don't compete.

particularly when you can find the fx6300 + or - $5 of the i3-3220

of course, i'm beating a dead horse with this point. last month i made a similar comment.
 
It just seems strange to see a review claiming the i3 is a great buy at the price of an FX6300, which when overclocked (which the i3 can't do) will not only easily match the i3 but nearly pace the "gaming value king" i5-3570k and in multi-thread optimized games beat a stock one.

thats value which should be represented somewhere. this has long bugged me, as since xmas, when the price of the fx6300 came down a large number of people in the private computer consulting industry have been building low priced gaming rigs with fx6300 cpus, because of the insane value/performance you get. Its a nice overclocking monster... and while there are intel chips better, when you're building a system to match a 600-800 budget it gets hard to justify the premium paid for the i5 parts... and the i3 simply don't compete.

particularly when you can find the fx6300 + or - $5 of the i3-3220

of course, i'm beating a dead horse with this point. last month i made a similar comment.[/quotemsg]

so that is +/- $5 including an after market cooler. I do not think you are taking that into account. if you add the $20-100 for the ability to overclock is it still a good deal(codt of a good quiet CPU cooler). also never compare any chip to an i5 k edition that is not overclocked. nobody buys a k series chip and does not overclock it, at least nobody with half a mind.

your fx6300 probably would not beat out my i5 2500k at 4. Ghz

 


 
To Sakkura:
Modules and cluster core are the same thing....get a tech dictionary...A Cluster Cores are multiple cores within a core. While you are trying to play professor.....look at the knowledge and stop judging the concept.
 
I just have to say I bought a x4 955 over a year ago for $69. Prices may have gone up but i think you could still find it for that much. People can say what they want but after putting 600 in a budget computer and comparing benchmarks with my friends custom built i5 I would never purchase an i5. To me it is just not worth the extra money for an i5/i7. For months I've been waiting for toms to see this. Bout time.
 


as Tom's themselves said, you won't notice the difference in performance between cpus within 3 tiers of eachother. They're right too. I've been drooling over the performance i've been getting out of my 965be, and frankly, it plays and looks identical to my buddies i5-2500k.

Heck, i've got a friend with a wimpy little G630, and frankly... that little baby holds its own against the i5 and PhII pretty well too. CPUs are so silly overpowered these days, even the low end ones seem to be faster then anyone's day to day or even gaming needs.

Heck, of all the CPUs i've seen in the last 2 years the only one that impressed me was an A10-4600m APU. A mobile 4 core cpu, with enough gpu power to play modern games on high settings and enough energy efficiency to play those game for 7-9 hours on battery? That chip smoked the mobile i7 a buddy of mine had (in battery life it wasn't a contest, those discrete gpus eat up battery... and intel hd4000 just aint there yet). Very impressive cpu... it would be nice if the APUs on desktop could stand out like that as well, but right now they just aren't there...

I'm sure the new mobile cpus from intel will be impressive as well, and look forward to seeing them.
 

Agreed. Until recently, even a miserable X2 260 could play any game on decent settings. While I'm not certain that's true today, a X3 should still be able to.

 
Still kicken my Q9650 down the road for 4 years later. Would be interested in updating someday soon the haswell in the 220-280 range will certainly putt me down the road for another 4 years. On graphics side still waitin for the right monitor to push my graphics to upgrade my 6870. 40inch 4k monitor at 120hz would be nice..
 


+3 tiers... anything 3 tiers or less will seem like a pretty nominal change... just seeing the similarities between my buddies i5-2500k and my PhII x4 965 has kept me from upgrading.

Since i can't tell the difference, there is zero point to spending the cash to upgrade.
 
This is so old. Why repackage something with a new title and depict it as new? The 8350 is doing far better now with Crysis 3 and other games released. This is certainly not a solid list for April. Also the criteria of a cpu to establish itself as a gamer is rather vague and Intel-centric. The 8350 is for sure on par with the i5 3570k, the review just hasn't been edited since January... The i7's are where they should be, but the 8350 definitely deserves a bump up. I've run my own tests parallel with my 3770k
 
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