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

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[citation][nom]Deadboy90[/nom]Picked up an fx 8320 from Microcenter the other day, got it for only 160 bucks. Also, I'm having a blast trying to overclock it with my coolermaster hyper 212 Evo. And a bonus feature is that when I'm testing stability I have to leave the side of my case cracked open to keep the CPU under reasonable temps so my room gets nice and warm![/citation]

Needing to keep the case cracked open implies that your case doesn't have sufficient airflow 😉
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Needing to keep the case cracked open implies that your case doesn't have sufficient airflow[/citation]

Yea but if I get a new case I will lose all my stickers! The world must know that my motherboard is powered by Asus and Sapphire Radeon graphics!
 
[citation][nom]Deadboy90[/nom]Yea but if I get a new case I will lose all my stickers! The world must know that my motherboard is powered by Asus and Sapphire Radeon graphics![/citation]

Is there no room for more fans or even upgrading current fans a little?
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Is there no room for more fans or even upgrading current fans a little?[/citation]

Nope. Just one 120 mm case fan out and 2 80mm fans in. And I already bought the highest Cfm fan they had on newegg. 🙁. Doesn't bother me too much I only have to do it when I'm OCing and running prime 95.
 
Thank god they put the phenom x4's way higher. I have been saying for months that anyone who recommends a $100 Pentium over an $85 Phenom x4 965 is a moron. When overclocked to 4 GHz (Which is crazy easy) a Phenom bests even i3's by a little, and it also has 32 lanes of 2.0 PCIe so it can run 16/16 crossfire in many sub $80 motherboards. AND you can later upgrade to AMD's future steamroller.

The choice is obvious!!!
 
Oh and btw the FX-8350 should be a tier higher and the top tier should be divided into two tiers. I know the 8350 is far better than the Phenom because my brother did that upgrade and in many games his framerate doubled...
 
[citation][nom]CaptainTom[/nom]Oh and btw the FX-8350 should be a tier higher and the top tier should be divided into two tiers. I know the 8350 is far better than the Phenom because my brother did that upgrade and in many games his framerate doubled...[/citation]

That doesn't sync with our benchmark results at all.

What games is he seeing a framerate increase in? What were the settings, resolution, and actual frame rates according to FRAPS?
 


For the record his Phenom II x4 965 was at 3.99 GHz, and his FX-8320 was at 4 GHz or maybe 4.3 GHz.


His reported results:

Assassins Creed III in the forest and cities [All settings maxed out]:

25 FPS -> 50+ FPS


Hitman: Absolution [I assume max settings]:

He just said his framerate "doubled." Probably 30 FPS -> 60 FPS


Far Cry 3 [All settings maxed except shadows on High, and x2 MSAA]:

35-45 FPS -> 45-55 FPS



I can also say from personal experience that his PC running a highly overclocked 7950 got CPU bottlenecked at the same place my highly overclocked 7970 and i5-3570k did in your metro: 2033 medium setting benchmark of around 100 FPS.
 


Have you used one? The FX-8350 almost always keeps up with my i5-3570k, and the FX-4300 usually beats an i7-920.

I am gonna have to assume you are trolling...
 


I just bought an fx processor and my framerates doubled over my old phenom.
 
An X4 965 OEM ($75 at a number of US sites) is about as cheap as it gets for a still capable CPU for gaming. Not the best by any stretch, but good enough. I'm using an old X4 @ 4.0 Ghz and its more than fine for modern games with a good GPU.
 
[citation][nom]CaptainTom[/nom] [I assume max settings]:He just said his framerate "doubled."[/citation]

I'm seeing words like 'probably' in there.

Are you saying these are the frame rates you 'estimate' he has? Or were these actually measured in a repeatable, objective test?

I say this because the objective lab results we have from multiple games do not jive with what you've described here. In fact, the stock 980 performs almost identically compared to the FX-8350 in repeatable lab tests.
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]I'm seeing words like 'probably' in there. Are you saying these are the frame rates you 'estimate' he has? Or were these actually measured in a repeatable, objective test?I say this because the objective lab results we have from multiple games do not jive with what you've described here. In fact, the stock 980 performs almost identically compared to the FX-8350 in repeatable lab tests.[/citation]
I'm Captain_tom's brother, and I can vouch for what he is saying. All the settings were the same.
 


Well I can say that his framerate definitely doubled in ACIII. I saw this myself. lt_dan_zsu can give you the specifics. I would test ACIII if anything is to be tested. That game is know to require modern i5's and up so if a piledriver can keep up at all it means a lot!


Edit: Make sure to play in the cities and snowy forests though.
 
I would just like to say that 2 months ago i bought the Pentium G860 because of Tom's recommendations. Now they are telling people to get the Athlon x4.... Really??? I would just like to say my Sandy Bridge Dual Core @ 3ghz outperforms those things in *most games*. It doesn't matter how many cores a CPU has if they all suck! lol
 
I would just like to say that 2 months ago i bought the Pentium G860 because of Tom's recommendations. Now they are telling people to get the Athlon x4.... Really??? I would just like to say my Sandy Bridge Dual Core @ 3ghz outperforms those things in *most games*. It doesn't matter how many cores a CPU has if they all suck! lol
Click to expand...

I am so tired of this. I actually run these benchmarks and I can assure you that a Gxxx doesn't beat a these quad core's in ANY modern games! I am glad you like your cpu, but seriously you are gonna tell these people who have labs and a job running these tests that the mere mention of an Athlon is dumb?! Also recommendations change with time. The 680 was cheaper and stronger than the 7970 at launch. Now the opposite is true. Welcome to the world of PC's.
 
[citation][nom]CaptainTom[/nom]Well I can say that his framerate definitely doubled in ACIII. I saw this myself. lt_dan_zsu can give you the specifics. I would test ACIII if anything is to be tested. That game is know to require modern i5's and up so if a piledriver can keep up at all it means a lot!Edit: Make sure to play in the cities and snowy forests though.[/citation]

I am skeptical, but I will give Assassin's Creed III a try on our testbed. :)
 
[citation][nom]CaptainTom[/nom]Well I can say that his framerate definitely doubled in ACIII. I saw this myself. lt_dan_zsu can give you the specifics. I would test ACIII if anything is to be tested. That game is know to require modern i5's and up so if a piledriver can keep up at all it means a lot!Edit: Make sure to play in the cities and snowy forests though.[/citation]

Does he have an Nvidia card? The latest drivers bumped the performance of Nvidia cards on the game by A LOT. That, plus the better CPU could have probably doubled the FPS, but the CPU upgrade alone? I highly doubt that.
 


No he has a 7950 and he now gets solid 50-60 fps in the bad places...
 
In wow killing a world boss with 40 people, another 40 horde trying to kill you, plus the addons, good luck to any cpu on the market to date trying to do that at 60fps. Get in there Toms and do a world boss benchmark with 40 people :) thats a proper playing the game benchmark, not all this other crap i see like flying from one point to another, like really hahahahhah. fail benchmark
 
[citation][nom]mubin[/nom]I think AMD FX cpu should not be listed here. As it bottleneck in cpu intensive games and cant give a advantage over old pentium dual core.[/citation]

...someone dies when things like this are mentioned.
 
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