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

[logainofhades]

Microcenter takes itself out of competition for just that reason. No shipping does more harm when you're trying to reach potential buyers. As much as I'd like to pay them a visit, I still have to justify going 2 hrs out of my way for any of their deals. The money spent in gas could have been used to buy from New Egg, whom does deliver to my location.

Closest one to me is about an hr and half away. I try to stop by whenever I am in the area or make a day out of the trip and go there. Often I will go to Cabelas, then take the 15min drive down to MC, eat at Hot Shots or Hooters, then head home. 😀 People from the STL area will understand probably how that one works. :lol:

 

[Onus]

It was an ASRock Z77E-ITX, in a Lian Li PC-Q08R. CPU and GPU temps were good, but one day a VRM popped. All I can think is that either it was a quirk, or overall temps were too warm.
Oh, and nothing was overclocked.

 

[bassbeast]

I'd say the sweetest deal right now is the Athlon X3 450 and 455, these can be found for $45-$60 in a lot of spots and its looking like they are getting nearly 100% unlocks! If you can't find one the FX6 is a great steal at $100 but a 3.1Ghz-3.3Ghz quad for under $50? you just can't beat that.

 

[bassbeast]

^ for the price the old athlons still can put a smile on your face, But when you take the system price as a whole.i can build just as cheap with a apu or newer athlon.

Not when Newegg has plenty of AM3+ boards for under $50! You put the 2 together and you can get a PC plus board that will play the latest games, works great for multimedia, and you can get the whole smash for less than the FX6 CPU by itself? That's crazy cheap, I don't know of any cheaper for a quad!

The best deals ATM for the APUs is the Tiger kits, I have seen several of those at the $200 mark which if you need a new box with nothing coming from previous builds? Its a good buy. But most of us here have parts lying around and the Athlon X3 unlocked is the absolute dirt cheapest way to take an old system and bring it up to decent.

 

[logainofhades]

I wouldn't buy FM1 or FM2 or even FM2+. None of them have an upgrade path. Kaveri was a letdown. I would rather pick up a used Athlon II or Ph II on ebay and buy an AM3+ board to start and upgrade to an FX when I had money again.

 

[InvalidError]

I wouldn't buy FM1 or FM2 or even FM2+. None of them have an upgrade path. Kaveri was a letdown. I would rather pick up a used Athlon II or Ph II on ebay and buy an AM3+ board to start and upgrade to an FX when I had money again.

Funny thing to say when all AMD roadmaps currently available seem to indicate AMD has no plans to release any new CPUs on AM3+... all new AMD chips for the foreseeable future appear to be FM2+. AM3+ looks like the obsolete socket to me, which is no surprise considering how hard AMD seems to want to push HSA/HUMA.

 

[logainofhades]

I wouldn't buy FM1 or FM2 or even FM2+. None of them have an upgrade path. Kaveri was a letdown. I would rather pick up a used Athlon II or Ph II on ebay and buy an AM3+ board to start and upgrade to an FX when I had money again.

It was more of a example of how cheap you can build based on availability, than a actual endorsement of the build.
Unless your going to buy a 990x chipset, Starting with a fm2+ gives you far more upgrade options, even if they are not the fastest.

If AM3+ is still faster than anything you are going to get from FM2+, I see no point in buying FM2+ for a gaming rig.

 

[bassbeast]

^ for the price the old athlons still can put a smile on your face, But when you take the system price as a whole.i can build just as cheap with a apu or newer athlon.

Not when Newegg has plenty of AM3+ boards for under $50! You put the 2 together and you can get a PC plus board that will play the latest games, works great for multimedia, and you can get the whole smash for less than the FX6 CPU by itself? That's crazy cheap, I don't know of any cheaper for a quad!

The best deals ATM for the APUs is the Tiger kits, I have seen several of those at the $200 mark which if you need a new box with nothing coming from previous builds? Its a good buy. But most of us here have parts lying around and the Athlon X3 unlocked is the absolute dirt cheapest way to take an old system and bring it up to decent.

I can buy a fm1 651k for 53.99 at superbiz and fm1 motherboard is just as cheap. or a fm2 5500 for 84.99 and it has the 7560 gpu eliminating the need for a discrete gpu. Take your pick , both will be faster than the athlon x3, and no there is not a 100 core unlock rate for the x3 even with a 880g motherboards

The FM1 is already abandoned, there aren't any FM1 chips coming out and the max FM1 chips are frankly rather weak. Compare to AM3+ where the max chip is an Octocore over 4Ghz which would be able to play pretty much anything currently out or even coming down the pipe for the next couple of years.

Its obvious that AMD considers the FM1 a failed project and its one of the shortest supported sockets in the history of AMD. the FM2 is nice but there is still a price premium there that is hard to justify as you can get several discrete GPUs under $50 that will give you better performance due to the fact of having their own memory instead of leeching system RAM.

If you are building a system from scratch, especially for an HTPC? Then the FM2 is a good choice IF you can find a good price on the kit. But I wouldn't recommend an FM1 any more than I would recommend a netburst Pentium D, its a dead end that is ignored by its parent company.

 

[artk2219]

For anyone that lives near a microcenter and missed the fx 8320 for $99.99 deal around thanksgiving weekend, its back and it might be worth checking out.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/401796/FX_8320_Black_Edition_35GHz_AM3_Boxed_Processor

 

[bassbeast]

FM1 was just for comparison on how cheap you can build compared to your athlon x3. Fm2 boards are just as cheap as am3+ boards. And fm2+ is what AMD will support in the next gen. I repeat FM2+ is the best option for future upgrades from AMD .

I personally can't recommend FM2 for anything but a system you will NEVER upgrade simply because with the FM series AMD has thrown out backwards compatibility. For an example FM2+ CPUs won't work in an FM2 board, just as FM2 APUs won't work in an FM1.

Compare this to the AM series boards were an AM3 fits in an AM2+ and AM3+ works just fine in AM3. Until AMD decides which socket they are gonna stick with? I wouldn't buy an FM1 or FM2 UNLESS you are happy with the chip you buy and don't care about upgrading. I also find the idea of APU only quite troubling as they have yet to release anything bigger than a quad so if you want more than 4 threads its either AM3+ or you go Intel.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

That's why you'd get an FM2 CPU, and an FM2+ board.

Remember that Richland used the socket intended for Trinity.

I think that part of the issue is that FMx is still quite a new idea for AMD, so every time they design a socket they find something afterwards they want added. AMx has long had this bashed out of it.

However, remember that AM3+ isn't going to get any updates. FM2+ can't be worse than that.

Yeah, personally I'd like to see a chip with 3 modules and a smaller iGPU to make up for the demise of AMx.

 

[InvalidError]

Yeah, personally I'd like to see a chip with 3 modules and a smaller iGPU to make up for the demise of AMx.

With AMD betting the barn on HUMA/HSA, scaling back the IGP to scale up the CPU seems unlikely since that throws out the CPU-IGP balance AMD is aiming for. You will probably get your 6-8 cores Axx APUs once 20-22nm becomes available to AMD and since AMD's current IGPs are already pushing the limits of what 128bits DDR3 can handle, I'm guessing this year's IGPs won't get scaled up by much; the next major bump in IGP power will wait until DDR4-2400 goes mainstream.

 

[Sakkura]

Yeah, personally I'd like to see a chip with 3 modules and a smaller iGPU to make up for the demise of AMx.

With AMD betting the barn on HUMA/HSA, scaling back the IGP to scale up the CPU seems unlikely since that throws out the CPU-IGP balance AMD is aiming for. You will probably get your 6-8 cores Axx APUs once 20-22nm becomes available to AMD and since AMD's current IGPs are already pushing the limits of what 128bits DDR3 can handle, I'm guessing this year's IGPs won't get scaled up by much; the next major bump in IGP power will wait until DDR4-2400 goes mainstream.

I do wonder what they're going to do after that though. If they want to really scale up the IGP, they'd need either a lot of DDR4 DIMMs or memory that can achieve higher transfer rates (GDDR5 or a successor to it).

 

[InvalidError]

I do wonder what they're going to do after that though. If they want to really scale up the IGP, they'd need either a lot of DDR4 DIMMs or memory that can achieve higher transfer rates (GDDR5 or a successor to it).

You can look at Intel for answers: large on-package/chip L4 cache/buffer, possibly more than one of them. Skylake leaks seem to indicate the 128MB L4 cache might become standard across the i5-i7 lineup.

GDDR5 would be too expensive as system RAM for mainstream systems and part of the reason why GDDR5 can achieve 6GT/s on a 128-512bits wide bus is because there is no socket/slot interface getting in the way of signal integrity and there are only 4-8 chips per channel instead of 8-32 on DDR3 DIMMs.

 

[bassbeast]

I can see amd releasing a 6 core or 8core apu with cut back igp to allow space for more cores, even on 28nm. But i believe it will be on fm2+ not am3+.

The best imo am3+ can hope for is a new centurion.

With AM3+ you can buy an octocore right now while ther is serious doubt whether you'll even see a hexa, much less octo, on FM2(+). More likely they'll toss FM2+ for FM3 before they come out with another hexa or octo (if they ever do) so again if you want more than 4 threads? Its AM3+ or buy Intel.

I've been loyal to AMD for awhile but if all they offer is low end duals and quads? With no hope of ever getting anything better? Well Intel is starting to look better and better. Right now my Phenom II X6 takes everything I can throw at it but I can't see going back to only 4 threads, and having an integrated GPU holds zero appeal as I always have a discrete card. I only hope AMD either comes out with some new AM3+ chips or brings out an affordable octocore APU because the IPC is just too low to only be selling duals and quads.

 

[logainofhades]

AM3+ is around for at least another year. We are not going to get a HEDT part till excavator. This article is for gaming CPU's, not most users cpu's. FM2+ has no place as a gaming rig. Now tell me which you would rather try to game on.

The 7850k with IGP
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($184.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $329.96
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-03 11:12 EST-0500)

Or spend a whopping $6 more and get an FX 4300 and an HD 7770?
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($59.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: Kingston Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($105.38 @ Newegg)
Total: $335.35
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-03 11:12 EST-0500)

I would bet most people would go with the system with the dedicated GPU.

 

[logainofhades]

It might be a bit of a wash on that one as the lack of L3 cache kills the 760k just like it did the Athlon II vs Phenom II. The 7770 and 7790 are probably close enough that the systems would probably be pretty close in performance due to the lack of the L3 cache. I would probably rather have the 4300 and 7770 so I had a decent upgrade path. Kaveri doesn't bring enough performance to the table to warrant an upgrade. An FX 8320 really would be worth the upgrade over the 4300. Those select few of us that are fortunate to live near a Microcenter can get the FX 8320 for $99.99 now and could get that from the start. 😀 FM2/FM2+ I just cannot see as viable gaming chips anymore. Kaveri was a huge disappointment. The fact that they only made it to roughly PhII X4 performance is pathetic.

 

[de5_Roy]

The 7770 and 7790 are probably close enough

they're not.

Those select few of us that are fortunate to live near a Microcenter can get the FX 8320 for $99.99 now and could get that from the start. 😀

the keyphrase here is "select few". in reality, too few compared to everyone else.

Kaveri was a huge disappointment. The fact that they only made it to roughly PhII X4 performance is pathetic.

the fact that amd managed to squeeze in high end phenom ii x4 performance with weaker sr modules sharing die area and power and transistor budget, with a big igpu, without L3 cache and offering all of that for entry level price is quite impressive (well.. the retail price is high, but that is changing already, if you go by microcenter prices). amd did all these despite glofo's repeated failures, pressure from intel, half-way redesign and shrinking pc market. i guess it's really about how you look at it. 😀

 

[logainofhades]

I look at it at price for performance and upgrade path. Kaveri fails in my eyes. Frankly, I would go with a Pentium G over an FM2+ chip. At least then I would have an upgrade path. Kaveri would be a waste of money even for those looking to upgrade their old Core 2 quad systems. A 3.4ghz Q9550 beats a 3.4ghz 750k. It would probably be nearly even with Kaveri. AMD finally managed to get performance to levels from 6yrs ago. That is just flat out horrible.

 

[de5_Roy]

I look at it at price for performance and upgrade path. Kaveri fails in my eyes. Frankly, I would go with a Pentium G over an FM2+ chip. At least then I would have an upgrade path. Kaveri would be a waste of money even for those looking to upgrade their old Core 2 quad systems. A 3.4ghz Q9550 beats a 3.4ghz 750k. It would probably be nearly even with Kaveri. AMD finally managed to get performance to levels from 6yrs ago. That is just flat out horrible.

you write about price for performance but compare the opposite. you did the same with ph ii x4 and kaveri. q9550 and athlon 750k are in entirely different price points. different brands and uarches, too. if you keep making lopsided comparisons like those you'll obviously set yourself up for disappointment. if anyone has a c2q pc, kaveri is not for them unless they need kaveri's igpu. pentium g, core i3, athlon are more comparable to kaveri.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

A Celeron is comparable to a high-end C2D or low-end C2Q. That doesn't mean Intel's gone nowhere.

Same thing applies to AMD.

 

[logainofhades]

AMD hasn't really gone anywhere, and that is their problem. Their mainstream chip are the APU's. They are just now at a performance level of chips from 6yrs ago. That is my point with regards to my previous post. Why would anyone want to buy one if they have a decent core 2 quad or Phenom II system now? You want better graphics, save your money and buy a dedicated card. AMD has nothing but the FX line for those looking upgrade to a new system for those with those types of systems. Kaveri made improvements, but not enough to warrant getting one except for in very select situations. A very small mini itx HTPC, I could see one making sense. For a gaming rig, which is what this whole article and thread are about, never.

Also, the celeron is a low end budget cpu. The i3 is the mainstream chip for Intel. On the CPU side, the APU's cannot compete with an i3. The IGP improvements are a step in the right direction, but still have a long way to go.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Their mainstream chips are just now at a level of their high end chips from six years ago. I don't see what's wrong with that; a modern Pentium/i3 wouldn't be too far from a C2Q.

 

[logainofhades]

Ivy i3 still has a decent lead over a Q9550 @ 3.4ghz. Clock for clock, Trinity/Richland are slower than a Q9550. Kaveri, it is probably closer to being pretty even. I have been an AMD fan for years and just picked up my second FX 8320 over the weekend. (thank you microcenter ) I am just highly disappointed in them overall. Other than graphics cards, they are not really going anywhere fast.

 

[inso]

just asking where is:INTEL Xeon E3-1230V3 3,3GHz LGA1150?