What CPU would you suggest for a gaming set up?

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Hey!!! I am not an Intel fanboy.
I'm not an AMD fanboy either.

BTW I'm waiting till June/July for a hex core (6-core) cpu to arrive.
 
sighQ2 is a conspiracy theorist or something. Goodness gracious. It's interesting that he spends more time combating other folks in this thread than actually making direct replies to the OP.

Anyhow, as far as what system to build. With your budget, you can certainly afford to go top of the line. In that case I'd go with the i7-920 (anything higher is pointless IMO).

If you want to save some of that tax return money for other stuff, I'd go with the Intel i5-750 or AMD Phenom II X4 955/965. Both are very capable gaming processors in their own rite and will serve you quite well. If you plan to OverClock at all, i can personally vouch for the fact that the i5-750 OC's extremely well.

The money saved could be used on high end graphics cards (ATI 5850 or 5870 for instance).

You'll find a TON of debate over AMD / Intel on Tom's forums lately. AMD Fanboys will tell you the Phenom II's are faster than a Ferrari (assuming the Phenom II had wheels). There are certain instances where the Phenom II's stand out, but in most tests the i5-750 (let alone i7-920) wins out.
 


If you go with the i7-920 I totally agree with the above recommendation. 2000Mhz RAM won't make any difference, and will cost you more. And you don't need to spend $320 on an X58 motherboard to get a good system.
 
Wow - I loving and reading all the responses and taking everything into consideration. JackNaylorPE's post on recommended products is really helpful too. Would anyone else agree that his product list is legit? What I'm trying to say is that this project is something that I want everyone's input on (like whats going on now) and be able to incorporate it into this new build. I'm no pro or amateur at this. So I want to document this and let you see the suggestions come to life in this build. My wife gave me the go ahead for a 3,000 dollar LIMIT. That limit will have to include keyboard, mouse and a 5.1 head set (oh yeah). I've got the monitor Samsung T220 Synmaster 10000:1 contrast (kept it from last build). I'll Vlog it as well and wait for the NOOB comments when I log onto here.
 


This board supports crossfireX as well.

All in all I agree with Jack's post, except for your budget I would recommend 2 5870s.
 
for this budget everyone who said i7 is right, there is no reason the buy an AMD chip for this budget when you can have a processor that scores better in cpu bound tasks

and SighQ2, go back to amdzone and live there, and in case you don't check my builds i have used AMD for years on builds
 
Enlighten us Sigh. Show us some 'real' gaming benchmarks that aren't GPU limited with Phenom II in head more than 10% of the time.

Then lets see some clock for clock 'real' game benches and see if Phenom II is really as glorious as you are making it to be.

Good luck.

PS: Before I thought you were trying to be informative but now you seem more like a troll. The OP has nearly an unlimited budget, i7 is only a couple hundred more. He asked for the best, SHOW us (not tell us) how Phenom II is a better choice than i7 in gaming with a budget like his, other than your hate for intel.
 


I wasn't talking to you, SighQ2 is another poster lol I was talking to him.
 


No, 3 5850s would perform a good deal greater for less money, and three 5870s would be quite insane for a little bit more, or you could get 2 5970s for the same price (both are about the same performance wise). As for PhysX, don't worry about it PhysX is dead and useless so you should not worry about that at all.

Seriously there is no reason to buy a GTX 285 today.
 
This is goign to be a stupid assumption but I always thought AMD and ATI one in the same and Intel and Nvidia bed buddies.
 
The best CPUs on the market now for gaming (reasonably priced) are the i7-920, i7-860, i5-750, and PII 955/965. I would probably eliminate the i7-860, simply because for gaming, it's nearly identical to the i5-750.

In gaming, during times of maximum FPS (when the GPU is not utilized as much), the i7-920's FPS is very high due to this period being limited to the CPU. During the times of the minimum FPS where there is often a lot of action on the screen, a GPU limitation generally kicks in. Generally speaking, this causes the i7-920 to have higher max FPS and the same min FPS as compared to a PII or even an i5 to a lesser extent. This is both good and bad. Dropping from 80 FPS to 40 FPS may be more noticeable than dropping from 65 FPS to 40 FPS. For the time being, it *may* create a gameplay experience that is slightly less smooth (generally, I highly doubt that it will be noticeable in most situations). However, this also indicates that the i7's will bottleneck GPUs much less. I'm confident that with 2 or 3-way Crossfire, that an i7-920 is definitely the way to go.

All three processors are superb and will be excellent in gaming for quite some time. With your budget, my personal recommendation is to go with the i7-920 which would be the best for the future. Otherwise, both an i5-750 and 955/965 would be almost identical for now, but may not be quite as good down the line.

Also, regardless of processor, I would highly recommend a Radeon 5870. Intel & NVIDIA are definitely not "bed buddies". As a matter of fact, they had some minor fallout a few months ago because the new Intel CPUs combined with an NVIDIA card weren't quite up to par with an Intel combined with a Radeon. AMD owns ATI, so they're essentially the same company.
 
Good feedback!!! So I'm going to be looking at 3 5870s. Can someone explain why you would have a seperatee physics card. I mean besides the obvious of eliminating the stress from the other card(s).
 


Only nVidia cards support PhysX. PhysX is a nVidia owned process of computing game physics with a GPU instead of a CPU. This is mostly useless today, as modern CPUs are plenty powerful enough for the task, especially the ones in your price range. That said, the future of games will require more of the CPU to process physics and AI. PhysX can help with the physics side, but it is too late. All DX11 certified cards can use a process called compute shaders which allows the GPU to do any CPU process, not just physics, and it can do it on all cards, not just nVidia like PhysX. So in all future DX11 games the developers will be able to use compute shaders to d some physics on the GPU as well as many other things on the GPU that are associated with CPU. Therefor since PhysX is only noticeable in 2 games, Mirrors Edge and Batman Arkham Asylum (which they only are because of dirty business from nVidia, an overclocked i5, Phenom II, or i7 could easily do the same without a hitch) and since it is already being replaced by an alternative that allows for more uses and doesn't alienate a portion of the game developer's customers, it is too late.

Long story short, PhysX is dead and those 5870s use DX11 which is the future of GPUs doing CPU processes.
 
Just curious - what resolution do you use? I can't imagine ever needing 3 5850s or 5870s. Hell, even a single 5870 will run most games at 60-80 FPS at even the largest supported resolutions. An "above average" gaming PC would have a single 5850 or 5870, not three. Now if you're definitely looking to blow all of your money and get something that is extremely overkill, then I can certainly understand...😀
 


That's exactly what I'm doing :). The monitor I have now is the Samsung T220 22" 10000:1 contrast. I want to find a LED monitor or maybe upgrade to a bigger one. The one I have now is one that I've had from a previous build.
 
Ok well from the looks of things I'm going to have to keep my monitor. So far I've got a total with the case, mother board, ram, video cards, SSD, and SATA HD at 2,885.14. That includes shipping and tax from newegg.com.
 
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