Your criticism of the TH charts makes no sense. If the gpu was the bottle neck then putting in a faster CPU would not help, yet quite clearly it does. That is why the fastest cpu on the chart is almost 3 x as fast as the slowest Intel core duo.
Instead of criticizing my link as invalid, why don’t you post one yourself that shows benchmarks where a 2 core processor isn’t slower in games ? Because you can’t find one? Not surprised, 2 core CPU’s are about 1/3 slower in most modern games, regardless of the vid card you use.
My point wasn’t that the 8400 is a shitty part that can’t run modern games. It was an awesome part 3 years ago, but has been eclipsed in performance by 80 $ 3 core CPUs. If your 8400 CPU, that you paid big $ for years ago, still works for you, great. Buying one new now, at a 100 $ premium over faster choices, is a poor choice today.
It only helps when your PC is bottlenecked by the CPU. With any midrange gaming card, this isn’t the case.
I’m not dissagreing that it shouldnt be bought today. I’m just saying in games it wont make a difference and because of its high clock speed it will probably beat all your 80$ tri-cores. Note I only mentioned the E8400 because it was the highest clocked dual core available on OCuk, seems the E8600 is clocked higher - I dont keep up with intel’s marketing… It’s probably better to compare apples to apples so I’ll take to defending the X2 555BE
Lets start here :
The E8600, a dual core part, beats every AMD part. quad core or not.
In this benchmark notice the X2 555BE part is 4fps behind the X6 1055T.
So wait 3x more cores and 4fs more?
And in this benchmark the 1090T beats the 555BE part by 0.3fps
Again these are CPU bottlenecked benchmarks with a GPU from a very high end PC, so they are fairly useless for someone making a mid range gaming PC, but this shows that money is far better spent on a better GPU than on a CPU than a tri/quad/hex core CPU.
The second bench mark was for a game released over a year ago. I already said that older games, not coded to use extra cores, will run fastest on the 2 core processor with the fastest clock speed, and most cache.
The benchmark I posted was for L4D2 , which came out this summer. It does better with 3-4 core CPU’s, even 72 $ ones, because the game is coded to use more cores.
More cores is the future. It is true that current 6 core processors aren’t faster in games than 4 core processors. But in 2 years, many new games won’t run on 2 cores. They might require 4 and run best with 8. This is why I am a bottom feeder, and recommend sub 100 $ parts to game box builders on a budget. When it comes time to park my 72 $ 3 core BE AMD on the shelf, it will seem a casual expense, and I can buy another OEM (without heat sink) CPU, and reuse my fancy giant heat sink. Maybe I’ll only pay 60 $ next time. No need to go there yet, my current box, with an 8800 vid card, plays everything great.
Prices have dropped, and if I was to buy today, I might get a 4 core. I always read stuff for a day or 2, to catch up on the news before I do an upgrade. Tom’s Hardware sounds like a hick site, but I have used it for 10 years, it is one of the oldest and largest international hardware sites. Their monthly “best vid card or CPU” , in each price range, is a helpful place to start.
What I really don’t get is the idea that you can object to 4 core cpus because of the extra cost. Here is the 4 core unlocked cpu I would recommend to a budget box builder today, only 70 $. Where is the extra cost compared to a 180 $ Intel 2 core ? One minute changing the multiplier in bios, and this thing will be stable at about 3.2 Ghz. CPU’s with fewer cores are not only slower, they aren’t much cheaper either. Seems clear cut to me. You can’t afford less than 4 cores today, buying now as a cheap gamer.
Left 4 dead 2 uses the same engine as L4D1 and HL2. An engine that is much more than a year old! And if you believe they added loads of threading optimisations to the source engine for L4D2 then you are lost ;-). Crysis is a much better benchmark IMO.
Just cause multi core on the requirements or on the side of the box is written doesn’t mean it needs it… Dont you wonder who does these benchmarks and who gives them PCs to do them on?
Your benchmark showed that the latest graphics card bottleneck cheap CPUs at low resolutions/settings and that NT6/7 is a terrible OS for pure gaming…
Actually I showed they are no faster than dual core ones…
Theres nothing wrong with THG (apart from the Intel bias a few years ago but seems to have gone away more recently), but the fastest CPU + all the graphics cards available provides nothing usefull for someone doing a midrange build. All it does is rank the power of all the GPUs. It doesnt mean your midrange/low end CPU will get close to that with any of those GPUs…
Oh you don’t understand me. It’s not because of the cost, I’m arguing that a tri/quad core will do not better than a dual core in most current mid range gaming scenarios. I’m not saying you should buy the dual core because it’s better value or anything… In a year or two this may change, but I think it’s going to take longer, especially since currently the average PC is dual core and the cost of writting threaded programs in traditional languages is very high (if you care about bugs that is…). Obsidian will probably be the first to do it!!
As for overclocking, this is an old argument. Sure overclocking adds value, but most users dont know how to do it, and it usually ends you up with a more unstable PC. I should know I’ve had athlon XP-Ms on peltier + H2O in desktops and my Q6600 was at 3.4ghz on air for a while (motherboard still remembers that…)
But the overclock you can do on your tri core you can overclock the dual core intel by alot more. Or the X2 555BE has an unlocked multiplier so that can go pretty high… Also clock for clock the Intel core2duo are faster than the Phenom II so you’d need to go higher than 3.2ghz to match…
For GPUs im somewhat of an ATI fanboy. Luckily at the time of my build the HD4870 was basically brand new and sitting above everything else without doing any SLI. I remember first playing Crysis and Devil May Cry 4, max settings on both games, ran completely fine, and still is doing great even on the latest games. My card is pretty old now, im sure youll be fine with the newer ATi or Nvidia cards.
For the PCU, Corsair is my go-to brand. Id go with more than what you need, and luckily 850w-1000w boxes are just over $100.
Good luck on your build. Ive been thinking about doing a new build soon, but I think im just gonna start off with a better case. I have this one, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119106 but I want something that has more isolation.
Why anyone needs a 850W PSU without having SLI is completely besides me. I did a dual Xeon build (harpertown with FB-DIMMS) using a 620W corsair PSU and worked out the max powerdraw was 350W. Admitedly it has a fanless GPU ATI gpu (can’t remember which one, it was the cheapest with two dual link DVI)
But i like corsair, my main rig has a VX550, which are really good for the money.
If you want a case with isolation and lots of room the coolermaster cosmos (not the ‘S’ version) are really nice. Also they fit E-ATX
Yeah, mines at 650w right now, but paying another $20 to get something a little bigger wouldnt hurt, specially if you plan on upgrading and adding on later on.
I’m running a cheap 500 watt 50 $ Antec PSU from Office Max. Cool that a local place had something in stock that could fix my box. My PSU went pop, and they had a 500 watt for a good price. Like buying carrots. Right next to the grocery store.
I expect power demands of PC computers to go down. The parts are being made smaller, need less voltage, and power saving is a design priority in modern chips.
Problem is they’ll probably change the plugs that you need on the PSU so your old PSU will be useless…Especially on those high end builds you need the 8pin 12V and the 4pin 12V.
Antec is a good brand for cheap but reliable stuff. My main build has one of the Antec/chieftec cases. I love those steel beasts but they dont have any isolation. Maybe i’ll change the case in my next build as well
That is why you should opt for something that is quad and overclocks a lot: the i7 920. Stock speed 2.66GHz; mine runs at 4.2, and this is not abnormal.*
I have an i7 920 always at 4GHz+ and a couple hard drives, a DVD burner, RAM and an HD 4890. When I had a PC P&C 750W power supply, I could not significantly overclock my CPU without causing massive instability. When I installed a Corsair TX950 I could run it at 4.2 with ease and my system wasn’t wigging out and restarting constantly when I played games.**
That is why my current CPU draws more power than my last one, as does this video card over my old one. What you say may be true about the general consumer PC segment, but high performance computing such as is required for gaming is demanding more power and cooling than ever.
*Caveats: budgetary constraints; heat; power requirements
**Yes I know none of this would have happened if I didn’t insist on overclocking, so many of my points here may be moot. I do not consider my CPU fast enough if I can still get another 1.5GHz out of it. (That is a 63% increase in clock speed, ladies and gentlemen.) And I know that CPU clock-speed is not always linearly related to CPU speed, nor CPU speed to gaming performance, and that there are other factors at work, such as video card performance, memory capacity and performance, hard drive performance, meteorological conditions, and probably others. That is why I believe you should also overclock everything related to your video card, RAM, and anything else possible as much as possible. Uh…
I maintain that the best thing to do is buy the best CPU you can afford that will allow for fairly massive overclocking, buy some good thermal paste and a (massive) quality heatsink–read the instructions and don’t destroy your fragile CPU with two pounds of copper–, buy a high CFM industrial fan that you can strap to the heatsink, buy a quality motherboard, buy the best video card you can afford, buy quality RAM, buy a quality PSU, don’t put the side on your case and then it doesn’t matter how crappy the ventilation is, and overclock it all. You won’t care about the fan noise when you have your headphones on and are shooting people’s avatars in the face with a smooth framerate maximizing your deadliness.
Rest of the post is spot on, but this part I dont get. I’ve run a dual quad core hapertown (2.5ghz xeon with 5400 chipset) with 8x2GB FB-DIMMS (the power hungry ones intel dropped for DDR3 registered), a DVD drive, 3 disks (1x SAS 15k + 2x 7.2k 1TB), and a HD4850 on a 640W corsair HX PSU and it ran perfectly fine. Admitedly no overclock cause the Tyan card didnt let me!
I put my system as it stands into that calculator and it told me I need a minimum 676W power supply.
Maybe my old PSU was dodgy, but I just think it wasn’t powerful enough. Dodgy is when your PSU starts popping and smoking when you turn your computer on and kills almost everything connected to your motherboard.
Overclocking is completely the issue here. I don’t think my scenario is that dubious. An i7 920 at 4-4.2GHz and overvolted uses a ton more power than it does at default speed and voltage–in the order of 50%+ more. (Compare these graphs.) Therefore it is not inconceivable that my single CPU in its overclocked state uses as much power as both of your Xeons put together, even if they’re the 80W TDP models and not the low wattage ones.
As to PSUs, we know they very rarely run at full capacity; nor, despite their wattage ratings, are they really meant to. The closer you run them to 100%, the hotter they get and the more inefficient they become at changing 120/220V wall socket juice into what your computer needs. That’s why I buy more PSU than ‘necessary’. Better to have it and not need it than be pissed off and have to buy a new part. (Example: my maximum overclock on my Core 2 Duo E6400 with a generic 500W supply was barely 3.2GHz, so I bought the aforementioned PC P&C 750 and I could suddenly run the CPU at 3.6 without any issues.)
And anyway, enough is never enough. I thought that was the point of overclocking.
they’re both reference designs so the choice is pretty hard. I prefer HIS as a brand but only because I’ve had one before… And I think their sticker looks better.
well, last night i was about $20 more than i had wanted in my total purchase, so i said fuck it, and i went with a different gpu. One with less bad comments.
I realized that i’m getting the 5770 1gb in a cheaper gpu, that runs cooler than the other i had wanted.
So, apparently redeeming warranty on this card is horrid, but eh. Hopefully it just doesn’t come DOA or with anything funny.
ah well.
at any rate, i could return it if need be.
and for all practical means, it will run what i want to run on mid-high settings smoothly. Which are games like battlefield 2 PR and battlefield bad company 2.
In a year or two this may change, but I think it’s going to take longer, especially since currently the average PC is dual core and the cost of writting threaded programs in traditional languages is very high (if you care about bugs that is…). Obsidian will probably be the first to do it!!
