- Jun 2, 2013
- 36
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- 10,530
I am looking to be building a new PC in the next 2-4 weeks, and I have been doing a lot of reading and researching and hypothetical builds on pcpartpicker. I do have a question that hasn't been definitively answered, as well as some thoughts I wanted to get some advice or correction on if I am outright mistaken.
At first I wanted to go with the AMD Athlon II x4 965 Black edition because a) it has 4 cores and b) it is pretty dang cheap at the moment because it is older. My last PC I built is about 3 years old now, and when I built it, I didn't future proof it at all, so I am trying to leave the door open for myself to at least be able to upgrade in a year or two. The only problem, it seems, is that the AM3+ socket doesn't have a ton of options for upgrades, as I can only go to the FX series, and I have heard mixed opinions on them. So I am operating under the assumptions that I don't have upgrade options that offer significant improvement on the types of games I am going to play (WoW and F2P mmo's on the market, as well as a few older strategy games), and that there's a chance that sometime within the next three or so years, I am not going to get very good performance from my system if I decide to move into the area of more than casual PC gaming.
So keeping in mind that I do want to be able to upgrade, the Intel socket 1155 looks a lot better. I have a much greater range of upgrade options, but the problem I run into here is that for the budget I am looking at, a 4 core Intel processor is going to be a lot more than I really want to spend, because it eats into my graphics card budget. I could go for an i3, but I am concerned that if I go with an i3 that I won't get the same multi-tasking performance that I would with a quad core processor. That's a concern, as well as the issue that I have heard some games in the very near future and even right now require at least 4 cores to run smoothly.
So to my questions. First of all, is that above logic at all correct, or am I off base anywhere? Secondly, I'd like to know if an i3 will be able to handle certain multi-tasking operations as effectively as the AMD I previously mentioned. Multi-tasking is important to me because I go to school online and I run a two-monitor setup (one to type or explore my school message board, the other to browse for information or have my "school book" open in adobe). I also like to have one screen open for chat purposes while I play games. The last question I have is if there is a cutoff point if I were to go with the AMD where I wouldn't see a huge difference in GPU performance due to the processor?
Thanks to anyone that reads all of this and has any information/advice by the way. I have settled on almost everything for my build, but I am really on the fence right now on the processor I should get. I have spent the better part of a week gathering information, and it really all comes down to these questions.
At first I wanted to go with the AMD Athlon II x4 965 Black edition because a) it has 4 cores and b) it is pretty dang cheap at the moment because it is older. My last PC I built is about 3 years old now, and when I built it, I didn't future proof it at all, so I am trying to leave the door open for myself to at least be able to upgrade in a year or two. The only problem, it seems, is that the AM3+ socket doesn't have a ton of options for upgrades, as I can only go to the FX series, and I have heard mixed opinions on them. So I am operating under the assumptions that I don't have upgrade options that offer significant improvement on the types of games I am going to play (WoW and F2P mmo's on the market, as well as a few older strategy games), and that there's a chance that sometime within the next three or so years, I am not going to get very good performance from my system if I decide to move into the area of more than casual PC gaming.
So keeping in mind that I do want to be able to upgrade, the Intel socket 1155 looks a lot better. I have a much greater range of upgrade options, but the problem I run into here is that for the budget I am looking at, a 4 core Intel processor is going to be a lot more than I really want to spend, because it eats into my graphics card budget. I could go for an i3, but I am concerned that if I go with an i3 that I won't get the same multi-tasking performance that I would with a quad core processor. That's a concern, as well as the issue that I have heard some games in the very near future and even right now require at least 4 cores to run smoothly.
So to my questions. First of all, is that above logic at all correct, or am I off base anywhere? Secondly, I'd like to know if an i3 will be able to handle certain multi-tasking operations as effectively as the AMD I previously mentioned. Multi-tasking is important to me because I go to school online and I run a two-monitor setup (one to type or explore my school message board, the other to browse for information or have my "school book" open in adobe). I also like to have one screen open for chat purposes while I play games. The last question I have is if there is a cutoff point if I were to go with the AMD where I wouldn't see a huge difference in GPU performance due to the processor?
Thanks to anyone that reads all of this and has any information/advice by the way. I have settled on almost everything for my build, but I am really on the fence right now on the processor I should get. I have spent the better part of a week gathering information, and it really all comes down to these questions.
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