Which AMD CPU is better for gaming?

[hedo]

Please help me figure out which AMD CPU is better for gaming. I am looking at the Athlon X2 6400 or the Phenom 9850BE. After reading and reading, i still cant figure out if dual core or quad core is better for gaming, higher clock speeds vs more cores. I currently play only 1 video game, hellgate london, but may play Diablo 3 when it comes out. I also use this computer for multimedia, internet and burning dvds. My current setup is an Athlon X2 5600, gigabyte MA790X-DS4 (790X chipset) mobo and an ATI 4850 video card. The price difference between the 2 CPUs is not a factor.

thanks for your input

 

[reconviperone1]

I wouldnt upgrade from a x2 5600 to a 6400 since the x2 5600 is a pretty fast processor, te x2 6400 would be slighty faster than x2 5600, and a bit faster that the 9850, but more cores is alwys better imo, so im gonna say go with the 9850.

 

[spanner_razor]

Well from a 5600 to a 9850be would be worth it but if you already had a 6400 i'd advise against getting the 9850be. Btw you know that hellgate london's developer have laid off all their staff and aren't accepting new subscribers so you may need to find a new game. Honestly though I'd wait for a while to see what the 45nm AM2+ chips are like as there won't be a monumental difference in either upgrade path.

 

[speedbird]

You have a good setup already, but out of the two you mention the Phenom 9850 has more potential.

 

[jitpublisher]

I hate to disagree with others here, but more cores is not always better. If the program is only written to use 1 core, or 2 cores, throwing more cores at it will not do squat.

Games will still get more benefit from fast dual core than an slower quad. It's a fact.
All the yelling and cheering for Quad's is from the Intel camp.
But they have good reason, you can buy an Intel Quad cheap, clock it to the speed of Intel's fastest dual core. Why not go Quad when you can do that? But you aren't going to clock a Phenom to the speed of a 6400 x2 without some serious cooling and a lot of tinkering.

Oh, by the way, going to a 6400 is not going to do much for games, or really much anything else you do.
And neither will the Phenom. Why do you feel that you need an "upgrade"?
If you feel you must still go quad, wait for the new AMD Quads just around the corner.

 

[gjdixon]

overclock the 5600 or go 4 the 9850 (don't buy 6400)
don't Compare clock speeds

i got amd 5600
4g ram
amd (ati)4850
next upgrade quad core 9950 or higher sometime

 

[bf2142-rules-ok]

u won't notice the difference! save ur money

 

[sarwar_r87]

goin for 6400 won realli help and 2.5 ghz of 9850 game performance is almost the same as 5600+. if i were u, i would wait for the 45nm cpu.initial reports clain that they r less power consuming (40% less) and hence they have higher potential 2 hit high clocks.

PS: i have a 5600+ and i have no complain while gaming althou i feel that sum games maybe hiting cpu bottleneck. but nothing that hampers gameplay

 

[bf2142-rules-ok]

get urself another 4850 and crossfire them (if ur board allows it) (and if necessary overclock ur 5600)

 

[emp]

I hate to disagree with others here, but more cores is not always better. If the program is only written to use 1 core, or 2 cores, throwing more cores at it will not do squat.

Games will still get more benefit from fast dual core than an slower quad. It's a fact.
All the yelling and cheering for Quad's is from the Intel camp.
But they have good reason, you can buy an Intel Quad cheap, clock it to the speed of Intel's fastest dual core. Why not go Quad when you can do that? But you aren't going to clock a Phenom to the speed of a 6400 x2 without some serious cooling and a lot of tinkering.

Oh, by the way, going to a 6400 is not going to do much for games, or really much anything else you do.
And neither will the Phenom. Why do you feel that you need an "upgrade"?
If you feel you must still go quad, wait for the new AMD Quads just around the corner.

I agree with more cores is not always better part, however I disagree on your phenom bashing. First of all the Phenom is already more efficient clock for clock than the Athlon 64 X2 by about 25-30%, which should put the 9850BE on stock at around the same speed as the X2 6400+. On top of that, Phenoms used to not be good at overclocking, however with the new SB750 it has been proven that phenoms can clock higher than what we expected possible without heavy tinkering and aggressive cooling.

The reason I disagree with you upgrading to Phenom at this point is because you do not have a SB750+790GX motherboard available to you, therefore you can't really reach the phenom's true potential.

On another note, some of you guys really need to dispel all that bias against the phenoms, sure... they were utter crap at release and still were a few months back, but now they are decently priced if you look hard enough and with the SB750 boards they appear to be quite overclockable. We can't just disregard someone who wants a phenom based system nowadays if you take into consideration all the recent changes.

 

[Dameon_Bananaman]

i agree, amd has come a long way since and if you arent planning on overclocking too much i believe the phenom is just as good a processor as intel's core2 processors.

 

[jitpublisher]

I agree with more cores is not always better part, however I disagree on your phenom bashing. First of all the Phenom is already more efficient clock for clock than the Athlon 64 X2 by about 25-30%, which should put the 9850BE on stock at around the same speed as the X2 6400+. On top of that, Phenoms used to not be good at overclocking, however with the new SB750 it has been proven that phenoms can clock higher than what we expected possible without heavy tinkering and aggressive cooling.

The reason I disagree with you upgrading to Phenom at this point is because you do not have a SB750+790GX motherboard available to you, therefore you can't really reach the phenom's true potential.

On another note, some of you guys really need to dispel all that bias against the phenoms, sure... they were utter crap at release and still were a few months back, but now they are decently priced if you look hard enough and with the SB750 boards they appear to be quite overclockable. We can't just disregard someone who wants a phenom based system nowadays if you take into consideration all the recent changes.

Well, I didn't mean to bash the Phenom. And I do see that the 9850 on a good board with good air cooling can go to 3 ghz without too many problems. However, I still don't think that OP really needs a CPU upgrade. For what he is doing, he won't notice much change at all. And he will still have to overclock the Phenom a good amount to reach the speed of the X2 for gaming purposes.
I would still wait on the new AMD 45nm quads if I was in the market for an AMD quad core.
(Which I may just be very soon)

 

[speedemon]

I agree with more cores is not always better part, however I disagree on your phenom bashing. First of all the Phenom is already more efficient clock for clock than the Athlon 64 X2 by about 25-30%


Wrong. Where do you come up with 25-30%? Sh]t i wish it was

 

[sarwar_r87]

I agree with more cores is not always better part, however I disagree on your phenom bashing. First of all the Phenom is already more efficient clock for clock than the Athlon 64 X2 by about 25-30%


Wrong. Where do you come up with 25-30%? Sh]t i wish it was

phenom IS 25-30% faster than athlon 64 x2 when considered clock for clock in single thread.

 

[dario77]

with that board, i'd agree that your best bet is to get another 4850, and wait it out until 45nm. if nothing else, when 45nm drops, so will the price of that 9850be. and the 9950be, and every other 65nm chip.

if you really plan to stick with amd, you might even look into a higher end 790gx board, so that when you do go phenom, you can goose the hell outta her! make sure to get one that has dual pci-e slots for crossfireX.

it feels good to feel excited about AMD again!!

 

[Wisecracker]

with that board, i'd agree that your best bet is to get another 4850, and wait it out until 45nm. if nothing else, when 45nm drops, so will the price of that 9850be. and the 9950be, and every other 65nm chip.

if you really plan to stick with amd, you might even look into a higher end 790gx board, so that when you do go phenom, you can goose the hell outta her! make sure to get one that has dual pci-e slots for crossfireX.

it feels good to feel excited about AMD again!!

I'm not 100% on this but I've seen a few rumahs on the internets that surmise that the Phenom Blackies with unlocked multis will slowly start to disappear if the 45nm shrink leads to decent IPC and GHz speed improvements.

AMD stopped taking orders in June for the Phenom 95's, 96's & 97's at 65nm. They will be replaced this Fall with 45nm versions. I haven't heard anything about the Phenom 98's but would guess they'll have a quick EOL at 65nm if the transition to 45nm goes well overall. AMD can't afford to leave that kind of cash on the table.

I'm sure they will keep some Phenom 'Black Edition' series but possibly drop availability and models to keep the price up as they incorporate more platform/architectural improvements into their hardware (like a refresh of 790GX/FX with sb750).

I'm sure alot of this will relate to what Chipzilla brings to the table ...

 

[zenmaster]

Unless the game you want to play is optimized for Quad Cores, don't upgrade.

The X2-6400 is not that much faster than the X2-5600.
The Phenom may actually be slower than the X2-6400 in some games.
If the game is quad core optimized (Check Reviews) then the Upgrade may be worth it.

 

[SEALBoy]

Going from a 5600 to a 6400 isn't worth it. Get the 9850BE.

 

[zenmaster]

And here are some charts which seem to fail to show the "Magical 25-30%" Phenom improvement.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=12

It's not there.
There is a small gain, but not much.

But Again, if you find a game that utilizes all the cores, it's a good upgrade.

 

[jj463rd]

I've heard of people having lots of problems with that motherboard and both the Phenom X4 9850 and 9950 BE CPU.If you want to run these chips go with a 790FX or 790GX chipset based motherboard.

 

[xx12amanxx]

What i want to no is if i had a 9850@ 3ghz would it be faster than my 6000+@3ghz? Im thinking it would so if i was to buy the new 790chipset i would actually have an upgrade path huh...

 

[jj463rd]

It will be faster especially if you run quad core optimized software (Like Microsoft Flight Simulator X etc.).Just wait till the 790FX,750 Southbridge motherboards come out soon.I myself would pass on the 790GX,750SB boards.But I'd go with a 9950 BE rather than a 9850 BE if the motherboard supports it.

 

[crow_smiling]

phenom IS 25-30% faster than athlon 64 x2 when considered clock for clock in single thread.

That would mean it has a higher IPC than C2D which is news to me. Can you link to data confirming that? I doubt it.

 

[B-Unit]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-phenom-athlon-64-x2,1746-9.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-athlon-core-scaling-compared,1759-6.html

25-30% seems a bit overkill, its more like 15-20%, but Phenom is faster.

 

[zenmaster]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-phenom-athlon-64-x2,1746-9.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-athlon-core-scaling-compared,1759-6.html

25-30% seems a bit overkill, its more like 15-20%, but Phenom is faster.

I know of that review, but if you read the comments, the testing is so fundamentally flawed as to be pointless.

For Starters, by disabling 3 Cores, you are in essence giving 1 core 4x the L3 Cache.
In the Mean Time but disabling one of the two X2 Cores, you are in essence cutting the cache in half.

I can't recall all of the issues with the article other than to recall it was a very very bad article.
Realworld tests show those results to be wrong.

I prefer RealWorld Bench Marks of Real apps running the CPUs as they would run in the RealWorld.
In those tests, the difference is quite small except in apps that scale beyond two threads.