Tom's Hardware: Topic Building a Gaming Rig - Countdown: 1.5 months
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Homebuilt Systems > New System Build > Building a Gaming Rig - Countdown: 1.5 months
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Please tell me your reasoning on getting a quad. I was just curious because I have read a couple articles saying that dual is best for gaming, Intel that is. That could be wrong?
I was going to choose an intel cpu because I have heard that they run cooler than the AMD's.
I wasn't really looking to do SLI or Crossfire, I wanted one card thats good to keep down on the heat/power consumption. I don't know if I am thinking wisely, advise?
For some reason I had my heart setup on a INTEL CPU and a NVIDIA based card, bah. I am no fanboy though, I want something that is going to be cool and awesome. I am sure you have heard that 10000000000000000 times 
| Cyclohexane123 wrote : Please tell me your reasoning on getting a quad. I was just curious because I have read a couple articles saying that dual is best for gaming, Intel that is. That could be wrong?
|
That used to be true about the phenom 1 line but the phenom 2's run cool and over clock very well, in your case just get the 720 BE and the 4890 and all games you play will be conquered,also get a bigger set of hard drives for a gaming rig you wanna have more storage than 320 gbs there are good drives with more cache that sell for cheap on newegg.
It was very clear 4 months ago that dual core was the best, AT THAT TIME, for gaming. Every month that goes by has seen more games optimized for quad cores. Even WoW has been optimized.
Quad core gaming is coming. More and more titles will make use of it. The more cores you get now the better. As to Intel vs. AMD, certainly Intel makes the fastest dual cores and the fastest quads.
Most of AMDs line up is old. If you look at the newest processors, they will run cool and are very competitive. AMD has one dual core CPU priced about the same as the E7400 and similar in speed, but that is all they have in dual core that's worthwhile. They have two very worthwhile quads, the DDR2 X4 940 and the DDR3 X4 955.
The X3 720 is a different animal though. It overclocks well and gives that extra core. It's very much a compromise between the speed of the Intel dual cores and the value of the AMD quads.
You can get an E8400, push it up to 3.8Ghz and be happy with it for a year or so. If you really want to do that, get a P45 board for the stability factor.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128358
This board also comes in a DDR3 flavor for a bit more. DDR3 is coming down in price while DDR2 rises. Probably not quite worthwhile yet on Intel builds but an option.
Let's look at some benchmarks....
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 304-7.html
Look where the overclocked X3 comes in on those benchmarks, and that's with a couple 4870s. That means even less difference with a slower single GPU.
Then a game known to support quad cores
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 04-10.html
Here's some more stock speed comparisons with the E8500
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 48-10.html
Oh, and AMD boards are inexpensive because they have no memory controller. you can even get by with a 770 board that would leave you even more cash for the GPU 
Heh ooops I just caught that. You have a very slow GPU listed. That version only has 192 processors. You want a 216 if you use a GTX 260.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150361
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