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Who's Got Game? Twelve Sub-$200 CPUs Compared

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  • CPUs
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March 1, 2011 4:00:07 AM

Today we're putting the latest sub-$200 CPUs into a cage match armed with nothing but the latest DirectX 11 games (plus a helping of StarCraft 2) to see how they fare. Can AMD's familiar Athlons and Phenoms stand up to the new Sandy Bridge-based CPUs?

Who's Got Game? Twelve Sub-$200 CPUs Compared : Read more

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Anonymous
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 4:40:26 AM

Simulated CPU Chart: 3330 GHz

o_O I'd like me one of those
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1
March 1, 2011 5:05:18 AM

id just love to point out, i personally will never again make a mistake of getting a hyperthreaded cpu over real cores. i made that mistake once, and never again.

a pc will never be gaming only, unless you have more than one, in that case, for for the cheaper dual core hyperthreaded, but if you do anything else, get a real quadcore and don't even take into consideration the logical cores.
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1
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 5:23:31 AM

I'm still thinking the AMD Athlon II x3's and x4's are the best buys around. If you take comparable configurations from AMD and Intel, AMD wins easily. Here is what I'm talking about below:

AMD build w/AMD Athlon II x3 455 w/Asus 870 based mobo:
$89 for Athlon II x3 455
$90 for AMD mobo (Asus) w/6xSATA 3, 6 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, 4 x DDR3 slots.
ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Intel build w/i3 550 w/P55 based mobo (Asus also):
$130 i3 550
$150-$10 MIRc Comparable mobo (Asus also) 6xSATA 3, 6 USB 2.0, 2 USB 3.0, 4 DDR3 slots.
ASUS P7P55D-E LX LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

**These are all Newegg prices**
AMD build (using the same Case/PSU/RAM/DVD parts in both systems)
$179 + shared parts.

Intel build (same parts shared w/AMD build)
$280 + shared parts.

This equals out to ~$100 price difference between the 2 builds, which to me is quite a bit!

So in general when trying to factor in "Value" for the gaming buck I still see the AMD based system being the better buy. Assuming your using mobo's with about the same features. If you notice the Intel based mobo's will cost you more for similar AMD based mobo's. This is where a lot of the value comes from AMD. Don't get me wrong here, the Intel based system is very good system too, you just have to pay more for them.
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5
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 5:32:36 AM

@lunyone

Yes the amd build is pretty cheap, but swap you're i3 550 with the i3 2100 and the p55 mobo with the p67 mobo, and you have a build that is now worth the $100 over the amd build
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2
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 5:35:57 AM

sorry I meant to add, the drawback is waiting for the SB mobo's to arrive

also I think this conclusion summarizes well AMD's predicament in a months time:
"the Core i3-2100 performs as well as (or slightly better than) AMD's Phenom II X4 970 flagship."

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2
March 1, 2011 5:42:55 AM

Quote:
Up until now, AMD's Pentium II X4


I almost missed this typo an AMD pentium hmmm something seems wrong.
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2
Anonymous
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 5:48:22 AM

So what everyone is saying is - AMD's old technology is getting beat by Intel's newest? This is to be expected.

If the point is that Intel has the best budget system at the current prices - then yes, the point is made. But it looks more like you're trying to prove Intel is better just before AMD launches a new generation of CPU's. While I can't speak for anyone else, I'm at least going to give their next generation a chance.
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5
March 1, 2011 5:52:43 AM

Why even bother upgrading when most games are console ports, and dont need more then 3-4 yr old hardware to run maxed out?

Certainly no one needs quad cores for web browsing and word lol.
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-5
March 1, 2011 5:55:12 AM

Don't forget the fact that these sandy-bridge CPUS can not be overclocked
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4
a c 94 à CPUs
March 1, 2011 5:56:47 AM

id like to see a core 2 duo comparison to the new cpu's. Everyone says they are old and slow, but in reality they are similar to an i3 without hyperthreading.
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-1
March 1, 2011 6:25:45 AM

So glad you did the bench's in 1920x1080 instead setting the resolution really low to make the differences more prominent. Much more realistic and usable as a real world benchmark. good read.
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0
March 1, 2011 6:25:55 AM

what are you guys at Tom's smoking lately ?

quote from the conclusion page:
"Because our charts are arranged in order of processor price, with the most expensive at the top and the least expensive at the bottom,"

but the first page shows the X6 being the most expensive CPU !!!

Also I miss the price/performance graph:

X3 455 = 88.99USD
i5 2400 = 189.99USD

from the average game performance graph:

i5 2400 offers 148% of X3 455 performance but it is priced at 213% of the X3 455 !!!

how about graphing the performance progression and cost progression in one graph to actualy see the best value for money ? the last graph only focuses on relative performance but price increase is not considered (at least only in the relative more/less expensive way).
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3
March 1, 2011 6:30:44 AM

oh yes one more thing. missing out on lga775 is a huge mistake. this way people have to run through several benchmarks to establish their still working rigs relative performance to the SB ships.

and ... do NOT test HT on I/O intensive workloads (winrar). run something like super pi or a physics simulation on the CPU. I/O limited workloads are the most favorable HT scenario.
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-1
March 1, 2011 7:08:19 AM

To bad they didn't add the i5 2500k since it's only $199.99 at microcenter..
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0
March 1, 2011 7:18:01 AM

Good to see Intel making great progress in the budget market.
But they still have nothing to combat AMD's APU + GPU combo.

Wait yes they do, i3..

I wonder if AMD's planning to go out in a bombshell..
Or will they make a comeback to remember them by?
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-3
Anonymous
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 7:33:16 AM

Im not agree with you Toms Hardware. There is a lot of difference btw Intel and AMD cpus in blizzard games because in those games GPU isnt the cap. And Intel is way faster than AMD...

Its stupid compare CPUs in games where the graphic card scores under 50pfs...
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-4
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 7:46:51 AM

I think AMD needs to lower their prices again.Comparing to the Phenom II X4 955 BE with the i3-2100 on your conclusion chart the Phenom II X4 955 BE should be priced at $115 to $125 to be competitive.Of course AMD will have a couple months until their new CPU line comes out though so they do have some time.
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-1
March 1, 2011 7:57:36 AM

In Europe the price difference between 2300 and 2400 is around 4$ in some markets so even better :p . I do have a request though, could you switch from winrar to 7zip for multitasking testing on future reviews? All in all, it's nice to see where things stand at now, even though only AMD is available on the market till ... april or may.
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0
March 1, 2011 8:10:51 AM

Nice article there.

would have been interesting to see some overclocked benchmark though, to see how the unlocked muliplyer of the Phenoms would do against Sandy bridge with no unlocked muliplyer.

And I know it's an older game, but GTA has the reputation of being a real cpu killer, so would have been interesting with that ass well.

And what did i learn? that my next cpu, will be a Phenom II 955, an upgrade from my current Athlon II 445.
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0
March 1, 2011 8:14:28 AM

Wait for bulldozer , then compare it with SB :/ 
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-2
March 1, 2011 8:23:09 AM

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it much more difficult or impossible to OC the 2300/2400??

Why not do a max OC comparison of these CPU's?? Especially given that at this price range most people who are buying these chips for their own rigs are trying to maximize their dollar and are probably at least considering doing so.

Too many "simulated" cpu's??
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0
March 1, 2011 8:34:00 AM

In the last graph, I really like if it was sorted from highest to lowest and see all the Intel processors on the top.
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-1
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 8:53:52 AM

masterofevil22Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it much more difficult or impossible to OC the 2300/2400?? Why not do a max OC comparison of these CPU's?? Especially given that at this price range most people who are buying these chips for their own rigs are trying to maximize their dollar and are probably at least considering doing so. Too many "simulated" cpu's??

Amd supporters are finally willing to talk about OCed performance considering non-K SandyBridge is not OCable.

How about paying $15 dollars more for the 2500K and OCed it to 4.4GHz? 2500K can achieve 4.4GHz easily with stock cooler which gives you a lot more performance without requiring paying extra cost ($80+) for a high end cooler. You will then end up with a much better performance for less cost than the PII-X6@4GHz+high end cooler.
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0
March 1, 2011 8:55:59 AM

All the non-overclockable SB procs are failures to anyone not running so-called "mission critical" things on their comps.

My old ass E4300 (which I got at the time for CHEAPER than the current SB procs) OCed to 3.5 ghz trashes the dual-core SB procs that can't overclock

Outside those who are willing to spend money on the SB mobos and are in the price range ($250 ish) for the 2500k/2600k, SB is completely pointless for overclockers of any stripe.

Since the AMD chips atm are still complete failures, people like me who are stuck with OCed core 2 duos and core 2 quads have nothing to look forward to in affordable high performance procs that are worth upgrading to until Bulldozer from the looks of it.
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-10
March 1, 2011 9:11:57 AM

Nice review.

But the article is using a GTX 480 thats a really high end CPU.

People who making a value rig are not buying that card with their mid range gpu.

I do understand that the focus was on the power of the cpu match each other. but in real world. it would be more informative if the low end where paired with gtx 460 or 6850 to see if the low end can ultilize the full potential of those cards.

i know some games favaour cpu og gpu power. But if you only need a athlon 645 to ultilize a 6850 fully etc.
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0
Anonymous
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 10:47:10 AM

So what does this article tell you, you can get decent gaming performance from the very cheapest chip, and yes very decent gaming performance indeed!

Intel have faster chip, but it is a couple of generations against the AMD chips, so well done AMD for staying in the game with chips as long in the tooth as these are, just goes to show how solid AMD chips are!

Problem is, as much as I like to recommend right now to my customers to go down the SandyBridge route, none are keen to wait for the motherboards, so all my builds are still going AMD way as they have for a long long time!

Unless its been High End (x58 i7 , Production/Extreme Gaming Systems), all my customer builds have been AMD since the Core2Duo days, I think Intel will be back there in the Budget/Midrange Market with Sandybridge once they have shipments of fixed chipsets, but it wont last long if AMD execute properly, pressure is on AMD again for sure!
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2
March 1, 2011 10:48:48 AM

When reviewing low end or mid range processors where cost is something to keep an eye on it only makes sense to compare the cost of the motherboards, if only very roughly.

Though the Sandy Bridge CPUs will run at competing price points their real price is inflated by the motherboards that, though they have the same features as their AM3 counterparts, will generally run ~40$ more or higher.

Realistically you'd have to tack on $40 to every one of those Intel CPUs, including the lga1156
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1
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 11:58:41 AM

The biggest fallacy is that these reviews assume you can just swap out the AMD or INTEL cpu's at will when anyone upgrading won't have that option at all. I'd have to buy a SB board along with that shiny new CPU. That would entail the purchase of another waterblock which in and of itself can be $100+ USD for a solid performing one.

And all of this for what boils down to 1~7 fps at ultra-mega-super-ridiculous high graphics settings. You can instead choose to put that money on a better GFX solution or hold onto it for a better upgrade path. Starcraft II is about the only game out that heavily taxes the CPU. Most of those charts have differences that are statistically insignificant because they are within the error bar.
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0
March 1, 2011 12:05:30 PM

I don't think running the test suite at 1080p was the best way to really spread out the difference across these different CPUs. It seems hard to justify getting the best bang for your buck on gaming potential, considering a $5 difference worthwhile, and trying to eek out extra frames while using a graphics card that costs over $400. It doesn't line up. Use a card that's priced within reason relative to these chips (if you're willing to buy a GTX480, you are almost certainly willing to buy a 2500k, which has already been shown to be the best bang for your buck (or very nearly so)) and run the suite at a lower resolution.
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-1
a c 162 à CPUs
March 1, 2011 12:12:50 PM

Time to change to SB?, I will wait for BD, see performance and then make my choice.
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1
March 1, 2011 12:18:05 PM

Burnley, and others who are complaining about the $400 graphics card: The point of the card is to not limit the CPU. Obviously nobody buying an i3 for a gaming rig is going to drop that kind of money, but the point is that for comparison purposes we need to see what the best potential is. Then when someone puts a cheap card in they know the spread will be similar and perhaps more pronounced when things are relying more on the proc for help.
Personally it was amazing to me that the new i3s did so well! I have been waiting quite a while for an upgrade from an older c2d, and everything I have seen of the i3 says it will be my 'starter' proc which will be upgraded if money allows in the future. Just need the new northbridge and lightpeak support before I am jumping on anything!
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4
March 1, 2011 12:40:15 PM

We will see what new Bulldozer brings to the table. Right now i would not suggest AMD platform over Intel platform. First of all it is much slower, you can get more out of Intel platform for same price and also you are limited to Crossfire only where with Intel you can go SLI/Crossfire. I believe Nvidia still makes chipset for AMD supporting SLI but it is very limited choice you can get.
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0
March 1, 2011 1:08:55 PM

Buldozer Buldozer when will you come...come & kick intel please :) 
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-1
Anonymous
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 1:28:55 PM

Come on guys. Cry some more. I've been an AMD fan forever because of their price/performance ration, but give Intel some credit. They have AMD over a barrel ATM. Come on Bulldozer, don't make me switch to the blue side...
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3
March 1, 2011 1:37:34 PM

CommunismSince the AMD chips atm are still complete failures, people like me who are stuck with OCed core 2 duos and core 2 quads have nothing to look forward to in affordable high performance procs that are worth upgrading to until Bulldozer from the looks of it.


Complete failures? Last time I checked this review is comparing 2+ yr old technology to brand new architecture. I think for its age that the Phenom II is hold up. I would say keep ignorant comments like that out of discussions until it's apples to apples. Don't forget when AMD released the Athlon 64 and it stomped the Pentium 4, it was the same thing then and people were trashing the P4 (which at the time was a 5yr old tech) Give AMD a break until they release their new offerings.. You wouldn't want to look foolish if Bulldozer beats SB in a review like this again.
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5
March 1, 2011 1:43:54 PM

CommunismMy old ass E4300 (which I got at the time for CHEAPER than the current SB procs) OCed to 3.5 ghz trashes the dual-core SB procs that can't overclock


That doesn't make any sense.

Even the new i3-2100 ate the i3-560 alive, and the i3-560 is 3.33 GHz stock.

Are you suggesting that a 3.5 GHz E4300 'trashes' a 3.33 GHz i3-560?
That's only a 170 MHz difference, and the i3-560 has twice the cache and also has Hyper-threading!

I don't see how an oc'd E4300 would have a chance.
Score
7
March 1, 2011 1:46:16 PM

HeuritiskNice review.But the article is using a GTX 480 thats a really high end CPU. People who making a value rig are not buying that card with their mid range gpu.


When testing CPUs you want to remove other bottlenecks.

There's little point in testing gaming CPUs if we limit the results to a low end graphics card. Then we're testing the graphics card, not the CPUs.

In order to focus on CPU results we have to remove the graphics bottleneck, and so a fast graphics card is required.
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5
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 1:49:14 PM

All Sandy Bridge processors overclock, K or no K. Get it straight people.
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-2
March 1, 2011 1:57:04 PM

geekapproved said:
All Sandy Bridge processors overclock, K or no K. Get it straight people.


Well, if there's no K you're limited to a few MHz times the multiplier.

Not much headroom, there. For all intents and purposes, not really overclockable to any noticeable degree.
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3
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 1:58:22 PM

Well this article raises some good points but it would be nice to see other issues covered like overclocking and pairing with a mid range card
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0
March 1, 2011 2:08:04 PM

Cleeve, I'll write the same thing I wrote in teh Lucid article:


Your commenting system is now completely broken!

When you look at the comments from the article, the first one that shows up is

"Wait for bulldozer , then compare it with SB",

but when you look at it, the first, second and third page of comments are the same. If you look at the comments through the forums, there are many comments before that one.

Why is it also taking forever for the comment rating system to be fixed ? It has been months now. What could be so hard to fix, when it actually worked before ? This is slowly destroying the community.
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1
March 1, 2011 2:14:44 PM

is the phenom II 955 powerfull enough to use with a pair of Amd 6950's in cf ?
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0
March 1, 2011 2:20:32 PM

I live by a Microcenter. Please include i7-950, i5-760 and i5-2500k plz kthxbai.
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-2
a b à CPUs
March 1, 2011 2:23:04 PM

Nice review..
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0
March 1, 2011 2:32:36 PM

quicksilver98Complete failures? Last time I checked this review is comparing 2+ yr old technology to brand new architecture. I think for its age that the Phenom II is hold up. I would say keep ignorant comments like that out of discussions until it's apples to apples. Don't forget when AMD released the Athlon 64 and it stomped the Pentium 4, it was the same thing then and people were trashing the P4 (which at the time was a 5yr old tech) Give AMD a break until they release their new offerings.. You wouldn't want to look foolish if Bulldozer beats SB in a review like this again.


You're wrong on so many levels. Pentium 4 wasn't an old technology at all, Prescott was a huge redesign compared to Northwood, much more than Athlon 64 was compared to the Athlon XP. In fact, Sandy Bridge is in many ways a Pentium 4 merged with the Nehalem, if anything being slightly more Pentium 4. For old technology, it's kind of funny it was used so extensively in the new architecture.

Pentium 4 failed because of one thing - power use and heat. It would have killed the Athlon 64 except it was limited in clock speed by this. Intel's big mistake was they didn't consider this a limiting factor, and, ironically, at 45 nm it would have been much less of one.

The reality is, Barcelona got stomped the day it came out by Intel's 1995 based architecture. It can't compete with Intel's generation previous to the previous generation. Yet, it was out well after it, and is larger. It's a complete failure.

It's comical to see people say they want to wait for the Bulldozer, and how it will compete with the SB. What do you base this on, it's new? It has NO CHANCE of being a better gaming processor, overall, because it's not designed that way. If you look at the design, you'll see AMD gave up competing with Intel on single-threaded performance, and as you can see from these benchmarks, going more than four threads yields nothing. Of course, that can change. BD will excel at multi-threading per watt, and will, AMD hopes, handle many threaded workloads more efficiently (meaning, per watt), than Intel's processors. For servers and such, where energy use is a big deal, this could make the processor very attractive for certain workloads. As is, AMD is worse at everything, and being better at this element is not trivial or unimportant, and I'm not in any way implying it. It's just not going to beat, or be close to, SB in games or other applications like that. Unless you can take advantage of the extra execution unit, or power use is critical (after all, a 2 core BD should be able to outperform a 2 core SB, if you're using four threads aggressively, since the BD will have two full execution units, compared to the virtual solution by Intel, and if you go to four core Intel, well, you're probably using more power), SB will almost certainly offer better performance. For gamers, power isn't important, and nothing seems to be capable of using 7+ threads, and you'd probably need 9-12 threads before a six core/12 execution unit BD would really flex its muscle over a six core SB. The test shown on this article don't show that's even close to reality right now.
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-5
March 1, 2011 2:52:00 PM

quicksilver98Complete failures? Last time I checked this review is comparing 2+ yr old technology to brand new architecture. I think for its age that the Phenom II is hold up. I would say keep ignorant comments like that out of discussions until it's apples to apples. Don't forget when AMD released the Athlon 64 and it stomped the Pentium 4, it was the same thing then and people were trashing the P4 (which at the time was a 5yr old tech) Give AMD a break until they release their new offerings.. You wouldn't want to look foolish if Bulldozer beats SB in a review like this again.


You know I kind of think the same thing. Through I have to laugh at all the people trashing it when considering the fact that it's 2+ yr old tech and it's still holding up. oh and before I forget, Tom's next time list at what prices each cpu is at
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1
a c 150 à CPUs
March 1, 2011 2:52:33 PM

The comments system is really FUBAR. In the forums, it now tells me I've already voted.
Anyway...
I thought this article was very kind to AMD. The differences are often insignificant, but AMD is out-performed across the board. The building is getting taller, and the basement AMD occupies is looking smaller and smaller all the time. And Bulldozer not until July? That rather blows.
Still, in the extremely low budget segment, platform prices have to be considered also. It is also worth noting that, while outperformed, an AMD CPU is still "good enough" for almost all of these games. How much more can AMD afford to drop prices?
Furthermore, I think using a lesser GPU (GTX460, HD5770, or even a HD5670) would be valid. This isn't a CPU review, it's a consideration of how suitable these CPUs are for games. If the bottleneck shifts to the GPU, would that make a Phenom II perform just as well as SB, or would it still lag, and by how much?
I'd also like to know how the i5-2400s performs. In actual use, does it really use less power, for equivalent performance, or does performance scale down with less power used?

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-2
March 1, 2011 2:59:57 PM

Quote:
two quick questions:

1. why a gt480 over a gtx580?
the 580 is significantly faster and will reduce gpu bottleneck further.

2.for these "budget builds", why not use a 6950/560/5870 for a more realistic system?


Your two questions kind of cancel each other out. :) 

But to answer them one at a time:

1) Because I think the 480 is sufficient to remove the bulk of CPU bottlenecking at 1920x1080. As the results show, even at this high res there are still some notable differences. I don't think a 580 would have changed that much.

2) Because we're trying to use a strong enough card to remove the GPU bottleneck, I don't think a 6950/560/5870 would be ideal for that purpose.
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1
March 1, 2011 3:12:06 PM

AMD is definitely more at all in the race. It is not surprising to hear rumors of its sale.
This is unfortunate for consumers who will soon have another monopoly over 90% of Intel. And it will raise prices of its microprocessors as it sees fit as there will be more competition.
This is what happens with operating systems and Microsoft's monopoly: it sells the operating system while $ 300 is worth at most $ 5.
Long live capitalism and its monopolies!
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-3
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