AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE or Intel i5 750 ?

[neagu]

Hello,

I was wondering, which one of these is best for games like GTA IV, Starcraft II or Crysis ?

Which would you recommend in this case ?

 

[o1die]

Both will work fine. The 750 has dropped a little in price. You can also use a cheaper h55 motherboard for it. I've had good luck overclocking some of the 1156 cpus.

 

[acer0169]

Got to agree with mal about the 760 instead of the 750, depending on what price you can get them for though. I believe the 760 is the same chip as the 750 but it has a higher default clock. If you're going to overclock get the 750 - you wouldn't see any different between the two.

Same with the 965, you might as well get a 955 and save some pennies.

The Intel has options for both SLI and crossfire as it uses the P55 chipset. SO maybe that's something to think about?

 

[eddie_im3000]

i would say to go with AMD .much better motherboards and so much cheaper than the ones for intel + a i5 760 is more than 50euro up than an amd 965.a good gigabyte mainboard and 4 x 1 gb (or 4 x 2 gb )ram and you are ready to go m8
cheers

 

[enzo matrix]

What video card will you be running in this system?

 

[Embra]

Either cpu will be fine. Intel would be faster, but a bit more $. The gpu will make the biggest difference. What will you be using?

 

[neagu]

For now I'm using a Radeon HC 4980 OC version.

 

[neagu]

No crossfire, didn't plan on any gpu upgrades yet.

 

[acer0169]

Id get the X4 anyway.. even if the i5 is a bit faster.. AMD is better bang for the buck.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

in the games mentioned money saved on a slightly lower end AMD chip is better put toward a better video card, particularly crysis.

 

[neagu]

Graphical quality for crysis would be a plus, but I mainly play SCII and sometimes GTA IV for I'm more interested in a config that works best with those.

 

[acer0169]

I've ran GTA4 and SCII on my old AMD X3, and new AMD X6, both run very well. You'll have no problems with the X4 playing them games.. so I would still suggest the AMD over i5.

 

[neagu]

I've no problem running them right now either, but I'd like to be able to turn the graphics to max on sc2 when I play online. Sure call me greedy, but I like to enjoy the beautiful scenery

 

[ahthurungnone]

go to www.cpubenchmark.net and compare real numbers

 

[enzo matrix]

go to www.cpubenchmark.net and compare real numbers

How is that generic benchmark useful?

 

[Derbixrace]

1055t is the most bang for buck CPU you can get if you overclock, i would look int one.

 

[Phoenixlight]

How is that generic benchmark useful?

It lets you clearly see how good a CPU is because it doesn't base it's results on a few benchmarks. It uses thousands to create a fair overview of the performance of each CPU.

 

[acer0169]

1055t is the most bang for buck CPU you can get if you overclock, i would look int one.

This is completely true. Only downside to the 1055t is the capped multiplier which means you need a good motherboard and speedy RAM to hit 4.0GHz. I on the other hand have a mid-level motherboard with slow 800MHz RAM but had no issues getting to 4.0GHz with the 1090T (black edition - unlocked multiplier). Compared the the i7 980x, the 1055T and 1090T destroy it in terms of bang for buck!

 

[enzo matrix]

It lets you clearly see how good a CPU is because it doesn't base it's results on a few benchmarks. It uses thousands to create a fair overview of the performance of each CPU.

But that on it's own makes it worthless. Viewing each 1000 benchmark individually is useful, but looking at some kind of "final score" is useless. Will the User be video encoding or any of those other random things included in the benchmark? The User is gaming.

1055t is the most bang for buck CPU you can get if you overclock, i would look int one.
I agree with this statement. However, the 955 black edition can usually make it to 3.8GHz, which isn't far off and it will be significantly less expensive.
None of the games mentioned will make good use of the 6 cores of the phenom II x6. Crysis can only use two cores. That's why in today's world, quad cores are the best gaming option. 3 cores on a budget.
In my opinion, there are only 3 best gaming chips on the market:

Core i5 760/750 $205/180. I don't know of a game that can use hyperthreading. Even if one could, I don't know of a game that seems to make efficient use of more than 4 threads. If you want more per core CPU power and don't overclock though, you'll have to go the i7 route.
Phenom IIx4 955/945. $145/135 The 965 and 970 are too pricey for their performance. But at $50 less than the 760/750, these CPUs can handle a lot. Most people don't need more than this anyway unless they have a top end card or a crossfire/SLI setup.
Athlon IIx3 ~$75 Although more and more games can use 4 cores, a LOT of games can still only use 2-3 cores. It may not have L3 cache but it has a high clockspeed. I don't recommend less than 3 cores for gaming unless you are on a super budget.

I would include the phenom IIx3 but they are hard to find, expensive when you can find them, and are always OEM.

The radeon 4890 is a decent card and if it were me, I would go for the 955 BE. Not much benefit could come from going any higher with that video card. GTA4 and SC2 can make use of all 4 cores.

 

[ssshjp]

If you want to try hard on overlocking with a lot more on motherboard, cooling, PSU and case requirements, Intel will be fine. Otherwise go to AMD for a much better whole system price.

The computer AI in games is demanding job for processors in some cases, but the graphics like pixel and vertex rely more on video card.

 

[acer0169]

Crysis can only use two cores.

I agree that games don't make good use of multiple cores, but it's not that the games are limited to a set amount of cores as your statement suggests (intended or not). I know Crysis can use more than two cores after playing it on a X2, X3 and X6 - and each time getting better performance.

Taken from earlier this morning:

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 4.0GHz IDLE:
average core 1 utilisation: 7%
average core 2 utilisation: 0%
average core 3 utilisation: 1%
average core 4 utilisation: 0%
average core 5 utilisation: 0%
average core 6 utilisation: 2%

average CPU utilisation: 2%

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 4.0GHz PLAYING CRYSIS:
average core 1 utilisation: 9%
average core 2 utilisation: 15%
average core 3 utilisation: 23%
average core 4 utilisation: 6%
average core 5 utilisation: 10%
average core 6 utilisation: 78%

average CPU utilisation: 25%


This shows that Crysis is using all 6 cores.. but only one at over 75% because it simply doesn't have that much to process.

 

[enzo matrix]

This shows that Crysis is using all 6 cores..

Not quite. It's more complicated than that.