[Solved] AMD Phenom x2 555BE or Athlon x3 450?

I'm down to the last few components for my budget gaming build. All I have left are my case, mobo, and cpu and I have $160 left to work with. I am really torn between the Phenom x2 555 and the Athlon x3 450. I put the athlon 450 in my fiances build and it runs great, but I can get the phenom 555 cheaper than the 450 with this deal: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Comb [...] mbo.625059

There aren't really any combo deals with the Athlon and cheap mobos. With the phenom I'd be left with $30 left for a case, rather than a pretty harsh $25. My budget is really tight so these two are pretty much what I have to work with.

I'm going to be gaming on WoW, Battlefield: BC2, possibly RIFT, and some other games. What are the advantages/disadvantages of these cards? I will most likely be looking to overclock, but not too hardcore because this is my second build and I'm not very experienced.

I have a 500w psu, 4 gigs of kingston hyper blu 1600 ram, HD 5770 if any of that is important.

Any help would be great!
Thanks

Deal? What are you talking about? $5 is not much difference. The third core is certainly worth $5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103886
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138283

i have the athlon II x3 in one of my PCs and its a fine CPU for everyday stuff but it's not a good gaming CPU compared to the phenom II series. even the x2 beat it in most games including WoW and BFBC2, probably RIFT also but I have not seen any CPU breakdown for that game. Most games are dual core optimized and athlon II cores are not very good at gaming, the series is really built on mediocre cores for cheap. the difference between the two CPUs at stock speeds is often minimal, with a slight edge to the phenom x2, so it's not like you can make a wrong choice.

FYI; while people may state CPUs like the athlon II series are better for gaming in the long term ("future proofing" ) because of additional cores compared to dual cores, that's really not true. Games are built for fast powerful cores so when quad cores are truly needed for gaming, they will be for CPUs like the Intel i5/i7 series and AMD bulldozer series (fingers crossed). Less powerful CPUs like the athlon II series, original phenom, Q6XXX will have a difficult time running those games. Even now they get left behind by the new SB i3 dual core series in games that are optimized for quad cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=189

wow just uses two cores and its just .5 FPS difference between the two, that as dead even as you can get in MMO benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62

FYI, SC2 is the same way
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/129

You could turn of that extra core.But my recommedation is that you buy a pure quad core for all your needs!
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=190

For a gaming build you would be much better off going with a i3-2100/H61.

It'll blow the doors off ANY amd cpu in gaming, has a better upgrade path and is only 65w.

If you live near microcenter, you can get a i3-2100 and mobo for $99.

Either way, $175 for i3-2100 and mobo and Newegg. A X3 and the cheapest mobo you can find is going to cost you at least $140.

That's $35 more for something with an upgrade path and WAY faster for gaming from the start, with power savings to boot.

go for the AMD phenom II x2 555 it is better than the athlon as it has higher frequency required for gaming and also the L3 cache which athlons dont have. if you can get a cheap athlon get it and overclock it over 3GHz and you'll be fine, and a stock cooler will do fine for overclocking, I have the Athlon #II x4 620 @ 3.23GHz and it is great for gaming and all the other tasks i use it for and i use the stock cooling fan by AMD.

^1155 is great as far as i know, but OP's budget is too tight for i5/i7 and socket AM3 will be cheaper, but also worse in performance

OK on that budget Sandy bridge is out of reach on newegg at least so go with an Athlon x3 $80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103886 + this board is only $45 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157204 and has a chance of unlocking a 4th core. The i3 is better but the Athlon is not going to hold back your 5770 and is a perfectly good gaming CPU. You also get $5 extra for the case.

GO FOR IT, GREAT COMBO AND NICE CASE

no he is not it is a great cpu i have similar one and is great, could easily last another 3 years. although the motherboard would need a upgrade in a few years time.

if this continues the Mods would lock this thread.Please stick to the question.

If what continues? This is a debate about what's better for a budget build.
Spend a little more now, or regret it later.

I made my point. You can argue with the benches all you want. I'll leave the thread. Sorry HuGHES, was just trying to help ya out!

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I don't expect this to be a super computer or anything, and I'll most likely sell it in a few years to upgrade to something better. For right now, it will do anything I want it to with above average performance. If I could have gotten the i3 for $99 I probably would have gone for it, but $40 over budget is 2 weeks of gas money to school and back. This isn't for futureproof gaming, although I believe it will run games in the near future pretty well. Keep in mind, this is a gaming build for under $300, if it runs the majority of today's games well, I'm happy.

Thanks again for all the help, I'll try to come back on here and let you guys know how it all works out

Been a while since i posted on Toms, but i had the same dilemma mate and plumped for the x2 555 BE (£67) over the x3 450 (£53). Yup...more expensive but what you are paying for is a massive L3 Cache, compared to a max of L2 on the 450 and also more overclocking headroom.
Additionally if you are rocking a SB750 you can unlock the extra 2 cores. This is super easy on an Asus board, and not so bad on anything else. Should be considered a bonus and an unlocked, overclocked 555 BE will never be 100% stable (but will be as close to as damn near doesnt matter).

Ill let you convert the pounds..im out of touch with funny money

Just for the record, 975BE is faster than all i3s, i5s except for 2500/k and early i7s

In your own comparison the 970 wins 25 of 37 benchmarks against the lowest i5 ever made for desktops, wins 2 of 25 benchmarks vs i7 860 hardly on par but yes it does bet the i3 2100 in most but thats because they are mainly encoding tests which favour a true quad, it the gaming tests the 970 wins none.

Please dont buy i7 920 if you dont even plan to OC.

Hey guys, got my computer built and thought I'd come back on here to let you all know how it turned out. I ended up going with the Athlon II x4 and I couldn't be happier with the performance. I've tried Crysis 2, Portal 2, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, LOTRO, and BF:BC2 and they all run on highest settings without any problems. Thanks for all the suggestions you guys provided as they helped me achieve a pc that I'm completely satisfied with. I've come on Toms hardware a few times with questions and have always left with answers.

Best answer selected by Hughes11.