Phenom II X4 980 or x6 1090T for gaming?

[HCGxKaLiBeR]

Currently, I have an ASUS M4N98TD EVO AM3 motherboard with an AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU installed.

But I have a GTX 570 SLI setup, I think the CPU is underpowered, so I decided to upgrade my CPU before those major games come out at 2012.

I was looking at the Newegg.com for choices between the

Phenom II X4 980 at $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103935

Phenom II X6 1090T at 180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849

I'm playing Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Men of War, RAGE, Red Orchestra 2, GTA IV, Skyrim, Star Wars The Old Republic, EVE Online, World of Tanks etc atm.

Which CPU can perform the best between my current games and future games like Diablo 3, Metro 2, GTA V and ME 3.

 

[computernewb]

here are some benchmark tests on popular games.
http://www.techspot.com/review/452-amd-bulldozer-fx-cpus/page10.html

 

[HCGxKaLiBeR]

hmmm, the performance on softwares/games between this two are very different... yet really close.

still cant decide....

 

[megagabobe1]

if they are clocked the same they will perform equal, if not, the one with the higher clock will win

 

[megagabobe1]

i would get the 1090t just for the 2 extra cores for the future or multitasking

 

[vitornob]

It's a waste of money IMO. You won't have a huge increase. I think the only way to proper drive this SLI is going with a sandy bridge architecture.

Just look at google for some SLI/Crossfire CPU scaling, you gonna see that this is an area where sandy bridge really shines.

 

[sarinaide]

Buying old architecture is never a good idea. Stick with what you have and save towards newer AMD/Intel chips

 

[Houndsteeth]

Since no one else is saying it...

Save your money and overclock the 965 to 4+ Ghz. If you have good aftermarket air cooling (i.e., Hyper212+, etc.), then you aren't ricking anything at all by turning up the CPU multiplier in your BIOS and then stability testing for the new clock.

If you find it isn't fast enough, or you can't get a stable overclock for nothing our of the 965, then you can weigh the decision to upgrade to the 980 or 1090T, or even ditching AMD altogether and banging down $350-450 on an Intel CPU and mainboard. You may even have to buy new memory depending on how finicky your Intel chipset is with voltages (i.e., not all DDR3 memory is the same).

 

[gamerk316]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html

Its close; both are practically identical. But both are already bottlenecks when compared to Intel SB CPU's. Point being, in the majority of titles, the both CPU's will limit the effects of the SLI'd 570's.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html

http://media.bestofmicro.com/X/F/323907/original/Averages.png

Its close; both are practically identical. But both are already bottlenecks when compared to Intel SB CPU's. Point being, in the majority of titles, the both CPU's will limit the effects of the SLI'd 570's.

always wondered what those graph are relative to seems moot LOL.

 

[omega21xx]

I sold my phenom CPU and Board to get an i5 2500k and board. This is the only noticable gain in performance you will get for changing cpu's, and that still depends on the game. In most cases i've noticed alot better performance. Especially when runnning crossfire/SLI. Consider a switch or waiting to see what piledriver brings, but i wouldn't hold my breath...

 

[Gordon Freeman]

I sold my phenom CPU and Board to get an i5 2500k and board. This is the only noticable gain in performance you will get for changing cpu's, and that still depends on the game. In most cases i've noticed alot better performance. Especially when runnning crossfire/SLI. Consider a switch or waiting to see what piledriver brings, but i wouldn't hold my breath...

There is not point so long as you are seeing a constant min 60fps and my Phenom II 955 @ 3.6ghz seems able to handle 60fps GPU limited of coarse.

 

[omega21xx]

There is not point so long as you are seeing a constant min 60fps and my Phenom II 955 @ 3.6ghz seems able to handle 60fps GPU limited of coarse.

The OP said he feels his CPU is underpowered, I was just pointing out the only CPU worth it to upgrade to is an i5, That's the only cpu that will net some additional performance that can be seen depending on the game. I had a phenom II at 3.5ghz and yeah most games ran fine, Skyrim had some severe bottlenecking in some places, as did some games having bad stuttering when crossfire was enabled. Now that i'm using an i5, i get no stutter in games i used to with crossfire, and skyrim runs flawless and doesn't get the stutter it used to when i'd turn around in cities.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

The OP said he feels his CPU is underpowered, I was just pointing out the only CPU worth it to upgrade to is an i5, That's the only cpu that will net some additional performance that can be seen depending on the game. I had a phenom II at 3.5ghz and yeah most games ran fine, Skyrim had some severe bottlenecking in some places, as did some games having bad stuttering when crossfire was enabled. Now that i'm using an i5, i get no stutter in games i used to with crossfire, and skyrim runs flawless and doesn't get the stutter it used to when i'd turn around in cities.

60fps V-Synch on a 60hrz monitor is the gold standard for perfect gameplay I fail to see how 60fps is any different on an i5 over any other CPU. I just do not understand peoples logic or lack there of and I am not saying i5 2500K is unnecessary for gaming or not good or anything I just am saying people are misunderstood and mostly are playing into the hype and aura surround the mighty Intel i series CPUs when 60fps is all the same as is the standard on SLI/CF and single cards cause between 60fps and 750fps+ you will never see or feel the difference cause there is none at all cause the monitors only displays a max of 60fps and thats is thats all. PS I want to build a Micro ITX LAN rig and I dont want to use a lesser powerful chip like Liano so I guess I will go i5 2500k and then I will find out what as this hoop haw is all about.

 

[omega21xx]

60fps V-Synch on a 60hrz monitor is the gold standard for perfect gameplay I fail to see how 60fps is any different on an i5 over any other CPU. I just do not understand peoples logic or lack there of and I am not saying i5 2500K is unnecessary for gaming or not good or anything I just am saying people are misunderstood and mostly are playing into the hype and aura surround the mighty Intel i series CPUs when 60fps is all the same as is the standard on SLI/CF and single cards cause between 60fps and 750fps+ you will never see or feel the difference cause there is none at all cause the monitors only displays a max of 60fps and thats is thats all. PS I want to build a Micro ITX LAN rig and I dont want to use a lesser powerful chip like Liano so I guess I will go i5 2500k and then I will find out what as this hoop haw is all about.

Yes most chips can handle 60fps, it's the minimum fps that is more important to me, i perfer a 40 fps minimum with 50max to 25fps minimum 75+max
It's about smooth game play. And like i mentioned, when in crossfire, some games are cpu limited enough to make crossfire blow completely, making mimimum frames drop a good amount. Play any fallout 3, new vegas, skyrim game on a phenom ii and then play on an i5, you'll see the difference trust me. I know this is just one game i'm mentioning but there are more, this is just one game that really shows the need for an i5.

 

[Houndsteeth]

Gordon is correct. Any FPS over 60 is wasted on a machine that has monitors that refresh at 60 Hz.

Skyrim is an absolutely terrible example to show bottleneck discrepencies.

1) New game from Bethesda - that alone will make me wait 6 months just to get in-game bugs resolved, let alone GPU driver-related issues

2) This game still runs DX9 and offloads almost all the shading processing to the CPU. Hence, you will see improved framerate performance as you put more processor to the task by either increasing the IPC or increasing the clock speed, or both. Turn down your shadow detail and VIOLA! your framerate issues melt away.

3) Why is this game still using DX9? Same issue that seems to plague a large number of the games coming out for PC today...crappy console portage. It's designed to run on a PS3 or Xbox 360. I guess the developers at Bethesda thought they would cut a few corners and make huge profits on the console versions and just tax unused CPU cycles on the PC version. I'm sure they optimized for Intel CPU scheduling while they were at it, since they control a majority of the market.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

Yes most chips can handle 60fps, it's the minimum fps that is more important to me, i perfer a 40 fps minimum with 50max to 25fps minimum 75+max
It's about smooth game play. And like i mentioned, when in crossfire, some games are cpu limited enough to make crossfire blow completely, making mimimum frames drop a good amount. Play any fallout 3, new vegas, skyrim game on a phenom ii and then play on an i5, you'll see the difference trust me. I know this is just one game i'm mentioning but there are more, this is just one game that really shows the need for an i5.

I was talking 60fps locked min to the monitors refresh rate or V-Synch which is the golden standar not for just only a smooth gameplay experience but a fast and perfect game play experience. Skyrim is a buggy POS game technically speaking but the gameplay and world/lore is great and 42fps min on OCed i5 2500k is terrible performance and indicative of a sloppy coded buggy game.

 

[omega21xx]

I was talking 60fps locked min to the monitors refresh rate or V-Synch which is the golden standar not for just only a smooth gameplay experience but a fast and perfect game play experience. Skyrim is a buggy POS game technically speaking but the gameplay and world/lore is great and 42fps min on OCed i5 2500k is terrible performance and indicative of a sloppy coded buggy game.

It's an example for one, and even the older games had cpu bottlenecks. Most quality games like BF3 won't need anymore than an Athlon II to run perfect. Again i was pointing the OP in the right direction from a CPU upgrade standpoint. I know a good majority stand by having 120 fps over 60fps if they have a monitor that supports that refresh rate.

 

[Houndsteeth]

Was just reading a forum where some modders spotted the errors in the code. It appears that Bethesda compiled the released version without any optimizations other than x87 FPU code ops (circa mid 90s, 486 era), and even these should have been optimized for SSE functions (circa 1999). Crappy, crappy coding and compilation which makes me think they may have jobbed this piece out to Turkminikazakistania somewhere where gaming code optimizations are still back in the mid 90s.

They probably ran it on $4500 gaming rigs, saw decent enough performance, and sent it off for duplication. Since the console market has its own custom compilation, and they have to follow strict optimizations or else the game just won't work at all, they probably spent almost all their testing budget on the console versions and the PC version became an afterthought, where they could fix any issues later in a patch.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

It's an example for one, and even the older games had cpu bottlenecks. Most quality games like BF3 won't need anymore than an Athlon II to run perfect. Again i was pointing the OP in the right direction from a CPU upgrade standpoint. I know a good majority stand by having 120 fps over 60fps if they have a monitor that supports that refresh rate.

That 120hz monitor cost a ton of money to maintain that min framerate of 120hz at all time's like $1000+ just in GPUs to run the modern games and even there are a bunch of games that will never maintain a min of 120fps 120hz that is why I stand by 60fps as the gold standard. PS 120fps min is impossible on HD+ resolutions.

 

[omega21xx]

That 120hz monitor cost a ton of money to maintain that min framerate of 120hz at all time's like $1000+ just in GPUs to run the modern games and even there are a bunch of games that will never maintain a min of 120fps 120hz that is why I stand by 60fps as the gold standard. PS 120fps min is impossible on HD+ resolutions.

Once again, just an example. You can achieve 120fps in games with one gpu depending on the game (games based on the source engine for example)
Seriously this shouldn't be flying off the shelf into some war, i was just staying on topic and giving my experience from switching, didn't need the whole explanation about why i'm wrong when i just was providing a viable and proven CPU upgrade option for the OP.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

Was just reading a forum where some modders spotted the errors in the code. It appears that Bethesda compiled the released version without any optimizations other than x87 FPU code ops (circa mid 90s, 486 era), and even these should have been optimized for SSE functions (circa 1999). Crappy, crappy coding and compilation which makes me think they may have jobbed this piece out to Turkminikazakistania somewhere where gaming code optimizations are still back in the mid 90s.

They probably ran it on $4500 gaming rigs, saw decent enough performance, and sent it off for duplication. Since the console market has its own custom compilation, and they have to follow strict optimizations or else the game just won't work at all, they probably spent almost all their testing budget on the console versions and the PC version became an afterthought, where they could fix any issues later in a patch.

Morrowind still has problems on PC LOL

 

[Gordon Freeman]

Once again, just an example. You can achieve 120fps in games with one gpu depending on the game (games based on the source engine for example)

Source Engine is a light, OLD and highly optimized engine that wuz designed on tech mighty old by like back in 05

 

[omega21xx]

Source Engine is a light, OLD and highly optimized engine that wuz designed on tech mighty old by like back in 05

The source engine is updated pretty regularly. Not that the engine is updated on older games, but it's not just an old engine, it is pretty powerful for it's age and it still gets the job done and like i said it's still updated regularly.

 

[Gordon Freeman]

The source engine is updated pretty regularly. Not that the engine is updated on older games, but it's not just an old engine, it is pretty powerful for it's age and it still gets the job done and like i said it's still updated regularly.

L4D for example to me looks all good but comparable to even some of today's even just mediocre newer engines it is not all that great and demanding but it is scalable and optimized which is so much more important to me.