For modern gaming on AM3: x4 980BE or x6 1045T?

[macman5187]

Hi, just in the middle of an upgrade wondering if the upgrade to a 1045T from the 980 black edition I have would warrant a performance increase or if the clock speed advantage of the 980 would trump it.

Games I would be playing are Tribes, BF3, WoT, any and all Command and Conquer games, and likely Crysis 2

As part of this upgrade I am getting a GTX670 so eliminating bottlenecks is the theme.

 

[teh_gerbil]

980 is quicker.-

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

the 1045t is classified as 2 tiers below!

 

[macman5187]

I wish I could just buy a 1100T! They are not on the market though and the main x6 still out on virtual "shelves" is the 1045t.

 

[teh_gerbil]

What about a 960t? It's cheaper than both, overlooks like a champ and may be able to be unlockable to 6 cores. Uncertain of how it stacks up against the 1100t or the 980t

 

[wr6133]

Purely gaming the 980 is best you don't need the extra cores. Saying that a 960T will reach similar OC's (though the deneb will be a smidge better at same clock speeds) and may unlock. 1045T would be a downgrade with its much lower clock speeds for gaming.

If you have a 980 now though you would just be sidegrading with a 960T unless you plan to do non gaming things that can make good use of the extra cores (IF they unlocked). Just OC your 980 take the new CPU cash and get the best cooler you can afford and go for a big OC.

 

[AMA8o8]

this is a fairly old thread but you could get the 1045t oc it to an 1100t which is easy only oc to like 3.2 ghz then you got a good gaming cpu and extra cores for maybe wanting to do other stuff

 

[wr6133]

not so easy as the 1045T has a locked multiplier

 

[rds1220]

Depending on motherboard the 1045t can usually be overclocked substantially even 3.5GHz would not be out of the picture!

 

[wr6133]

lol...possible yes but lets be honest 800MHz without multi increases is ambitious and definitely not a sure enough bet to tell people as something they should expect to achieve stable.

 

[rds1220]

Like I said it will depend on the motherboard. I have a 1045T that came on an HP desktop. The motherboard fried so I replaced it with a Asrock 970 Extreme4 and I was able to get it pretty close to 3.5 GHz. I think it's running at 3.3 Ghz. Of course I had to change the stock cooler with an aftermarket one but it can be done

 

[jaguarskx]

Since the vast majority of games only use 2 cores, and relative few games in comparison can use 4 cores, buying a 6 core CPU is more or less a waste of money for a game PC. If you use programs for others things like 3D rendering or video encoding that can make use of 6 cores, then that would be a different story.