Phenom II 965 (3.4Ghz) vs I5 2320 (2.9Ghz). Please comment :)

[UnlimitedBanana]

OK so the Phenom II 965 costs 245 LEVA (Which is about 125 euros) and the I5 2320 costs 325 LEVA (Which is about 165-170 euros). So which one is better not just by performance, because I know that outcome goes to the I5, but is the 2320 really worth that 80 leva (40 euros) over the 965? I will mainly be using my computer for gaming. I play games like Battlefield 3 and Borderlands 2. I'm really not keen on giving that extra money if the performance is less than 20% more than the 965. Thanks in advance

 

[mocchan]

It comes down to your total budget

If getting the Phenom II allows you to get a better GPU, then by all means go for the Phenom.

But generally speaking, in this scenario, the i5 may perform better but I would still opt for the Phenom due to the price/performance ratio PLUS the overclocking capability that chip has. It's a compelling value!

 

[UnlimitedBanana]

It comes down to your total budget

If getting the Phenom II allows you to get a better GPU, then by all means go for the Phenom.

But generally speaking, in this scenario, the i5 may perform better but I would still opt for the Phenom due to the price/performance ratio PLUS the overclocking capability that chip has. It's a compelling value!

One more great answer like that, and this question is down for the count. You have one of the best formed answers I have ever seen on ANY of my posts. Thanks for considering the budget. I will have up to a MAX of 340Leva to spend on a CPU and another 120 for a motherboard. I don't want to cheap out on the motherboard since that has got me into plenty of trouble before. Got a couple of capacitors flying out the open case directly at my leg once

 

[mocchan]

I'm glad my post has been of some assistance

If that's the case, you may want to go the AMD route, if I'm not mistaken, an ASUS M5A97 costs around $99 (not sure in your currency). It's a very nice budget board that has very high quality components for you to overclock.

Getting a budget Intel board is also easy, but considering how much the CPU will cost alone, it may be best to go the AMD route for this round.

Also, the board I mentioned above has an AM3+ socket which allows you to upgrade to Piledriver CPU's in the future when they are released!

 

[UnlimitedBanana]

I'm glad my post has been of some assistance

If that's the case, you may want to go the AMD route, if I'm not mistaken, an ASUS M5A97 costs around $99 (not sure in your currency). It's a very nice budget board that has very high quality components for you to overclock.

Getting a budget Intel board is also easy, but considering how much the CPU will cost alone, it may be best to go the AMD route for this round.

Also, the board I mentioned above has an AM3+ socket which allows you to upgrade to Piledriver CPU's in the future when they are released!

$99 is around 150 leva here, or around 175 euros. I am saying the price in my currency because on my last post the people that answered din't really understand the large difference in Price points between the 965 and the famous 2500K.
As for the motherboard I was looking at the ASrock 970 PRO3. It has dual PCI-E slots which gives me the ability to go Crossfire with my HD6750 if I don't bother sparing up for a HD7850

 

[mocchan]

$99 is around 150 leva here, or around 175 euros. I am saying the price in my currency because on my last post the people that answered din't really understand the large difference in Price points between the 965 and the famous 2500K.
As for the motherboard I was looking at the ASrock 970 PRO3. It has dual PCI-E slots which gives me the ability to go Crossfire with my HD6750 if I don't bother sparing up for a HD7850

Okay so that means the CPU will cost 245 Leva and the Motherboard will cost around 150 Leva..total comes down to 395 Leva, that's not too bad! A little over-budget, but I hope you can squeeze it into your rig.

Also, if you can invest a little bit more money into your budget, you might want to get the Radeon HD6850 or Radeon HD6870 if their prices aren't ridiculous They will provide better performance and once you crossfire them, they'll perform better than a single 7850.

On a side note, with the motherboard you mentioned, you won't be able to Crossfire it has two physical PCI-E 16x slots but only one of them is wired for 16x. They're 16x (top) and 4x (bottom); 4x slot will bottleneck the second card severely, I wouldn't recommend.

 

[Kamen_BG]

Actually you can get the Phenom for cheaper.

Asrock 970 Extreme3 - 120 Leva
http://www.pro-bg.com/product/Desktop-Motherboard/ASROCK-Dynna-platka-nastolna--AMD-970-Socket-AM3-DDR3-SATA-IIIPS2USB20USB30Microphone-InAudio-Line-InAudio-Line-OutLAN-ATX-S-opakovka_60017.html

+

AMD FX 8120 - 290 Leva
http://nikem-bg.net/computer-components/AMD-FX-8120--3.1G-X8-BOX-AM3

That's a pretty amazing combo as far as overclocking and future proofing is concerned.

Or you could also buy a Core i5 which will perform better than the FX at stock and will also keep up with an overclocked FX CPU in single threaded tasks.

http://nikem-bg.net/computer-components/ASROCK-B75M--B75-1155
Asrock B75M

+

Intel Core i5 3330
http://nikem-bg.net/computer-components/I5-3330--3G-6MB-BOX-LGA1155

 

[UnlimitedBanana]

Okay so that means the CPU will cost 245 Leva and the Motherboard will cost around 150 Leva..total comes down to 395 Leva, that's not too bad! A little over-budget, but I hope you can squeeze it into your rig.

Also, if you can invest a little bit more money into your budget, you might want to get the Radeon HD6850 or Radeon HD6870 if their prices aren't ridiculous They will provide better performance and once you crossfire them, they'll perform better than a single 7850.

On a side note, with the motherboard you mentioned, you won't be able to Crossfire it has two physical PCI-E 16x slots but only one of them is wired for 16x. They're 16x (top) and 4x (bottom); 4x slot will bottleneck the second card severely, I wouldn't recommend.

Well, a GTX590 running in an x8 slot only suffers about 5% less performance, which I consider within the margin of error. But an x4 slot, now that's another story. Thanks for pointing that out actually, I don't think that a HD6750 will suffer more than 25% performance hit, but I may be horribly mistaken. I will consider that MB though, it looks bloody amazing with that color scheme . It is 180 leva here but I will see if I go for it. If I want to spare up a bit of extra cash, I'll just go for the Asrock. Thanks a lot for your help mate.

 

[mocchan]

You're very welcome