Cheap FX 8120 or 2500k?

[fearless92]

In the next month I'm looking at building myself a PC for gaming and have gotten a rough idea of the system that I want to build, but I'm struggling to decide what processor to get.

The general outline of the system is

GPU: Sapphire HD 7950 OC 3072MB http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-305-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673 £249.99

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 XMP http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-vengeance-8gb--2x4gb--ddr3-1600mhz-cl9-xmp-79V4.html £37.96

Motherboard: Whatever is cheap and has the features I need for whichever processor I get

HDD: Seagate 2TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive http://www.dabs.com/products/seagate-2tb-barracuda-sata-6gb-s-64mb-7200rpm-hard-drive-7XD7.html £79.99

Case: undecided

PSU: Corsair 600 Watt GS Gaming Series High Performance 80+ Bronze ATX http://www.dabs.com/products/corsair-600-watt-gs-gaming-series-high-performance-80--bronze-atx-85SN.html £59.98 - unless this isn't suitable

So far this totals £427.92 and I would like to keep this build as cheap as possible without sacrificing too much.

An FX 8120 is currently £120 from overclockers.co.uk and is £100 after a rebate from AMD, whereas the 2500k is an extra £65 more. The £65 saved would practically buy me a £70 990fx motherboard! Would it be ok to get the 8120 or will I come to regret this decision due to it not performing as well as the 2500k?

The games I play are Company of Heroes, Fallout 3 & New Vegas, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Civ 5, Bulletstorm and F1 2011.

Please don't try and change the other system specs to save me money, I know I said I want to do this as cheap as possible but I am not sacrificing on the HDD space or the GPU, I just want to know which processor I should get.

Any input on a cheap but good mid tower case would also be appreciated.

 

[obsama1]

The Haf 912 and Bitfenix Shinobi are awesome budget cases. Get the 2500K.

 

[FinneousPJ]

For the money the 8120 wouldn't be bad but there's no question the 2500K is better. I'd say the 8120 is adequate though if you don't mind knowing "Intel is faster" :lol:

 

[Regor245]

Just overclock the 8120 if you need more power

 

[aaronstyle]

They're both handy, Intel is superior in the performance department. AMD will save you a few extra bucks, and still enable plenty of face melting FPS in all your favorite games, with that 7950. Both OC quite well. Personally, if I had the money, I would build an intel machine. But since I'm somewhat budget savvy, I went with AMD.

Do I regret it? Not at all.

By the time I had looked at the finished price of the two builds the Intel was a good $150 more. Which I sunk into a better GPU.

 

[quilciri]

For a gaming machine, the 2500k is worth the extra money over an 8120.

*However*, For a gaming machine, an 8120 is all but worthless. Unless you're also going to be heavily using apps you *know* to be very multi-threaded, 8 cores is useless to you.

You will get more gaming performance out of a 4170 (or an overclocked 4100) for cheaper, if you want to go the money saving route.

In short, for a gaming machine, get a 4k AMD chip or the 2500k. Don't bother with the 8k amd series in your build.

have fun!

 

[fearless92]

For a gaming machine, the 2500k is worth the extra money over an 8120.

*However*, For a gaming machine, an 8120 is all but worthless. Unless you're also going to be heavily using apps you *know* to be very multi-threaded, 8 cores is useless to you.

You will get more gaming performance out of a 4170 (or an overclocked 4100) for cheaper, if you want to go the money saving route.

In short, for a gaming machine, get a 4k AMD chip or the 2500k. Don't bother with the 8k amd series in your build.

have fun!

With the cash back promotion AMD are doing at the moment the 4k AMD chips are about £5 cheaper than an 8k chip, surely I would be better with the 8k and disabling cores due to increased cache sizes?

Would an AMD chip be getting or should I spend the extra £65?

 

[obsama1]

AMD's clearing stock for Piledriver. Wait a few weeks and get Piledriver instead.

 

[quilciri]

With the cash back promotion AMD are doing at the moment the 4k AMD chips are about £5 cheaper than an 8k chip, surely I would be better with the 8k and disabling cores due to increased cache sizes?

Would an AMD chip be getting or should I spend the extra £65?

Lol, in that case, yeah you're most likely better off with the 8k. Keep in mind that the difference in game performance between all those chips depends nearly entirely on clock speed, so going from memory (which admittedly, isn't the best), at stock clocks:

4170 > 4100=8150 > 8120.

...but the better option is what obsama said. That's what I've been waiting on to either bump from my x3 if the piedriver turns out good enough, or just ditch the platform completely for a 3570k microcenter combo deal if piledriver isn't worth the $.