Best Gaming CPU: $150-$200

It will be interesting to look up this article in January.

i think the Phenom II 965's & 970's should be out of consideration. the i5 750/760 obliterates the opposition. hey, i'm an AMD guy, bought a phenom II 940 back in the day. but if i'm upgrading to that price segment, i'd go for an i5. no need to upgrade to phenom II 955++ if ever, just OC the 940 to get more value from it, plus it OC's pretty well without a sweat.

Again, am I the only guy annoyed with the disapearance of the 95W Phenom II x4's?

Does the Athlon II X3 455 even work in a AM2+ socket, as it is a AM3 socket-product?

Yes it does, AM2+ has more pins than AM3. Just drop it in and it should work.

it seems to me like cpu market is dead like for 6 months. intel and amd please release new line of cpu already!!

2011 is a new year
some evolution to this highly anticipated article is highly appreciated.
pleeeeeeeeease add info such as bas BCLK, Ratio, VCore, TDP, ...etc.

to be honest i tried manytimes to leave tom's but i keep commin' back for some great articles.

and by 'some' i mean 2 ~ 3 / week.

other websites are evolving, tom's hardware is still the same...

I really don't believe that Intel creating even more blank space on the amd column next month is gonna be healthy for anyone.

Please add AMD's 45W CPUs to the chart. I'm sure they won't win any performance prizes, but it would be nice to see where they fall. If even the X2 255 was able to play most games not all that long ago, perhaps the X3 415e is also "good enough" where power saving is important.

I think this re-occurring article is great but I don't see a future in it with AMD dropping from the upper end chip competition and the i5 760 is really the only budget choice due to its extreme flexibility.

I was running a Q9650 over 2 years ago and it still outperforms most AMD's according the the CPU hierarchy.

I disagree that AMD is in any trouble here. If you can go 3-4 tiers down in the chart and still have a decent gaming CPU, having nothing in the top tier really doesn't make much difference.

Bulldozer is taking forever. My system I have now is going to be my new HTPC and a new build for bulldozer, is just waiting for it to get here. AM3+ motherboards needs to come out already. 4 module(8core) AMD Bulldozer here I come. When bulldozer comes out buy them by modules not by cores cause, with the new design 1 new module(AM3+) design will equal 1 old core(AM3) design. So todays AMD PII X4 955=Bulldozer 4module.

still holding strong with my 3.8gig OC 940 and 4770. will upgrade when SB and BD come around.

Shouldn't you start at a point lower than $85? Some of us still want to know what's best for those really low-budget rigs. Should start in the $50-$60 range.

I love the recommendations for "best 999 dollar cpu". There is only one CPU that costs that much, so I guess it's winner by default.

your adds suck!

I think a misprint is above in the article in the stating of the newer line from AMD

I think the E5620 and E5630 should be mentioned. Due to the 32nm process both these CPU's can run 4GHz+ long term stable unlike i5's and i7's. The i5's and i7's shouldn't be clocked more than 3.73GHz else they start showing problems in under a year. The memory bandwidth of the E56x0 put them far ahead of i7's clock for clock. These 2 workstation CPU's with an ASUS rampage III are much better gaming CPU's than the 6 core i7's. These 2 CPU's are a real step up from an i7 950 but for price premium.