It's a shame there aren't more games that run like FO3 considering how gorgeous it is yet still being much more accessible based on its focus of CPU power instead of being topheavy on the GPU side.

The Pentium DC can effortlesly overclock to 3.6, giving it a steep clock edge. And under good air cooling can easily hit the 4Ghz mark. With quality air cooling getting so cheap these days, it's not hard to imagine budget gamers buying great cooling while skimping on the processor budget because of overclocking.

This article would have been perfect if it included the OC information and a few quick benchies to show the results. The OC potential makes ALL the difference in the world at this price point.

If people have a delusion that games are not cpu constrained, it is because, if I recall, an article in Tom's made the assertion that any c2d >3GHz was sufficient.

OC potential is one of the most important factors in an article like this. If you can, most deff post an update soon.

AMD is really evening the playing field with their low cost CPU but they should start challenging the Core i7

I would have to say that overclocking results would be extremely useful. May I suggest that you run the same benchmarks again at two levels, the maximum overclock at stock voltage, and again with maximum stable overclock. Then compare the results to today's benches.

I would have to agree with some of the poster's above that overclockability is a key factor in this price segment.

360 ports generally run really smooth on adequite PC hardware, simply because of the archetectual similarities. I personally dont think that FO3's graphic technology is all that great, but the art direction that Bethesda took made it a great looking game.

Another game that does this really well is Operation Flashpoint 2. Technically speaking, the grapics arent that great. And I notice alot of places where textures and polys arent what they should be for a PC game. But aside from that, the game looks fantastic and runs very smooth even at the highest settings, and it all has to do with art, not technology.

First of all OC is out of the question here in this article since a 100$ CPU is clearly not for an enthusiast user (not even i with a PII 940 don`t use OC) , second OC`ing will only lead to huge power consumption fron the pc performance / watt will drop like hell.

I would love to see what impact OC has... Imo it's always interesting with budget hardware.

The AthalonII X4 would deffinately be the more futureproof of the four. Programs and games are rapidly being developed and upgraded to use 4+ threads. And when threaded applications finally hits mainstream, you'll appriciate those one or two cores a whole lot more. (Not to mention the platform itself lends itself to future upgrades a whole lot better than the 775 platform.)

well amd always pwns on the lower end but what i want to see is them pull out a demon with shiny guns that can gut an i7 clean. then we can start the partying (and new systems)

Yup that's the most interesting part of this. E6300 and the 550 are the most expected to oc well and benefit from it the most which is a factor for the crowd that reads these articles.

What's the benifit of harrassing people who arent driving daddy's bently to the PC store to squander away all their allowance on overpriced parts?

Get a life dude.

Nice article but buying a budget CPU will also be affected by its potentials. So it would be nice if you would add up the overclocking areas of these CPUs.

Ohim its for the same reason that us "cheap bastards" buy a i7 920 and overclock it rather than buying an I7 that costs twice or 4 times as much. The benefits outweigh the risks.

I feel this would've been more interesting with the 720. I know it's $20 more, but hey.

Yes, I would especially like to see what you can squeeze out of those motherboards.
This exact question has been bugging me all week, and here you are with the answers... Have you been reading my posts???
Anyway, I strongly suspect that any 785G board is just all around better than any G41, another factor. 785G seems to aim for a wider audience.
Wouldn't a P43 board be closer in price to a 785G? Might that be a fairer comparison?

A very well done article. The multitasking benchmark was a real eye opener. I'd like to see an overclocking look at these 4 CPUs, i'm not as interested in anything extreme as I am in stable and cool overclocks.

Good article!

An overclock article is more than a little over due for the $100 and lower level CPUs.

Yes and no, but that would have been uncontested if you'd have benched an intel quad core or even the 1000$ i7 (kind of like 100$ vs 1000$ processor battle in gaming). I know that common sense dictates that if u buy a 1000$ processor you will pair it with the appropriate graphics card and not just a 4890, but still in theory for a cpu to cpu comparison it would have sense.