Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: November '09
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Best Gaming CPU: $50-$90
- 3. Best Gaming CPU: $100-$150
If you don’t have the time to research the benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right processor for your next gaming machine, fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best gaming CPUs offered for the money.
November Updates
AMD has introduced some new CPUs since our last installment; most notably, the Athlon II X3 family. The new Athlon II X3 435 combines three CPU cores, a fast 2.9 GHz clock rate, and a low $90 price tag. Since today's games tend to utilize no more than three CPU cores on average, the Athlon II X3 435 is a fantastic gaming processor for the enthusiast on a budget. Our Athlon II X3 435 sample overclocked to 3.7 GHz fairly easily, so there's a lot to like about this low-cost processor. In addition to the X3 435, AMD has also created an Athlon II X3 425 with a 2.8 GHz clock speed, available for about $80.
There are a number of other new AMD CPUs available, mostly a host of low-power Athlon II X2, X3, and X4 variants. These are great for energy-efficient applications, but they don't offer much to gamers looking for maximum performance per dollar.
Aside from those introductions there isn't much to report on the CPU front, with Intel dominating the $200+ market with its Core i5 and Core i7, and AMD dominating the sub-$200 market with the Phenom II X4 955 and new Athlon II.
Speaking of the Phenom II X4 955, the street price has dropped to $175, making it a great deal for a premium multiplier-unlocked processor. The Core i5 is faster, but the $25 price difference might be enough for some tweakers to opt for the unlocked Phenom II, especially since the P55 platform tends to be a bit more expensive than AMD options at this time. Either way, there are some fantastic products out there--let's look at the recommendations.
Some Notes About Our Recommendations
This list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don’t play games, then the CPUs on this list may not be suitable for your particular needs.
The criteria to get on this list are strictly price/performance. We acknowledge that there are other factors that come into play, such as platform price or CPU overclockability, but we're not going to complicate things by factoring in motherboard costs. We may add honorable mentions for outstanding products in the future, though. For now, our recommendations are based on stock clock speeds and performance at that price.
Cost and availability change on a daily basis. We can’t offer up-to-the-minute accurate pricing information in the text, but we can list some good chips that you probably won’t regret buying at the price ranges we suggest (and our PriceGrabber-based engine will help track down some of the best prices for you).
The list is based on some of the best U.S. prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary. Of course, these are retail CPU prices while we do not list used or OEM CPUs.
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Latest Intel reviews
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E7500 still going strong and on the list....
AFAIKT, Athlon II 425 runs at 2700 MHz, not 2800 MHz.
Kinda strange that here on toms I5-750 is superior in gaming, well true if u want to play on low resolution and with no AA, AF and so on, because at 800x600 the I5-750 whipes the floor with AMD 965, but then something a bit strange happens when u turn the heat up.
Source:
Testet with radeon 5850.
Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark[/b]
Benchmark Reviews uses the DirectX 10 test set at 1920x1200 resolution to test with 8x AA (highest common AA setting available between GeForce and Radeon video cards) and 16x AF. The benchmark runs through four different test scenes, but scenes #2 and #4 usually offer the most graphical challenge.
Sene 2
I5-750 - Looses with 4,8 frames
Sene 4
I5-750 – Looses with 4,4 frames
Far Cry 2 Benchmark
Og Far Cry is nown to be good on the Intel arcitecture
Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for DirectX 10 tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. Performance settings were all set to 'Very High', Render Quality was set to 'Ultra High' overall quality, 8x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled.
I5-750 – Looses with 1,8 frames
Resident Evil 5 Tests
Benchmark Reviews uses the DirectX 10 version of the test at 1920x1200 resolution. Super-High quality settings are configured, with 8x MSAA post processing effects for maximum demand on the GPU. Test scenes from Area #3 and Area #4 require the most graphics processing power, and the results are collected for the chart illustrated below.
Area 3#
I5-750 – Loses with1,6 frames
Area 4#
i5-750 – Looses with 3,7 frames
Source:
And even against the i7-940 with radeon 5870 on max settings, 1920x1080, the phenom 965 wins 2 of 4, ties in on, looses 1 on.
Shoudnt this tell that to base that a cpu is good with low resulutions is worthless when it comes to real gameplay.
Well the link sources isnt in the post over, dont know why, but the numbers are from Benchmarkreviews and Guru3d.
Fixed.
So far on the net with tests with powerful grapic cards the phenom wins 80% against nehalm, well there are only 2 test on the web where real settings are appliend, but that will change now, since Toms is doing it so far good "balanced gamer rigg artichles
Edit:
Thanks Izzycraft
And edit a lil bit more
If my memory serves me right Phenom does better than i7 with the nvidia gtx 285 when the grapic card is on max settings to, confirmed here on toms among other places.
The athlon x3's DO NOT have 3 mb of l2 cache !
This needs changed asap...
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 452-2.html
The athlon x3's DO NOT have 3 mb of l2 cache !This needs changed asap...http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 452-2.html
Fixed!
oh hilarity ensues
edit: osse you can edit your posts but finding the forum and post is not that easy, you can even delete a post if you go into full edit instead of a quick edit
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] w=0&nojs=0
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-56.html
And the reason why cpus are tested at low resolutions is more academic then practical yes but it does show in theory that what a cpu can do when other parts of the computer isn't holding it back mainly the gpu as "practical" test can't show everyone's personal set up and quarks of a system
pentium dual-core E2160 still there..
@ osse, 1 to 4 frames difference is not something I would call worthless performance... That can easily be a difference because of slightly other parts besides the cpu as it would be the cpu.
And if it were so that it was 1-4 frames slower that still doesn't mean it is slower on all facets of cpu usage. ofcourse gaming is important but other tasks it will outperform amd easily.
@ osse, 1 to 4 frames difference is not something I would call worthless performance... That can easily be a difference because of slightly other parts besides the cpu as it would be the cpu.
And if it were so that it was 1-4 frames slower that still doesn't mean it is slower on all facets of cpu usage. ofcourse gaming is important but other tasks it will outperform amd easily.
Actually with latest prices in the $100-150 cataogory we have
Phenom 2 x4 925 @ $141
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103656
Locked multi but still good to go for clocking hehe
I have asked this question op a number of forums but nobody seems to know the answer. What is the CPU design software that AMD and Intel use for designing their processors. Maybe Cadence products?
Good to consider then build around. Will help with the few builds I am considering.
@2shea
I for the most agree that 1-4 frames isnt much, and it wasnt in that context i refered to the 2 tests where high end grapic card is used 5850/5870.
While there is no diffrense in 100 vs 130 frames, there can be a diffrense between 40 and 44 frames in gamer experience. However small.
It was in the context to the claim that i5-750 is superior in gaming. When it actually loose when you have settings that gamers want.
Edit:
And i was actually more supprised when guru matched i7-940 vs phenom 965, espeially in Far cry, wich should be a very good game for Nehalm, I7-940 wins big times on 1024x768, but looses with a few frames when we go to 1920x1200.
with gamer settings : high-quality DX10 mode with 4x AA (anti-aliasing) and 16x AF (anisotropic filtering).
Same happens in Brother In Arms, i7-940 wins big time 1024x768, and looses with a few frames in 1920x1200. In crysis they tie at 1920x1200, and resident evil I7-940 wins good.
But the conclusion so far of tests out on the web with gamer setting , is that overall phenomII 965 is abel to pull a few more frames out of the radeon 58xx, both against the i5-750 and i7-940. On stock speed.
And that is the oposit result of what you would expect from testing in low resolutions and no grapic effects tells us, there both i5-750 and i7-940 wins big time.
I just bought an i750 at Microcenter for $149. Great steal, not sure if they have pics of Andy Grove or something, but that changed the price/performance enough for me to go Intel this time around - I'd been looking at Phenom II x3s until that find.
It would be nice to do an overclocked section, so we could compare overclcocked to non overclocked processors. It is being done here:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html
Uhm... what is E7500 doing there, when there is also E6500, which supports virtualization... unlike the E7500?
Uhm... what is E7500 doing there, when there is also E6500, which supports virtualization... unlike the E7500?