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Phenom II x 4, or Phenom II x 3
theyalllie
Member Posts: 229
I posted recently for thoughts and Ideas, about a build, that my son wants me to do for him. Talking more with him, and reading about the , On - Line, game that he plays, Im now wondering if a Phenom II X 3 wouldn't be better for him.
Iv'e read that WoW Cataclysm, will not be quad optimized, and will be DX 11. He does play RTS, games, and enjoys the latest releases. Peraps these later mentioned would seffer badly from a three core, in which case, back to the quad.
One of the things I'm wondering, in a game that only uses two cores, just how much processing difference is going on, between an AMD 965 Black 3.4 Quad, and an AMD 740 Black Triple? Perhaps alot, I don't know.
I'm sure I will have other question, along the lines of using a triple behind a 5870, is this a CPU bottleneck?
Does a good SSD, help with latency, even slightly, in PVP? Ive thought it would as years ago when I went to a SCSI, in PvP shooters I seemed to be a nano second faster, which is an eternity in reaction time, or at least I'll always beleve that, lol. It may be that whatever gain the SSD gives him, would be negated by a triple( again in a two core game).
Im tring to shoe horn a very very, good card AND, SSD, into his budget, yet bypass the issue of which games support SLI, or , Crossfire, (WoW does not and will not with CAT), and which ones don't. The single card option would do this. Again scenario would be something like, triple core, 4 gigs ddr3 1333, SSD, 5870, vs, 4 cores, 4 gigs ddr3 1600, HD, and a 460 gtx or 5850, something like that.
He really does like stunning graphics, does not want me to OC it, and wants WoW PvP, to be optimized, above all.
(Footnote) For those in the earlier thread last week, he has taken, possible CAD applications, out of the picture. This will just be for gamming. He does play music on his PC, while he games.
Thanks
Comments
an SSD will help boot times, but, in terms of framerate i'd go for the better processor/GPU i would say if you can afford a quad core then get one, rather than the 3 core. its easier to add an SSD at a later date..
Yep boot times arent really a concern, for him, at all. It wont be a quad and a 5870, it'll be a quad and a 460 gtx, maybe a 5850, at the most , maybe, as the combo's are now, with other things he wants, it's the 460.
But we are going to wait til black friday to order, so, who knows. I'd be happy going with the triple, unlocked and clocked, with just a 5750, and SSD, but I play a different game, and want fast boot times, and GPU quality is fine for me at medium.
in reality he plays WoW on my rig at Utra high, and gets about 40 fps- 60 fps, with an OC'd core duo and a 5750. Actually it blows him away, as he plays on a laptop, thats not so hot.
Yet he wants the best he can afford, so....thats what we will do. And Cat, will lag my machine at Utra, Im willing to bet. The last expansion cut 20 frames off, in those new areas. And that was DX 9, this next expansion will be DX 11. Weird I was reading today and saw that WoW didnt go DX 10 on that last one, kinda suprised me.
What OS your running and how it handles the multiple cores is going to matter as well. Taking the same comptuer and upgrading from XP to Win 7, I've noticed huge framerate increases. (I run a Phenom x 4) I can only attribute that to how Win 7 is using the core and how it dedicated which to what threads. I went from a Phenom x 3 to an x 4 and was happy to see noticable improvements on benchmarks and gameplay without the addition of other hardware. A Phenom x4 and a 460 GTX seems like a solid choice to me and has my vote if your OS is 4-core friendly.
Never Buy a Phenom 3 Core. Personal Issues with them, and theories about them compared to Quad or above, Un Even Cores is not so good, think about an Unbalanced CPU Load.
Only go with 4 Core, or the new 6 Core...
Only buy 3.0 GHZ and above, anything lower isn't worthit now forget the over clocking unless you know a few things.
Also make sure when you choose your MOBO/PSU that you don't Bottle Neck the Computer. Buy a Motherboard which supports future upgrades, such that has 2X, or More PCIE Slots.
Always buy a powerful GPU, at least a decent one 1 GPU works per card becuase most games I play don't support cross fire, add another of the same card to it if you can afford it, cross fire them together.
Always buy 8 Gigs of memory or max it out never anything lower.
FOR a high end pc I would say 1000 Watt or more would do it.
Add Good Cooling to the PC, my pc runs at around 10C on the CPU, mostly only if your looking for over clock.
Dont mess with SSD Drives... It is a scam... I know some people just have to have those, but Im going to say that those dont hold enough space, unless your buying a Laptop, or using it as a portable drive that your going to move, has a chance of bumping around during travel, dont buy a SSD.
Instead buy 1TB + Drives such as Western Digital SATA.
Always buy a good sound card such as Creative Soundcards Platnium, or Gamer, if not better its one of the best I have used and offers a TON OF Free software.
Always Buy Windows 7 Ultimate FULL. Dont buy home, home premium. Ultimate has many other useful features and stuff the others do not, if you can't afford at Least PRO, or Ultimate, Dont evne buy a pc seriously.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/default.aspx
Also the Last Thing. Once you format, Install windows for the first time, and boot up. First thing you want to do is.
(INSTALL 64 BIT ONLY!)
1. Install all windows updates, and service packs.
2. Download install all drivers from the website, do not install drivers from Disks that come with the stuff.
3. Download AVG Anti Virus, Internet Security Only, or Esset Anti Virus. DO NOT get NORTON, OR MCAFEE, they are both pieces of crap, and Stopsign those guys fail hard they got hacked by a 12 year old kid back in the day or something like that.
4. Dont Buy an AlienWare, Dont Buy a Premade PC, Dont Buy a Dell...
IF you do expect to have problems all the time with the computer should something happen to it.
Last, if your a dummy, Buy a dummy book, they can help a lot, and google is your friend.
http://www.dummiesbooks.net/
Hope This Helps.
IF your Concerned about Shooters, or FPS games...
1. Internet Connection, Unless you can afford $300 a month for an internet, dont expect to have the best connection.
2. SATA Drives in Raid work just as great as anything else for gaming. You could use 1 drive for OS Loading stuff, 1 for games, or such like I do and i get like 50 MS Ping in most my FPS games.
3. Buy a Killer NIC Card, these help lower the ping and stuff.
4. There will always be Connection LAG no matter what, In general a good pc would not cause any client side lag at all, but server side lag, or lag between P2P networks could be big, Depending on your connection.
The Last thing for that I can Recommend is this.
Motorola Signal Booster 4-Port BDA-S4 Cable Modem TV HDTV Amplifier
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WPGRKK/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000066E6Y&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0EMGZTKDXM89Y7S5CY8Z
There are many different types and Models out there you can try. I use one like this but a different version of it, and I get super fast 30Mbit + Downloads at all times. Any Lag I Get connection wise is because their servers are cheap, or because of other laggers in the game.
http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killer-nic-m1/
Is it just me or does the above poster just sound like hes telling you to buy the best of everything thats out there right now and spend as much as possible?
EDIT: Oh dear God, he's added more. T_T Well, if you've got a couple grand collecting dust, his post is for you!
Oh, it's beyond the "best"; he's telling you to buy things that are complete overkill. Presently, 4 GB is the most RAM you'll ever need for almost any purpose, including gaming. There simply isn't a game out there which will, when combined with average background processes, use anywhere near that much RAM. The only reason 6GB ends up being a semi-common setup is because of the triple channel memory on the Core I7s.
As such having 8GB of RAM is useless for anything and everything, save maybe completely massive photo or video editing projects (to give an idea of just how massive, I have to open about 50 15MP images simultaneously in Paint.net in order to max out even 4GB).
You could make the futureproofing argument, but that really doesn't work either, because you can just buy more RAM later if it ever becomes needed, and prices on RAM have been getting progressively lower (as higher and higher speced kits with tighter and tighter timings at given speeds have been available in a given price range).
There is also no need to buy a 1000W PSU for 98% of gamers. I don't even think dual GTX480s would require something with that kind of output if we're talking quality PSUs that actually live up to their rating, so unless you're going tri/quad-crossfire/SLI there's just no reason for something like that, and even then, if 2 GTX480s don't require that, then 4 Radeon HD 5870s won't either.
I could argue that saying to only buying 3+ ghz CPUs is also overkill, as that excludes the majority of Core i7 CPUs, but I can chalk that one up to only referring to AMD CPUs.
Ok simply put.
He getting either
A) 3.5 phenom II quad, 460 gtx, and 1- 64 mb cache 7200 rpm HD with 4 gb ddr3 1600,
or
I will assume then that a game written for only two cores, will do good enough in column A), that it is worth not having the SSD, and 5870, from column
,
and no fortune cookie, but does get windows 7- 64, (of course) with either build. MOBO, PSU, CASE, ETC, ETC, is finalized allready.
That about sums it up.
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A Phenom II X3 is just a Phenom II X4 where one of the cores didn't work, so AMD disabled it and sells it at a discount. On your budget, I'd probably go with an X4 primarily for futureproofing reasons.
In 2004, Intel released a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 and promised that they'd reach 5 GHZ by the end of the year, and 10 GHz eventually. Today, that's still the highest stock clocked processor ever released. What Intel didn't know was that physics would conspire against them to stop their mad rush for higher clock speeds.
Today, game designers know that clock speeds are pretty much maxed out, and there are probably only slight improvements to be had from improving performance per core per clock cycle. Meanwhile, Moore's Law makes it easy to add more cores with successive die shrinks. Game programmers know that there aren't big future improvements to single-threaded performance coming, but they can have more processing power available if they thread the game to more cores.
Games for the most part don't need a fourth core yet, though quite a few benefit from a third core. But if you believe that future games are likely to scale well to more cores, then having a fourth core sitting there could be handy, since it's hard to add more cores to a processor that is already there. I'd advise against going with six cores for now, simply because quad cores are common and six cores are rare, so I believe that, while games will eventually need six cores or more, that won't happen until after it's time to replace the computer you build now.
You could consider a Phenom II X4 955. It's a black edition, so the 3.2 GHz clock speed from AMD is just a suggestion, and they make it easy to clock it however you like if you decide that 3.2 GHz doesn't offer enough speed a couple of years down the road.
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If you're waiting for Black Friday, there will be new parts out by then. Barts (Radeon HD 6770 and 6750) will likely perform in the neighborhood of a GeForce GTX 460 or a Radeon HD 5850 while being cheaper than either. Cayman (Radeon HD 6870 and 6850) should be the fastest single GPU card on the market. Some rumors say that Barts will be 6800 series and Cayman 6900 series, and then Antilles will also be 6900 series or something like that, but I think those rumors are simply wrong. Barts launches likely on October 25, and Cayman about a month later.
I've got more to say, but need to leave for church. I'll be back later.
First of all, SSD do help a little actually but not enough to give you value for your money.
So don't get the SSD and use those money for a better processor instead. I have a Phenom II myself (x6 3,2) but Intels processors do outperform it. a Intel I5 is a better choice at the time, it will outperform the AMD processor without much difference in price.
SSD are quit, uses little power and don't get hot besides being fast, nice stuff but it is only something you should consider for a computer in the high price range.
In your case we are talking about an average system and you will get a lot more for the money putting them into the processor, more ram or the GFX card instead.
I have BTW 4 raided SSD myself and have some experience with systems running on them.
I don't mean to troll or anything, but that sounds like complete overkill. I have a "medium to high end" rig, AMD Phenom X3 2.8, 4GB RAM and HD 5870. I run everything at high, Crysis at "very high" with 8X AA, AoC at "high" with DX9 and DX10.
SO back to OP, the general guideline I give people is:
If you got tons of cash to throw away or have special needs like video editing or CAD, get an Intel I7 setup with a high end Fermi or HD 5870/5970
If you want good performance per dollar, get an AMD setup at around 2-8-3.0 Ghz. Phenom II X3 with HD 5850 is quite cheap, but not as futureproof. Phenom II X4 with HD 5870 is very good.
Either way in most applications and games, the Intel setup is a few percent better on benchmarks, but you won't notice a difference as a regular user.
Time for a long list of quotes.
"Un Even Cores is not so good, think about an Unbalanced CPU Load."
There's no intrinsic reason why one needs an even number of cores. With a given architecture and clock speed, more is better, as far as performance goes, at least until you hit enough that it's no longer processor bound, or are limited by a single thread maxing out one core.
"Only buy 3.0 GHZ and above, anything lower isn't worthit now forget the over clocking unless you know a few things."
Performance per core matters, but going strictly by clock speed is the wrong way to look at it. A Core i7-870 is the fastest CPU you can get for under $500, but is clocked below 3 GHz. Well, I guess it will lose to a Phenom II X6 1090T in programs that scale well to six cores, but the Core i7 will be faster at most things.
"Buy a Motherboard which supports future upgrades, such that has 2X, or More PCIE Slots."
Pretty much any modern motherboard will have at least two PCI Express slots unless it's Mini ITX. Though they won't always have multiple x16 slots. Regardless, it only takes one x16 slot for a video card.
"Always buy 8 Gigs of memory or max it out never anything lower."
A 32-bit program (which includes essentially all modern games) can only address 2 GB of memory. They generally shy away from using anywhere near that much, even, as you don't want to bump into the cap occasionally and crash. 4 GB of system memory is plenty for games, and for most other purposes, too.
"FOR a high end pc I would say 1000 Watt or more would do it."
Very, very few desktop computers need a 1000 W power supply. Maybe if you're getting two GTX 480s in SLI, a 3-way SLI configuration, or two Radeon HD 5970s in CrossFireX, but that's about it. If building a system where you'd actually need a 1000 W CPU, then maybe you should think about whether you actually want a space heater at your feet whenever you play games in the heat of the summer.
"my pc runs at around 10C on the CPU"
That's extremely unlikely unless you have a really outlandish cooling system. Phase change cooling can do that, and maybe Peltier effect coolers, but those put out a lot more heat yet. Or maybe you happen to open up windows when it's snowing outside to have sub-freezing temperatures inside, but I doubt that.
"Dont mess with SSD Drives... It is a scam..."
The D in SSD stands for "drive" already, so you're talking about "solid state drive drives", which is nonsense.
SSDs deliver what they promise: tremendous speed. This helps enormously where a hard drive would be a bottleneck, and not where the hard drive wouldn't be. They're no scam.
"Instead buy 1TB + Drives such as Western Digital SATA."
How much capacity you should buy depends on how much you need. There's no sense in buying a huge hard drive if you're only going to use 100 GB of space.
"Always buy a good sound card such as Creative Soundcards Platnium, or Gamer, if not better its one of the best I have used and offers a TON OF Free software."
Onboard sound is good enough for most people. At least try the onboard sound that comes with your motherboard before getting a sound card. Sound cards sometimes have driver problems, too.
"Always Buy Windows 7 Ultimate FULL. Dont buy home, home premium. Ultimate has many other useful features and stuff the others do not, if you can't afford at Least PRO, or Ultimate, Dont evne buy a pc seriously."
Check the features list from Microsoft. If you don't see anything on the list not available in home premium and think, hey, I need that, then you don't need it. If you see something and don't know what it is, then you don't need it.
You know what the difference between "full" and "system builder" version are? A promise of some brief tech support from Microsoft in case the OS doesn't install, a license that lets you uninstall it form one computer and install it on another, and having both 32-bit and 64-bit disks so you can wipe and install the other if you change your mind. Also, about $80. That's an $80 charge that's easy to avoid.
"SATA Drives in Raid work just as great as anything else for gaming. You could use 1 drive for OS Loading stuff, 1 for games, or such like I do and i get like 50 MS Ping in most my FPS games."
If you're using different drives for different purposes, it's not RAID. RAID 1 doesn't improve performance. RAID 0 does improve it a bit, but doesn't really fit the problems with hard drives as an SSD does.
"Buy a Killer NIC Card, these help lower the ping and stuff."
The modern Bigfoot card is the Killer 2100. It will improve your ping times a little. But in most games, only a little, as in, a few milliseconds. Occasionally it can do a lot more, but that only fixes some problems with bad network code that doesn't play nicely with certain hardware. I'd recommend one for someone building the ultimate gaming computer on a $3000 budget, but there's no reason to consider one on a $1000 budget.
"There is also no need to buy a 1000W PSU for 98% of gamers. I don't even think dual GTX480s would require something with that kind of output if we're talking quality PSUs that actually live up to their rating, so unless you're going tri/quad-crossfire/SLI there's just no reason for something like that, and even then, if 2 GTX480s don't require that, then 4 Radeon HD 5870s won't either."
Make that 98% figure more like 99.8%.
I'd say 1000 W is about right for two GTX 480s. Of course, the bigger worry is that you'd better liquid cool them. Two 5870s use more power than one GTX 480, too, though for more than two 5870s, AMD recommends two 5970s so you don't overload the CrossFire bridges.
"First of all, SSD do help a little actually but not enough to give you value for your money. "
It's a question of what you value. I really don't like sitting and waiting for my computer to respond. I want high frame rates, and if I have to turn video settings down to get the frame rates I want, I'm fine with that. For me, it would be better to get a good SSD even if it means I don't get a high end video card.
Some people aren't like that. Some people want to max video settings at all costs, even if some settings actually make the game look worse. Depth of field is particularly bad for that, and a lot of games look better if you turn shadows off entirely, too. For someone who doesn't mind sitting and waiting for the computer to respond, but demands excellent looking screenshots, it would be better to get a higher end video card and not the SSD.
Some games only load things off the hard drive at loading screens, so an SSD will make that go faster, but not otherwise help. Some games have to load things off the hard drive while you're out doing things. If it's coded well enough, it can load things far enough ahead of time to cover this up. If not, sometimes you get some hitching (e.g., frame rate stops for 1/5 of a second) with a hard drive, while an SSD can avoid that.
"Intel I5 is a better choice at the time, it will outperform the AMD processor without much difference in price."
A Core i5-760 will give performance close to a Phenom II X4 965. The Core i5 costs an extra $50 or so for the processor, plus an extra $20 or so for a comparable motherboard because Intel charges more for inferior chipsets. The reduced power consumption of the Core i5 is nice, and it has more overclocking headroom, but the Phenom II is a perfectly viable alternative on a budget.
"Games can only use 2 cores at most, 3 are perfectly fine."
That's a common myth, but it simply isn't true. A game can use as many cores as the number of threads that the programmers build into it. One could easily push the number of threads into double digits if so inclined, though there isn't necessarily a point. If several threads each only use a few percent of the processor cycles, they can readily be put on the same CPU core. For that matter, the OS in the background will have dozens of threads going at all times.
The more relevant factor is how many cores do you need for the CPU to not be a bottleneck. If a given game isn't processor bound with two cores, then adding more cores won't help. If a given game has 70% of the CPU work in a single thread, then additional cores beyond two won't help. But extra cores definitely do help in some games. It varies wildly from game to game. See here, for example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-performance-bottleneck,2738-16.html
Even with a pretty good processor, some games do perform better with four cores than with two. Some don't. Aliens vs Predator doesn't perform any better with two cores than with one, which is probably why AMD chose that game to show off their Bobcat processor running a DirectX 11 game.
As time passes, more and more games are going to be able to take advantage of more and more cores.
"The sweetspot in heat/power is around 2.8 Ghz, I use a 2.8 Phenom X3, which I can put at 3.3 Ghz with 2 clicks of my mouse using AMD Overdrive."
Do note that appropriate clock speeds vary by architecture.
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One important thing to consider is your priorities. When I play games, I expect steady, high frame rates, and don't like to sit and wait for the computer to respond. Image quality is less important, and if I have to turn video settings down to get the performance I want, then I will.
Note that if you're processor-bound, turning video settings down may help a little, but not a lot. If the problem is hitching caused by a hard drive (which isn't that common, though Vanguard had a severe case of it), you can't avoid that at all by changing video settings. If the problem is an insufficient video card, then turning down video settings will make an enormous difference, and can usually clear up a video bottleneck unless you've got woefully inadequate hardware. Maybe you should worry about that if looking at a low end "don't try to play games on this" card, but it won't be an issue on a GTX 460, Radeon HD 5850, or anything else in that range for several years.
Some people, on the other hand, think image quality is paramount, and are willing to put up with hitching and poor frame rates to get it.
Heh mad quote
Yeah bad choice of words there, of course they CAN as you say I really meant "in many cases they only take advantage of 2", and as Tom's say "the average optimal number of CPU cores suggested by the test results is 2.75" so games are getting better at using more cores, but there is only so much of the load that can be distributed on cores efficiently. So the choice of cores comes down to budget, 2/3 cores gets you a long way, 4 cores if you can afford the price and extra heat generated.
RAID has been benched several times to be barely useful for gaming. SSD + storage is a much better investment than RAID anything.
NO. Killer NIC card is a waste of money. Anything the NIC card does can be done with software and router settings for free, and it *only* comes into play if your bandwidth is maxed. To do it in software just set an upload/download cap on your browser/torrent program, and set up QoS in your router.Well then, I guess no three core for the build, it was just an after thought, but one I wanted to explore.
Im hoping Black Friday will be productive. Nothing against the 460, naturally Im looking to get him the best card I can within the budget.
And I have to remember, in the next year, he and I can add other things, to the rig. Im sure SSD's will come down in price, and if he has heat issue's, which I doubt, perhaps water cooling, or liquid cooling of some sort, the case Ive chosen does support that. Again, I doubt it will be necessary.
Im encouraged by the new cards comming at the end of the month. Only thing about using one , for him, is the time it takes for driver issue's to be sorted out on new cards, and possibly getting the, "you built me a peice of shit," philosophy, when in fact it's just new cards and drivers getting sorted out. But thats easily handled before hand.