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Best CPU for £150-£165?

tywyn

tywyn

tywyn

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Joined
12 Jan 2009
Posts
122
I'm building a new base unit and wondered which of the current CPU's would best fit my budget for a CPU bearing in mind I'll be gaming, but not that bothered about overclocking?
 
Going Intel and also buying a GTX 260 216. I've just been looking at what I need and it works out at about £680 so another £100 for a Q9550 is out of the question.
 
I thought you might say q6600 it's just seems a shame to pay £150 for a chip that's 2 years old. I was looking at the Q8200/8300 and they have a 1333 FSB, wouldn't I be better off with one of these? Bear in mind I'm not that bothered about overclocking.
 
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tywyn said:
I thought you might say q6600 it's just seems a shame to pay £150 for a chip that's 2 years old. I was looking at the Q8200/8300 and they have an 1333 FSB, wouldn't I be better off with one of these? Bear in mind I'm not that bothered about overclocking.
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Argh hell no. Crippled cache is a no go for those chips in my opinion. The higher FSB will make nearly zero difference in real performance as well.

I'd be looking at an E8400 / 8500.
 
Hmmm, if you're not overclocking then as zeppelin said, an E8400 is your best bet. Most apps don't need more than two cores anyway :)
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I'm just concerned that if I don't go for a quad core then in say 18 months apps/games will require a min of quad core, and I'm not planning replacing the chip for about 3 years after the upgrade.
 
Hmmmm....that's always the gamble, and it's especially worrying since socket 775 will be phased out in the next year.
 
Go AMD and get a Phenom 2 720 Tri Core, at least being a current socket you can upgrade to quad easy if you want to in the future and they are great chips for the cash..

Otherwise you could consider a 920 or 940 chip but you would then need to go AM2+ rather than AM3 and I think AM3 is going to be more future proof.
 
+1 for tricore.. seems impressive in other reviews etc. I'm getting a little bored of the Dual is enough, most apps dont use 4 cores arguement... The fact of the matter is background operations use small amounts of processor too. I've seen me gaming on a game i know doesnt use 4 cores, yet my usage across the cores is still roughly 60-70% a core.. explain that one? I personally would prefer more cores vs less @ higher speed. 3.6ghz is pretty doable on most q6600's and thats plenty fast enough for gaming etc.
 
unless your desperate, probably better of waiting on buying an average quad/dual core because sooner or later you can buy the x58 motherboards and an i7 processor at a good price. Otherwise I would say get the Q6600, cheap and reliable.
 
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