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Core2Duo v Phenom II for Gaming

All the advice on am3 socket being new etc Is fairly sound I would say, which obviously makes you lean to the amd chip. BUT the fact still remains that once these two chips are overclocked the core2 wins hands down for gaming. Its still a tough choice though :confused: .
Hm not much use at all there was I :p
 
Nope definitely not. Custom pc magazine did a full labs test on around 40 cpu's last month and the results where still very favourable for the e8400 in most games it outperformed the phenom II 720 by around 10 fps. It was a different story for media benchmarking but the op is looking for a gaming chip.
 
Did they find top overclocks for each chip and bench?
(I've not read CustomPC in a long time, just want to know what they do these days...)

Think the last CustomPC CPU overview I saw still had the AthlonXP in it. :D
 
lol that is a while since you read it :)
Yes they benched all chips at stock and then at max stable overclock. Very in depth and thorough article as to be expected from CPC. To be honest I really didnt expect the e8400 to stand up to all the latest cpu's as well as it did C2duo quads and i7 included. Just shows how great a chip it is eh :)
 
The c2d has a slight overclocking edge (200-400mHz in most cases), the PII has an extra core.

If your primary games are slightly older, get the C2D (COD4, anything on the source engine) - if your main games are newer stuff eg L4D, crysis, you're probably better off with the PII
 
For gaming I'd deffinatly go for the core 2 range... infact I've seen quite a lot of gaming benchmarks where even the aging E6600 was scoring in the same ballpark as the new PIIs.

For gaming I don't see much point going for 3 cores as most games are either single threaded, dual threaded or for the few games that are really multi core aware designed for CPUs with 4+ cores.
 
 
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I'd go for the 720, make sure you get a black edition so you can overclock it easy. Intel is more expensive, and uses a dying socket like a lot of other people said, and COD and L4D can use more than 2 cores making it better value.
 
Audigex said:
The c2d has a slight overclocking edge (200-400mHz in most cases), the PII has an extra core.

If your primary games are slightly older, get the C2D (COD4, anything on the source engine) - if your main games are newer stuff eg L4D, crysis, you're probably better off with the PII
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Totally disagree with this I run all those "newer games" you list there absolutely perfect L4D for instance with no v sync runs at 200fps
 
If it was me, I'd go for the Phenom II 720 for the extra core. It may not be immediately useful, but 12 mths down the line I think you may regret buying a dual core now.
 
Would go for the phenom II 720 as well. If you are planning to keep it for 2 years then thats probably got a better upgrade path and the extra core might come in handy. Socket 775 is eol.
 
core 2 may just have the edge now but phenom ii is still very good now and will be better later when games are more threaded and the core 2 duos will start showing there age. So my vote is phenomii
 
after reading latest custom pc i have settled on upgrading to a e8400 from my pentium 4 (whos that sniggering at the back) was gonna go all out and get a core i7 but needing a whole new system to run it ive decided on a duo hopefully this time next year prices will have dropped on the i7 the scores on the amd chips didnt seem to warrent one but as these were bench tests and you guys have run them real world may need to reconsider hold on antiques roads are at the door wanting to value my computer
 
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