First gaming rig! Advice please!

Question: Do you really need a quad core for gaming? Wouldn't a cheaper dual core that's overclocked higher outperform a quad?

I think there's like 10 games out there that support quad cores and even they don't usually get significant improvements over dual cores.
 
cmndr_andi said:
This is my suggestion - a touch over budget, but it will run like the clappers:

743i5.png


The i5 is about as fast as the AMD Phenom 2 in games, but is the same price, cooler, overclocks better and faster per clock.

But the CPU isn't the limiting factor in most games, the graphics card is. In my spec I included a 5850.
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Go with cmndr_andi's build for sure! Amazing spec for the price. i5 & 5850 is a excellent combo.
 
w1llyg said:
Yes the i5 is awesome, and yes can be overclocked to 4GHz but good luck overclocking the i5 with the coolmaster cpu cooler, cause im going to guess its going to overheat.
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I wouldn't be recommending it if hadn't researched it.

I take your point on the motherboard, yes crossfire is better on the 790X. But you are sacrificing graphics power now for extra graphics scaling later - in my book this is not a good trade. Especially when you think that by the time the 5850 starts feeling a bit slow - you won't wanting to be putting a smelly old DX11 card in crossfire, HD 7850 all the way :)

@Strawberry: Yes, in most games you don't get much benefit from the extra cores. But there are games that do use them, and this is always growing. There is also a small number of games that require quad cores to be playable. So all-in-all, if you want to build a gaming system that will last a few years you really want to be looking to multi-core CPUs.
 
GTA4 and ARMA II, not the best games in the world perhaps - but you really want to be packing multi-cores to get playable framerates. My friend REALLY wanted to play GTA4 on his core 2 duo - he ended up having to overclock it to within an inch of its life to get over 20FPS. Later he just bought an i7, he isn't having any problems now (same 4850 GPU).

The problems with these is inefficient coding/porting, but on these occasions quad cores have the multi-threaded power to make them work. One would hope there are not too many more of these games in the future, but with numerous console ports and an increasing prevalence of triple/quad core CPUs - there are lily to be others.

This certainly isn't the biggest selling point of multi-core CPUs, but if you have you heart set on one of these games, make sure you have a quad core.
 
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my vote goes for i5 + 5850

dont even think about crossfire when considering your build, buy the time you consider doing it there will be a faster, cheaper, more power efficient single card available than 5770 x2.
 
I have not much knowledge about the recent cpu. My only advice will be look for the one that will get you going for a while. I am currently using Q6600, which is still good enough for me atm.
 
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