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What Is The Best Gaming CPU?

Jotunkaiser

Jotunkaiser

Jotunkaiser

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Value for money Aside, What would be the best -Gaming- CPU money could buy atm for performance.

I hear a lot of ppl saying that the I5-750 is the best performance for your £ but what is -THE- best?

I cant really find anything solid to show why, is all - wanted to know if anyone here had a better idea :p - thanks.
 
It depends on budget and future upgrade route really. In terms of gaming performance, i5 750 and i7 920 got very similar frame rate for games, but it's much cheaper building a i5 750 system than a i7 920 system, as you can get a decent 1156 motherboard at £85, whereas any half decent 1366 motherboard would cost £140+. Also have to take into account the fact that i5 750 cost around £150, whereas i7 920 cost around £210~220.

With that said, the 1366 platform is better for people that are intending on going Xfire/SLI, as the 1156 support for Xfire/SLI is pretty poor (need to get a motherboard that cost around £140 in order to run Xfire/SLI in 8x/8x.

Intel has has refreshed the i7 920 to i7 930 with an extra mutiplier, making the average max overclock gone from 4GHz to 4.2GHz~4.3GHz. But according to review, the difference between i7 920 and i7 930 is almost minimal for gaming with same frame rate in Crysis and only 2-3fps higher with the i7 930 for less demanding games.

So to sum it up, if going for a single graphic card build, go 1156 playform and invest the £100~120 saved (comparing to going 1366) on getting a better graphic card.

If intenting on going Xfire/SLI (now or in the future), then go 1366 platform.
 
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i5 / AM3 (PII) and CDQ are all similar frame rate wise.. i5 / i7 tending to out perform AM3 (PII) at low res and the AM3 (PII) actually performs better at higher resolutions..

i5 will leave you with only 8x / 8x PCI-E no good for a serious gamer

CDQ has no future proofing

AM3 offers 16x / 16x PCI-E and an upgrade path and will come in at significantly less than an i7 so if you are a serious gamer you can spend that saved cash on GPU power
 
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i5 if you must have quad, i3 if your not fussed about quad.

i7 is overkill for general gaming unless you 'have to have the best'
 
I recently built an i5 gaming rig as my first rig and I have to say it is amazing. Seeing as it only supports dual channel DDR3, this ram is ideal as its an absolute bargain and performs brilliantly. With the money you save on getting an i5 an that ram, you can afford to buy a better GPU which will always result in the best gaming experience
 
Any quad will be more than ample for gaming, i5/i7 are the fastest CPUs at the moment but if all you do is gaming then a Phenom II will suffice.
 
Fledge said:
I don't know why people are so against i5 8x/8x crossfire - with 99% of graphics cards you only lose 1% performance.
That's still great value.
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As a general rule of thumb on these forums, take everything you read here with a generous bucket of salt ;)

Too many people read things on here and take it as gospel, instead of actually going out of their way and doing the research themselves.

I'll post this link again with this quote from the conclusion.

PCI-Express 2.0 x8 performance, which is perhaps the most crucial set of figures in this review, holds relevance to most people looking to pair two of these cards on mid-range motherboards or one of these cards on an x16 1.x motherboard. It holds even more relevance to users and potential-users of most socket LGA-1156 motherboards, as this is where 16 lanes from the processor's on-die PCI-E switch are split into two 8 lane links. Surprising as it seems, the Radeon HD 5870 is comfortable, with a mere 2% performance drop overall. PCI-Express 2.0 x4 is where the Radeon HD 5870's discomfort is slightly notable, with a 5% drop, and even more surprisingly, on PCI-Express 2.0 x1, big as it seems, the performance drop is "only" 25% overall. Considering that you rob the card most of its data transfer potential, leaving only a 1/16th of the optimum bandwidth, it is still impressive that it can deliver 75% of its performance.

Our bottom-line on this subject is that there is every reason to be optimistic when opting for two of these accelerators on motherboards with two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8) slots, because the performance penalty between that and PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x16) is just too small.
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