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Cheapest Gaming CPU??

Zaphrod

Zaphrod

Zaphrod

Associate
Joined
13 Feb 2003
Posts
342
Up until last month I was using an e8400 CPU in my gaming PC and to be fair it was easily fast enough to play every game I have played. With that thought in mind what is the cheapest CPU currently available which would match or exceed the e8400's performance in all areas?
 
from those charts and looking through benchmarks it looks as though the G860 might be equal to the e8400 also but it doesn't do HT so I wonder how much that would effect its overall gaming performance.
 
I have a E8400 in a system at home overclocked to 4Ghz+ and I doubt a i3 2100 would even come close, (I could be wrong). So the question is, was you E8400 overclocked? I ask because you want the same level of performance or more. Nothing against the i3 but coming from a fast Wolfdale like the E8400 the next step in my mind is a fast quad.
 
I did have the e8400 overclocked for a while but it was fine at stock speeds so I set it back to stock. If I could buy a decent new 775 Motherboard this wouldn't be an issue. :(
 
spain said:
I have a E8400 in a system at home overclocked to 4Ghz+ and I doubt a i3 2100 would even come close, (I could be wrong). So the question is, was you E8400 overclocked? I ask because you want the same level of performance or more. Nothing against the i3 but coming from a fast Wolfdale like the E8400 the next step in my mind is a fast quad.
Click to expand...

2100 to an E8400 4GHZ is 900MHZ difference, the IPC advantage of the 2100 would have them pretty close, then the HT, I'd say they're very close.
 
I'd recommend a 2100, for the money they're unbeatable and you need to be in the realms of HD6950 at large resolutions to really stretch it. I'd reckon it's got the measure of an 8400, overclocked or not. I have one and only moved from a 2.8Ghz c2q but the difference was marked, in favour of the 2100, which I wasn't expecting for under £70.
 
For games the 8400 is close to the core i3. At 4GHz it would best it:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=289

There's only a few gaming benchmarks there and the e8400 is behind in one significantly, but the i3 wins out in all the other benchmarks. Overall I would still go for the i3, since in newer games it should be faster because of the improved instructions, the memory bandwidth is also 2x as much which can make a difference at high resolutions.
 
I run a pentium 860 in my LAN rig - which is just for gaming - and its not come up against anything it cannot handle so far, great chip and power efficient.
 
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