Best AMD CPU For Games & Number Crunching

Bint Box · 27 Dec 2009 at 11:28

Hi,

Would anyone please be able to advise me which AMD CPU would be most suitable for the following tasks in a PC.

1. Gaming
2. Number crunching with applications such as SQL Server, Excel, Access

Do I really need a 4 core CPU or will a 2 core CPU be just as fast and efficient. Also, I would prefer something that will hold its own for a couple of years rather than have to upgrade again.

Lastly, would there be any advantages considering an Intel CPU considering the above requirements ?

Thx
Binty

Martini1991 · 27 Dec 2009 at 11:46

Phenom II c3 965.
But number crunching, Intel are really better.

Phatzy · 27 Dec 2009 at 13:30

the phemon II 955 or 965 is perfect for the software mentioned

Big.Wayne · 27 Dec 2009 at 13:48

Athlon II X2 240/245/250
Athlon II X3 425
Phenom II X2 550

Are the choices I suggest from AMD, very good value for money, I went for the AII X3 425 and its doing the business!

Can't recommend the Phenom II X4 chips as I think they are not as good as a similarly priced Intel® Core™ i5 which would appear to be a better processor all round!

For the money its very hard to beat AMD right now . . .

Gamer Deluxe System Core

Gamer Credit Crunch

Rroff · 27 Dec 2009 at 14:19

Bint Box said:
Hi,

Would anyone please be able to advise me which AMD CPU would be most suitable for the following tasks in a PC.

1. Gaming
2. Number crunching with applications such as SQL Server, Excel, Access

Do I really need a 4 core CPU or will a 2 core CPU be just as fast and efficient. Also, I would prefer something that will hold its own for a couple of years rather than have to upgrade again.

Lastly, would there be any advantages considering an Intel CPU considering the above requirements ?

Thx
Binty

For the last bit I'd reccomend looking at i5 - someone posted benchmarks recently of similiar tasks where their old Q6600 was pushing out almost double the numbers in some cases of their new Phenom II X4 for server tasks.

For gaming I'd reccomend 4 cores, maybe 3 at a pinch - even tho a lot of games don't really make much use of the extra 2 cores - they do make everything smoother especially with some of the newer titles... that ability to offload the odd bit of processing now and again can make the difference between mad stutters for 20 seconds when entering a new area and being completely smooth with just a minor fps drop.

aastii · 27 Dec 2009 at 14:37

965 would be your best bet, however you could save a few quid and take a bit of a gamble and get a 720BE and a mobo with a bios that will let you unlock the 4th core, just about any asus, gigabyte and some ASRock boards can do it, but there is a chance that it won't unlock, so you will have saved a bit of money, but will only (only

) have a tri core CPU. It will still plow through any game and your number crunching, but not quite as quick as a quad if the software you are using is optimized for multiple core CPUs

Bint Box · 27 Dec 2009 at 14:49

Thx for the replies and assistance.

One point I should expand on is that the SQL Server usage is local PC only for development, nonetheless, there are large data sets.

Would the above lean the choice away from Intel and back to AMD ?

From reading other posts on the forum and the advice kindly provided in this topic I am starting to lean towards an AMD Phenom II X4 965 C3 (125W) CPU.

Are there any negative aspects of this processor for my proposed usage where an Intel i5 would be better ?

Thx
Binty

Rroff · 27 Dec 2009 at 15:00

Intel are usually 25-30% faster when it comes to SQL/databases but depends on the nature of the data sets and the levels of cache involved.

Big.Wayne · 27 Dec 2009 at 17:03

Bint Box said:
I am starting to lean towards an AMD Phenom II X4 965 C3 (125W) CPU

Why would you choose that when you can buy INTEL for the same money or another AMD CPU & Motherboard for the same money? :confused:

Rroff · 27 Dec 2009 at 17:11

One thing to consider - how much do you use the SQL stuff - and how well does it thread? SQL is potentially quite threadable so 4 cores could have a massive advantage... or even the HT units on the high end i5/i7 CPUs.

Bint Box · 27 Dec 2009 at 18:52

The SQL, Excel and Access stuff is approx 60% of the total use of the PC so it is THE dominant user of resources.

On reflection, I need to have a rethink on this as I was not aware of the fairly large difference in performance between AMD and Intel CPU's in this area. Perhaps my original thoughts and leanings need to be corrected.

If you guys have not lost your patience with me changing direction then I would appreciate some advice on potential Intel CPU's in the light of the dominant PC usage.

Am I correct in assuming something like an i5 750 might be more appropriate?

Thx
Binty

Big.Wayne · 27 Dec 2009 at 19:24

Hey Binty,

can I ask you what computer specs you have been using so far please?

And can you also describe the scenario you think the PC would be working hard i.e is there a point where you have to walk away from the PC because it is takingt 5-10minutes to complete a task etc?

Bint Box · 27 Dec 2009 at 22:46

Big.Wayne said:
Hey Binty,

can I ask you what computer specs you have been using so far please?

And can you also describe the scenario you think the PC would be working hard i.e is there a point where you have to walk away from the PC because it is takingt 5-10minutes to complete a task etc?

Wayne,
I am currently using a Dell Latitude laptop with 3gb of RAM and a Core2Duo 2.33GHz Intel CPU running WinXP as O/S. Some of the queries and macros that I run with the database stuff can take up to 25 minutes to complete and the larger data sets are approx 3 million records with perhaps 20 fields per record.

Thx

Big.Wayne · 27 Dec 2009 at 22:55

Hey Binty,

I've never witnessed high-end database stuff so I'm not sure what the best hardware fit is . . . . I guess the next question would be what is the primary software you are using and is it multi-threaded?

I can imagine that if your new PC could crunch the task time down from 25 minutes to 1 minute you would be rather pleased

It may even be a hard disk related thing also?

Would need to know if your software can deal with multiple threads . . or if it can't then your gonna need to lob a very fast processor at it with increased frequency . . . .

Bint Box · 27 Dec 2009 at 23:05

Wayne,

The primary software application is microsoft access but I am not sure about the multi threaded capabilities of it. The SQL server stuff is mainly using analysis services for data mining but again I am not sure of the capabilities re multi threading. Although I can use these applications, I am not up to speed on the "threading" and other background processes that make it all work.

I think that you may have a point re the hard disk. I am using the standard 160gb HDD that shipped with the Dell so again there could be a contribution from this.

If I could get the time down from 25 minutes to 15 minutes for the longer macros it would be a drastic improvement for me.

My intention is to either build or purchase a PC that will specifically meet all of my tasks rather than struggle on with my current set up. The requirement for gaming is a luxury but will be nice to have so I thought I should include it now rather than update at a later point.

Thx
Binty

Big.Wayne · 27 Dec 2009 at 23:13

Bint Box said:
The requirement for gaming is a luxury but will be nice to have

The only special requirement for a gaming machine is the GPU, if your not gaming then you will be served well with an IGP that comes with most modern motherboards . . .

You would need to speak with someone who has experience of High-End SQL stuff and find out what their experiences have been. If it's pure out & out computational power you need then it may be best to go Intel, if its something else like a fast disk and fast memory then the AMD options are good . . .

SQL Hardware Guru needed! :cool:

LeJosh · 27 Dec 2009 at 23:39

Big.Wayne said:
Why would you choose that when you can buy INTEL for the same money or another AMD CPU & Motherboard for the same money?

Slight hijack, would you recommend i5 for gaming over 955? I was going for a 955 setup for gaming but can afford i5...

liquidex · 28 Dec 2009 at 01:46

LeJosh said:
Slight hijack, would you recommend i5 for gaming over 955? I was going for a 955 setup for gaming but can afford i5...

I would say so. If you can afford a Phenom II X4 chip then you are looking at i5 territory and may as well go for that.

For budget or more mainstream options you can't go wrong with AMD. The configs that Big Wayne posted cannot be beat by Intel at that price imo.

Corasik · 28 Dec 2009 at 10:40

SQL Servers thread well, but I believe the performance benifits of SQL Threading come in when there are multiple query's being executed in parallel (Typical usage pattern of a web server with a sql based back end.. lamp for example), many users, many connections potentially hundreds of query's being fired off at the same time. At this point the SQL servers threading is giving pretty much linear gain as you throw in more cores and more ram (for caching the databases).

However if your application is sending 1 query and then waiting for the result, then sending the next query and so on, then it will likely not make much use of multiple threads for this. It really depends on how the application is designed. However if the application is smart enough to analyze the results of the last query in 1 thread(or more) while its waiting for the sql server to extract the next data set, or even send out multiple threads all extracting and analyzing data in parallell, then the more workers the more cores.

I quick and dirty way to see if an application is heavily threaded, is by turning on threads in task manager, then you can see how many threads an application has active at any given time. (or there may be a user configurable option in your application)

i5 and i7 work just fine for gaming, they are more than powerfull enough to hit GPU bottlenecks in most real world situations. Biggest "problem" with gaming is most games are still limited to just one, or sometimes two heavy working threads, and then perhaps a couple of lightweight helpers, so in the majority of games quads (even i5) are a waste as you can get cheaper dual cores which generally clock higher due to heat limitations.

But at least i5/i7 can shut down cores, and go into turbo, which is definalty of benifit to games, especially on "stock" speed PC's. That auto overclock is really pretty good.