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Best Stock CPU <£200

Troezar

Troezar

Troezar

Soldato
Joined
6 Aug 2009
Posts
7,276
Intended for gaming, web browsing, general office stuff. The plan is to build a first machine that I won't OC as I need it to be stable and reliable, home office use.

My thought is a 965BE would be the best bet, any advance on that?

Must be stock though
 
965 or the i5 760.
They're fairly equal with one or the other getting slight advantage here or there.

AM3 probably gives you better flexibility in terms of future upgrades tho so I'd probably pick that over the i5.

How heavy the gaming would be ? You might consider something even cheaper like the athlon II 635, saves you 70quid and is still makes a very good CPU.

Also what would be the rest of the spec and what kind of budget you're on ? This will help us decide better on what to choose.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys, probably not too heavy gaming on this rig. Looking to build a second in Q2 2011 intended for heavier use. Minimum spec on the first one would be to max out any MMO's for the next 3-4yrs.

I'll have a quick look at that article, off out soon...

Total budget is about £1150 with currently a BX2450, GTX 460 1GB and Blu-ray player and SSD (C300 64GB) currently in mind :)
 
955BE + lets say this :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-251-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-201-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Spinpoint F3 500gb, whichever dvd driver in a good case and with half reasonable cooler for silence like this :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-044-ZA&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395


You could probably do with a lot cheaper CPU like the X3 440 but if just to be on the safe side as most mmos arent well optimized recently.

Good choice on card as well.
Also the AM3 mobo will allow you for easy and cheap future CPU upgrade if you ever decide that you need more power you'll be able to put in any of the newest 6 cores and most likely even the incomning 8 cores.


This should come down to around your budget including keyboard, monitor and mouse.

Remember to pick yourself a nice mouse like the G500 for MMOs ( extra programmable buttons give you a lot of advantage in mmos ) and maybe a nice headset if you haven't got one yet!
 
Troezar said:
Intended for gaming, web browsing, general office stuff. The plan is to build a first machine that I won't OC as I need it to be stable and reliable, home office use.[/U]
Click to expand...

While we can accept you might be lacking confidence if its your first time, it's really madness not to consider overclocking in your purchase choice - overclock doesn't guarantee unstability, if you don't go wild you get the performance of something 3x the price, for the price of a few more watts of power.
 
Some good points there esp. about the total cost of ownership. I've got no problems overclocking hence the second rig I'll be building Q2 next year. I do however want a pretty fast PC running at stock as I want as few potential problems as I will be using it for a small business run from home.

Given the lack of usage of multiple cores in current apps. I think a quad will be more than enough considering my use. Maybe the Intel with its turbo feature might be better than the 965 BE? (I've always used AMD chips in the past).
 
Both are good, intel is probably slightly ahead in performance in some cases ( nothing you'll notice tho ) and amd will be easier and cheaper to upgrade.

Either you choose will be very fast and good so you can't go wrong here really.
The amd six cores have turbo option as well so might think about one too especially at their great price, the 1055 is just a bit more than 965be.

Also you could wait a bit and see how much the 1035T would cost.
 
Good point Phoenix, I did wonder if the Hex cores with turbo on three cores would also work well. I don't think it kicks in below three cores does it? Does the i5 turbo work on one or two active cores?

It would be a lot easier to decide if we knew whether AM3 will support Bulldozer cpu's....
 
Another good idea is to buy cheap X3 like this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-270-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=803

And then upgrade later when you feel the need to.
Don't be put off by the low price, it's still a beast of a CPU.
Even dual core will play most if not all games today without problem and this clocked at 3.4-3.6ghz will most likely eat anything you throw at it for the next 1-2yrs tbh.
And then if you decide that you need more power, get whatever is best at that time.

I don't think you'll need all that power but then even if you do, you can sell this off without any loss and get something better.

I personally have done similar with my current rig and bought 555BE with 70quid and 2nd hand mobo for 40 along with 4gb of nice ddr3.
The whole thing cost me around 170quid and on 18quid cooler I've got it unlocked to quad ( same as 965BE ) and OCed to 3.8+ .

Can't really go wrong with the x3 at such a low price as you can see from most benchs that games don't use more than 2 cores.
 
dont forget that the cost of the processor isnt all you have to pay...amd look a lot more attractive once you factor in ram and mobo
 
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