Dual core Phenom or Tri Core Athlon

[Silent Tristero]

Pretty simple; building a budget gaming system, AM3 platform.

Do I go for the Phenom II x2 545 3ghz, or the Athlon II x3 435 2.9ghz?

Basically comes down to slightly faster clock speed and L3 cache Vs the third core. They are both the same price, and I'm not going to invest any more in a CPU at this time (Ruling out 550's and 720's, basically, unless there's a really big reason to get one over the 2 above).

Cheers for any help.

 

[Lanz]

The are the same price, because they offer the same kinda of performance in games. X3 will pull ahead in Encoding, but at stock, they kinda go neck and neck in most game benchmarks. I think the Phenom II x2 545 would run a little cooler, as it has a lower TDP. (X3's arent that good, running at 95W)

 

[95thrifles]

go for the phenom, for gaming the extra cache will help more than the 3rd core, all games use cache, very few games use more than 2 cores