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intel chip £60 - £100
- Thread starter FoxEye
- Start date
Someone else bought the non-K 2500 for £100. I was debating whether or not to go for it, and well, it went
I'll keep my eye out for a similar deal, but I'd rather get it a bit cheaper than that if poss. Considering I'll need a new motherboard too, and I want to keep the total spend to £150 or less.
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Apr 2004
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- 13,496
I sold a W3520 (Xeon i7 920) equivalent for £77 on here.
Easily pick up a i7 for <£100 :/
Easily pick up a i7 for <£100 :/
Soldato
- Joined
- 30 May 2012
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- 2,537
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- Bristol
Hyperthreading generally gives around 20-25% more performance in applications where it is supported, which is why an i3 with 2 cores 4 threads is not as fast as an i5 with 4 cores 4 threads (in the same generation-needs to be an apples to apples comparison of course).
As for coolers, you can pick up decent coolers for little money, my 212 Evo keeps my 3570k nicely cooled at 4.2 GHz for only £25. If you can stretch to a K edition, it is well worth it for the significant performance increase, for not a lot more outlay. You could probably manage 4 GHz on a SB/IB chip on the stock cooler without any difficulty.
As for coolers, you can pick up decent coolers for little money, my 212 Evo keeps my 3570k nicely cooled at 4.2 GHz for only £25. If you can stretch to a K edition, it is well worth it for the significant performance increase, for not a lot more outlay. You could probably manage 4 GHz on a SB/IB chip on the stock cooler without any difficulty.
4GHz on stock cooler sounds ideal. If, that is, I needed to overclock it at all 
The most CPU dependent game I play is... wait for it... Dwarf Fortress. It *kills* CPUs, but it's worth mentioning that it can only use 1 core.
That said, GTA4 did make the old AthlonII X3 creak a bit. And I don't think it'll be up to running next years titles.
The most CPU dependent game I play is... wait for it... Dwarf Fortress. It *kills* CPUs, but it's worth mentioning that it can only use 1 core.
That said, GTA4 did make the old AthlonII X3 creak a bit. And I don't think it'll be up to running next years titles.
Soldato
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- Bristol
4GHz on stock cooler sounds ideal. If, that is, I needed to overclock it at all
The most CPU dependent game I play is... wait for it... Dwarf Fortress. It *kills* CPUs, but it's worth mentioning that it can only use 1 core.
That said, GTA4 did make the old AthlonII X3 creak a bit. And I don't think it'll be up to running next years titles.
Yeah, you may find overclocking unnecessary for your needs though it's always nice for extra bragging rights if nothing else
Of course, when I say 4 GHz on a stock cooler, I assume you have decent enough case cooling- it'll want fresh air to breathe Gta IV is notorious for being a badly coded console port, most of the early issues are somewhat fixed, but it still has quite a few issues (constant fatal errors in the middle of mp for no reason are not fun) so I'm not surprised if your X3 was at its limits. Hopefully Gta V will be better coded from the start, I have high expectations of it being a San Andreas sized map with amazing graphics 
Associate
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- London
i3 faster than a first gen i7? Didn't realise that
I3 faster than an I7 920?
You're having a giggle mate
Faster in lightly/single threaded applications, like office apps and some games. In multi-threaded apps like video rendering, the i7 would be faster
Caporegime
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How about you just overclock your Athlon II X3 and try unlocking it?? If you have a £70 motherboard it should be fine for that.
I know a few people who had them and they are not bad for tweaking.
For instance one of my mates got an Athlon II X3 455 up to 4GHZ on a Hyper 212 cooler and another one unlocked their Athlon II X3 435 to a Phenom II X4. Some of the earlier Athlon II X3 CPUs were actually based on the Phenom II X4.
Then you can save up some more money and get Haswell next year and a socket 1150 motherboard which will support another generation of CPUs after that AFAIK.
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Well, was thinking of buying 2nd hand, but the market is so wildly unstable.
First I watched a 2500k go for £99, then a 2500 vanilla for £100. Afterwards two 2400s for £120, then some 2500k's for very close to brand new retail price.
Don't fancy going for an i3 because a dual core makes about as much sense today as buying a P4 The lack of turbo or any form of unlocking makes them not that great a deal.
Then looking at the i5 range, there really doesn't seem to be any point in buying anything other than a 2500k. The price difference between all the i5 series chips is too small to make the other chips worthwhile I think.
Guess I'll keep checking the MM for the time being.
First I watched a 2500k go for £99, then a 2500 vanilla for £100. Afterwards two 2400s for £120, then some 2500k's for very close to brand new retail price.
Don't fancy going for an i3 because a dual core makes about as much sense today as buying a P4
The lack of turbo or any form of unlocking makes them not that great a deal.Then looking at the i5 range, there really doesn't seem to be any point in buying anything other than a 2500k. The price difference between all the i5 series chips is too small to make the other chips worthwhile I think.
Guess I'll keep checking the MM for the time being.
Soldato
- Joined
- 27 Feb 2012
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- 6,586
I thought the i3 2120/2100 was dual core with HT? They're supposed to be pretty good.
What are you using it for anyway?
What are you using it for anyway?
Associate
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- 5 Jun 2012
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- 15
You can get it new for £130, If you're in London I can explain more.
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
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- 14,583
Well, I have bought my i5 2500K oem chip (it says to be new but has been tested) off the bay for £125 last December, and I have also bought a i3 2120 retail new from etailer for a friend. Having seen performance of both first hand, I would say the i3 2120 would be good to pair with graphic card up to around GTX560Ti or 6950 level...but I have seen my friend's i3 2120 slightly bottlenecking his GTX560Ti 2GB (overclocked to 950GHz) when playing on 64 players map.Well, was thinking of buying 2nd hand, but the market is so wildly unstable.
First I watched a 2500k go for £99, then a 2500 vanilla for £100. Afterwards two 2400s for £120, then some 2500k's for very close to brand new retail price.
Don't fancy going for an i3 because a dual core makes about as much sense today as buying a P4
Then looking at the i5 range, there really doesn't seem to be any point in buying anything other than a 2500k. The price difference between all the i5 series chips is too small to make the other chips worthwhile I think.
Guess I'll keep checking the MM for the time being.
If you want to future proof I would say you best go for a i5 2500K for around the £100 price range.
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I (possibly) saw 4 2500k chips go for £126 each yesterday, but I couldn't be 100% sure the sale was legit. Photos were for a different chip, so I held off buying. They sold out within minutes.
I'm several hundred miles from London tho
Cheers anyway for the offer.What would be a good motherboard to put it in? I'm not interested in USB3, or PCI3, or SLI/X-Fire. Or Lucid Virtu.
Want something reliable (and not ASUS!).