• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Phenom II 965 BE or I7 !?

Sh3rlock

Sh3rlock

Sh3rlock

Soldato
Joined
20 Nov 2006
Posts
6,928
The time has come for my next major upgrade.

My Q6600 has served me well for the best part of nearly 2 years but after a little while saving, it is time for me to move on to newer tech.

At the moment I'm torn between AMD's Phenom II 965 BE or and I7.

All i would be doing is gaming.

Which !?
 
I would probably stick with your Q6600 and if you have not overclocked it I would do so. You should be able to get a Q6600 to around 3GHZ to 3.2GHZ relatively easily.

I would upgrade next year as both AMD and Intel will be shifting their entire desktop processor lines to 32NM AFAIK and AMD Bulldozer and Intel Sandy Bridge are also being released in 2011.

Also there are some newer AMD processors coming out in the next few months based on the Thuban and Zosma cores. Some of these will be quad cores and some will have six cores:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?p=4208509#post4208509

It maybe possible that there will be some slight tweaks to improve performance over the current Deneb core used in the Phenom II.
 
ok was/ is the q6600 overclocked ? if not overclock it and wait a yr seriously.

a q6600 at say 3.2 or 3.3 is about same as a 955 amd at stock

so basically a 965 youd need to overclock it to like 3.5

a 3.7 amd phenom 2 quad is about the same as a stock i7

so upto you what to do me personally would wait and overclock your current cpu as its still very good.

the i7 is fastest but the outlay in my honest op isnt worth it

i wouldnt move from what you have to the phenom either and i have one (955 amd at 3.7).
 
if you want something that matches current CPUs get a Q9550 for £173 on OCUK. Tends to match or beat stock i7s and Phenom II's in most games, looking at benchmarks. Get a decent cooler and overclock it a bit - total bargain upgrade. Wont be as good for some other uses like encoding but hey all you do is gaming.
 
The other way of reading the above is that the intel i7 920, overclocked, is the only option for a cpu performance increase. For gaming, you probably wont notice.

Alternatively you could spend the money on watercooling, get the q6600 clocked higher than it currently is, and wait for sandy bridge which you can then use the watercooling on.
 
Gaming wise you wont notice any difference with the i7, clock the q6600 a bit, 3.4ghz should be easily enough achieved. Ive had a few intel quads, minimum clockckspeed on any of them was 3.8ghz. No noticeable gains in gaming above 3.3-3.4ghz. The i7 however really comes into its own in applications such as encoding, but as your gaming only it wouldnt really be worth it.
 
For a worthwhile upgrade from a Q6600, you'd be wanting the i7. Especially if you do encoding. A Q6600 isn't that far behind a P2 965.
 
If you're only gaming, go for the AMD. Chances are you'll have a nice upgrade path for the future.

If you have lots of money lying around and you're not sure what to do with it, get an i7 just so you can join the elitist club.

Honestly, the i7 is *only* necessary for encoding and/or professional CAD/Photoshop type stuff. You won't notice the difference if you get an AMD quad to 3.5Ghz. (which is easy)
 
Go for the 965

The I7's performance is great, but a 965 will not bottleneck anything right now, and it is a heck of a lot cheaper once you take the motherboard into account.

I am happy and dont really envy the I7 users, especially as there is a good chance the next amd processors will fit am3 aswell.

Plus the 965 chip has a far lower thermal output and uses less power.

If you look at the difference in performance compared to the extra you will have to pay- my vote is for the 965, but the I7's are a really impressive chip. Suppose it comes down to how much cash you have really.
 
In the future Intel's CPU should start to see more benefits for gaming as well, it's just that most current games don't push quads particularly hard.

AMD's Phenoms are gleaming in Resident Evil 5: the older Phenom X4 9950 beats the Q6600 and the Phenom II X4 945 (4x 3.0 GHz), if running at the same frequency, beats the more expensive C2Q Q9650 by about 6 percent - normally the Intel CPU is the faster one if those two are compared. Neverthless even a (simulated) Phenom II X4 965 (4x 3.4 GHz) doesn't stand a chance against Intel's Core i7 array - even the smallest model, the Core i7-920 with 2.67 GHz is about 17 percent faster. If running at the same clock speed the Nehalem beats the Deneb by almost 25 percent and the Yorkfield even by about 32 percent - even though the Core i7s are slowed down by the Geforce GTX 285. Smaller resolutions like 800 x 600 place the Core i7 more than 50 percent in front - so the "Runs great on Intel Core i7” logo hasn't been placed at the beginning of the benchmark without a reason.
Click to expand...

I'd say i5 750 is best bang for buck but as mentioned already the AM3 platform does have some advantages.
 
Last edited:
People really get worried about CPUs too much when it comes to gaming!!

Even with an X2 555BE dual core or a Pentium G6950 and an HD5850 you can play most games at 1920X1200 with framerates well above 40FPS:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/phenom-ii-x2-555,review-31794-8.html

Far Cry 2 and World in Conflict are supposed to take advantage of quad cores too. Both these processors should be around £80 or less.

The slightly slower X2 550BE is around £70 ATM at most retailers.

According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey around 75% of people are still using single core and dual core processors:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Most of the processors are under 3GHZ too.
 
Last edited:
arknor said:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/real_world_gameplay_cpu_scaling/
Real World CPU Scaling.
Click to expand...

With 4 GPUs as it is a Crossfire X configuration whereas most people either have one graphics card with a single GPU,a pair of single GPU cards or one dual GPU card.

CPU scaling with an HD5970:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=869

Look at the graphs and most importantly look at the actual framerates.

The games which have lower framerates are more GPU limited than CPU limited.

A Phenom II X4 925 or 945 is going to be as playable in almost all games at stock speeds as a Core i7 920 at stock speeds.

Overclocking both makes very little difference too it seems.

Hence an overclocked Q6600 even with an HD5970 will be fine for gaming.
 
Last edited:
Intel seem wee bit expensive as AMD still lots cheaper to get X4 965 - I bought it last week and seem great run. It up to you which one as long as you got enough money to spend - I would save some money for the future, dont want to spend too much -- you need is 10p coin to toss head or tail...
 
Overclocked Q6600 will be pretty close to or even beat a stock Phenom II 965 for most things.

I would stick with the existing CPU if I were you.
 
I'd say if it's purely for gaming, stick with the Q6600.

If you still want to upgrade though, I'd say if you want to leave everything stock, get a 965BE, if you want to overclock get the i7.

There's also the money thing, is an i7 setup really worth the extra cash? I've no idea really, I know that with my system at stock settings it's my hard drive that is the bottleneck. (For loading programs, loading games, moving large files around etc.)

The only time I find this computer to be not fast enough is when loading games like MW2, and I've monitored it and while it's loading, my CPU and RAM are at about 40% load. Because of this, I can't see how an i7 will be faster for everyday use unless you give both systems the same SSD.

The i7 only seems to have a big advantage in tasks like rendering video and things like that, as far as I know.
 
Thanks for the advice lads but;

Order1.jpg


I really wanted to step toward next gen hardware, plus i wanted to get a crossfire compatible board.

Once I sell my old kit and after the £100 birthday contribution from the Mrs, the upgrade hasn't cost me THAT much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom