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What best CPU for gaming.

rustynuts

rustynuts

rustynuts

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3 Sep 2011
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All i do on my machine is gaming and im upgrading my cpu, mobo and ram at the end of the month.

I currently have a Phenom X2 555 unlocked and OC'd to X4 B55 3.8.

Iv been reading forum posts, internet reviews all day and my heads gone to much lol..

Iv got around £500 for a CPU, mobo and ram but cant make my mind up what to get.

The Bulldozer 8150
i7 2700k
i7 3820
i5 2550k.

I added i5 to the list because a few threads iv read people are saying the i5 is just as good for gaming as the i7.

Now iv ALWAYS had AMD and im clueless when it comes to intel so i really need some help with this.

I mainly play MMO's like Lotro and Swtor along with a lot of BF3.

Any help would be greatful
 
Bulldozer isn't great especially for games.

Games don't use hyperthreading so no need for an i7

Get a good i5. I'm not up to speed with the new ivy bridge stuff, but the 2500k has been the standout gaming CPU for a long time now.

Edit: the responses below show I'm out of date. 3570k is what you need :)
 
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Hi there,

The best CPU for gaming at the moment is the i5 3570K - and for the motherboard you would be best getting a Z77 chipset board, so you can overclock the CPU.

The i7 isn't really any better for gaming as the only real difference between an i5 (like the 3570K) and the i7 (like the 3770K) is that the i7 is has hyperthreading (a technology where each physical core creates two virtual threads). This hypertrheading is useful for heavily multithreaded applications and can produce a performance increase of up to ~20%. However, modern games are not heavily threaded - so can't use this technology and as a result an i5 quad core performs the same as an i7 quad core of the same design at the same clockspeed.

The AMD bulldozer CPUs aren't really great for gaming since they costs as much as Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs but per core they are a good deal slower. Therefore in games (which don't use many threads and prefer more performance per-core) a quad core Ivy bridge i5 will heavily beat an eight core Bulldozer FX-8150 in most tests (and draw with it in others where the graphics card is the bottleneck).
 
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If you plan on this upgrade to last a few years then for and extra £80 the i7 would be a good way to future proof. Personally I got one because i do other things requiring a speedy CPU besides gaming but i think as physics of games becomes more important for realism and newer more powerful consoles coming soon, I think that games will move forward very quickly and an i7 would be more preferred. Just my opinion :)
 
Thankyou for the fast replies guys.

So that rules out Bulldozer then lol

Looks like the i5 3570k is the choice of gamers. Least ill save a few £ as my cpu cooler will fit the 1155 chipset.

What about ram to complement the cpu and Z77 board? I was thinking of getting some of that Samsung Green ram as the reviews on it has been amazing.

Thanks again guys.
 
For RAM get whatever's the best value 8GB 1600MHz kit right now. There's no real gain to be had from mega fast RAM.

What cooler do you have now? You may be fine sticking with what you have.
 
That is a pretty good cpu cooler - you should be able to get a nice overclock with that and as you say - it should come with a mount for a LGA1155/1156 socket.
 
Best CPU for gaming is the 3570K.

Get some Samsung green RAM and a good Z77 (the Asus one is good) motherboard and you are good to go.

Don't get a 2550K it's just a 2500K with a faulty iGPU.
 
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In probably 95% of the games, an overclocked 3570K won't really be any faster than an overclocked i5 2500K as games mostly GPU bounded (unless you got Crossfire/SLI of high end range cards). But in games that are SERIOUSLY CPU demanding...such as total war series, the i5 3570K will really shine and quite a huge margin faster than i5 2500K:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2012/05/01/intel-core-i5-3570k-cpu-review/6
 
ye you should mention that to get 5ghz out of 3570k you need 250f cooling and good chip .......
 
While we're on the subject of this chip, what do we reckon the % gaming performance improvement between i5 750 @ 3.8GHz vs a clocked 3570K ?

Can't shake the feeling my CPU is "old and past it" but haven't seen any benchmarks so far that prove this conclusively...
 
In most games your CPU is still plenty fast enough - it is only in a small number of really CPU-heavy games where an i5 3570K will show a meaningful performance increase over an overclockied i5 750, as most of the time games are bottlenecked by the GPU (even if you have a really nice one).
 
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