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Which CPU?

Jak3 Mac

Jak3 Mac

Jak3 Mac

Associate
Joined
14 Apr 2012
Posts
213
Location
Liverpool, England
Hi, I'm building a new pc, it's my first, and I thought I would go for the Phenom II X4 cpu but someone recommended the i3-2120 and I don't see that it's better, in fact it seems worse to me but they're the same price and someone experienced recommended the latter to me, am I right in saying the Phenom is better?

Thanks in advance.
 
Thanks, looks like the AMD is better, another contributing factor is motherboard compatibility, do you think it would be better to get the i3 for the motherboards it can be used with?
 
Jak3 Mac said:
Thanks, looks like the AMD is better, another contributing factor is motherboard compatibility, do you think it would be better to get the i3 for the motherboards it can be used with?
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How'd you figure the Phenom II is better? The benchmark results look inseparable or maybe slightly in favour of the i3, IMO.
 
Jak3 Mac said:
Thanks, looks like the AMD is better, another contributing factor is motherboard compatibility, do you think it would be better to get the i3 for the motherboards it can be used with?
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Jak3 Mac, could you please remove my image from your signature. Thanks in advance.
 
theheyes said:
Jak3 Mac, could you please remove my image from your signature. Thanks in advance.
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Didn't realise you had this one, I'll remove it once I find one to replace it



Barry1987 said:
How'd you figure the Phenom II is better? The benchmark results look inseparable or maybe slightly in favour of the i3, IMO.
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Sorry, my mistake, got the colour coding wrong!
 
If you have a limited CPU budget then you may want to consider waiting a week until the release of the ivy bridge CPUs. When they arrive a fair few people will be upgrading from their Sandy Bridge CPUs (usually i5 2500K quad core) to a new ivy bridge while keeping their existing motherboards, so expect quite a few second-hand i5 2500Ks at good prices to appear.

Though if you don't want to go second hand then I would agree that an i3 2120 dual core CPU is a very good option and generally better than a Phenom II X4.
 
I have a Core i3 2100 myself and from my own research ,it seems to be between a 3.2GHZ to 4GHZ Phenom II X4 in most games. However,if you are running things like HandBrake or certain rendering programmes a Phenom II X4 or Core2 quad will be faster. If you are running such software I would point you towards the 95W Phenom II X6 1045T which can be had for under £100(it also overclocks well from what I gather).

I run an overclocked HD5850 1GB(around HD5870 1GB level performance AFAIK) and the Core i3 2100 does not seem to bottleneck it,so should be a good choice if you don't want to spend over £100 on a CPU.
 
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Gone are the days you could buy a cheap CPU and overclock it to perform better than the best stock processors :(
 
cmndr_andi said:
If you have a limited CPU budget then you may want to consider waiting a week until the release of the ivy bridge CPUs. When they arrive a fair few people will be upgrading from their Sandy Bridge CPUs (usually i5 2500K quad core) to a new ivy bridge while keeping their existing motherboards, so expect quite a few second-hand i5 2500Ks at good prices to appear.

Though if you don't want to go second hand then I would agree that an i3 2120 dual core CPU is a very good option and generally better than a Phenom II X4.
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Thanks, that's a great idea. I'll probably do that.
Thanks for all the help guys








theheyes said:
Well you're using my host to link to the image as well so if you could amend it asap I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
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Sorry! I never realised!! I'll remove it now!
 
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Hello
I also recently built my own pc and coming from a phenom 945T i bought an FX8120 at a very good price and despite it having some negative reviews I genuinely found it to be much better than what people said about it especially when gaming (my primary use) So it might be worth checking those out also :-)
 
ussff said:
...and IF I was in the market for a quality second hand i5 2500k - do you have any advice on where to look? :rolleyes: please don't say a popular auction site
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Ha, I wish I could. It is worth a hunt there and see what you find, just look for a good seller and you should be OK.

There is also a members market on the OCUK forums where members sell kit and prices and service are very good (in my experience), however you need 1000 posts and 180 days membership to get access. You have enough time registered, you just need a bunch more posts (though no spam). Maybe worth jumping into some discussions on the GD section :)


Stas823 said:
Hello
I also recently built my own pc and coming from a phenom 945T i bought an FX8120 at a very good price and despite it having some negative reviews I genuinely found it to be much better than what people said about it especially when gaming (my primary use) So it might be worth checking those out also :-)
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Though I agree that the FX8120 isn't a bad CPU and certainly decent for gaming, I wouldn't recommend it for a gaming system. I say this because for gaming it's performance is worse than competing CPUs (low-end i5 quad cores), no better than a cheaper Phenom II X6 and uses a lot more power than these. If the OP can afford an i5 2500K (new or 2nd hand) and a board to overclock it then it will perform much better than a Bulldozer FX-8 and keep up with games for much longer.
 
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Not 100% true as time will go on games will use more cores and therefore make the fx8--- more useful In gaming but so far I had to actually disable 7 cores when playing gta vice city to make it work hehe :-)
 
Yes, games are likely to make better use of more cores in the future. However, currently they generally don't even make full use of a quad core - so it will take some time. Until then a sandy bridge i5 will be considerably faster.

It is also worth pointing out that even in heavily multithreaded applications (ie tasks that make full use of an 8 core CPU) the FX-8 either draws with or slightly beats the quad core i5 2500K. So when the time comes that games do make full use of an octo core, the i5 2500K will be giving the FX-8 a run for it's money while playing the older games better.

As I said, the FX-8 isn't in itself a bad CPU - it just isn't very good compared to what it is directly competing with.
 
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