Conclusion
What about this other CPU that’s not on the list? How do I know if it’s a good deal or not?
This will happen. In fact, it’s guaranteed to happen, because both stock levels and prices change quickly. So how do you know if that CPU you’ve got your eye on is a good buy in its price range?
Here is a resource to help you judge if a CPU is a good buy or not: The gaming CPU hierarchy chart, which groups CPUs with similar overall gaming performance levels into tiers. The top tier contains the highest-performing gaming CPUs available and gaming performance decreases as you go down the tiers from there.
However, a word of caution: this hierarchy is based on the average performance each CPU achieved in our charts test suite using only four game titles: Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, World in Conflict, and Supreme Commander. While we feel this represents an acceptable cross-section of typical gaming scenarios, a specific game title will likely perform differently. Some games, for example, will be severely graphics subsystem limited, while others may react positively to more CPU cores, larger amounts of CPU cache, or even a specific architecture. We also did not have access to every CPU on the market, so some of the CPU performance estimates are based on the numbers similar architectures deliver. Indeed, this hierarchy chart is useful as a general guideline, but certainly not as a gospel one-size-fits-all perfect CPU comparison resource.
You can use this hierarchy to compare the pricing between two processors, to see which one is a better deal, and also to determine if an upgrade is worthwhile. I don’t recommend upgrading your CPU unless the potential replacement is at least three tiers higher. Otherwise, the upgrade is somewhat parallel and you may not notice a worthwhile difference in game performance.
| Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart | |
|---|---|
| Intel | AMD |
| Core i7 Extreme, Core i7 940 | |
| Core 2 Extreme QX9775, Core 2 Extreme QX9770, Core i7 920, Core 2 Quad Q9650, Core 2 Extreme QX9650, Core 2 Quad Q9550, Core 2 Duo E8600, Core 2 Extreme QX6850, Core 2 Quad Q9450, Core 2 Duo E8500, Core 2 Extreme QX6800, Core 2 Quad Q9400 | Phenom II X4 955 |
| Core 2 Quad Q6700, Core 2 Extreme QX6700, Core 2 Duo E8400, Core 2 Quad Q9300, Core 2 Duo E8300, Core 2 Quad Q8400, Core 2 Duo E7600, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Quad Q8300, Core 2 Duo E8190, Core 2 Duo E8200, Core 2 Duo E7500, Core 2 Duo E6850 | Phenom X4 945, Phenom X4 940, Phenom II X4 920, Phenom II X4 810, Phenom II X3 720 |
| Core 2 Quad Q8200, Core 2 Duo E7400, Core 2 Duo E6750, Core 2 Extreme X6800 | Phenom II X4 805, Phenom II X3 710, Phenom II X4 910, Phenom II X3 705e, Phenom II X4 905e, Phenom X4 9950 |
| Core 2 Duo E7200, Core 2 Duo E6550, Core 2 Duo E7300, Core 2 Duo E6540, Core 2 Duo E6700, Dual-Core Pentium E6300 | Phenom II X2 550, Phenom X4 9850, Phenom X4 9750, Phenom II X2 545, Phenom X3 8850, Phenom X3 8750, Phenom X4 9600, Phenom X4 9650, Athlon 64 X2 6400+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4700, Dual-Core Pentium E5400, Core 2 Duo E4600, Core 2 Duo E6600, Dual-Core Pentium E5300, Dual-Core Pentium E5200, Core 2 Duo E4500, Core 2 Duo E6420 | Athlon II X2 250, Phenom X3 8650, Phenom X3 8600, Phenom X3 8550, Phenom X4 9500, Phenom X4 9550, Phenom X3 8450e, Phenom X3 8400, Phenom X3 8450, Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Phenom X3 8250e, Phenom X4 9450e, Athlon X2 7850, Phenom X4 9350e, Athlon X2 7750, Athlon 64 X2 5600+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4400, Core 2 Duo E6400, Core 2 Duo E4300, Core 2 Duo E6320 | Athlon 64 X2 5400+, Athlon 64 X2 5200+, Phenom X4 9150e, Phenom X4 9100e, Athlon X2 7550, Athlon X2 7450, Athlon 64 X2 5000+, Athlon X2 5050e, Athlon X2 4850e/b, Athlon 64 X2 4800+ |
| Dual-Core Pentium E2220, Core 2 Duo E6300, Dual-Core Pentium E2200, Dual-Core Pentium E2210 | Athlon X2 6550, Athlon X2 6500, Athlon 64 X2 4600+, Athlon X2 4450e/b, Athlon X2 BE-2400, Athlon 64 X2 4400+, Athlon 64 X2 4200+ |
| Celeron E1600, Dual-Core Pentium E2180 | Athlon 64 X2 4000+, Athlon X2 4050e, Athlon 64 X2 3800+, Athlon X2 BE-2300 |
| Celeron E1500, Dual-Core Pentium E2160, Dual-Core Pentium E2140, Celeron E1400, Celeron E1200 | |
Summary
There you have it folks: the best gaming CPUs for the money this month. Now all that’s left to do is to find and purchase them.
Also remember that the stores don’t follow this list. Things will change over the course of the month and you’ll probably have to adapt your buying strategy to deal with fluctuating prices. Good luck!
Latest CPU News
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- 09/02 – AMD Adds FM1 CPUs Athlon II X4 638 and Athlon II X4 641
- 08/02 – Raspberry Pi Scheduled to Launch This Month
Phenom II X3 710= 99$ on Newegg now so it is the best So move E6300 away .
In the UK for an equivalant (£149.99) $247 you can get a AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition.
To give a comparison a AMD Phenom II x3 720 is (£105) $173
An iCore7 920 D0 Stepping £208.99 ($344)
All are retail
the x3 720 is £92 @ overclockers in the uk, plus you need to take into account heat / power consumption and total cost of other vital parts like motherboard/ram no point in getting a top of the line cpu and sticking a £80 motherboard in it.
the x3 720 is £92 @ overclockers in the uk, plus you need to take into account heat / power consumption and total cost of other vital parts like motherboard/ram no point in getting a top of the line cpu and sticking a £80 motherboard in it.
I think this is where the AMD-based rigs win hands down, especially for upgrades. The platform solution seems cheaper overall, more so if you just need basic gaming performance (eg AMD/ATI 780 Chipsets), with minimal power consumption. The cost of electricity in the UK has rocketed and more people are looking to cut back without sacrificing performance or features.
'Dual-Core Pentium'..I'd have chosen a different name for that product.
It's name implies everything but the latest technology, yet as the article explains it is a stripped-down Core 2 that still offers good performance and energy efficiency. The moment I've mentioned the name of this chip to unsuspecting clients they've steered away from it, under the impression it's something inferior like the old 'Pentium D'..
I'd have gone with 'Core 2 Duo L' (Light Edition). I wouldn't use Celeron because many folks have bad memories of those xD.
Interesting article. It's nice to see the AMD hardware under consideration, as well as the Pentium Dual Core. I can't fault any system here especially with the latest grafix cards, it's just a pity the prices of those cards seem to be higher in the UK than in the US. Sometimes much higher.
Be interesting to see a similar article a couple of months down the line, what with AMD's latest 45nm products hitting the market
I have a Core 2 Quad Q9550. I am extremely happy with it. Have always been since i bought it. I succed to overclock it to 3.8ghz (air) but i now run it in 3.6ghz. Together with 4gb Corsair 1066mhz DDR2, and raided regular 500gb drives this is a incredible workhorse. I just love to stream my bluray content to my 42" LCD TV via HDMI with my Asus EN9800GTX. Windows Vista Ultimate with SP2 and NOD32 makes me feel comfortable, safe and have a fast computer that can handle both x86 as x64.
I run a community. The game servers is virtualized in vmware on this computer. As i do only need 2 cores for gaming (games does rarely use 4 cores today) the other two cores can serve for gameservers.
Think about it. Computers of today is extremely more then you probably ever will take advantage of. Before you buy quad, if the price is not to convincing you will probably never notice the difference between a dual or quad core cpu.
Micro Center has been selling the Intel i7 920 for $200 for months now...
http://www.microcenter.com/single_ [...] id=0302727
Best bang for the buck!