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 availability 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 965, 975 Core i7 860, 870, 920, 940, 950, Core i5 750 Core 2 Extreme QX9775, QX9770, QX9650 Core 2 Quad Q9650 | |
| Core 2 Extreme QX6850, QX6800 Core 2 Quad Q9550, Q9450, Q9400 Core 2 Duo E8600, E8500 | Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955, 965 |
| Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Core 2 Quad Q6700, Q9300, Q8400, Q6600, Q8300 Core 2 Duo E8400, E8300, E8190, E8200, E7600, E7500, E6850 | Phenom X4 945, 940, 920, 810 Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Athlon II X4 630 Athlon II X3 435 |
| Core 2 Quad Q8200, E7400, E6750 Core 2 Extreme X6800 | Phenom II X4 910, 805, 905e Phenom II X3 710, 705e Phenom II X2 545, 550 Black Edition Phenom X4 9950 Athlon II X4 620 Athlon II X3 425 |
| Core 2 Duo E7200, E6550, E7300, E6540, E6700 Pentium Dual-Core E6300, E6500 | Phenom X4 9850, 9750, 9650, 9600 Phenom X3 8850, 8750 Athlon 64 X2 6400+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4700, E4600, E6600, E4500, E6420 Pentium Dual-Core E5400, E5300, E5200 | Phenom X4 9500, 9550, 9450e, 9350e Phenom X3 8650, 8600, 8550, 8450e, 8450, 8400, 8250e Athlon II X2 240, 245, 250 Athlon X2 7850, 7750 Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 5600+ |
| Core 2 Duo E4400, E4300, E6400, E6320 Celeron E3300 | Phenom X4 9150e, 9100e Athlon X2 7550, 7450, 5050e, 4850e/b Athlon 64 X2 5400+, 5200+, 5000+, 4800+ |
| Core 2 Duo E6300 Pentium Dual-Core E2220, E2200, E2210 Celeron E3200 | Athlon X2 6550, 6500, 4450e/b, Athlon X2 4600+, 4400+, 4200+, BE-2400 |
| Pentium Dual-Core E2180 Celeron E1600 | Athlon 64 X2 4000+, 3800+ Athlon X2 4050e, BE-2300 |
| Pentium Dual-Core E2160, E2140 Celeron E1500, E1400, 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!
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This is great, AMD is fastest were it counts. Anyone that buys a CPU >120$ will have to buy a new one in a year or two, if they rly want to be ahead of the game... Not like most people need a CPU over 120$.. anyway
roughly, >95% of all computing power is wasted (i.e not used), because most PCs only run Web-browsers and Office applications..
Running Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition @ a modest 3.0GHz with the 4th core unlocked. So far, so good. Will probably push it a little harder, but not much. Seems fine.
I have to say your not looking at the overclock value of budget cpu's good enough as people buy these because there cheap and smoking and $50-65 cpu is something i could live with ..anyway i use a e5200 clocked @ 3.9Ghz and a HD5850 and i am running Eyefinity at 5760 x 1080 with this cpu in COD4/WaW/MW2/HawX/Dirt 2 DX11 so you guys need to do more testing before picking your budget cpu..