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Afternoon folks,
Looking at upgrading my PC Processor from it's current dual core monstrosity. Had a look around but not really 100% sure on what would be the best bang for the buck.
eBuyer are doing a 6 core AMD FX-6300 for ~ £85 which looks like a decent deal.
However, people have mentioned about cores don't = performance and so on.
Anyone any thoughts to this? I do know its an AM3+ socket and would be willing to spend up to and around £100 if it was worth it.
Cheers,
The FX-6300 is well suited to gaming without breaking the bank. It's true that AMD CPUs' need either more cores or higher clock speeds to compete with the faster intel chips and generally run hotter; but since they are usually cheaper and most games rely more heavily on the graphics card these days why worry?
Have a hunt around though, you might be able to get an older Intel i5 Sandy-bridge or Ivy-Bridge CPU /Mobo bundle a bit cheaper now that their latest generation has been released.
BTW - if you can't stretch to good graphics cards the AMD APU's might be worth a look - they have the same CPU architecture as the chip you mentioned but have integrated GPU's - the only downside is they use a different socket to the FX chips so you can't swap chips later on.
I've got a PC that was fairly middle of the road a couple of years back based on a 1st generation i5 and it's certainly more than happy gaming in HD.
I'd guess that you'll need a new motherboard along with the processor so it might be worth looking around for some second hand deals; you can get a surprising amount of PC for your money these days.
I upgraded the GPU a few months back, got a nice 7770HD I believe, more than capable of running anything out at the moment on a decent setting given it has the processor to back it up, which currently it doesn't!
Cheers gents, will have a look around for something second hand possibly then!
I'm sitting here working out a new build too, been speccing up AMD builds and Intel builds and the FX6350 can be found for under £100 and the FX8320 for about £110. With an FX cpu dont go silly on the RAM as there's next to no difference between 1600Mhz DDR3 and the higher speeds.
Now for the AMD APU's it's different and higher speed RAM does make a big difference if you use the integrated graphics in the APU.
I'd debate the cooling as despite the lower TDP on Intel chips VS AMD, the Intel chips use thermal paste between the real CPU core and the protective load spreader on top, AMD use solder. This means the transfer of heat from the CPU core to the cooling device is going to more challenging on the Intel, if you look at the under full load temps Intel vs AMD you see despite the higher power draw on the AMD it'll be running cooler.
I've been looking at current Intel LGA1150 vs LGA1155 and not been finding any real price drops on the CPU's on their own, however there are bundles out there at attractive prices but so far for me being a fussy bugger they all seem to be flawed in some way (lower end cooler, lower end MoBo etc)
Is it really that important? My ancient Q6600 doesn't seem to be a bottleneck, fair dos it was a beast when it came out and it's overclocked to a ridiculous degree but it's still 6 years old...
Really if you're on dual core now you're going to need a new motherboard and RAM also.
Look for an Intel i5 bundle from Scan or Overclockers.
A new graphics card is a good shout also and really if you want a significant step up in performance you are going to be looking at doing the lot.
Trouble is then you may need a new power supply and is your current hard drive IDE or SATA?
£100 as an upgrade budget is not much to go on to get any reasonable gain from where you are now...
Those q6600 were awesome chips. I went from a stock one of those at 2.4ghz to an AMD FX 8120 and as far as I can tell the AMD is only faster for gaming due to higher clock speeds and ddr3 ram.
Mine paired well with a radeon 6850 so an overclocked one should still give decent performance on todays cards if you can get it high enough.
Here's some info from the ever helpful Tom
[url= http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html ]Best Gaming CPUs for the Money[/url]
Also - mmmm new AMD graphics card goodness launched today R290x - quite a beast!
What % overclock you lot running?