Hardware & Technical Hardware-Cpu advice please?

Steve50

Steve50
Hi.

I'm currently running an Athlon II X4 620 (4X 2.6ghz) cpu. The cpu is the oldest part in my PC and I'm thinking of updating it.

My local pc shop has two cpu's that fit my socket.

3.8ghz quad core and a 3.5ghz six core.

The price is like £7 difference.

Which should I get? (they only have one of each so I'll be ordrering it today)
 

owain1122

owain1122
It's a big gamble on whether ED will actually be multi core. A lot of developers promise multi core support but few ever implement it. On the other hand it might be a good future proof to buy the six core.


Edit* Go for the six core
 
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oomwat

Banned
oomwat
One thought though ... how much on-die cache ram is there for each set of processors? ... you may end up trading one bottleneck for another, or if your CPU isn't the problem you may end up making things worse!

Try running the game, switch to task manager and see if your processors are currently maxed out, if they're not it's possible that spending your money elsewhere may have a better result.
 

djbully

djbully
Hate to say it, but the best advice I could give would be get a new Motherboard, RAM and an Intel i5 or i7 processor. They are miles ahead of AMD.

No arguments!

If you're after the best performance, thats what you need.....

Cheers,
 

RedeyeJedi

RedeyeJedi
As above, if possible go for a quad or AMD Hex core as the AMD FX8320 or higher cpu is very nicely priced right now compared to Intel though as said not quiet as fast as the intel equivalents and the FX8320 can be found in very competitively priced bundles with mobo and overclocks nicely too.

If you already have some DDR3 ram check the qualified vendor list of the mobo you may be looking at to ensure it will work and its one thing less to purchase.

Seen the FX8320 and mobo on ebay for about £160 - $270 and this way you should not need to upgrade for a good while longer.

All depends if you have the cash though.
 

Steve50

Steve50
I really don't have money to burn, I have enough for a cpu, not a mobo too.

btw to the person that asked about the cpu info:-

the quad core is:- 8mb level 3 cache, 4mb level 2 cache.
six core is:- 8mb level 3 cache and 6mb level 2 cache.
but socket am3+ and 95w

not that it makes any sense to me tbh.

btw my mobo is a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3, I have 8gb DDR3 ram and a Asus GTX 650 (which I was going to upgrade but I figure the cpu was more important as its the oldest part of the pc)
 

Steve50

Steve50
natte hond said:
how does Elite runs on your current CPU ?
what is its load?
do you really need to upgrade?
Click to expand...

It runs pretty good tbh.

its load? I'm really not sure about that. But I get around 20fps in stations, 40 fps in open space.

Do I really need to upgrade? Well not really no, its just that I have the money to buy it now and I might not have the money 6 months- 1 year down the line.
as the cpu is the oldest part of my PC, thats the main reason I thought of upgrading it.

its over 3 years old. Athlon II X4 620 2.6ghz
 

Tonberry

T
natte hond said:
how does Elite runs on your current CPU ?
what is its load?
do you really need to upgrade?
Click to expand...

+1.

If it isn't essential right this instant, then it would be much more cost efficient to save a little longer and move over to an i5 or i7 as Intel have eclipsed amd in recent years. Buy nice, or buy twice.
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
Steve50 said:
Hi.

I'm currently running an Athlon II X4 620 (4X 2.6ghz) cpu. The cpu is the oldest part in my PC and I'm thinking of updating it.

My local pc shop has two cpu's that fit my socket.

3.8ghz quad core and a 3.5ghz six core.

The price is like £7 difference.

Which should I get? (they only have one of each so I'll be ordrering it today)
Click to expand...

The Athlon II X4 620 is a socket AM3 chip. Is your motherboard socket AM3 or AM3+?

If the latter then you could fit an FX83x0 chip and get 8-cores (albeit 8-integer and 4-floating point due to the Bulldozer / Piledriver architecture).

It sounds like the 6-core chip you are being offered is an FX6??0 chip - same as the FX8??0 chips except with fewer cores.

If the 4-core chip is an FX4??0 chip then you may well benefit from the 6-core chip as E: D is multi-threaded as has been said already.
 
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Steve50

Steve50
Robert Maynard said:
The Athlon II X4 620 is a socket AM3 chip. Is your motherboard socket AM3 or AM3+?

If the latter then you could fit an FX83x0 chip and get 8-cores (albeit 8-integer and 4-floating point due to the Bulldozer / Piledriver architecture).

It sounds like the 6-core chip you are being offered is an FX6??0 chip - same as the FX8??0 chips except with fewer cores.

If the 4-core chip is an FX4??0 chip then you may well benefit from the 6-core chip as E: D is multi-threaded as has been said already.

If the 6-core chip that you are looking at is a 1055T
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I'm dumb I don't understand most of what you said but.

My mobo is AM3+ (Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3)
Yes the 6 core cpu is an FX6300, 4 core is (iirc) FX4300

I'll take from that, that the six core is the one to buy, thank you for your help!
 

M3SS3NG3R

M
Multithreaded doesn't necessarily mean more cores = more performance. If you are doing something like say, video encoding, it is fairly easy to load balance all cores therefore see good performance increase as you increase the number of cores. If you are running video games, there are too many things (ie: physics) that have to wait for the main thread. You can only offload so much processing to other cores before you end up having to wait for the main thread to catch up first. An example: i7 can run double amount of concurrent threads compared to i5, but they have almost identical performance when it comes to gaming. If your main thing for the rig is to play games, single core performance is more important than the number of cores. Saves yourself some money that way. If you plan to stream when you play games though you might want to give the multicore more thought.
 
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hypergreatthing

H
I agree. Almost all programs made in the last 10 years are multi-threaded and can use multiple cores. For a game however, the graphics engine is usually the highest cpu/gpu consuming process. Most depend on single core execution time. The rest of the cores? sounds, music, some logic/physics, user interaction which is usually a small fraction of what the cpu is used at the time.
Run elite, open up task manager. Tell me how many cores are maxed out, how many of them are 50% utilized on average and how many are low or close to idle. Just run elite in windowed mode to do this.
 

Cmdr Andy B

Cmdr Andy B
djbully said:
Hate to say it, but the best advice I could give would be get a new Motherboard, RAM and an Intel i5 or i7 processor. They are miles ahead of AMD.

No arguments!

If you're after the best performance, thats what you need.....

Cheers,
Click to expand...

while that may be true on a 'bang for your buck' basis AMD is the cheaper alternative, beside the fact that if you get the top spec of everything and expect today's games to run better because of it you are buying because of an erroneous conclusion - top spec bells and whistles isn't required simply because if the chip came out yesterday games that can use that amount of power wont be out tomorrow - they need time to write them first!

have a look at this comparison chart for the details, if you look at the price of the fastest AMD chip its $25 cheaper than its nearest intel equivalent and as you go down the spec list the gap only becomes wider.

i can understand why people chose intel but in my view they are overpriced and overpowered for today's systems, you just dont need that much grunt in a games machine even if you do run every game with it's settings maxed.

there is always the 'future proofing' argument but considering how fast the cost comes down when something better comes out and the initial high price of the latest chip's its a false economy. if you'd gone for the lower spec you would still have the cash in the bank to spend on upgrades a few years down the line, you can in effect end up with 2 systems for the price of one that way.
 
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