The advantage of getting a phenom II quad black edition is you are a sytem designed for games because of the l3 cache.... But the price goes up considerably.

I'm basically running an old core duo 1.8 ghz here that can barely run Wow, so anything is going to be a drastic improvement.

If you look at the phenom II quads that aren't designed for gaming IE the 810 and 830 models they dont get any more performance boosts in gaming over the athlon 2 quad i showed you. The 630 is pretty sweet in comparison for the price. At least that is my understanding unless I'm wrong here.

You have to get the high end phenom's and black editions. Even the tri cores really see a bump in gaming performance. Thats my conundrum. Because the base quad core cpu is the same price basically less expensive then black edition dual and tri core phenoms which are more designed for games.

What the Athlon II 630 basically is is a vanilla quad core cpu in regards to gaming, for cheap but the performance is actually pretty good in comparison. And it's a quad core.

[QUOTE="piercetruth34"]

The you are saying get a phenom II quad? The price goes up significantly when i do that though. Keep in mind i'm buying everything including drives etc..

desertpython

In terms of future games, yes.

'

The problem here is I start building a phenom II x4 955 black edition, we are basically getting close to the price points of building an i7 pc.

I'm trying to get a quad core pc that will last me here for about $500 that is upgradeable that will last me a while and will give me good performance in gaming if i tweak it a bit IE adding more memory and a graphics card etc.....

I'm not really looking to get the best otu right now and dropping a lot of money.

I'm trying to get the best price performance and upgradeability, longevity option i can for about 500 bucks.

The you are saying get a phenom II quad? The price goes up significantly when i do that though. Keep in mind i'm buying everything including drives etc..

Also i've been pricing AMD vs Intel and price vs performance for gaming it seems like you can get by much cheaper by going AMD. But chime in if i'm wrong here. I don't really want to spend for an i7 right now. I've looked at a bunch of core duo pc's and i3 and i5 pc's but they seem overpriced vs the performance you are getting.

I'm looking to get a fairly inexpensive pc for gaming and general use.

I'm looking pretty hard at this PC

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Desktop+/+AMD+Athlon%26%23153%3B+II+Processor+/+4GB+Memory+/+750GB+Hard+Drive/9964106.p?id=1218202473164&skuId=9964106

This is not a gaming PC per say. But this model is $529. They also have the same pc pretty much with a 1 terabyte drive and 6 gb's of memory for $40 more. I don't really need 750 gb nevermind 1 terabye and the memory i can always upgrade later so I'd like to keep costs down.

I used to build my own gaming rigs but i don't really feel like going through the process of buying all the drives and putting it together. Prices are fairly cheap these days where if i can get a decent namebrand pc and throw in the extra stuff i need better graphcis card etc I'll be happy.

I'm looking for longevity here in gaming. Right now i want to run starcraft 2 but i'd like this PC to keep up for a while, for a budget price.

That's why i'm debating quad or going with a dual core or tri core like the Ahtlon Phenom's which are more geared towards gaming with the l3 cache.

The quad core 630 is getting really good reviews in the budget category and is holding its own in a lot of categories across the board. It's strength appears ot be video and sound encoding btu it does pretty well in gaming as well even though its not specifically designed for it.

Check out this article for reference. It holds its own against more specifically designed gaming cpu's

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2836

Is it worth it to get a quad core even though i'm sacrificing the l3 cache for gaming in the future? I can throw a $100-$150 graphics card off new egg in for basically the same price of what i would be paying for a nice dual or tri core gaming pc.

Right now most games are still only using the two cores. So the additional features in the Phenom model make a difference, but in the future wont having a quad trump that?

Old news is old.

spookykid143

I disagree. Tim Schafer is never old!

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3180383

[QUOTE="piercetruth34"]

[QUOTE="Elian2530"] Some people read too much into things and they make up wild and imaginative excuses for things that they thing aren't accounted for. I for one, do not believe reviewers are being paid off. A lot of the games that have come out in the past 5 years have been pretty dead on. Sure, there are slight and marginal differences in opinions, but those are just opinions at the end of the day. Nothing more. Some people feel the need to make things out as conspiracies. Which in this case, isn't true.Vinegar_Strokes

To each their own. But my point is game companies thinking everyone is pirating their games. Isn't that wild and imaginative? I think you are missing my point. It goes both ways. We can't return games because game companies think everyone is pirating. Did you read the topic title?

The excuse they use are copyright laws and that you can copy their game and return it. Isn't that a conspiracy in itself? I know way over your head.

You post thinking everyone is being wild and imaginative, when I'm just an honest consumer here, speaks volumes. I'm not being wild and imaginative at all. You are. That's the problem.

Maybe he reads way too much into things and think people are being wild and imaginative instead of realizing they actually have a point? I know crazy concept that there is actually intelligent life out there that just has a difference of opinion.