Hai guises,

which processor would be better for TF2? An Athlon 250 with 2x3GHZ or a Phenom 905e with 4x2,5ghz?

And keep in mind that the 905e is three times more costly that the 205.

_________________

I'd say i7. ^^

P.S. Yeah, I know i7s are even more expensive but not THAT much more expensive and even an i7 920 will absolutely blow away any AMD processors right now.

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

TF2 isn't really a benchmark game, your not going to see a noticeable difference unless your upgrading from running a 1.8ghz single core or something... and even then the major difference will be in a GFX update.

But I would say if your intent on finding one, look for the fastest to price comparison.

E.g. Quadcore 101 is £150
Quadcore 102 is £200
Quadcore 103 is £450.

Obv rock out at 102 but for £250 a slight upgrade isnt worth it

No games or OS even use Quadcore well as far as Im aware and using multicore rendering in games is usually a pain which causes alot of shit to go wrong:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/pag ... _10_0.html

P.S. Toms hardware is good for info on most hardware

Oh well thank you for the replies but they didn't help

I am slightly downgrading from a 140 watt Phenom 9850. The question is: A fast dual core or a slow quad core? Its just about TF2. Every other game and app is fine with a slow dual core.

_________________

I can only find GPU comparisons for tf2, and since you said you're not interested in CPU overall ranking, myeah, can't really help.

somewhat related though xD
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... p?t=825807

_________________
Comfortably Numb

Oh snap im quoting Limdul
i7 might not be that much more expensive but the motherboards are, if you are a bit low on budget i'd stick to intel anyway but instead of i7 I would pick a core2 quad cpu.

_________________
<@[SpA]DonDonDon> someones gotta love me, and that someone is me

i7 would be pretty useless as he likely doesn't want to change his board.

I'd tend to go for the quadcore if you want to stick with the processor for something like more than the next 12 months. Quadcores will simply get more and more support. If you're only looking for a cheap replacement for now, then take the dualcore. The dualcore also consumes less power... which is nice, if you have to pay the electricity bill on your own.

Edit: Lookilooki here... http://www.gamestar.de/hardware/special ... onats.html

_________________
SaintK: I'm completely lost

He wrote in my "He's dead, Jim" thread that he fried his motherboard, hence my suggestion. See, it's not that stupid. :-P

But yeah, motherboards for the i7 are more expensive so I guess it really is better to stick to the cheaper stuff...

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Ya uhm...its unlikely i will replace a motherboard which is one day old
Ooooh...Lim used his brain! Hihi <3 You are right I fried my mainboard and my cpu and my tv card...ahem. And I put my psu under water but thanks god it survived it. But I allready bought a Crosshair 2 as replacement.

I guess I will pick the quadcore. I just downcored my phenom 9850 to two cores and TF2 stuttered very much.

_________________

Stop dl'ing bird porn in the background. TF2 runs fine with mah 3 GHz dual core.

_________________
SaintK: I'm completely lost

Depends what dual core :U

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

The new AMD Phenom 2 series is performing quite well, and depending on the motherboard you are using, it might be a better choice then an Intel CPU, if you don't go with the i7. This is because this new series also supports the faster DDR3 memory format.

So basicly if you want a quadcore, but not the expensive core i7+mobo, then AMD would be your bet. As for me if I would buy a new system 'right now' I would go for the AMD CPU.

Besides that, the i7 does not perform that well in games, as one of them Dualcores does (8400 and such), simply because code of most games is not optimised for multithreading.

_________________
"Why do it simple, when there is a hard way..."

Athlon 3700+ handles tf2 pretty well ( on low but it does ) and it costs 15$, you can send rest of the money to me for awesome advice

A lot of things handle tf2 on low I guess he wants something which handles it on uberleetbird graphics

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Nope, the i7 platform actually does perform better in all benchmarks and all games from top to bottom and it's not because of the amount of cores (hey, we had quad-cores years ago) but because of the completely redesigned processor architecture.

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

All of the Core i7 benchmarks i've seen have been outstanding for gaming. I've looked all over the web and they all compare to each other. They are very pricey though.

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Yeah, however 9mmNL is right in that they aren't that much faster in games (by comparison) as they are for other things and that's because in parallel processing their advantage is kinda multiplied while games indeed don't use any processor's full potential yet (even on two core CPUs).

If I were to buy a computer right now (which I'm going to do - well, in several months) I'd probably go with the i7 920 since it's not THAT expensive (I bought more expensive CPUs in the past) and overclocks really nicely - overclocking CPUs is what I'm really into after those 2.5 years of running a Core2Duo overclocked by over a third (strangely enough it's the only part that isn't giving me any troubles). ^^

Funnily enough the situation with i7s is even more "extreme" than e.g. with Core2Duos. Even initially Core2Duos had some build differences while all current i7 models share absolutely THE SAME build with only different multipliers etc. - this means that you can make an i7 920 go FASTER than an i7 975 XE - ON AIR COOLING. The higher models of course don't offer that much overclocking potential...

In my opinion, considering how easy overclocking has become and how ANYBODY can do it after reading one article only people with too much money would go for the higher overpriced models (consider that - you can save over $700 if you overclock the 920 to 3.33 GHz (it goes to 3.2 GHz without raising the voltage for crying out loud!) AND in fact you can go much higher - as high as 3.8-3.9 stable while the higher models will still only go to around 4.0 GHz).

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I don't see why you would even bother buying something remotely expensive, as you can just as well spend half the money
today and get a good pc (it IS good, not as good as OMGi7, but it's good), and rather buy Today's Awesomeness next year for the same amount you spent today.

You know, when there's a new, awesome cpu everyone just gotta have :p

Well - I for my part am not a fan of buying mid-range PCs every year. I have a 2-3 year system lifecycle and I'd rather buy a good PC once and have IMMENSELY good performance in the beginning, good performance in the middle and OK performance at the end instead of upgrading everything part by part more often, spending about as much money in total and NEVER experiencing "immensely good" performance at all.

And no, it doesn't make sense to me to buy today's technology tomorrow since, well, tomorrow it will be yesterday's technology and will be by comparison slower. ;-)

Should I wait a year to be able to enjoy the games that are coming right now? No - in a year I will be playing games that will be coming out then. ^^

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I think the general consensus is that quad core is still more or less useless for gaming, as multi-threadin isn;t that advanced yat (at least the last I knew of it) so you're best sticking with a dual core. intel tend to be better value than ATI's, so I would stick with them. I guess that that whittles it down to either getting a cheapass core 2 duo and overclocking the hell out of it (what I did/am doing ;D) or a shiny new i7.

I haven't been paying that much attention to the new hardware scene for a while, so there might have been an option that I missed, or maybe AMD got staggeringly better in a very short space of time (which I somehow doubt :p)

_________________
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

I'd rather spend more money on the gfx card then. Today's CPU's are pretty good in almost all price ranges.

Well - I'll be spending a bunch of money on the GPU too - probably a GeForce GTX 285.

According to my calculations the total build cost of a i7 computer for my needs should be around 1000 Euros. Funnily enough that's LESS than I paid for my current computer 2.5 years ago and by comparison the result would be faster by today's standards.

It's crazy - high end electronics are getting cheaper and cheaper.

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

I know the i7 has more calculation capacity then the other older processor series, especially for tasks which allow multithreading and things like editing videos and such, the i7 is your thing.

However seeing the price you pay for the Memory + Motherboard + i7 and the performance you get then, put next to a e8500 setup, the actual increase in performance for games does not really rectify the price difference.

As for me with my limited budget which I spend on a PC, the i7 is just way to expensive for the actual performance boost it gives.
I would have a similar AMD Phenom II setup for at least 150 - 200 euros less.

However the i5 will soon hit the market and maybe that one will be a nice alternative.

_________________
"Why do it simple, when there is a hard way..."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phe ... 60-13.html

A good read.

I think the Phenom II's are good if you don't want the extremes, for example a Phenom II 955 Black Edition and a 4870 1GB is a computer I wouldn't say no to But the article does show that the i7 does have noticable performance advantages over the Phenom II's when on a comparably priced computer. If they went lower in price budget though, they wouldn't have the money for decent GPU's to go with the i7, so I guess the Phenom II would win after the budget was lowered to a point.

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Well we are talking about different things. I just search a power saving processor which runs TF2 fine. And everyone of you and your moms are making an intel vs amd war

_________________

Well to put it this way if I would buy an i7 system I would have something like this:
i7 920 CPU -> around 230 Euros
Mobo -> Around 200 Euros
DDR3 memory -> 100 - 150 Euros.
Which brings this total to 530 - 580 euro's.

AMD cpu -> 170 Euros
Mobo -> 130 Euros
DDR3 -> 100 - 150.
This would save me more then 100 euro's on these components, this combined with the fact that I do not like to spend more then 800 Euros on a PC, i7 simply is not for me, then I would need to increase my budget to around 1000 euro's.

And the actual performance advantage I would get out of these 200 euros simply isn't worth it for me.

So this basicly also wraps up my answer to the original question -> the best CPU for TF2 depends on the budget you have for your PC.

..... Long life the hardware wars.....

_________________
"Why do it simple, when there is a hard way..."

I wasn't starting a war... I said exactly what you just said Just read my last post again

As you go down in budget the Phenom II's become more viable an option. I don't see why everyone see's a discussion about CPU's as a war, no one was flaming at all...

People make it into a war by being personally attached to a company, which is silly (It also reduces your choices)

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig