New processor

[rebith75]

Ive been out of the "keep up with computer components" game for about a year now but want to upgrade my setup for DX10 games (BTW is now the right time for that? or would you wait, im ancy to upgrade now though). My question is about my Mobo/cpu setup. Processor speeds are so ridiculous these days (quad core, million ghz dual core) will, for example, a opteron 165 OC'd to about 2.2 be any sort of a bottleneck when DX10 games come out? or do I need to buy a better one? It seems that I could get a much better value by buying a AMD mobo/cpu setup even though intel may perform better, correct? Anyway, looking to spend around 200 for the combo, suggest a DX10 cpu or let me know if I need to step up my price range to do this, thanks

 

[swtethan]

You could buy the combo at frys for a quad core Q6600 $299 for mobo + cpu

 

[rebith75]

200 is the absolute max right now, I suppose I could wait then get some more cash and get a better setup, The main thing I want to avoid is while playing, say, Crysis is "man this processor is holding my fps back" I dont care about crazy encoding times etc.

 

[swtethan]

crysis uses 4 cores

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, but SC does, too, just not very well. For $200 you could get the best brisbane out there (5000+ iirc) and a good am2 mobo, or you could get an e4300 plus a cheap intel mobo. The 5000+ looks to be around 20% faster in most cases, but the e4300 should oc a lot more. I'd probably go with the 5000+ in this situation. An alternative is an e2160 + p35 ds3r. You will be a little bit slower for now but you will have a great mobo for a future penryn upgrade at a reasonable cost.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
yeah, but SC does, too, just not very well. For $200 you could get the best brisbane out there (6000+ iirc) and a good am2 mobo, or you could get an e4300 plus a cheap intel mobo. The 6000+ looks to be around 20% faster in most cases, but the e4300 should oc a lot more. I'd probably go with the 6000+ in this situation.

Corrected that for you. The 6000 is $169 at newegg, atm, but it would require new RAM and a new motherboard.

An alternative is an e2160 + Gigabyte P35 ds3r. You will be a little bit slower for now but you will have a great mobo for a future penryn upgrade at a reasonable cost.

This is probably the best suggestion, but it's also going to require new RAM, so add ~$100.