What should I upgrade to?

[Makol]

Haven't posted here in a very very long time, got a bit more involved elsewhere, but it's nice to be back!

Anyways..

These are my current specs:

The Q6600 is currently overclocked to 3.2GHz and is cooled by an Antec KÜHLER H₂O 620.

I plan on upgrading the CPU at some point and currently Microcenter is having a really good sale on AM3 and LGA1155 cpus and motherboard combos. I'm going to try and pool money together and maybe get some birthday cash (high doubt my parents will help me out a bit since it's less than two months away lol) and do the upgrade possibly this week. Now my question is what I should upgrade to. They have the i5 2500K at $179.99USD and the Phenom II x4 955 at $111.99 right now, with $40USD off any combo AM3 and LGA1155 motherboard. Which one will give me the best bang for the buck?

If you need the lists of what the deals are here is the link http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a905f0fc#/a905f0fc/1 The Intel deals are on page 28 and the AMD deals are on page 29. To be safe I'd say my budget is about $250USD at the moment, I can maybe push it to $270USD. If you guys can help me find a good cpu and motherboard deal that'd be great, and crossfire compatibility woould be nice since I plan on getting a second 6870 and PSU after this upgrade.

 

[GODuk]

i5 mate all the way.

 

[rwiuviberwVFIUBER]

Pick up the 2500k, not the 2600k. Saves you money

I'd pick up the 2500k + Gigabyte Z68 UD4, or ASUS Sabertooth. Those are both very affordable motherboards that are really top quality. But you won't really find any Intel combo that actually has Xfire for that price, so you can really only go AMD.

If you're going AMD I'd get the 955 Black Edition. It sits in your price range + a motherboard. Sorry I can't help any further then that, I haven't looked at the AMD motherboards

 

[alienware]

Mate give the Phenom 2 X4 a seriously wide berth. They are nothing but a 45nm equivalent to the old quad cored core Intel chips (for example a Q9950 or what not). They are completely arsey compared to chips like the 1156 I5 and 7, let alone the 1155 ones.

Recently a friend of mine was going to buy a quad cored Phenom for about £120. I did some research and came to find that the SB I3, even though it is practically locked beyond clocking, beat the crap out of the X4 in games and cost £30 less. This also left him open to a new socket running new technology which leaves him open to the 2500/600k should he decide to upgrade later.

AM2+/3 are dead technologies mate. The only reason AMD kept churning out the X4s was to cater to those who had a older system and wanted a cheapish upgrade without having to replace their motherboard or memory ETC. Just literally a drop in performance boost. They should never, ever be considered for a new build.

When building a system you need to weigh up what you need it to do. Things that are important to you on a day to day basis. Then, once you have found a minimum mark for your needs you can go on to figure out if you can get what you want with the budget you have to spend. My friend decided it would be a good idea to get a better motherboard for his I3 using the £30 he saved on the CPU. He then added in a GTX 460 and Crucial SSD and came in within budget. Obviously he didn't need the GTX 460 or SSD, but once he figured out what he needed he then managed to cram the extras into his budget

 

[Stryker64]

Unfortunately at this moment of time Intel offers both better value and performance than AMD, hopefully August will change all that. But at this moment in time even i3 can almost go head to head with Phenom II CPUs. Having said that AMD A8 3850 looks promising with hybrid crossfire and CPU performance that is on par with i3. So if you had to go AMD the FM1 seems to be the way to go but that is for low end rigs. Back on topic at the moment definitely go for a 1155 processor (i5 2500K). With your budget is it $250 for both the CPU and Motherboard?

Your budge does limit your choice of motherboards, but from the list provided I would probably go for the MSI P67A-GD43, which assuming I can do maths just fits into your budget.

$179.99+$119.99-$40=$259.98

 

[rwiuviberwVFIUBER]

Mate give the Phenom 2 X4 a seriously wide berth. They are nothing but a 45nm equivalent to the old quad cored core Intel chips (for example a Q9950 or what not). They are completely arsey compared to chips like the 1156 I5 and 7, let alone the 1155 ones.

Recently a friend of mine was going to buy a quad cored Phenom for about £120. I did some research and came to find that the SB I3, even though it is practically locked beyond clocking, beat the crap out of the X4 in games and cost £30 less. This also left him open to a new socket running new technology which leaves him open to the 2500/600k should he decide to upgrade later.

Did not know this, +1

 

[alienware]

Aye that's what the Deneb was released to do tbh. To compete with the 45nm quads. It did quite well, but as Intel moved on AMD didn't.

It's just more of the same really. AMD catering to the lower end bargain part of the market and Intel going balls out to maintain the top spot.

It's only really been recently that AMD have been getting spanked at the low end too, but Llano will change that. I mean £100 or so for a Phenom 2 x4 with a 6750 aboard can't be a bad thing

 

[Makol]

Seems like I'll be going with i5 then after reading what AlienALX had to say. For the motherboard I think I'll have to actually see what the store has in stock when I go pick up the i5. I'm glad I can still use my Antec KÜHLER H₂O 620 since it 1155 compatible.

 

[alienware]

Unless you absolutely must have 4 cores to aid with your Epeen then wait on the I3 k chip.

It'll end up doing everything the I5 can in pretty much every normal desktop use and will cost less. It *may* even OC higher too given that it'll only have the two physical cores so heat should be less than a true quad.

The last bargain of the year for gaming was the I3 Clarkdale. I think a lot of people got a surprise when they saw how good it was in gaming.

I'm running a close on four year old core 2 duo in one of my machines and it plays everything I have chucked at it so far, including a totally maxed out Dirt 3.

If you are media encoding or doing any heavy number crunching then of course the more cores the merrier

 

[Makol]

When would the i3 k chip be coming out around?

 

[alienware]

I don't know sadly. It was supposed to be here by now but as I say I think they may be worried about it hurting the I5 sales.

 

[Makol]

Oh. Well this deal only has about 7 days left so I might just want to take advantage of it now then wait for who knows how long.

But knowing my luck it'd be out the week after these deals end lol.