[QUOTE="TellDaddy"]

I disagree with all the people saying get a i3 2100.

It's a dual core CPU, while it does do 4 threads to sort of mimic true quad cores and for the majority of games it performs on par with an AMD phenom X4 or slightly better it isn't very future proof especially with so many games that are starting to fully utilize quad core CPU's. If I were you I would definitely save up an extra $50-60 and get an i5 2300/2400 true quad core CPU. If the extra money is not an option I'd grab a Phenom X4 and overclock it (which is very easy and they excel at). People on here are going to act like intel CPU's are so much better when in real day to day use they are not. There is no doubt they are better CPU's but unless you pair it with a monster of a video card (which with your budget you obviously are not doing) you won't see much of a difference, your GPU is going to be your bottleneck, not your CPU.

A Phenom X4 paired with a nice video card will max (or almost max) most games around 50-60 FPS where as the intel CPU will give you 65-75 FPS and in some games it won't give you any real gains at all. 10-15 FPS is a huge difference if you are comparing 30 FPS to 45 FPS but once you get over a solid 40-45 FPS it's really just nit picking.

blaznwiipspman1

problem is, am3+ is a dead board, it has been dead ever since bulldozer released and we found those pathetic results. If the op had a really low budget then yes we'd have no choice but to go for AMD cpu's, but this isn;t that case. I3's actually beat out phenom II's in most gaming...its utterly pathetic.

I'd say the i3 beats the Phenom (stock) in about 50% of games, the Phenom beats the i3 in about 20% of games and the other 30% of the time they are basically equal. The AM3+ board is basically dead but if he were to get a black edition Phenom and overclock it to 3.8ghz (easily done just by upping the multiplier, can get better overclocks with voltage increases and better cooling but for arguments sake lets stick to the easy overclock that anyone can do without really endangering the CPU) then he has a CPU that beats the i3 in 80-90% of the games out there and he is future proofed more by having 4 physical cores for all the newer games that are coming out that are designed to run best on 4 cores. It's not like processor power is whats holding games back anyways. If you have a good quad core CPU there is not a game out there now or in the near future that you will not be able to max at 50-60 FPS. Having the super high end sandy bridge CPU's will let you get closer to 80-90 FPS maxed but at that stage of the game what's the difference? Thats like the difference between a car that goes 160mph versus a car that goes 200mph, the top speed really doesn't matter because both are fast enough.

If he were to get a Phenom he'd be set as far as needed CPU power goes for atleast the next couple years, probably a little longer. By that time the 1155 boards will also be obsolete so we are just splitting hairs here. By the time he would upgrade the 2100 there would be better CPU's out there that don't run on the 1155 boards or he could upgrade to something like a 2500k which makes no sense at all. If he were to do that he should have just bought one in the first place right?

I will say I think his best course of action is to save up a little more cash and get a i5 2300/2400 sandy bridge quad core CPU, they are undoubtedly the best CPU's you can get for about $180, and they are very close to the 2500k (stock) in terms of gaming performance. The 2500k might get 4-5 FPS more but they cost 20% more, not exactly what I'd call bang for your buck unless you plan on overclocking. While I don't think Phenoms are in any real danger of becoming obsolete for gaming (or anything else for that matter) any time soon getting a 2300/2400 considering the price difference and slightly better longevity is his best option IMO.

Like I posted earlier his GPU is going to be the real factor in all this, a 6950 paired with a Phenom is certainly a better option than an i5 2300 paired with a 6850, both would cost about the same.

I disagree with all the people saying get a i3 2100.

It's a dual core CPU, while it does do 4 threads to sort of mimic true quad cores and for the majority of games it performs on par with an AMD phenom X4 or slightly better it isn't very future proof especially with so many games that are starting to fully utilize quad core CPU's. If I were you I would definitely save up an extra $50-60 and get an i5 2300/2400 true quad core CPU. If the extra money is not an option I'd grab a Phenom X4 and overclock it (which is very easy and they excel at). People on here are going to act like intel CPU's are so much better when in real day to day use they are not. There is no doubt they are better CPU's but unless you pair it with a monster of a video card (which with your budget you obviously are not doing) you won't see much of a difference, your GPU is going to be your bottleneck, not your CPU.

A Phenom X4 paired with a nice video card will max (or almost max) most games around 50-60 FPS where as the intel CPU will give you 65-75 FPS and in some games it won't give you any real gains at all. 10-15 FPS is a huge difference if you are comparing 30 FPS to 45 FPS but once you get over a solid 40-45 FPS it's really just nit picking.

[QUOTE="Wolfetan"]

Then what would be the best PC i could build for like 650 - 700$?

Socijalisticka

For around $600 you could get a 6870/560 & PH2 build (which is what I have). Definitely a 560ti with $700.

Not unless he already has an opertaing system a case and a few other things which by only going on his original post he does not have already. He could maybe pull of a 6870 if he found some amazing deals all at once but there is now way he is building a system with a 560 as the center piece of it without surrounding it with pure crap parts, it can't be done. A 560 is at the absolute minimum a $210 card and that's for one that has universal poor ratings or almost no ratings at all. If you want a trusted quality 560 you are looikng at around $240, add in all the other components he will need to be around $700 give or take a few bucks and it can't be done considering he now has to spend at least another 20-30 bucks on a reliable PSU for that card. A 560 needs a PSU with higher amperage and at least another 40-50 watts when compared to a 6850. Thats not to say it wouldn't be money well spent, the 560 is atleast a 20-25% more powerful card in most games compared to the 6850 but when you factor in the price over a 6850 and the better PSU needed I can't see anyway he can get that build for what you have suggested without totally skimping in other areas.

If your CPU is at 100 plus degrees I'll give you a few weeks before you have to ask that question using a new computer. 85-90 (for any sustained period of time) is dangerously high for a CPU. My CPU has never cracked 70 under max stress with moderate cooling, something is wrong and you'd best fix it soon.

I'm not going to link all the parts because I'm lazy but assuming you already have a monitor, speakers, mouse and keyboard I'll do my best.

Case- Cooler Master/Antec/NZXT/Rosewill mid tower-$50-60

AMD Motherboard- Asus/Asrock/Gigabyte/Biostar $80-90 (Intel CPU's are better but the gains are not as big as some will pretend)

CPU- AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHZ $125 (easily overclocks to about 80-85% of high end intels which is more than enough)

Hard Drive- 500 GB Kingston/Samsung/Seagate 7200rpm $80-90 (prices have went up drastically lately)

RAM- 8GB (4GBX2) DDR3 1367/1600 MHZ Kingston/Crucial/G Skill/Mushkin/Patriot $40-50 (4GB is usually plenty but RAM is cheap now)

GPU- AMD 6850 1GB $140 (best value vs performance and they don't require that much power or amperage)

PSU- 450-500 Watt Antec/Corsair/Cooler Master/Rosewill with 20+ amps on the 12+ volt rail 60$-70 (low amps are dangerous with better GPU's)

Operating System- Windows 7 64bit $90-100 (you gotta get 64 bit because 32 bit has limits on how much RAM is actually recognized)

Assuming you pay the max price I listed you are looking at $725 (before shipping and taxes) for a system that can play the majority of games with mid to high setting at 1080p at 40-75 FPS (depending on the game). If you could come up with another $200-300 dollars you can build a system that will basically max every game out there (with a couple exceptions) at 1080p and solid frame rates that rarely will drop below 30 FPS (generally considered the minimum you want to game at on a PC)

[QUOTE="Steameffekt"]

I would never buy a prebuilt. Usually they're around $700 and they don't even have a graphics card or decent PSU. I'd build your own if I were you.

Wolfetan

You can get a decent prebuilt computer from some manufacturers, others such as Gateway, HP, Acer etc I'd stay away from because they really do use the lowest quality motherboards and power supplies and rarely give you a quality graphics card which is essential if you want to play games at anything but the lowest resolutions and lowest settings. They also fill your computer with a bunch of unwanted software that will bog down your system. Everyone here but me is going to tell you to build your own although if you do have some knowledge building your own is usually (not always) the best and cheapest way. I personally bought a prebuilt from a computer store around my home (in Toronto) that I have had no issues at all with and it didn't come loaded with a bunch of crap software and junk parts. I also got a 1 year warranty on everything.

After paying for shipping and an operating system there is no way I could have built the system for cheaper than what I paid. I got a decent cooler master mid tower, Windows 7 64 bit OS, an AMD PhenomX4 840 at 3.2ghz CPU, Saphire 1GB ddr5 6670 GPU (included a free copy of Dirt3), 4GB (2x2) of kingston DDR3 ram, 1 terabyte Seagate 7200rpm hard drive, a Biostar mother board with 6gb sata and USB 3 ports (i know Biostar is not a top end board maker but on newegg this board is actually rated quite high with over 70 user ratings. The power supply is the only thing that is sorta low end, it's a 420 watt budget brand so if I ever wanted to get a better video card or do any type of real overclocking I'd have to swap it out for a better brand with better specs but for my system it has been rock solid so far even with a mild overclock on my video card. It also came with a card reader, a set of nice Atec Lansing speakers and a decent Microsoft keyboard and mouse. With taxes it ran me $675 which I could not have done for the same price from any site or store on my own.

If you do go prebuilt just make sure you get a good GPU, the card I got in my machine (amd 1GB 6670 with ddr5) is about as low as you can go and still expect to be able to play most games at decent settings unless you game at lower resolutions. I'd personally say don't get anything less than an AMD 5770/6770 or an nVidia GTX460 as I notice on some games I really wish I had a GPU with a little more power but overall I'm pleased.

Check the parts you pick against their rating and comments on Newegg, that should give you a good idea if you are getting crap or value for your money.

There are a few games (Left 4 Dead series) that make more use of the L3 cache the 955 has that you will gain 10-15 FPS in but the majority of games you're probably looking at more like 5-6 FPS gained and in some games that are not CPU limited or games that are 2-3 years old there will probably be no difference at all. With the OC you have on your Athlon and the great GPU you already have I don't see that uprade making sense for you unless 45 FPS with max settings on most new games is not cutting it and you want 50 FPS at max settings. Whether or not that's worth $120 is up to you but IMO you'd be better off putting that money towards a brand new rig in a couple years, as it stands now there isn't a game out there that your CPU is hurting you in.

[QUOTE="InternetSwag"]Currently looking into new motherboard, CPU and RAM DDR3. Current PC is really outdated. The CPU I want is a Sandy Bridge i5 3.1 ghz Specs of current pc CPU Intel Pentium E5500 Cores 2 Threads 2 Socket 775 LGA 2.80GHz Hyperthreading not supported. RAM Total Memory slots 2 Used Memory slots 2 Memory Type DDR2 Size 3072 MBytes Physical Memory Memory Usage 39 % Total Physical 3.00 GB Available Physical 1.80 GB Total Virtual 6.00 GB Available Virtual 4.56 GB Motherboard Model 945GZM-S2 (Socket 775) Chipset Vendor Intel Chipset Model i945GZ Chipset Revision A2 Southbridge Vendor Intel Southbridge Model 82801GB (ICH7/R) Southbridge Revision A1 Slot PCI Slot Type PCI Slot Usage Available Bus Width 32 bit Slot Designation PCI Slot Number 0 Slot PCI Slot Type PCI Slot Usage Available Bus Width 32 bit Slot Designation PCI Slot Number 1 Slot PCI Slot Type PCI Slot Usage Available Bus Width 32 bit Slot Designation PCI Slot Number 2 Slot PCI Slot Type PCI Slot Usage In Use Bus Width 32 bit Slot Designation PCI Slot Number 3 Graphics MSI ATI RADEON 5670 HD PU Maker: ATI GPU Model: 5670 Video Memory: 1GB Memory Type: DDR5 Interface Slot Type: PCI-E Memory Clock: 3800Mhz Graphics Clock: 800Mhz ionusX

dont get the 2400.. its a joke either up to a 2500 or 2500k.. OR or go am3+ and get an fx-6100 they can be had for about 155 now and you get a free dvd burner on newegg.

There is nothing wrong with a 2400 compared to a 2500, now the 2500K is obviously superior if you plan on overclocking but if you don't then saving $25 by getting a 2400 and using that extra money on a better GPU is actually a smart move. At stock speeds the difference between a 2400 and 2500K gaming wise is next to nothing, I've even seen the odd instance where the 2400 gets an extra frame or two in certain games. Take the extra money you save on the CPU and get a 6770 instead of the 5670, that should net you a slight bump in settings and about 15FPS more in most games compared to a 5670 and you don't have to spend a cent more to get it.

For GTA IV you are going to need a quad core CPU, it's also good for future proofing because while the 2100 will be more than fine for the majority of games now it won't be very soon and even now there are a few games that unless you have a monster GPU will not run well on a dual core CPU. The extra few bucks now may seem like a waste but this time next year that will be the best $40 she ever spent as far as computers go.

As for the settings for GTA IV I saw someone complained about not having the power for max draw distance, it really doesn't matter quality wise. The difference between 40 and 100 is very minimal as far as how good the game looks but it sure as hell makes a huge difference in performance. The 100 setting is maybe 5% better than 40 but stresses the GPU and CPU atleast 20-25% more.

I have a AMD quad core at 3.2ghz, 4gb of ram and a 1gb AMD HD6670 DDR5 GPU, I have all the sliders set to 40 and get about 65 FPS indoors, 50 FPS when driving and about 40FPS when on foot, with drops to 28-32 during heavy gun fights. I have all the other settings basically maxed with the exception of shadows which I turned low because anything higer and my FPS fluctuate wildly.

If I were you I'd do my best to convince her to spend a few extra bucks and get the 2400 quad core and pair it with a HD 6770 which is about 25-30% better than my card which I can play most games at 1080p, medium setting and get around 40FPS, you could find one for about $120. For the way she wants to game that card is plenty powerful, it's also a very low power card so you don't need a beefy PSU.

You guys are crazy IMO. A bottleneck is ANY time you can run a program and have your performance held back significantly by one or more components in your system. It is ALWAYS determined by the software being used. There is NO such thing as a "physical bottleneck." Obviously there is a point of balance where all components in a computer are capable of running nearly any game well together. While true that a Phenom II can provide that when coupled with a strong GPU (I have such a PC), there are games currently on the market where I would see a significant real-world increase by keeping my GPU and getting something like a 2500k. Civ 5 is one such example. Far Cry 2 and Dawn of War II are others.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

Since there are obviously already games on the market where the CPU is pushed hard enough to expose this bottleneck, you can't tell me that there won't be more coming soon. I'm not saying that I plan on upgrading from a 3.7ghz PII X4 any time soon.. I'm just saying that I know I will run into a bottleneck if I try to play certain games. Those games will stress my CPU enough that my 950mhz 560 Ti won't be able to give me optimal performance.

hartsickdiscipl

Like I mentioned the difference will be being able to play Shogun 2 or Starcraft 2 at 100 FPS where as the phenom may only get you 75FPS. Thats not what I'd call a real world bottleneck because the difference between 75fps and 100FPS is neglible almost to the point of being meaningless. There is not a single game out now or on the horizon that when paired with a top end GPU that the CPU will be the reason you can't atleast squeeze out a solid 35-40FPS assuming it's a high end quad core. People don't get new CPU's so the can jump from 80 FPS to 90FPS they get them to go from 25 FPS to 40 FPS...that in 99.9% of situations is all about you GPU not your CPU.