Wow. A lot has changed in the CPU world since I upgraded my computer early last year.
I was browsing Newegg yesterday and noticed that you can snag a quad core processor from AMD for $99. No, that isn’t a typo. With prices as low as ever I decided to go through a budget system build. I will be using some of the info from the Hardware Leaderboard form PC Perspective (If you haven’t checked it out, do so!).
First a bit of history. Last year I upgraded my current computer system by purchasing a new motherboard ( ECS BLACK SERIES A780GM-A), a new CPU ( AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 Kuma 2.7GHz), and a new graphics card ( MSI R4830-T2D512 OC Radeon HD 4830 ). These components have served me well, but I am looking to further augment my system because of my new High definition Video Requirements.
CPUs are obviously one of the single most important components in any system. However, you don’t want to overbudget here. I only bought dual-core last year because I knew I would only be playing games. Quad-core CPUs show a negligible increase in performance for games.
However, when you start doing other things (like *cough* video editing) those precious cores are worth their weight in gold because they can significantly decrease your rendering time. It took my Athlon X2 12 hours to encode a one hour video (with 2-pass .h264). To get that time down, I was looking to buy a new system (I started looking at Core i-7s). I was excited to get the performance increase, but I wasn’t excited about the cost. Fortunately, I noticed something wonderful right in front of my face.
To be completely honest I never noticed that this CPU was a Quad-core on PCPer (I guess I should read more). Like I said earlier, I was browsing newegg reading reviews when I saw it. This thing is an insane value for the price, and makes buying anything below a higher-end core i5 (if you are an intel fanboy) make no sense (even THAT is a push considering you can get a 6-core AMD for $200).
The other great thing about this CPU is that it is AM3. AM3 cpus are backwards compatible with AM2/+ motherboards, and they have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers built in. What that means is that I can drop this CPU into my current setup and it should work just fine! Win.
If you are considering the Intel path, that is another important area. You won’t be able to upgrade just one thing. You will probably have to upgrade your CPU, RAM, and Mobo at the same time (as Intel changes their sockets quite often).
I plan on buying this CPU in the near future, so stay tuned for comparisons and a review (if you don’t want to wait for my comparison, Anandtech has a review here).
