(For instance, the Core 2 Quad Q8300 should perform somewhere between the Q8200 and Q9300 with a price tag of around $185.)įinally, sharp-eyed readers might notice we didn’t factor platform or power costs into in our processor prices. Thanks to our relatively broad cross-section of data, however, figuring out where those chips would be situated shouldn’t be too hard. There, too, time constraints forced us to make some compromises and exclude CPUs like the Core 2 Duo E7400 or Core 2 Quad Q8300. Low-end processors aside, you may see some other missing links in the lists above. It should thus serve as a useful baseline against which to compare newer and dearer offerings. Why include a discontinued CPU to begin with? Though it’s growing long in the tooth, the Athlon X2 6400+ should be roughly representative of the type of performance you can expect from some of today’s faster sub-$100 dual-core processors. The only exception is the Athlon X2 6400+, which doesn’t appear on the AMD pagewe got that CPU’s $90 price tag from Newegg.
These are figures for bulk orders, but they should only be within a few dollars of retail prices. Since retail and e-tail prices oscillate a little too much for our liking, we took our prices straight out of Intel’s official list and AMD’s processor pricing page. Here’s the list on the Intel side of the playground: Model With that in mind, let’s take a look at which CPUs we’ll be comparing today.
Is a Core i7-920 worth the extra cost over a Phenom II X4 940 for video encoding buffs? Are dual-core CPUs like the Core 2 Duo E8400 still compelling choices compared to low-end triple- and quad-core offerings? Those are some questions this article should help answer. Rather, this is an attempt to determine how our collection of test processorsalmost exclusively enthusiast items priced above $100compare when we study both pricing and performance simultaneously. This isn’t an exhaustive value assessment of all current desktop processors, nor should it be your one-stop guide to picking a new CPU. Once again, we threw our test results and official pricing information into a big spreadsheet, laid out the data into a veritable smorgasbord of graphs, and compiled everything neatly here for your reading pleasure.īefore inviting you to bask in the glow of our many charts and scatter plots, we should clarify this article’s purpose. The stars have now fallen into place again (or so it would seem), and we’ve therefore taken another gander at CPU price-performance relationships using fresh numbers from our Socket AM3 Phenom II review. Setting the stage for these articles is a bit like waiting for the stars to align, because a number of criteria must be met: we need performance numbers from a broad enough cross-section of current processors, we need to skirt new processor launches, and we need to wait for prices to be reasonably stable. Our first stab at the concept dates back to June 2007, and we tried again with a new batch of CPUs last May.
I'm only running 720p, and i've seen systems with less RAM and similar spec otherwise run games at 1080p better than the next gen consoles.Evaluating the latest processors based on a price-performance analysis is turning into a yearly tradition here at TR.
Please consider a platform upgrade to LGA1155 or LGA1150, it will boost your general use case experiences overall a lot more than just the gaming side.Ĭonsidering i got this for free, and considering it'll last me until i have the money for a proper machine, i'll just buy a GPU and save the rest. Trying to provide you an alternative view here. This means if you buy one of those two cards now and then upgrade your platform within the next 6 months, you would, then, have bought outdated gpus by then and then bought a platform upgrade nullifying the reason you bought such low end cards in the first place. Moreover, those two cards in suggestion here are very small cards if you ever want to step up your game later with a platform upgrades. Your system already cannot handle anything more than 750ti or a R7 260X / 265, so a GPU upgrade would not be, whilst very beneficial, not as big of an impact on your general computer experience (everything else than gaming). I would seriously consider a platform upgrade instead of a GPU upgrade right now and do the GPU upgrade within 3-4 months when the new iteration of gfx cards are out so you will get the best performance out of this. You have 6 year old CPU and motherboard combination, and DDR2 memory.