CPU Shopping for the Holidays

Submitted by James Munn on November 29, 2006 – 7:54 am6 Comments

I’ve been scoping out the PC CPU scene for a few weeks now, freshening up my knowledge of the do’s and don’t of dual-core processors. Thankfully, Arstechnica has a holiday buyers guide for PC gamers who absolutely need to upgrade their processor this holiday season.

I’ve been out of the PC upgrade loop for awhile now and have noticed new applications making my current PC bog just a little. I don’t know how much PC gaming is left in my future but I do know that at least my next CPU upgrade will take gaming into consideration. Here’s Arstechnica’s synopsis:

As for the mid-range, some of you may have noticed that I skipped the E6700 in favor of its slightly lower-clocked sibling, the E6600. This is because I think the Core 2 Duo E6600 is clearly the best mid-range option from Intel. In most of the recent reviews I’ve read, the E6600, Athlon 64 X2 5000+, and E6700 are all neck-and-neck in most gaming benchmarks. Of course, the E6700 definitely outperforms the E6600, but not by enough to make it worth the $200 price premium. So skip the E6700, and put those extra two bills toward a good video card to go with your E6600.

So to sum up my main points:

Nathan

Now for a computer tech’s look at this.

A good quad-core GPU or CPU is some time far away. Even the initial manufacturers of quad processors will have troubles. Motherboards won’t support it for at least another year and Microsoft may not even implement it for another year and a half while shaping up vista.

GeForce 8800? A $500 video card that is barely an upgrade to the 7800 series? Might as well wait. Once Vista hits shelves NVIDIA will be putting out another line of cards bringing 8800 prices down. Also the new line will actually feature way better graphics since DX10 hasn’t been introduced yet. GeForce 7900 costs half th price of 8800 and will function just as well on an XP based system.

99% chance you’re going to have to buy a new motherboard anyway if you have anything less than a P4, Athlon 64 or motherboard without PCI-e. Unless you are so picky on a few megahertz of power difference, don’t unload your whole wallet for the new core 2. Athlon X2 processors run nearly the same speed and being a slightly older processor, they run much cheaper. Also throw in the fact that most Intel based motherboards are unreliable and don’t make full use of bus speed, sata, full PCI-e 16x graphics and don’t include nforce chipsets… you should, at least for now, stick with AMD.

We don’t know the future of any of this technology until Vista hits store shelves. As I see it, AMD will still come out ahead as they have been the pioneers for some time. I would expect they will hit quad technology before Intel. At least a fully working quad technology.

One thing also you should know. Intel processors are not clocked properly. Their rated speed and bus speed on their packaging is actually the highest safe running level. Most of them out of the box run much slower and would have to be overclocked. This voids your warranty. Just a nice tidbit of info.

Technology will make a large shift when Windows Vista comes out. Keep that in mind.

Subnet6

Ummmm, what Nathan said…..yeah.

Seriously though, Nathan has really hit it on the head. Athlon is still a bang for your buck leader if not the overall leader. The technology is changing even faster than normal now as manufacturers try to juggle Mhz, Cache Size, Bus Speed and Core technologies in a effort to boost performance by even smaller amounts. Intel is a bit overhyped right now and for the money, I agree the 8800 GPU is not ready to pop yet.

James (Aeropause)

Holy comment, Nathan!

Nathan

There are many misleading informers out there. I don’t even trust Tom’s hardware much anymore. Most of these sites have had their opinions bought out or don’t really know much about what they are doing anyway. Seeing as people go to these sites, or worse Best Buy, I add my bit of knowledge when I can. I’ve been deep into computers since Windows 95 hit. I was 13 and I had built my first PC.
I know this stuff inside and out and there is a lot of info they don’t tell you. They make everything seem great and even the benchmarks for things like the core 2 processor seem great but how does it REALLY work? Benchmarks can’t rate math processing capability. They can’t tell you if programs will load decently and how they will function with your other hardware.
Just like most things, you have to match up all your parts well to make it work. You can’t put a golf cart motor in a monster truck and you can’t put 1 gallon of water per second through a table straw. Things have to match up with PCs otherwise one side gets too heavy and it’s just a wasted piece of hardware and money. If anyone wants some tech info just add a comment and I’ll put up my email. I’m always up on all my technology. From HDTVs to audio systems to PCs. It’s my life.

flit

@Nathan:

Holy cow man, sounds like you need to start your own site, and instead of just reviewing certain cards or processors, actually tell consumers on what components to buy at which price level to build the most balanced computers! You’ll be rich with advertising!

Martin

yea I plan on updating my gaming rig a couple months after the first wave of Vista, say meybe march-april. So itll be new proc/mobo/ram/PCIe card hopefully I wont have to spend more than $600 but we’ll see. Just spent $350 on new viewsonic 22″ ws lcd monitor – mmm purrty. So what am I gonna be looking at come early spring 07 nathan?