Full PC build on a budget < £670

highest clocked phenom in the test

unreal tournament 3 (you are mainly gaming?)


edit: forgot about your later post, quadcore (or more) is definately they way to go for transcoding
ps: dont worry about socket life, when you replace your cpu, you will have to replace the board, its always the way (unless you upgrade every 6 months)

ps: shaidar, thats a good setup apart from one thing the ps3 - Do not defile gods own gaming machine with that propriety evilness

 

Mostly movies but I do have a fair amount of game ISOs there for LANs. I may turn it into an apps-only drive eventually though, if my media storage requirements exceed the space I have available on the 1TB drive. Maybe pick up a couple 1.5TB drives or even 2TB.

It's not an across the board improvement. I don't deny that i7 can be faster, but there are plenty of tests (gaming in particular) where there is little to no difference. Not many games are so well-threaded that they can take advantage of 8 threads after all.

Yeah, I've been running bottom-mounted PSUs since I got my first really good case in 2005, a Silverstone Temjin 7. No longer have that case but running my quad in a Lian li full tower and my dual in a Coolermaster Storm Scout, both bottom-mounted PSUs.

The Mugen 2 is one of the better coolers on the market. I don't feel let down by either of mine though. It can get pretty hot in my apartment sometimes (during LANs especially) so having that 2nd fan is a necessity.

That's an original Phenom, Davros. The Phenom IIs are almost on-par with the Q9 series, and easily match the Q6 series at the same clock speeds. Also they're up to 3.4GHz now which is nothing to sneeze at.

LOL, not going to get into a console war but I'll stand behind my roommate's decision to pick up a PS3 slim. Too many good games not too. We already have an existing library of games and Blu-rays so it only made sense. Just started using it as a media playback device and streaming all my Divx movies from my PC, man does it clean up those images. It's amazing what the PS3 does for image quality on low quality Divx files @ 700MB or so. Better than a DVD in most cases. Gotta start collecting Blu-rays again to really take advantage of its media center functionality though, all the ones I have already have been watched over and over.

 

Maybe Your not reading the correct benchmarks but i7 slaughters any core 2 quad at ANYTHING. It's ~16% faster per clock so your still going to see an improvement in performance over a C2Q in single threaded applications if both chips are clocked equal.

 

If your looking for a Xfire AM3 mother board then look at this.
It uses a 790X chipset so if one PCI-E 16X slot is used then it has all 16 lines but if both 16X slots are used then each slot gets 8 lanes. The 790gx chipset is the same but to get 2 slots with 16 lanes for each then yo will need a 790FX chipset and that will cost £130 or more.

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=363780&CatId=0

 

Not in farcry2 it doesn't (from[H])

my quick bit of research found 10% per clock on average in games for the i7

 

Congrats you found 1 article and 1 game

 

from bit-tech
"Despite being a graphics behemoth, Crysis requires a fast CPU as well and there's a little extra performance available from the new architecture. This appears to be down to out and out CPU performance more than memory performance, as even with single channel memory, the Core i7 965 is about two percent faster than the QX9770 and two percent slower than the i7 965 with triple channel memory."

Like I said the i7 is about at 10% faster per clock in games (and thats because supreme commander does scale well and pushes the average up) a far cry from

 

As I said, on average 16% faster

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-11.html

 

You also said slaughters , you cant have it both ways

 

Core 2 Quad officially slaughtered

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/19

 

Using that popular configuration 3 way sli

 

If you read the article it's the same story with 2-way as well

 

Not that it's relevant at all considering the OP's budget, but from all I've read Crysis with SLI loves a fast CPU.

kyetech, the Lynnfield CPUs just came out and it might be worth your while to splurge on an i5 750.

 

This one would be better for OC because of the better voltage regulator and theirs Xfire if wanted later.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-199-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482

 

Dude don't go AMD.......

 

Be gone Troll!!!! Your not trying to help at all.

 

16% faster is "slaughtering"?

Seriously? Tom's Hardware?

Completely different platforms. X58 vs. 680i is a joke. At least compare as close to like for like as possible and do X58 vs. X48.

 

Back on-topic: AMD hardware is perfectly fine. The Phenom II and Athlon II offer excellent performance for the money. I was going to buy an X3 720 until I found this Q9550 for only $50 more.