AMD Phenom II X4 970?

[JRR]

How good is the AMD Phenom II X4 970 compared to the Intel i3 and i5 processors?
i am looking to buy a gaming PC and i was looking a processors and the AMD Phenom II X4 970 is good for my budget and its Quad Core, 3.50GHz and 8MB Cache.
So how does it perform on games like, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War 2 and the Total War games?
Thanks

[Crazyeyesreaper]

i5 750 stomps it i5 2500k same price as the 760 is even more stomp into the ground

if your building all new from the ground up depending on where you are in the world

if you budget money well enough you can get a 2500k system for $80 more and if you dont overclock at all a i5 2400 P67 combo instead for $30 more that blows the Phenom II away. in many situations the i5 2000 series quad cores are minimum 20% faster but tend to be closer to 35-40% faster then Phenom II x4s

[JRR]

Ideally i would like to get a decent gaming pc for under £550 these are the specs i was looking at:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 970 (3.50Ghz/8MB Cache/AM3) Black Edition.

Motherboard: ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3.

RAM: 2x 4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz.

Graphics Card: (To save money i have kept my old one, but later i will buy a better card) Nvidia Geforce 9400GT.

HDD: 1TB SATA HDD (16MB Cache/ 7,200rmp).

PSU: 450W Quiet 80 plus dual rail PSU.

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

EDIT: This is the website that i would be getting my PC from: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

[Crazyeyesreaper]

are you located in the UK? if so ebuyer and scan have better prices usually if not pc specialists ship to you i can use them but yea knowing your location UK, Germany, France blah blah blah makes this easier.

if there building the PC for you well its cheaper to do it yourself

[Devilmaypoop]

Dont get 970 if you're going AMD, but get the 955 but make sure to get the C3 revision. 970 is only a 955 with a higher multiplier and you can just change the 955 multiplier to the 970 one and it's very likely you wont even have to change voltages.

[fdk]

Good start when you want to compare stuff:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=288

Gaming is not really the friend of a card like the 9400gt you should switch that out soon if you want to take advantage of either cpu. As a rule of Thumb: >=6 in the second digit ->gaming cards (like geforce 460gt or radeon 5770). you can do with smaller ones, but i wouldn't especially on a pc which primary purpose will be games.

[JRR]

The main problem is if i was to go with a intel processor that would be the i5, it boosts the costs up to £547 but the AMD specs i chose are around the same price with better Ram, HDD e.c.t

[Crazyeyesreaper]

ram dosent matter much get 4gb ddr3 1333mhz sandybridge has superior bandwidth on memory no matter what DDR3 its running, amd cant keep up there

and again 2500k would be ideal if overclocking if not grab a 2500 non K or 2400, trust me its a HUGE difference performance wise,

for gaming you do not need 8gbs of ram, i do 3d modeling high res sculpting in mudbox and zbrush, photoshop editing etc, only times ive needed more then 4gb of system ram was A) using adobe premiere pro to encode some video footage, and when running maya mudbox and photoshop at the same time

so drop the ram to some Gskill ripjaws X, 1333mhz or 1600mhz 1.5v 2x2gb there cheap and performance is good, for HDDS to save some cash grab a samsung F3 1tb usuall cheaper then every other 1tb drive out there and there faster.

if your not going to go dual gpu in the future and do not plan to overclock you can step down to an H67 motherboard to save a few more $$$ if i had the website your buying from i can spec the machine myself.

just simply put Phenom IIs performance is roughly the same as Socket 775 quadcores, that means Intel has released 1156 1336 and now 1155 sockets 3 new sockets soon to be 4th this fall

granted in terms of market segment its only 2 sockets 775 --> 1156---> 1155.. anyway get me a link to your favorite E-tailer and ill put a build together.

[JRR]

Thanks,
this is the website i am buying from if you want to get me some specs : http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

[Crazyeyesreaper]

ill take a look later tonight early tomorrow and put up a full build for you.

[JRR]

Thanks

[Crazyeyesreaper]

from the looks that site just builds custom units for you far cheaper to do it yourself but if you can stretch your budget a bit, if you have to go prebuild your stuck with AMD,


just get a Phenom II 955 with the asus 870 motherboard, with a 560ti / 6950 a 955 can just be bumped up 2x on the multiplier to become a 970 for $50 less.

total is $636 with VAT $530 without it.

my advice to you
A) is to learn to build a PC for yourself to save money,
B) if you cant do the above save up around $700 so you can get a machine thats worth buying prebuilt.

[JRR]

Thanks for the advice +rep