Help building a Gaming Rig

[Squilliam]

SpartenOmega117 said:

Squilliam said:

Well a good compromise is the Phenom 945 I believe for $130ish if you're concerned about it. It uses less power than similar Phenoms so should be a good balance between performance and running costs and noise. Anyhow games will require more cores in the future so roughly speaking that Athlon II 2.8Ghz is about 2.8 2.8 2.8 2.8 = 10Ghz equivalent or so, I can't be bothered with the maths.

okay so i should be future proof with the processor? so should i go for the $130 one ore $100 one?

Well... The processor is already future proofed given it has 4 cores and most games only use two. So the $130 one is extra future proofing.

If you have the budget I would say go with the Phenon, I selected the Athlon because I figured you needed to have Windows 7 for full OEM price. My reasoning is this: You'll switch graphics chips more than once if you continue to play games on it over the coming years, you'll probably never have to swith the CPU before you'll want a completely new motherboard etc anyway, so make the CPU count. Also its wayyy more frustrating to be CPU limited in games than being GPU limited, because you can't just turn settings down.