CPU Config - Need Advice

[DeXt0R]

AMD Athlon II X4 640 - Est 4.5k
Asus M4A78LT-M-LE 8GB DDR3 AMD Motherboard - Est 2.5k
Crossair/Transcend DDR3 1333 RAM 2GB - Est 2.7k
Coolermaster Elite 310 - Est 1.5k
(COOLER MASTER Elite RC-310-RKN1-GP Mid Tower)
WD Caviar Blue 500GB - Est 2.5k


I Ripped this details from some other person's post here.

I need a config for multi-tasking... Applications can include the following

• Photoshop CS 5 or other similar applications
• Visual Studio 2005
• Lots of browser windows
• A mmorpg (low requirements but can use upto 512 mb ram) / Counter Strike 1.6

• Can the onboard graphic card the motherboard run counterstrike 1.6 at 100 FPS?
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• If it can run counter strike at 100FPS with onboard graphic card, do i need to buy a different PSU? Can i use the Stock PSU that comes with Coolermaster Elite 310?
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• If it cannot run counter strike at 100 FPS then can you suggest a different motherboard (cheaper) that can support a graphic card like 9400GT DDR2 512MB? but is compatible with this motherboard.
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I am open to all suggestion on a different/better configuration with better performance/reliability with little increase in price (mostly looking for cheaper). Again am open to Intel / AMD.

I'll be buying mostly all parts from Lamington Road within a week.
I would also like if someone can update the price list of the items that can be bought from Lamington Road.

Parts i didnt add to the list are. Please advice me on this too...

• DVD Writer
• Wireless LAN Card

I am online almost whole day so will look forward to good discussions...

 

[The_Man]

Why do you want to run half life @100fps???You should go for a quad if you're looking for multitasking.
Intel doesn't offer a quad at that price range so forget about the quad but the sandy bridge i3 which is about to release in a week is an excellent cpu.But it wont be as cheap as the AMD X4

Crossair/Transcend DDR3 1333 RAM 2GB - Est 2.7k

You will get Corsair 2GB memory for just 1.2K.
What's your budget?

 

[DeXt0R]

AMD Athlon II X4 640 is better than an Intel core 2 duo E6550 right? Thats enough for me.

I want to run CS at 100 FPS, not HL. But its important. There is a difference i play when i lay at the normal 60 fps and when i increase it to 100 fps.

Even am not sure on the reason behind it.. but my current config is able to do that. It has a Core2Duo E6550 and a XFX 9400 GT 512mb gfx card.

Thanks for the price update on RAMs.. Dont know why online listings give 2x price on rams.

Trying to keep budget at lowest.
Also want to buy a Flat screen monitor. Atleast 21"

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

Specify ur budget inc monitor.

And AMD Athlon II x4 640 is better than core i3 2100.

 

[The_Man]

And AMD Athlon II x4 640 is better than core i3 2100.

Again...
It's not when it comes to gaming and photoshop operations.

*images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35024.png

*images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35038.png
*images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35050.png

For complete results, go here

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

thats 6 seconds saved in photoshop and not 6 hours.

now here is a quote from anandtech -

In these heavily threaded situations, AMD's Athlon II X4 645 is a better option than the 2100.

see that you might get some more fps in games, in this case 6. do you think it will be noticeable?

in other one its 15. but for how long. given that everything is slowly becoming multithreaded that 15 fps in future will shift opposite.! new games like crysis 2 will be optimised for more cores.

and you cant overclock that i3!! stuck!

so x4 is much more futureproof.

 

[vickybat]

Yup x4 is the better option than i3 2100. The latter is a dual core and everything is becoming multithreaded fast including games.

 

[The_Man]

Consider the present first and then the future.OK?Games in the future will need a better graphics card too.Why don't you recommend something like GTX470?


And let me remind you that i3 comes with hyper threading technology.It has 2 virtual cores+2 real cores. So it's not a simple dual core like the core 2 duo. It's much more than that.
Vicky,you praise SB in all your posts and when it comes dual cores,you straight away turn your head.It's not the no.of cores that decide the performance of a CPU.

Dextor,use your common sense and decide.These guys are talking about the future always.What's the point in buying something that is useful in the future but not in the present? Gaming performance is decided by the GPU most of the times not the CPU.

Many of the multithreaded applications still don't show much of a performance boost when more than 2 cores are used.Trust me.It has 2real+2virtual cores.It's not equal to 4 real cores but almost equal to it.So if you need pure multitasking Quad is definitely the best option.

 

[Cilus]

The_Man, be polite buddy....if you have different suggestion thens say it with proper data point, don't just start forcing the OP by saying other guys don't have common sense.
What you've said is partially correct..Obviously the number of cores are not indicating the higher performance and Sandy bridge architecture is superior to all the AMD line ups.
Now in your other post in intel sandy bridge or amd?, I have put some points in the end also. Probably you did not have a look at it. So again posting the same thing here.
Tomshardware does also have 2 articles, CPU/GPU bottleneck story. muticore CPU also reduces the chance of bottleneck of GPU.
Read the part 1 and part 2.
It clearly says that in current generation games a Tripple core is required in more than 90% cases to avoid bottleneck when paired with a decent set of cards. So don't you think all games that will be released within 1 years need more CPU cores?
And it is not any distant future games. Games with 4 to 8 core optimizations are already in the market. Crysis 2 is the perfect example of it. Battle Field Bad Company 2 is the pioneer in this field and if you put a high end card, simply for avoiding GPU bottleneck a quad core is required.
And any currently available multi-threaded applications like Handbrake (video encoding), Antivirus scan etc have already shown the benifit of 4 physical cores over 4 logical cores..check any review.
You are basically putting all the points which only supports your point and hiding all the other points.
And not only Vicky, but all the other members have praised Sandy bridge for the raw performance they offer, but here our comparison is not by the whole series but with the specific model to model comparison.

 

[fartya2003]

Errr btw i am DeXt0R... That account is not activated yet after i changed emails... Took almost 24 hours for the 1st reactivation mail to come... till then i had reactivated like 3-4 times... So still waiting for the last link to show up...

The_Man's suggestions makes sense...

I have applications right now that only use my Core 0 of my Core2Due E6550 (2.33 ghz).... So technically the application gets only around 1.2 GHz...


So if AMD Athlon II X4 640 is 3Ghz and has 4 cores... That means this application i am talking about will only get around 750 MHz?

Correct me if am wrong.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

^^its completely wrong.

all cores function at available mentioned speed.

Consider the present first and then the future.OK?Games in the future will need a better graphics card too.Why don't you recommend something like GTX470?

that 470 is crap hot card. 6870 is better option. and 6950 1gb and GTX 560 are much much much better at almost same price. consider price, power consumtion, raw power. and from where has a gpu come up in this cpu discussion?

And let me remind you that i3 comes with hyper threading technology.It has 2 virtual cores+2 real cores. So it's not a simple dual core like the core 2 duo. It's much more than that.
Vicky,you praise SB in all your posts and when it comes dual cores,you straight away turn your head.It's not the no.of cores that decide the performance of a CPU.

we all know not only cores matter. we need to consider everything. 4 actual cores are better than 2 cores with HT..

its not a fanboy game going on! that we need to favour a company.

Dextor,use your common sense and decide.These guys are talking about the future always.What's the point in buying something that is useful in the future but not in the present? Gaming performance is decided by the GPU most of the times not the CPU.

then go and get a sempron or celeron and combine it with a 580. then tell what decided gaming performance and what not! it needs to be best balance. and that future is not far away. crysis 2 will be here soon and you will see the lot of changes within this year AFAIK!

Many of the multithreaded applications still don't show much of a performance boost when more than 2 cores are used.Trust me.It has 2real+2virtual cores.It's not equal to 4 real cores but almost equal to it.So if you need pure multitasking Quad is definitely the best option.

give a link prooving 4 real cores = 2 cores+ht. and consider heavily threaded apps and not those singled cored.

 

[fartya2003]

^^its completely wrong.
all cores function at available mentioned speed.

>.> you must be kidding... as far as i know each core operates at specific speed which adds up to 3Ghz incase of AMD Athlon II X4 640...

If each core runs at 3GHz then woudnt it be a 12 GHz processor? duh~


Also i was talking in terms of applications that were not built to run on multicore processors...

 

[vickybat]

Single threaded applications will highly favour the i3 2100 but multihreaded apps will favour x4 640. Since everything is going the multithreaded way, x4 640 is still a good solution. Had i3 2100 been cheaper, then it would have been recommended. But its expensive than 640 now and is slower in multithreaded applications.

Yes. 2100 cores are more powerful than 640 but the numbers game play here and 640 trumps 2100 in multithreaded apps. So we still recommend x4 640 instead of an i3 2100.

But its totally different in i5's and i7's of sandybridge which beats amd's current x6's even in heavy multithreaded apps. Future sandybridge and upcoming amd bulldozer based cpu's will have 6-8 physical cores along with smt.

So the future is definitely more cores.

 

[fartya2003]

Thanks for trying to help out but one of my requirement was running counterstrike at 100FPS with the possible need of a graphic card...

Counter-Strike only uses 100% of core 1... It was not build for multi core processors...

Again am not looking for a future proof PC..
Will AMD Athlon II X4 640 be able to run Counterstrike at 100 FPS just using one core?

If it is not able to then i need a cheap card under 2,500 like my current XFX GT 9400 GT 512 MB. which is able to run Counter strike at 100 FPS? Card should be supported by the motherboard [Asus M4A78LT-M-LE 8GB DDR3 AMD Motherboard] Of course...

Please dont make guesses or assumptions...

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

>.> you must be kidding... as far as i know each core operates at specific speed which adds up to 3Ghz incase of AMD Athlon II X4 640...

If each core runs at 3GHz then woudnt it be a 12 GHz processor? duh~


Also i was talking in terms of applications that were not built to run on multicore processors...

then what you know is completely wrong. each core runs at 3ghz. this doesnt mean 12ghz for the processor. and this doesnt meen speed is divided!

this means if a program is threaded different cores can execute multiple threads at same time. means cores will work at 3ghz and execute ithe multiptle threads faster.

you must have enabled power saver mode in windows 7 which reduces the clock speed like for example in phenom 955 it is reduces to 800mhz when processor is at idle. use balanced mode.

 

[fartya2003]

Ok.. even though i was wrong at that part, it still does not change the fact that Counter strike 1.6 (not source) will only use one of the cores to run... As it was not built for multi core systems

 

[vickybat]

Jas is right. Clock speed is the speed at which a microprocessor executes a program thread. In a superscalar processor, each core is assigned the same clock rate and in athlon x4's case, 3ghz and it completes the task at that speed.

The cpu throughput in a superscalar processor is achieved by parallelism (instruction level).

In counterstrike's case, my i5 750 locks it at 72 fps which is extremely fast and responsive. Amdx4 should also do a similar job.

 

[Ishu Gupta]

My Dual core gets 70 fps (40 in crowd) in CS 1.6 with an Intel onboard.

 

[fartya2003]

My Dual core gets 70 fps (40 in crowd) in CS 1.6 with an Intel onboard.

Guess i'll have to buy a card then...

I have a Core2Duo right now, E6550 2.33 Ghz.... And XFX 9400 GT... So if i put a similar graphic card in with Asus M4A78LT-M-LE 8GB DDR3 AMD Motherboard it will be able to run CS 1.6 at 100 FPS sure right?

Will 9400 GT run on this motherboard? Or is there a better card available under or a bit above Rs 2.5k?

Can also suggest in 3.5k range..

Also can anyone update me on the current price of XFX 9600 GT and 9400 GT graphic cards in lamington road, mumbai?

 

[vickybat]

^^ I don't understand why are you after 100fps. My cpu and radeon 5750 locks everything at 72 and its blazing fast at those frames. A 100 won't make any difference.