So I'm looking to gather some not too expensive parts to rebuild my recently deceased computer.

Right now I'm considering either the

Athlon II 250 3.0 for 77$ (dual core)

or

Phenom II 945 3.0 for 180$ (quad core)

Basically one of the stronger dual core versus a baseline quad core. My question is: what effect does quad core have over dual core on gaming, if any. I've not been up to date on these things and the last I knew games still had trouble using dual core :P.


Right now the parts I'm looking at :

Asus M4A77TD : 98$
4gb RAM DDR 1333 : 120$
Athlon II 250 3.0 : 77$
ATI 5770 : 100$ (-30$ for my 4650HD)

-or-

Asus M4A77TD : 98$
4gb RAM DDR 1333 : 120$
Phenom II 945 3.0 : 180$
ATI 4650HD : 0$ (already owned)

Well there are more games recently that can take advantage of quadcore cpus so normally I would never recommend dualcore at this point, but looking at the choice you presented it's defiantely not worth cutting back on your graphics card to gain the additional 2 cores.

GPU is still king when it comes to gaming and the 5770 + Dualcore will out perform the 4650 + Quadcore all day long.

Is there no middle ground options? Someday I hope to build an AthlonII X4 620 and overclock it in a budget gaming system.
The motherboard you picked supports unlocking disabled cores/l3 cache on some X2/X3 cpu's (No additional cores on the X2 250 tho).

There isn't much of a middle ground to be met. Basically, its one of the strongest dual cores and one of the weakest quad cores. I was making up the 100$ difference between the first choice and the second with the graphics card. I already own the 4650HD, so if I was gonna pay 100$ more for a quad core cpu, I'd keep that card. Right now, I'm already maxing out my budget and would rather not go over just now.

I'm also thinking of putting off the decision until fall, and see what's available then. I just don't really know.

If you do anything more than non-trivial multitasking, quad core will help.

IF you are getting this system for gaming, you'd be insane to pick quad core over a better GPU.

Also, waiting till fall wouldn't be a bad idea, prices will drop.

Yea, I tend to play less during the summer anyways. On the other hand, it leaves me without a computer and without music for several months. I have my laptop but aside from basic internet and word, it can't do much.

Does anyone have other suggestions around the same price range? Maybe an intel CPU instead of AMD?

Get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846&cm_re=phenom_ii_x2-_-19-103-846-_-Product and then try to unlock it ... a lot of people have had success in doing so and so at worst you get a solid dual-core for $100 and at best you get a $100 equivalent of a Phenom II X4 or X3

Or get an Athlon II X4 they rock and are like $20 more than your listed Athlon II X2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103704&cm_re=athlon_ii_x4-_-19-103-704-_-Product

Intel CPU, motherboard from a company that isn't still using bad caps (i.e. not Asus,) wait until NVIDIA launches a new part for AMD's inevitable price beatdown.

Recommending quad core.

Bad caps or just not solid film? There's nothing wrong with ordinary electrolytic caps.

Bad caps.

I thought that whole debacle was resolved a long time ago.

As did I.

Microcenter is selling i7 920s for $180 and 930s for $200 right now. i7 motherboards are pricier, but holy cow that's an awesome deal. Of course I realize this probably doesn't matter for Canadians.

My i5 750 cost 200 CAD

No, motherboards with the defective capacitors are still turning up today.

My Nforce430 I got 4 years ago has had loads of them go, it still works (Barely, only a single RAM slot works). While this old P2 Mobo from 1997 (Which has had a hammer go to the case once to remove a drive) still works.

from a gaming point of view you won't at the moment get any benefit from quad core, there are a few games out there, that use more than two but the load on the cores is hardly anything over the 10-20% region. In 2-3 years time maybe it might be different but they've been saying that for 2-3 years...as said early your money is probably better spent on the GPU.

If however you plan on doing other stuff than just pure gaming, quad core comes in real handy...

For instance I've been running Win7, WoW, Ubuntu (Virtual Box) for work and encoding some movies/watching HD....just for giggles and quite frankly it's absurb what you can do.

Reference? I don't doubt it but I'd like something concrete.

not specifically. check the badcaps forum, hardocp and hots

Well for the most part I've decided to wait a few months and save up some money. I don't spend as much time on the computer as i used too, and will likely use it that much less with summer coming up. Might as well save up and get some nice big shiny rig when I'm ready to get down to gaming next fall. Meanwhile I have my consoles to entertain me on rainy days.