My Gf's pc has just taken a dump and its WAY WAY old so she needs a new PC. We are on a budget (we're in the USA), so I was looking for decent budget CPU. Basically all she does is play Everquest 2 and check her email etc. EQ2 is very CPU intensive, far more so than GPU intensive. I am completely out of touch with what CPUs are good/bad etc so I was hoping to find a rundown in terms of performance/price on the latest crop of CPUs.
AMD or intel? AMD are better value for money atm for cheaper cpu's, so have a browse in the cpu section and i am sure your question will be answered there.
Doesnt matter if its Intel or AMD honestly, I just need to know what at the moment the best value CPU is around at the moment.
Well intel budget cpu that can be overclocked nicely are the E5300 series and about £60 tha AMD equvelant is the core X2 series for about £50 both very similar in performance, at that budget range as these are and with the intel cpu's on 775 mobo's you can pick up a budget system pretty cheap atm that be more than enuff for your gf's needs.
Theres a good article on tomshardware atm about gaming CPU's which include budget stuff. They recommend the best entry CPU is the AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 250 3.00GHz (Socket AM3). You'll need an AM3 compatible MB as well, the AM2+ ones mean you can use cheaper DDR2 RAM. Of course the lower you go the more performance you lose.
Want best value, overclock. Its very simple and the rewards are clear. Here is my suggestion for the basis of a system: The integrated GPU on that motherboard is an HD 4200, maybe this would be good enough to run EQ2, what graphics card is currently being used?
