CPU Choice?

yangzie · 08-16-2009, 10:39 PM

Hey guys another quick question on which CPU would be best for gaming / overlocking

Q8400 (the quard)

or E8400?

I would get the e8500 but i don't think for that extra $50 jump it would be worht for a extra .2 GHz? or is there more to it? comments please? Im from australia btw so everything is so fkning expensive.. a e8400 is like 220 AUd and 28500 is 270 :S

Phædrus241 · 08-16-2009, 10:43 PM

E8400, games need more clock cycles more than they need two extra cores. The E8500 is actually only $20-30 more than the E8400 most places, I suppose in Australia that would be $50... I'd say it's worth it (but not worth it to go to the E8600), but that's your call. Both the E8400 and E8500 make excellent overclockers as well, you should be able to push the E8400 to 3.8GHz fairly easily if you know what you're doing and to ~4.0GHz with some effort.

yangzie · 08-16-2009, 11:22 PM

okay cool and another quick question theres this site i buy from
its pretty cheap for australians and im not sure which power supply to get
this place is the only place i pretty much trust and buy from
heres is their part list on the site
http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf
can you guys help me pick out a power supply?
im planning to OC and im gna be using a 4890 HD gfx card
and another thing is, is the brand "XFC" or something like that i cant remember any good?

Phædrus241 · 08-16-2009, 11:40 PM

Most of the PSUs listed under their "Quality Power Supplies" thing are junk, but they have three good brands: Seasonic, Thermaltake Toughpower (not the other Thermaltakes, the Toughpower ones only), and CoolerMaster Real Power Pro (same as with Thermaltake, only the Real Power Pro models). You'll want a 700w+ one of those units for a 4890 and an overclock, the higher the wattage the better of course.

Good brands for Nvidia GeForce cards are EVGA and BFG Tech, for ATI Radeon look for Sapphire and PowerColor. XFX is a middling brand for graphics cards, they're ok but their customer support is lacking so if you see another brand for a similar price pick that instead.

yangzie · 08-17-2009, 12:18 AM

mmm well from what you have said i can only really afford the 600 / 650 watts ones... are those enough? :(

Phædrus241 · 08-17-2009, 02:42 AM

If you drop down to a 4870 and are careful with your overclock, yes. Otherwise it's shaving it thin.

yangzie · 08-17-2009, 05:34 AM

is the 4870 comparable to the 4890? and i losing a lot of performance from the drop? :S

Phædrus241 · 08-17-2009, 07:52 AM

You're losing some performance, but not a ton. I have a 4870 and play on a 1440x900 resolution, it can handle most any game out there on its highest settings on this res at a very good (50+) framerate. Most of the time when my framrate drops below that it's my CPU bottlenecking, and the E8400 is faster clock-for-clock then my overclocked E2200. It's a good combination.