Phenom II x4 or X6?

[PowerPie5000]

I'm thinking about changing my CPU from an Athlon II x4 645 to either a Phenom II X4 975 or Phenom II X6 1100T... I can't decide! I'm leaning more towards the X6 1100T which will probably perform better with the latest games (waiting for Battlefield 3). I can't afford to build a new i5/i7 rig so i'm just going to upgrade what i have now (i will also upgrade the RAM to 8GB).

Anyone have any opinions or suggestions on this? I won't be overclocking either.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Phenom II X4 has L3 cache per core and will be better for gaming IMHO.

[PowerPie5000]

The Phenom II X4 has L3 cache per core and will be better for gaming IMHO.

I thought both the Phenom II X4 and X6 use 6mb of 'shared' L3 cache? I know my Athlon II X4 only has a total of 2mb L2 cache (512k per core) and no L3 cache. So would a Phenom II x4 run BFBC2 better than a Phenom II x6 (i know it's one of the games that will use more than 4 cores)?

[watercooled]

I think he meant to say more L3 cache per core i.e. 6MB shared between 6 cores on the X6 or 6MB shared between 4 cores on the X4. The X4 also runs at a higher clock speed (3.6GHz vs 3.3GHz), however the X6 has a max Turbo frequency of 3.7GHz so should be faster than the X4 in both single-threaded applications and those which fully utilise all cores. It may be a different story for stuff in between e.g. 4 threads but it's anyone's guess which would be faster for BF3 - the only way to know for sure would be to wait for benchmarks.

[AlphaVictor]

I wouldn't think either of the CPUs will bottleneck you significantly in games. Your 6870 is likely to be the bottleneck for Battlefield 3 before the CPU. Not at all saying you 6870 is slow, just that the requirements for Battlefield 3 are extraordinarily high!

[PowerPie5000]

I wouldn't think either of the CPUs will bottleneck you significantly in games. Your 6870 is likely to be the bottleneck for Battlefield 3 before the CPU. Not at all saying you 6870 is slow, just that the requirements for Battlefield 3 are extraordinarily high!

Where have you read the requirements for BF3? I know there's a fake spec going around on the net at the moment. My 6870 is the 'black edition' which has a bit more grunt than a standard 6870 (it's almost on par with a 6950)... I can always upgrade later anyway, but it will be the last upgrade for my AM3 rig after the CPU as i might go with an 'Ivy Bridge' build later on if it's any good (or whatever AMD have at the time).

[AlphaVictor]

Where have you read the requirements for BF3? I know there's a fake spec going around on the net at the moment. My 6870 is the 'black edition' which has a bit more grunt than a standard 6870 (it's almost on par with a 6950)... I can always upgrade later anyway, but it will be the last upgrade for my AM3 rig after the CPU as i might go with an 'Ivy Bridge' build later on if it's any good (or whatever AMD have at the time).

The only actual system requirements I've seen detailed are those fake ones, however guessing from how the engine looks from all the gameplay footage that has been released and the fact that GTX 580s were used to show it off, I think it's safe to say the requirements for maxing the game will be very high. On the other hand I know nothing about how scaleable the engine is, it could be that it will run very well on much less powerful systems with options turned down.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

PowerPie5000 could you please contribute to this thread:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ded-power.html

There is a distinct lack of Athlon II X4 results.

AlphaVictor if you can add some results too it would be great.

[watercooled]

The only actual system requirements I've seen detailed are those fake ones, however guessing from how the engine looks from all the gameplay footage that has been released and the fact that GTX 580s were used to show it off, I think it's safe to say the requirements for maxing the game will be very high. On the other hand I know nothing about how scaleable the engine is, it could be that it will run very well on much less powerful systems with options turned down.

The game will be demoed on a very high-end system, often way beyond what's actually needed, so they avoid anything like stuttering/frame rate drops which might get the game some bad attention. It's very common to do this. Also remember that games will be running less than optimally this far before release due to lack of driver support/optimisations, another reason high-end hardware is used.

[PowerPie5000]

PowerPie5000 could you please contribute to this thread:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ded-power.html

There is a distinct lack of Athlon II X4 results.

AlphaVictor if you can add some results too it would be great.

Ok no probs... Downloading it all now