I'm building a new system for gaming this month and i've been wondering should I go for the i7 or Phenom II


I heard the Phenom II pretty much performs the same as the i7 but about half the price.

Not quite. An i7 920 can be had for $280ish. A decent X58 board can be had for about $260-270. DDR3 is going to cost you, though. $140-150 for a 3x2GB kit. On the Phenom II side, where gaming performance is basically the same, a 940 BE can be had for $280. An AMD 790FX + SB750 (Foxconn A79A-S) can be had for $105 after MIR, and 4GB DDR2 can be had for <$40. It's a cheaper platform, if you put your system into standby when you're not using it, it's also more power efficient (9.6W instead of 25.8W or so).

Are you going to build or buy prebuilt?

Gonna build from the ground up.

Mom getting some money back for taxes so shes giving me about $1200 to play with

That's a tough amount. You can get more bang-for-your-buck and upgrades with the Phenom II system, as Core i7 is so expensive and Core 2 isn't exactly the picture of an upgrade path. Based off of information that I have, I would say go for Phenom II for gaming. It won't be the best at everything, but it'll be plenty fast. Better, grab an Athlon X2 5000 and overclock it, and when Phenom II prices are driven down or it gets further revised, then buy it. Do you need a monitor? Keyboard? Mouse? Speakers?

I have a Athlon X2 5000+ on this system atm im using my own money to buy speakers monitor etc

I can wait a little until the Phenom II drops but im pretty sure thats not gonna happen until the AM3+ version is released which I think is a few months away

I heard it's either like 1 month away or a few months away.

Run CPU-Z (link at the end of my signature) and post a validated dump. I'll have a look at what you're running right now and recommend upgrades.

AM3 processors (later Deneb) are going to be drop-in compatible with AM2+ motherboards (AMD 700 series, nForce 700a). That being said, your biggest upgrade at this point would be graphics.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=483292

Here you go
Im running Win7 right now so should I remove the slower acer ram?

Because by the dump you can see I have faster Crucial Ballistix in here as well.

Is that core speed right as well seems low

The processor underclocks itself under low loads---that's what you see.

Anyways--do you have a micro-ATX system or an ATX system? You can tell the difference as the former has 4 expansion slots and the latter 7.

The best performance boost you'll see is in the form of a new graphics card. There's also the new-motherboard option (as AMD600 isn't full compatible with AM2+/AM3 processors). I hear good things about the Foxconn A79A-S motherboard ($165-$60 MIR=$105) as well, so that board, a good graphics card like a Radeon HD4850, and a new power supply like a Corsair 750TX (which would be total overkill, but should last you for many years) would be a very nice upgrade. When AM3 processors launch, grab one and it's drop-in compatible.

If you have more questions or points for discussion, I'll be back later.

I'd say go for either i7 or a high end C2Q. Even a C2D could suffice, since your main bottleneck is the graphics card, not the CPU.

ATX system




I'll wait for a AM3 variant and get the DDR3

Then the Foxconn board and either a Phenom II 940 or keep the Athlon X2 5000 would be a nice upgrade. You can grab 2x2GB DDR2 800 as well and then have 6GB DDR2 total. Overall a good upgrade when combined with decent graphics (which the 8600GTS isn't).

KK will do