how many cores does clod use

[jayrc]

please don't call people names if they don't agree with you, keep this civil please. I'm listening to everyone and will make an educated guess as to what will be best for me with my budget, keep it coming though.

[TonyD]

Hi jayrc – I thought we may have lost you long ago

As a cheaper alternative, why not consider an AMD setup? If you were to buy a new AM3+ mainboard (marked as AM3b on the socket, and black in colour) and a cheap Athlon-II X4 cpu, you would have the option of upgrading to one of the new ‘Bulldozer’ cores later if you wanted to, and the money saved could be spent on a better graphics card. This would not be as fast as a SB setup, but would still be more than adequate, with future upgrade options.

I build gaming machines as a hobby, and have built many over the years, mostly for youngsters who don’t have a lot of money to spend. My advice is always to go for a good gfx card and an adequate processor, rather than the other way round. Games don’t generally require very fast cpu’s to work properly (they wouldn’t sell many, if this was the case), but do benefit enormously from fast gfx cards, particularly if you like to turn the detail up.

This advice does depend on the cost of the components where you live; the cheapest LGA1155 Core i3 is $145 where I live (wholesale from supplier), while an Athlon-II X4 640 is $114. A Core i5 2500k is around $300. AMD maiboards are also cheaper than LGA1155,with native support for 6 SATA-3 ports.

One advantage in going for the 2500k though, is that you are unlikely to want (or need) to upgrade your cpu anytime in the near future.

Have I now confused you further?

[Rattlehead]

Upgrading always presents a few choice difficulties, especially now with Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer and Ivy Bridge all out this year.

For me, the 2500k seems like the best bang for the buck CPU, but what if Bulldozer proves as fast or faster for similar money? Then, there is Ivy Bridge that certainly will be faster than Sandy Bridge...decisions, decisions...on the other hand, if one keeps waiting for the new tech to arrive, one will wait forever.
Oh bugger.

[jayrc]

amd was my first choice but with everyone's performance issues in CloD I'm having a hard time pulling that trigger, Rof users are getting great performance with amd 965 and there overclocking them to 3.7 or 3.8 I believe without any problems. Think I might have to wait even longer still till this sim gets optimized. Anyone have any ideas on what bulldozer's bringing to the table?

[TonyD]

Ha! You’d have to be clairvoyant to know that. It is assumed that performance should match SB, although AMD claims better. It will only really be known when they arrive. Pricing will then depend on how they perform in relation to Intel’s offerings, although should be a bit keener.

I have no issues running CoD currently, with everything on ‘medium’, except Model, Effects and Terrain which I have on ‘high’ (shadows on, grass off) at 1920 x 1080. RoF I run at max. I also don’t OC my cpu, as it really makes very little difference – a couple of fps average in Black Death when raising it to 4.0Ghz. I’m not aware of any AMD cpu user having any particular hassle with CoD, other than what everyone else has, that is.

THG did a test with an i5 750 running at default speed and 4.0GHz, and there was a negligible difference in the frame rates over a number of games. Clocking your cpu will only produce a meaningful increase if it’s a bit too slow to start with, and even then the gain will not be great. There are certain routines that benefit when increasing your cpu speed, but games generally do not.

There is also no issue with running a nVidia gfx card in an AMD board; in fact THG did test each in each other’s boards at some stage, and surprisingly the GeForce was a bit quicker in the Ati board, than both the Ati card in the nVidia board, and the nVidia card in their board

[nearmiss]

The heat is building on this thread. Either bring it down or the thread will be locked.

Some of you need to go online combat and vent on some poor souls there.