Best Gaming CPUs For the Money 2012
Its always interesting to compare to compare our list of CPUs by popularity with which CPUs provide you the best overall value for your money. In general, you’d think that gamers would want more bang for their buck; however, this is not always the case.
What do we think about AMD’s Zambezi processor?
Despite all of the hype surrounding Bulldozer’s micro architecture it’s simply not performing when compared to today’s top gaming CPU. This has been confirmed by other top hardware sites including bit-tech, Tom’s Hardware, and Anandtech. Perhaps the harshest criticism that we could give it from a gamers perspective is that we’d stick with the Phenom II 1100t which seems like a step backward. If AMD wants to regain the market share that it’s recently lost it’s going to need to rededicate itself to optimizing its single thread performance. The question lingering in our minds is whether they’ll be able to figure it out by the time Intel releases its new Ivy Bridge 22nm processors, a shrink in the die bridge of Sandy Bridge, CPU to the public in Q2 of 2012.
Credit: The picture to the right is a from the IDF2011 Forum. You can read more information about Ivy bridge there as well as what is to come.
The i5-2500k is still your best bet
While getting the i7-2600k is tempting and may increase performance slightly, it’s really not worth it considering the 33% premium you pay when compared to the i5-2500k. That being said this is assuming that you use your computer strictly for gaming. If you want hyper-threading, and a larger L3 cache, then the i7-2600k is still a very good option for multitasking and one we’ve used for our gaming PCs here that double in functionality as our work computers.
What’s Ahead?
Intel’s i7-2700k processor was just released with a slight boost to the operating frequency. It’s hardly worth the extra cash considering the minimal performance boost, but we’re pretty sure that performance enthusiasts will continue to buy such products. The same argument can be made when looking at AMD’s 1090T and 1100T.
Recommended CPU Prices and Deals
Here are our recommended CPU picks. If you don’t ever plan on overclocking, then you might consider saving yourself additional cash by purchasing the version that isn’t “unlocked”. Then again for $5-10 who knows what you’ll end up doing with it later and the unlocked version is certainly better for resale.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EBUXSA/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=amazonaz-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B004EBUXSA&adid=14FTSP20K6CY98C1MGP3&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamingreviewguide.com%2Fbest-gaming-cpus-for-the-money%2F
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