- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
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The regular Phenoms aren't 'low' performers, but they are very far from high. What makes the Phenom II's much, much faster is the higher numbers of Cache (Like FreakingHell said) and they're clocked alot higher due to the 45nm shrink compared to 65nm Phenom I's. If you had a Phenom II x4 clocked at 2.2ghz it would be fine.
But with games as of now, the best results are from Dual Cores. Mainly the Phenom II x2 and the E8400 (being the most popular) both being clocked at 3ghz.
http://anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=21&p2=85
Best example of what a little bit more Cache can offer ^
All in all with a 9800gt, GTS250, etc. you won't notice much bottlenecking, but with that CPU it could slow a GTX275 down to almost the speed of a GTS250.
Not if u have a quad-core clocked at 3ghz.......a quad core 3ghz will beat a duo core 3ghz anyday and if the game doesn't support all 4 cores then it will still perform the same if anything.
Duo cores are almost not a contender now compared to quad-cores......the only way a duo-core is gonna outperform a quad core is if the thing is clocked over 4.5ghz or something and the game only supports 2 cores. Almost all the Intel i5/i7 cpu's clock 4.0ghz now 24/7 stable with a good enough CPU cooler.
Quad-cores help a lot more in bottlenecking so higher end GPU's will be better off with a quad-core resulting in higher FPS, especially with dual-card solutions now.......there was a review of an i7 965 @ 3.6ghz bottlenecking a Crossfire 5850 or crossfire 5870 in a few games like call of duty and such.

















