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[jjmusicnotes]

I own an AMD 1055T myself.  I had it OC'd to 4.09Ghz stable but turned it down because that amount of stress is unnecessary for what I use my compy for.

I mention that because I've always been an Intel guy, but recently went AMD for purely budget reasons, and I must say, I've been very happy with my CPU.

Also, one of the selling points for me was that the 1055T score about 600 points higher than the other cpu I was looking at, the i5-760, on this chart:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html


The six-cores work great for me because I do a bit of multi-threaded applications (and also wanted to futurize my rig,) and I was absolutely floored when I saw how much faster it did things than my old 3Ghz Pentium 4 w/HT (which scored about 1/6th the score of the 1055 on that chart.)

If you decided to go AMD, you could get the Phenom II Advanced 945.  The 955 and 965 are black editions, so you'd pay more $$ for an unlocked multiplier, and then you have the 1035, 1055, and 1090, which are all hex-cores.

That being said, I highly doubt you'd be disappointed with the i5-760, as I tend to agree with people that they seem to be more... resilient?

That being said, it's much more important to have a sweet graphics card than a sweet CPU when talking about gaming.

[Kratos]

I am running a Athlon X4 AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Quad Core. Its ok, but i want a i5.

[Rodney 1.666]

Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz
Graphics: Asus NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT
Asus NVIDIA GeForce 460 Top
700 MHz, "Overclocked", 768 MB GDDR5, DirectX 11 support, NVIDIA SLI

I'm safe in the GFX department.
Alright, well I'll see what my running total is and decide on the CPU then.

[Kratos]

I'm safe in the GFX department.
Alright, well I'll see what my running total is and decide on the CPU then.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215

its only $200     lol

can easily overclock it to a i7

[CCsaint10]

Gfx is important in many exceptions aside from source. From what I have been told and researched, it is much better performance to have a monster CPU and a medium Gfx than a medium CPU and monster Gfx. Bashe and Macc can tell you that from experience with their own rigs. Heck, even km says source is very processor intensive and only so much graphics intensive. Get a great CPU Macc as it will pay off in the long run as the system ages, but don't go to extreme since price obviously gets super crazy near the top with little to no performance gain good luck

[jjmusicnotes]

Gfx is important in many exceptions aside from source. From what I have been told and researched, it is much better performance to have a monster CPU and a medium Gfx than a medium CPU and monster Gfx. Bashe and Macc can tell you that from experience with their own rigs. Heck, even km says source is very processor intensive and only so much graphics intensive. Get a great CPU Macc as it will pay off in the long run as the system ages, but don't go to extreme since price obviously gets super crazy near the top with little to no performance gain good luck

That's a little weird  could it just be a source-specific thing?  I can definitely see loading levels and stuff, and maybe in an RTS style game when you have hundreds of little units flying everywhere, but GFX seem to do most of the heavy lifting.  Programs like Tmonitor are great for showing you exactly how your CPU is being used.

[CCsaint10]

I agree with you man, except for the fact that macc and I pretty much had the same performance. He has a 2.2 quad core, and I have a 2.0 core 2 duo and we were getting the same frames since the clock speeds were almost similar. AND, he had his gtx 460 or whatever running on the same res and me (1280x800) and we were getting the same frame rates...and my computer has a Radeon hd 3650 256mb card (not that great). If it was GFX highly dependent, I would think you could see a substantial increase with his card. Especially since he reformatted and everything was fresh with the latest drivers and such. He said he also received much better performance in games other than source, which kind of goes to show that source is a processor hog on clock speeds. It must just be source specific.

[jjmusicnotes]

No kidding, huh, well I guess you learn something new every day!

[Rodney 1.666]

BONUS ROUND

While I'm browsing/procrastinating, I'd really like to quickly switch gears temporarily to another issue.

I de-virus'd my friend's laptop via format and upgrade from Vista to Win7. All went off without a hitch (the second time; can't format from the CD in Windows, derp), but now there's a problem with the sound.
All sound in general, be it Windows or MP3s or games, what-have-you, occasionally cracks. That is, there's a quick staticy noise every random-or-so (usually seconds). This only occurs when there's actually sound to be heard; it doesn't happen when the comp is just sitting there.

Saint and I went to town on this and just could not find a solution. We found the only audio driver on the Google that matches the laptop and that just made the sound even worse. (Has since been rolled back.)
I was thinking that Windows updated something without us knowing but even a complete system restore didn't help.

It of course should be noted that the laptop was not doing this before the upgrade.

I don't want to just abandon this problem (obviously) so any advice is still appreciated. (And not just by me. )

~I'll include the model of the laptop when I can get it. (today)

The laptop in question.

[killermonkey]

I would imagine this to be a hardware error (burnt capacitor or something like that). Although coincidently right when you upgrade to Win 7? Try listening on headphones to see if it's an interface problem. There is no difference between Win 7 and Vista in terms of the Audio driver support. They both use the new abstract implementation method.

Try going into the speaker properties (Control Panel -> Sound -> Properties) then the Advanced tab, and make sure the default format is not 192000 Hz, I know that causes static sometimes on speakers.

[Kratos]

I would imagine this to be a hardware error (burnt capacitor or something like that). Although coincidently right when you upgrade to Win 7? Try listening on headphones to see if it's an interface problem. There is no difference between Win 7 and Vista in terms of the Audio driver support. They both use the new abstract implementation method.

Try going into the speaker properties (Control Panel -> Sound -> Properties) then the Advanced tab, and make sure the default format is not 192000 Hz, I know that causes static sometimes on speakers.

If the above resolutions doesnt work for you... I recommend shooting the speakers with a Glock!

[Rodney 1.666]

Try listening on headphones to see if it's an interface problem.

On the first install of Win7 (when the drives weren't formatted properly and I used 32-bit...*), when headphones were plugged in the sound would play out of both the speakers and the headphones. (wtf, mang)
This time around, sound just continues to go through the speakers and nothing goes through the headphones.

*Must have been sleep-deprived or something 'cause I wasn't sure if the 2.4 GHz CPU could handle 64-bit, and also because the laptop was originally fitted with 32-bit Vista. *shakes head*

Try going into the speaker properties (Control Panel -> Sound -> Properties) then the Advanced tab, and make sure the default format is not 192000 Hz, I know that causes static sometimes on speakers.

Next on the to-do list. Thanks.
~2nd edit: Negative, it's at 16-bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality).

~Edit: Updated previous post with the lap's model #.

[killermonkey]

Interesting: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7hardware/thread/95611990-c2bf-4040-ba41-c29ab1e18457

Suggest these drivers: http://www.realtek.com/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

[major]

"cause I wasn't sure if the 2.9 GHz CPU could handle 64-bit"

I lol'd.

[Rodney 1.666]

[/memory fail]

2.4. 2.4!