BleepingComputer.com: PC for Skyrim

AMD CPU's are typically more cost effective, costing less than similarly performing Intel CPU's, which makes them great for PC's on a budget, like this. Intel CPU's will typically win at raw performance, but will cost more and the performance increase generally isn't a night and day difference.

That said, here are some things to ponder.

AMD's Bulldozer CPU's - The desktop version uses their Zambezi core and are branded FX. These are essentially server CPU's toned down for the consumer market and will be replacing Phenom II. These are newer CPU's with a very different architecture from previous models. A Bulldozer CPU has "Bulldozer modules" these are two CPU cores that share resources, unlike older designs that have two, four, or six completely independent cores. In practice, this is similar to Intel's proprietary HyperThreading, however, on Intel CPU's the threads must compete with one another on Bulldozer, scheduler and integer units are split between the two cores within each module. This design is great for highly threaded and highly parallel programs. These CPU's are also unlocked allowing for easy overclocking, they also have an automatic "Turbo Core" unlock function that does it automatically if power and thermal limits allow. Now for the con's, few programs in the current desktop market can use Bulldozer's functionality, they simply aren't coded for eight cores, with many, especially games, not coded to take advantage of more than two. Windows 7 also has an issue scheduling threads. Instead of one per module, it assigns one per core, if it can, this leads to a performance penalty of anywhere from 1% to 10% depending on the program. Windows 8 will solve this issue and will be aware of how Bulldozer is designed. As it stands now, if you aren't running highly threaded programs, a Bulldozer CPU will roughly equal a Phenom II X6 in its performance under Windows 7. AMD says this Bulldozer architecture will be how they will be doing x86 processing from here on out, so get used to it. AMD also likes to keep CPU sockets around for a while, so upcoming CPU's will still work on it.

AMD's Phenom II - This is the classic K10h architecture, which is mostly an evolution over their K10 (Original Phenom) models. These CPU's have been AMD's main CPU part for many years undergoing clock speed increases and architecture tweaks. The Phenom II line has been around for several years, but couldn't quite catch up to Intel's Nehalem architecture, therefore, AMD competed on price, after all, a normal PC user doesn't need all the power the i7's needed, nor would the average person spend hundreds for a slight speed increase. The highlight of this architecture was it's final flagship, the Phenom II X6 using the Thuban architecture, the first consumer-level six core CPU. This was not only a technical achievement, but also somewhat put Phenom II on par with the i7's. The Phenom II's came in various core amounts, from two to six with varying core designs based on the same K10h.

AMD's A-series APU's - These are a bit of a footnote. The A-series APU blends a Phenom II core with a Radeon 6000 graphics core. For a low-end gaming machine or a simple PC needing only so much power, this has major advantages in needed power and thermal levels. AMD has stated that their "Fusion" line will continue in 2012 with the release of their "Trinity" products, which uses a Bulldozer core along with the Radeon 7000 (Southern Islands) graphics core. Sadly, the socket these APU's use are not compatible with AM3+ and are going to be retired when the Trinity APU's come out. Intel's recent Sandy Bridge CPU's do have integrated graphics too, but these APU's from AMD harness the power of their acquisition of graphics card maker ATI, thus, AMD has the faster GPU-on-the-CPU design.

Core i7/i5/i3 - A long time ago, back in 2005, Intel was the underdog in performance. AMD's Athlon 64 rivaled it there, plus AMD's take on 64-bit computing, AMD64, was gaining popularity over Intel's Itanium. This was mostly due to their approaches on x64, AMD merely extended it, Intel radically redesigned their CPU's. In the end, AMD won and Intel licenses AMD64, just as AMD licenses portions of x86 from Intel. Intel regrouped, and Nehalem was born, it was more powerful than Phenom II and reintroduced, sort of, HyperThreading to their CPU's. This architecture is more efficient with single threaded performance, with higher instructions per cycle. Intel's initial i7's used the X58 platform which was, and still is, powerful. The X58 chipsets allow for triple channel memory, which most people don't need, and the ability to run either SLI or Crossfire, which gave gamers more flexability. This last feature was only recently introduced to AMD systems with their 900 series chipsets and even Intel is moving away from triple channel memory design for most consumer products given the cost and lack of benefit for most users. Sandy Bridge is more of an evolution to Nehalem, with some new features, like overclocking in the "K" series, and higher speeds. This is contrasted with AMD's Phenom II and Bulldozer, which is an entirely new design. Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer are competing, with Bulldozer, in some applications being as fast, but given its radical new design, programs and Windows don't really know what to do with it.

In gaming, especially with multiplatform games, the graphics card shares most of the burden in processing. Therefore, in many cases, a high-end CPU will still offer a performance advantage over mid-range CPU's, but it is more slight than say the difference between a GeForce 9800 GTX and a Radeon 6870. With gaming PC's, it is usually a better idea to focus most of your cash on the graphics card.

In response to the question:

If there's a financial difference, the new CPU is actually a detractor when it comes to gaming. It does not have the same performance as I've mentioned before, as mentioned by the reviews on Tom's.
If the main factor is long-term viability, the new AM3+ interface is the way to go but the new CPU may not be necessary - I'm not sure if the AM3+ will take AM3 CPUs or if it's just that AM3+ CPUs will run in AM3 sockets.

Regarding the x6 or x8 vs x4 question:
When it comes to gaming, games are still only scratching the surface of multi-core and multi-threading. A lot of them don't have the capability to utilize more than 2 mores, and the vast remainder only 3. I think there are one or two games, perhaps Skyrim, which could handle 4 cores. The problem is that the game designers can't make these games dynamically accepting of any number of cores simply because the complexity for the system to, at will, designate commands between cores based upon not knowing, at design time, how many cores will be in there, is overwhelming. In addition, a lot of the time, when you get the graphics and sound (both single-threaded separate functions which go to their own respective processors (GPU and sound card)) are out of the way, there's very little in games that can really be parallelized. Most of the time, the functions of the game have to follow a linear progression. Sure, with new AI routines there is some parallel computing, but in general most of the majority of it is waiting on the user to do something. Finally, when you increase the number of cores, even assuming that the program is smart enough to handle, let's say, as many as 16 (!) cores or threads, you hit the law of Diminishing Marginal Returns. Eventually, the gains from each core really are minimized out to not really improve the experience that much, as you eventually are spending just as much computational time figuring out what things can be run parallel, and you're eventually pushing out such small amounts of work to each, that the gains aren't really that significant. The difference between 1 core and 2? Probably huge. The difference between 4 and 5? Well, if overall you're only shaving a few fractions (1/32nd?) of a second off of the processing time for a particular set of instructions that would have taken that full second to run? You're getting so little out of it that the extra power and heat and cost of the bigger CPU? Not really returned to you.

Now, in big business apps or multithreaded stuff (video encoding or database, anyone?) the extra cores are like free candy. There's just no downside.

EDIT: Wow. I just read over DJB's post, and he said everything I did in different words. Great minds.

Seriously though, With the current system the Bulldozer does see a bit of a decrease in performance.

If you can wait till Windows 8, then get a lower-end phenom now that'll play your games okay, then blow a LOAD on a new architecture later... But that sucks.

So get the Bulldozer and reap the whirlwind when the time comes? Maybe. Keep in mind by the time "The time comes" your new bulldozer will be the back of the pack. So, does it really pay to get the highest of the high? Depends. Is it necessary to be best of the best right now? If not, go for one that's a decent value and good product, and when it comes time to upgrade, do the same thing. You'll keep seeing significant gains each time you upgrade, and your piggy bank? Won't be in pieces.

This post has been edited by Nicholas Basso: 31 October 2011 - 06:29 PM

Personally i don't like Windows 8 and i reckon it's not suitable for gaming. Since the performance of Bulldozer chip is roughly equal to a X6 and i prefer using Windows 7 for gaming, i wouldn't bother to upgrade yet.

If you look back at how Microsoft released Windows 7, all signs point to a mid to late 2012 launch for 8. That said, Bulldozer will undergo an architecture change in 2012 before the launch. It won't be a severe difference, but will probably be a die shrink or tweak to make it more powerful. Keep in mind that the developer preview for Windows 8 is not feature complete with Microsoft taking feedback from users. You can get a Bulldozer CPU now and hold off until the Windows 8 launch, or, get a Phenom II X6 now and have a more substantial upgrade after a Bulldozer revision.

I already have a X6 :D

Fine then, be that way. ;)