Thread: Budget gaming CPU - X2 550 be vs. X4 620

I’m making a low finances gaming pc for my brother,. All has really going to be doing is training (word documents), web surfing, said he has to play Oblivion, Diablo III and Star craft II when they appear. I was setting up on getting him a 550be, but then I saw the AII X4 620 and I'm thinking I might go with that. I read on and they got theirs up to 3.25 GHz on stock cooling and I would consider I could possibly get something alike. So what do you guys think I should get a higher clocked dual core with more hoard, or a lower clocked quad with less cache?

The 620 is a beautiful chip, I’m waiting for it to be launched actually, i wouldn’t expect it at though, memorize the 4770.

After looking at some benches it’s really a tossup for me. I'm not sure if he'll ever use the other two cores, he doesn’t do any video encoding or photoshop or anything like that, just pretty basic stuff. What I’m really looking for is gaming performance; it’s regularly around a 10-20 fps difference between the two. You suppose it would close the gap if I clocked that 620 up to around 3-3.2GHz?

If he’s not a hardcore consumer get an Athlon ii x2 240 it’s a really good quality chip.

The 620 is a much gimped quad core. The 550 will out execute it in most things, particularly over clocked and if you get lucky you might be able to unlock the other two cores with the right MB.

I recognize it’s gimped but the similarity in gaming is not too severe 10-20fps in most games and I attributed that to the clock difference. I'm thinking if I get the 620 up to 3.2 it will perform similar to the 550 in gaming, and it will have two more cores for future quad threaded games.

It will not at all have l3 store, so will forever limited. You are also forgetting the 550BE can be over clocked much higher, so what little gains the two gimped cores give you will be counteract by the higher clock rate on the 550...and if you get fortunate on the 550 you will have a full phenom II quad. I love quad cores, but to me the 620 is just a advertising ploy and will underperformed in the lengthy run compared to similarly priced dual cores from both AMD and Intel.

They both overclock equally since they are attractive much the same accurate cores with a different amount of cache. I think I've determined that I’m going to go with the 620 and overclock it up to at least 3.0. I recognize I could get auspicious with the 550 and get a full blown phenom II but it’s not certain. It performs about the similar as a Q8200 is cheaper.

I would say that it's a stiff call between those options. However look intimately at the combo deals at newegg when the Athlon II X4's is obtainable because you will most likely be able to pick up that CPU with a main board for a few currencies off of the price.
Another thing hold off on getting any Radeon 4XXX cards as the Radeon 5800 series will get there pretty soon and they will kick hit and greatly do better than the Radeon 4XXX cards giving about twice the presentation. You might want to catch a Radeon 5850 for that budget system.