AMD Phenom x6?

[Danny93]

I've just been looking at some reviews of the AMD Phenom x6.
3.2ghz with 6 cores and it scores 5128 in passmark, so it seems rather good for they money payed.
8MB cache I think.

I'm considering getting one because my current mobo will run it fine but I'm just wondering what kind of gaming performance I'd get with it.

It mentions it actives turbo core and when you're using game it will use less cores at a higher speed... Games do this automatically on multi core processors right? Use however many cores is best?

 

[Indigo]

AMD's research indicated that games that don't use all the cores in a multicore processor will still benefit from having 3 cores active. They then overclock those 3 cores to a predetermined clock speed, usually within the specified thermal envelope for that processor (the TDP) to achieve a performance improvement.

Depending on what you have now, and the games you play, the 6 core Phenom II is either a great idea, or a waste of cash. Unless you play multithreaded games all the time, it's better to stick with a really fast dual or even a quad core.

I play a lot of games - WoW, Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, L4D, L4D2, Eve Online, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 4, etc and I have yet to make my Phenom II 940 (a quad core) beg for mercy. I even do heavy video work with Adobe Premiere. You'll get more performance in games with a good solid processor, enough RAM and a high end video card. If you do a comparison between the Intel CPUs, even the might 980x, you'll find that with the same video card, at the higher resolutions, the performance is identical to some of the slower Intel and AMD CPUs (depending on game tech of course) but for the most part, that's how to value your system upgrade goals.

 

[Danny93]

Yeah, they're the kind of games I play. I was thinking a 3.2ghz dual core or something maybe. I think the Phenom II's have a 8MB cache which should be good I imagine.
I do a fair bit of video editing and some rendering, so that's the part where I may benefit from the 6 cores. Maybe I'll upgrade my current Phenom quad to a Phenom II quad. It's only a 9150e @ 1.80ghz and it's not Phenom II either.