I am in the process of building a budget system and wondered what the cheapest CPU processor I could buy that would run playable PCSX2 games (2d and 3d) at full speed? I know you can pick up the core 2 duo processors cheaply these days but is there anything cheaper with similar performance?

Thanks Dave

Core 2 Duo E8200 seems to be the cheapest, I've got it and I can just BARELY run games at full FPS ( except Rumble Roses which constantly is around 40-80% ).
Your GPU can ofc. help out a bit too, but really anything above the 8800GT won't improve performance a lot I think, since a m8 of mine has GTX260 and a little weaker CPU and performs worse than mine due to the CPU.

you cant go below core2duo for that ... maybe some pentium dual cores but they will mostly require overclocking. E7500 would be quite reasonable budget choice

You can find an i5-750 for around $150 these days. Pair that with a cheap $80-$90 board and thats a cheap system that will run almost all games at full speed even on stock settings. If you are absolutely on a budget, you can try the AMD dual core setups, but they will require OC and an aftermarket cooler with artic silver 5 paste. I have never been happier with my rig and the core components were not that expensive. I can probably push my i5-750 to 4Ghz on air if I tried. That's pretty awesome for a $150 Intel Quad core CPU.

(11-19-2009 10:25 PM)marada2 Wrote:  I am in the process of building a budget system and wondered what the cheapest CPU processor I could buy that would run playable PCSX2 games (2d and 3d) at full speed? I know you can pick up the core 2 duo processors cheaply these days but is there anything cheaper with similar performance?

Thanks Dave

Perhaps you should state your budget because our definition of cheap may not be the same as yours.

(11-20-2009 12:25 AM)decode1984 Wrote:  You can find an i5-750 for around $150 these days. Pair that with a cheap $80-$90 board and thats a cheap system that will run almost all games at full speed even on stock settings. If you are absolutely on a budget, you can try the AMD dual core setups, but they will require OC and an aftermarket cooler with artic silver 5 paste. I have never been happier with my rig and the core components were not that expensive. I can probably push my i5-750 to 4Ghz on air if I tried. That's pretty awesome for a $150 Intel Quad core CPU.

I would go for i5 already i think if it cost so low .. in my country it cost like 250$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealD...mbo.293363

$178 dollars buys you a processor and mobo. The processor is an easy overclocker and the board supports all you need to get it to 3.4ghz on stock cooling and fan. Drop in a nicer fan (for $20-30 more) and you should be able to get it to 3.7-4ghz. Even at 3.4ghz you'll be hard pressed to find a PS2 game that's CPU limited (depending on the video card, some games like MGS3 may have slowdowns, but it won't be CPU related).

On the bonus side, besides being a really good overclocker, there is a good chance that you can unlock the 4th core and have a quad processor really cheap. Even if you can't, you won't find any game (PC or emulated) that'll need more than a tri-core.

I can run my games full speed but on native xDD (That's because of my video card) so for me my procesor is good enough. Just get a E4XXX and overclocked at 3ghz and done, full speed (A good video card for better resolutions would be fine too )

My games :

Xenosaga III (yes, 60fps all the time but on native )
Final Fantasy XII (some times fps drops until 45 but most of the time 60 fps using 1024*700 )
FFX / FFX-International (full speed always at 1024*700)
Resident Evil 4 (Full speed all the time at 1024*700)
Obscure II The aftermatch (Was compatible with some revision on playground but now doesn't work, always crash )
Dragon Warrior VIII (40-60 fps using Native)
I almost forgot : Fatal Frame 1 (solid 60fps using a nice resolution 1024*700 )
and many more xD

Why go cheapest when it is better to go for quality, I would get a quad core Phenom of course because you can have it for awhile and it would still be a great processor. Getting a dual core would be a waste of money since phenoms are going for 200$ on average! Why I don't recommend Pentium processors, because I'm a hater like that and any real gamer knows AMD is better for gaming! ;P

Well the funny thing paradox....the phenom quad core as you say is $200~, while the Core i5 is $150 and trumps all phenoms clock for clock. On my i5, I can run almost any PCSX2 game with no slowdowns. AMD is slowly losing their price:performance ratio. I used to be an AMD fanboy, owning several Athlon CPU's. I decided to go with Intel this time because of it's cheap Core i5-750, and I am not regretting it one bit.