Wha do you think of this rig?

[Death Saved]

Well im planing to build a new rig for entertainment.

CPU: PII X4 955 BE (965 wasnt worth it)
GPU: HD 4890 or HD 5xxx
RAM: OCZ BE 4GB(2x2) DDR3
MOBO:Asus Crosshair Formula III
Sound: SupremeFX X-FI
Case:Antec 1200
Power: CP-850
OS:Windows 7 if it turns out good

PCSX2 games i like to play are mostly RPG's.
Well what do you guys think?

and yes i know PCSX2 only uses 2.

[nataq01]

if you are buying PC mainly for emulating PS2 then you are overpaying for your 4 core CPU since PCSX2 uses only 2 cores, for a price of 955 you can get much faster 2 core CPU that would emulate ps2 faster, you will be able to play most ps2 games with high requirements tho, but you will get slowdowns sometimes ( even if you overclock your CPU, phenoms go max up to 4ghz if you are lucky, usualy most people get stable 3.7ghz ). GPU and ram is more than enough.

i would suggest something like one of intels E8xxx, and i would overclock it to 4ghz ;p E8500 is closest to PII 955 price and in applications that use only 2 cores its much faster than 4 cores PII, also its easliy overclocked to minimum 3.8ghz, some people manage to get it as high as 4.5ghz with only air cooling. With this CPU you would be basicaly able to play any PS2 game that emulator can run.

[KrazyTrumpeter05]

False, more cores is the future. Newer PC games are starting to use more than 2 cores effectively. If you are really concerned about PS2 emulation, I would really consider an Intel chip. They are faster clock for clock, tend to overclock better, and the later generation quads will have the SSSE3 and SSE4.1 instruction sets which will help with speed.

Really, though, if you can afford it, go for an i7.

[nataq01]

in same price region:
more slower cores = future of PC games, its obvious that 4 cores are faster in PC game that uses 4 cores than fastes dual core CPU
fast dualcores = better PS2 emulation, its obvious that 2 faster cores are faster than 4 cores cpu with slower cores that cant use all his potential because application use only 2 cores.

Please consider at what price range OP is pointing, slowest i7 have two times bigger price than E8500 or PII 955 BE, and it wouldnt be even faster in emulation than E8500. Also if you want to buy i7 then you need to buy ***** mainboard in which you cant put any other CPU since its only compatibile with i7 socket ( so forget about expanding your PC capabilities in the future when it starts to get old, you will have to buy everything from the scratch. ). And this mainboard isint cheep too.

nothing false in my post.

[Zeydlitz]

Newer PC games are starting to use more than 2 cores effectively

Not really, it's only a superstition. Symmetric cores loading is not possible except some high mathematical tasks (video compression is the mainly used by end customers). And sometimes you could LOOSE speed with more cores. So two 3.5HHz cores with average load of 0.8 (normal for many games -- 100% and 60% distribution of load) would be same effective than 3 3HHz cores with load of 0.65 (wich is usually obtained by 100%, 60% and 40% distribution), if you task have a "main" thread, that load his core at 100%, than CPU speed would be main priority for you. Big computers enter milticores path a long ago, they programmers a lot qualified than games programmers, but low-end servers is still only 2-cores (or 2 processors for older ones). Right now (and a few years in future) the main gaming thread would be 2-cores and multithreading support.

[Fred Dee]

It's definiatly a nice rig. I am/was also thinking of getting this specs but I'm going to wait (2 days or so?) for the i5 and see how it performs and what the prices will be (euros).

[Death Saved]

@Nataq:Hell no im not upgrading for just PCSX2, i mean i can just by an adapter for my slim and id be set.
Also the hair on your avatar*Shudder* thats a face i dont want to wake up to XD!

@KrazyTrumpeter05:While the requirements for some games state Quad's in there recommended specs they still cant handle it efficiently.

@Zeydlitz:I agree with you on everything you said except for the last bit about how 2-cores will still be king in a few years.

@Fred Dee:Yeah same here but the price on the "Rampage Extreme II" MoBo is well extreme XD.

Also forgot to add that the OS and a couple of other software will be on a VelociRaptor, while most of my other stuff is gonna be on a 1TB Caviar Black HDD by WD.

Yes i know about SSD's but i think they still need 6-12 months before there good for me.

[nataq01]

if you want good 4 core phenom then get this one


, there are only 100 of them made, its Phenom II 42 TKWR BE "Not for Sale" but there is 1 auction going on and if you are wealthy enough then maybe you can win it

[Death Saved]

Wow your kidding, right?

I thought those were pre-production 965's

Also is that overclocked?

[Koji]

Yes, it's overclocked with a $3000 cooling system... kind of pointless.

There isn't going to be a single game that will REQUIRE more than a dual core for at least 3+ years. What quad cores are more useful is for multitasking and video editing... Adding more cores to a CPU doesn't necessarily make it faster as Zeydlitz has already explained.