Best value CPU per dollar

[MountainKing]

Hi guys. Still debating about the need to upgrade my rig. I don't find the current offerings too compelling with Intel having a firm foothold in the high end PC segment.
What I am looking into is the best value CPU that will do the following:

Encoding (x264, blurays etc), competent multi tasker (surfing, encoding, video editing etc). I don't need the most expensive thing going as we all know in 6 months time, your investment in paying a price premium is going down the drain.

What I need is the best value oriented multi core CPU (4 cores or more) that will perform adequately compared to high end CPUs without breaking the bank. The least I can get away with the better.

 

[Denithor]

x5650 on eBay for $65.

 

[MountainKing]

x5650 on eBay for $65.

Fast reply ;-) Hah price is great What about the 1366 mobo? Any other socket it uses?

 

[DominionSeraph]

A P3 picked up off the side of the road.

 

[ElFenix]

Fast reply ;-) Hah price is great What about the 1366 mobo? Any other socket it uses?

and therein lies the rub. if you can find a decent board for under $150 then have at it, otherwise a run of the mill haswell i5 will start to be price competitive after combos/specials and come with an up to date platform. there isn't enough frequency variation between the desktop i5s to really make a difference so long as you don't get S and T parts. if you get a K part you can overclock it for more performance if you also get an overclocking board (Z series boards).

 

[Lepton87]

x5650 on eBay for $65.

totally agree, I don't remember any old used CPU that would offer a better value compared to other CPUs of the time. It just shows how lackluster CPU improvements have been. A graphics cards from that time is now basically junk. After OC it holds its own against 4770-4790 which cost upwards of 300$, new of course, I don't know used prices and they differ by region.

 

[sm625]

There's also a LOT of X5670 and X5690 out there. I saw a supermicro board for sale for under $300, it came with TWO 6 core 12 thread cpus! Can you imagine, 24 threads of nehalem for under $300? lol. Lots of companies dumping this old hardware because... well.. that's what they do every few years almost without thinking.

 

[Burpo]

24 workers @ $17.71 ea.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precis...787469?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item51c44dda4d

 

[janeuner]

Going back to this...

Encoding (x264, blurays etc), competent multi tasker (surfing, encoding, video editing etc).

...and considering the motherboard cost, a FX-8310 solution compares pretty well to a used x5650 solution, plus the mobo/chip will have a manufacturer warranty.

 

[Lepton87]

There's also a LOT of X5670 and X5690 out there. I saw a supermicro board for sale for under $300, it came with TWO 6 core 12 thread cpus! Can you imagine, 24 threads of nehalem for under $300? lol. Lots of companies dumping this old hardware because... well.. that's what they do every few years almost without thinking.

That's a lot of MT performance, the only downside is that you can't OC on a dual CPU board, can you? But that Xeonn 5690 has a very high base clock speed and I think its ST performance is quite good, enough for games and for really parraliazable programs two such CPUs easily beat even an OCed i7 X5960. If only something like that was availabe in my area for a comparable price(400$ that's base price plus tax) I would have chosen it over what I have. Almost. I forgot that SLI wouldn't work when I wrote the above.

UPDATE: Xeon 5960 was a 1600$ CPU!!! Selling it for 100$ is like giving it away and here I thought my Titan lost a lot of value. That's nothing compared to this.
Maybe in 5 years we will have 18 cores for 100 $ if it follows a similar trend. What's not to like? Given the fact that software is getting more MT and those 18 cores Xeons E5 turbo very well and don't loose out much to a frequency optimised 8 Cores Xeons in ST I would gladly take two of those with an MB for 400$ in 5 years.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you are buying new, it's hard to disagree with the FX-8310 + Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P. Some would argue against this and recommend the FX-8320E, but really you should be okay either way.

Buying used, there are some crazy server hardware deals out there. There was a 4P Magny-Cours (48 cores!) in FS/FT for $900 not too long ago, with a bunch of RAM and overclocking options. But yeah, some of those Westmere deals are interesting.

The real question to the OP is: how many threads do you really plan to handle on a regular basis? Do you need 12C/24T or 48C/48T power? That's a lot of thread handling capability that will be lost on everyday users. The most heavily-parallelized task you mentioned is video encoding, and most encoding tasks end-users would seriously consider would be handled very quickly by a 12C Westmere system. Or a video card, depending on your choice of software.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Problem with FX is you need to add a gpu, unless you use the gpu itself for encoding, in which case pretty much any cpu will do.

Really though, I disagree that the value of the cpu is going down the drain in 6 months. I would view the cpu as a long-term purchase, since cpu progress is painfully slow these days. So in that case, any FX 6300 or 83xx or a locked i5 are all well suited to the purpose. Even an i3 would probably be sufficient, although probably not the best value for encoding.

Or you could even consider an i5 and use quick sync. Not that familiar with it, but supposedly is very fast at the expense of some quality.

 

[Yuriman]

Or you could even consider an i5 and use quick sync. Not that familiar with it, but supposedly is very fast at the expense of some quality.

The new Atoms have quicksync too, and will probably outpace AMD or Intel's best single chips in CPU-only encoding.

 

[VirtualLarry]

According to CPUbenchmark.net, the FX-6300 is tops for performance per value, last time I checked.

 

[MountainKing]

Problem with FX is you need to add a gpu, unless you use the gpu itself for encoding, in which case pretty much any cpu will do.

I already have parts from my current PC build. My GPU is a Radeon HD6850.

Really though, I disagree that the value of the cpu is going down the drain in 6 months. I would view the cpu as a long-term purchase, since cpu progress is painfully slow these days.

What I meant is that they lose dollar value real quickly as you go up the CPU hierarchy. That is what I want to limit

So in that case, any FX 6300 or 83xx or a locked i5 are all well suited to the purpose.

I thought about this and was wondering if the 8 cores AMD is a match for the i5. Dollar wise, they are the same?

UPDATE: Xeon 5960 was a 1600$ CPU!!! Selling it for 100$ is like giving it away and here I thought my Titan lost a lot of value. That's nothing compared to this.

The x5960 is still very expensive on ebay.

The new Atoms have quicksync too, and will probably outpace AMD or Intel's best single chips in CPU-only encoding.

Quicksync should not be a deciding factor for me. It's nice to have a fast encode for the quick and dirty jobs but its not a decisive factor.

 

[eton975]

I already have parts from my current PC build. My GPU is a Radeon HD6850.


What I meant is that they lose dollar value real quickly as you go up the CPU hierarchy. That is what I want to limit



I thought about this and was wondering if the 8 cores AMD is a match for the i5. Dollar wise, they are the same?



The x5960 is still very expensive on ebay.



Quicksync should not be a deciding factor for me. It's nice to have a fast encode for the quick and dirty jobs but its not a decisive factor.

If I'm correct, the i5 will absolutely bulldoze (no pun intended) the FX in any single or few-threaded applications, but the FX can have a 30-40% advantage in pure integer multithreaded stuff, and you're not worried about the power consumption.

 

[Yuriman]

To be honest, returns are pretty linear all the way up Intel's lineup right now. The 4790K is actually a pretty decent chip for what you pay. It's ~45-50% more expensive than a 4670K, but is clocked 13% higher and gets 0-50% more from hyperthreading (30% average), which works out to 48% more expensive for 47% more performance.

EDIT: An i5 is about 50% more expensive than an i3, and delivers about 50% more performance. An i3 is around 75% more expensive than a Pentium, and offers ~55% more performance, if you don't take into account AVX instructions, so it looks like a Pentium *might* be the value king if you're not running AVX code, and if you take the cost of the rest of the platform out of the equation. With the total PC cost considered, an i7 is easily the best value.

 

[MountainKing]

Really thinking about it...if I can get a 2nd hand motherboard (LGA1366) how would the x 5650 perform vs an i5 (say 4460) in multi threaded workloads?

 

[Brekyrself]

Really thinking about it...if I can get a 2nd hand motherboard (LGA1366) how would the x 5650 perform vs an i5 (say 4460) in multi threaded workloads?

Here is a comparison of the 990x (1366 @ 3.46ghz) vs 4770k (3.5ghz). Imagine the 990x with another ~600+ mhz which you will get out of the x5650.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/444?vs=836

 

[MountainKing]

Problem with FX is you need to add a gpu, unless you use the gpu itself for encoding, in which case pretty much any cpu will do.

Really though, I disagree that the value of the cpu is going down the drain in 6 months. I would view the cpu as a long-term purchase, since cpu progress is painfully slow these days. So in that case, any FX 6300 or 83xx or a locked i5 are all well suited to the purpose. Even an i3 would probably be sufficient, although probably not the best value for encoding.

Or you could even consider an i5 and use quick sync. Not that familiar with it, but supposedly is very fast at the expense of some quality.

Here is a comparison of the 990x (1366 @ 3.46ghz) vs 4770k (3.5ghz). Imagine the 990x with another ~600+ mhz which you will get out of the x5650.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/444?vs=836

Wow. That looks like a real winner. I really need to get a board and nobody has it where I'm phoning at the moment unless I buy 2nd hand from ebay and then I could slap in 2 of those beauties

 

[MountainKing]

Core i7 4790: $415
Core i7 4790 + mobo: $540

x5650 + Mobo (ebay): $~300-325

mobo choices from ebay: NONE available locally....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-P6T-SE...453061084?pt=Motherboards&hash=item1c472aa3dc
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Intel-D...145882028?pt=Motherboards&hash=item51c1ecf1ac
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-P6T-So...453060057?pt=Motherboards&hash=item1c472a9fd9
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-RAMPAG...470243801?pt=Motherboards&hash=item1c4830d3d9

 

[Magic Carpet]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-RAMPAG...470243801?pt=Motherboards&hash=item1c4830d3d9

I would get this one. Price seems to be right as well.

 

[Burpo]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUSTeK-COM...519024435?pt=Motherboards&hash=item27ef549d33

Hmmm, not really a SaberTooth tho :/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-X58A-GD...207182693?pt=Motherboards&hash=item51c5945165

 

[MountainKing]

@Burpo: Nice one but need to contact seller for shipping fees to Mauritius Could be worth a shot though.
The x5650+mobo combo seems a price worthy upgrade at the moment without breaking the bank.

 

[Burpo]

It really is (for what you're doing).. If nothing else, grab the Intel board. Can be overclocked via their Extreme utility program
For the money that MSI board is nice tho (USB 3.0 & Sata III)