Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Originally posted by: mrchan
there's an e2180 combo for $82?
if the 4200 is too slow, frys also has amd 5200 combo for $104. is that enough of a difference?
Oh my bad, I misread what you said. No the $82 is just the cpu itself which makes it more expensive than what I said. However, 4200+ is just not fast enough for 2008 since generally speaking E8400 is 90-100% faster today and that's not even top of the line. But if you are really on a tight budget, then I suppose it makes sense for you to keep the $70 for your next upgrade and grab the 5200+ like you said if you only intend to play these 2 games.
Starcraft 2 is for sure nothing to worry about since historically every single blizzard game tends to run extremely well on older hardware. I remember I played Warcraft 3 on a Radeon 8500 (a card from 2001!) and it ran the game with everything on high at 1600x1200. Also, blizzard will want to attract as many gamers as possible and will therefore develop an engine that is very flexible to target the largest possible user base.
Check out this
LINK. They mentioned units will be slightly more detailed than in Warcraft 3 with shadows similar to Age of Empires 3. You'll also be able to turn off dynamic shadows and lighting, which will give you a nice performance boost according to Blizzard. So you have nothing to worry about. => but there are currently no "official" system requirements yet.
What about Call of Duty 4?
1280x1024, Maximum Quality with 8800GT 512mb
C2D 2.93ghz = 77fps
C2D 2.4ghz = 77
C2D 1.86ghz = 54
A64 FX-60 dual core 2.6ghz = 60 <------- X2 5200+ is 2.6ghz
A64 FX 60 dual core 2.0ghz = 48 <------- X2 4200+ is 2.2ghz (but it'll still deliver under 60 frames)
Therefore, it can be deduced that X2 5200+ at 2.6ghz will be sufficient for COD4 but X2 4200+ will not be without overclocking.