Great advice all of it, thanks!
Quite needed too when you've been out of the CPU market for a while like I have. Got good service out of that Phenom. And it's still OK. After all, the "low" FPS of 25-30 is in Kiel harbor with all of the traffic, seagulls, buoys, weirdos on the quay flashing my crew etc.
. Once I'm away from all of those distractions, she runs quite fine.
But it's still obviously true that she's not living up to her full potential with that CPU, so I'll eventually have to upgrade.
As to AMD vs. Intel, my personal preference for AMD goes back to the day when Intel was pushing Pentiums that couldn't do math out to market. I know, they're not like that anymore, but that just generally pushed me in AMDs direction, and you tend to stick with what you know. Of course, that's not relevant today and hasn't been for a long time, so I'm not particularly "stuck" on one or the other. I just want the best performance.
The other thing, which
is relevant today as opposed to those ancient times, is that AMDs, as mentioned, tend to be quite a bit cheaper than Intel's offerings. On the other hand, Intel's chips run really, really cool from what I gather and I do know from personal experience that AMDs tend to get a bit hot under the collar, particularly if you don't install a good aftermarket cooler.
As to OC stability, I haven't had any trouble with the AMDs other than the temp issue which, as I said, is easy to correct with a good fan and heatsink. Except when I'm experimenting, of course, but the point there is to
see when it becomes unstable, so it's really not the CPUs fault. Once I found a good setting for this one, it appeared to be rock solid.
And I hear the same thing about the Intels, stability-wise and OC capacity. Lots of headroom above the "stock" frequency.
For now I'll just see how it goes. If I have to do a rebuild I will, but if I can hold it off for a bit (I do so loathe reinstalling everything
), it'll work.
Thanks again
