Fastest Processor

[caboose]

H, everyone.

After looking online for a while, I have decided to build my own PC, and I want all the best parts I can. But I cannot seem to decide what CPU to use. Can someone make some recomendations.

Intel's i7 Look's like a good choice, but so do AMD's Phenom ll.

I have not decided on a motherboard yet. I want the motherboard that will take the best CPU.

Thanks

[oz]

If I were looking to buy a new processor right now, my personal choice would be the Intel Core i7-930:

Intel® Core? i7-930 Processor (8M Cache, 2.80 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI) with SPEC Code(s) SLBKP

[meton_magis]

I know Intel is supposed to be releasing their first 6 core processor sometime soon. It was pegged for a Q1 release. you MAY want to wait for it, since it's so close, and it includes instruction extensions that makes some things more optomized. However, expect to pay for it if you do.

Honestly, CPU is VERY rarely the bottleneck of a system. My current rig is a core2 quad 9300 (2.5ghz, 45 nm, 1333 fsb.) with 4 gigs of DDR3 ram. The ONLY time I've ever seen it hit 100% was when I do mass compiling for Gentoo, and even then, it was only spiking 100% for a brief time. The GPU for gaming and graphic stuff, and the hard drive speed are far more often the things that will slow down your system (ram could be, but you should not have that problem with today's sizes.)

To anyone who is not doing highly intensive work, I'd recommend buying a good system around a core 2 processor, duo or quad, depending on what applications you use (quad if you use a lot of multithreaded apps, duo if you mostly play games on windows that are over 2 years old.) You will save a LOT of money, and can still use the best GPU available with a CPU and ram that old.

If money is no consideration, than go wild, ever geek has at one point built the best computer available just so they can say that they did, even me (at the time, my system was top of the line without selling your soul.) But you will very rarely get any appreciable difference from having spent a premium on the better system.

[oz]

True... it's definitely fun to build a powerhouse of a system at least once in your lifetime, even if you don't really need it. Then of course, that system too will soon be outdated in the world of modern electronics.

[Rubberman]

These days, the CPU isn't the bottleneck. It's the I/O, which the new Intel Nehalem architecture has done a lot to address. I put together a system a couple of years ago before the i7 (Nehalem) era that is my current workstation. I got an Intel dual processor workstation motherboard (S5000XVN) with dual E5450 Xeon Penryn 3GHz processors (they had just come out and were the fastest chips available from Intel at that time), 8GB RAM (motherboard can handle at least 32GB), and tonnes of Sata drives, nVidia 8800GT video, etc. Even after 2 years, you have to work at getting something better/faster. I run CentOS 5 on the system, and haven't had a minute downtime except to replace one of my external eSata drives that started to fail. It runs 24x7 and usually has 1 or 2 VirtualBox virtual machines running, XP and/or Solaris x86.

Today? I'd get another Intel mobo in a heartbeat, but with dual i7 Nehalem processors (I'd wait awhile for the new 6-8 core units) and 16GB RAM. Thruput would go waaaay up I think.