Budget Gaming Build

[Sorreah]

Hey guys,

I'm building a new rig but I'm on an extremely tight budget. I'm already set on getting a 6950 2GB and 4GB of RAM but I'm currently debating between a couple of CPUs.

i3 540

Phenom x4 955

They're about on par price-wise with the motherboards I'm looking at, and the i3 will be easier to overclock with the stock cooler (I'm hitting 3.8 with the stock cooler and voltage on my brothers i3 530). However, seeing how I'm mainly getting this rig for BF3, I think the extra cores would be better.

What would you go for?

[_dangtx_]

welcome dude. the 540 is nice, odd multi=better oc sometimes. if youre only running one card, then you can get a cheap but oc'able board for it, around 70 bucks you should find something decent.
one pci-e slot though.
4 real cores are better,if the game can and will use properly all the cores. i3 all the way. better power consumption, better thermals, thus gives you more headroom for the psu unless you go higher :)

[YukonTrooper]

Well, the majority of games still play better on higher-clocked cores opposed to more cores, so the i3 would definitely be the better buy, especially if you plan on sticking with stock cooling. Having said that, whether or not BC2's quad-core performance will translate to BF3 scaling well with quad-cores as well has yet to be seen.

[Stock]

Can you shell out another $50 for an i5? If not, I vote for i3 as well.