Out of Pod Experience

All games give a damn about console performance because they release in the same market as the other PC games and can't be seen as having unrealistic requirements. Your own example of Arma 3's recommended (not required, recommended) is any i5, and the BEST i5 is a 2.6quad. My dual core 3.0 will easily run that game at full or damn close.



Nothing else you run on a PC comes close to a game unless it has bad memory leaks and you leave it running. If you want a machine to run a dedicated server for a cutting edge game that would be a whole different thread.



You don't have to update a processor, you only need to overclock it and a good CPU+Fan is still far less than an overpriced shiny new CPU, however your argument hasn't gone that far because my 3.0 dual is still not over clocked after four years.

I've been buying a sub $1,000 pc every four years actually and I consider myself to be over spending. The fact you think you need a new one constantly or you have to overspend is pretty sad. Processors are over rated. Period.

The only point for overspending on a CPU is multiple clients you insist on running at max, but I don't now of any upcoming games you'd actually want to dual box, that my 3.0 dual core couldn't. Usually that's an MMO move and the MMO's coming out are not going to need an i7 to run two of them. Even if you DID want to dual box a fictional game that actually needed close to an i7... no one dual boxes full rez full settings maxed. One account is always some kind of bot or support.



With consoles owning the market, you only need a cheap-o PC right now. When next gen comes out, wait for a next gen PC game you actually WANT to play, then go big and expensive for something that will last for years. Trying to do it now is pure gambling.

As stated by others, the i7's are not going to last. They are already talking about the ivy's. Then it will be 6 cores. Every few months something new comes out. By waiting, you can see what LASTS. I didn't pick my 3.0 dual arbitrarily by what was hot at the time. People wanted me to buy an early quad back then just like people are recommending i7's today, but I went with a newer improved model of an existing style. Cheaper, more reliable, no bugs/quirks to find out about.

To give a counterpoint to some of the sentiments expressed here: I use a 5.45Ghz 2600k with all the trimmings (tri-sli, etc.) and while it's fast, it's only just fast enough. I always want to play Eve in fleet battles with every setting maxed, have never turned brackets off in the time I've played, and want at least 30fps in thick combat to enable smooth refitting of modules, be able to watch drone/fighter swarms move, etc.

Although the frame-rate is often sky-high, Eve is a cpu-limited game in fleet combat, and I've often seen even this rig pushed down to 25-30fps in the heat of a good battle.

I've recently been planning an upgrade to 3960X on the socket 2011 platform, so in a sense I'm considering the same choice as the original poster is. So let's go through the options you have:

(£240) 2500k/2600k: Eve is a basically a single threaded app, so you don't really need cores. These chips clock sky high. They have 2mbx4=8mb l3 cache.

(£500) 3930 : The six cores won't help Eve, nor will quad channel ram. It also has 2mb per core = 12mb cache (6 cores). Clock for clock, it'll be almost the same as the 2600k in Eve.

(£800) 3960X: The 3960X has an important difference. It has 2.5mb per core, thus 2.5x6 = 15mb cache. This gives it extra punch per core over the 2600k, and an improvement that Eve can use.

So the question for you really is this: are you willing to push as much voltage through an expensive 3960X as you would a 2600K? I don't know yet but I'd guesstimate you need at least 4.8-4.9Ghz on 3960X to beat a 5.2-5.3Ghz 2600K. If the answer is yes, and you have the money, then go the whole hog and build a 3960X rig (or wait for the Xeon 8cores, out soon). If not, clock up a 2500K which is a lot cheaper and you'll have excellent performance with it in Eve.