How to Select a Gaming Processor for your game computer system!

Central Processing Unit, Processor, CPU – no matter what you call it, it’s the single most important component of your gaming system. Sure, graphics are important, but if you don’t have a decent processor you’ll never be able to play modern games.

As games grow increasingly complex, processors must scale in complexity to meet that demand. Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to buy the most expensive processor on the market! Instead, you’ll need to select a processor that meets two requirements: minimum performance and priced within your budget.

Finding a processor priced within your budget is fairly simple (look at your budget, look at the price of the processor), so let’s discuss the minimum performance you’ll want to get out of your processor.

Minimum Performance
When selecting a processor, the first thing you’ll want to consider is minimum performance. That is: how well does this process perform against the minimum requirements for the software you’re going to run on it? Most processors sold at retail are going to meet the minimum requirements to use your operating system and some desktop applications, but some of the low-end processors may not be able to play your high-end games.

You’ll need to ask yourself two questions: “can I play my current games on this processor,” and “will I be able to play next year’s games on this processor?”

Answering the first question is a pretty simple yes/no answer; however, the second question takes some thought. If the processor only meets the bare minimum requirements, chances are it’s not going to play future games, but if it surpasses the minimum recommended specifications, you’ll be able to use that processor for a longer period.

Price per Performance

Its worth to note that a lot of experts urge you to buy a processor that’s the best “price per performance” – which is a good idea, in theory. In practice, though, figuring out the price per performance is pretty difficult. Heck, entire websites are dedicated to showing you the raw processing numbers versus the cost of the processor.

Don’t waste your time trying to comb through the endless charts, graphs, and articles. Instead, while looking at the processors you’re thinking of buying (which meets your minimum performance criteria), consider these rules of thumb:

Motherboard

With a processor picked out, now is the time to start considering what motherboard you’ll want to get. You’ll need to know three things about your processor in order to select the correct motherboard: Interface (also called Socket Type), Bus Speed, and Clock Speed.

The interface (socket type) is pretty important to know, since you can’t fit a Socket 775 processor into a Socket 939 motherboard. You’ll also want to keep an eye on the bus speed and clock speed, because not all motherboards support the high-end bus and clock speeds that some processors require.

Recommended Processors

Tight Budget

Intel Pentium D 925 – $79.99 – At under $100 she’s not going to win any awards for being the fastest processor, but the Intel Pentium D 925 can take the brunt of the load. While lacking a large cache like its Core 2 cousins, the 925 makes up for it with a faster clock speed of 3.0GHz. Plus, it’ll play most of today’s games.

Average Budget

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 – $179.99 – Coming in at just under $200, the E6550 packs a price-per-performance punch that’s hard to beat. While it only packs on 4MB on on-chip cache, the two cores and faster bus speed gives the Core 2 Duo a significant performance edge.

Big Budget

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 – $1079.99 – At over one thousand dollars (yikes!) the Core 2 Extreme QX6850 packs a punch that can’t be matched by other processors. With four processing cores clocked at 3.0GHz, 8MB of cache, and a 1033Mhz bus speed, the QX6850 is “future-proof” for at least the next few years.