Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: July 2010

For those of you who don't have the time to research the benchmarks, THG has posted simple list of the best gaming CPUs offered for the money. Here's a taster:

Best Gaming CPU for ~$70:  The Athlon II X3 435 offers a trio of execution cores and a very respectable 2.9 GHz clock speed. As a bonus, that extra core will also make a notable difference in multi-tasking performance. This model has good overclocking headroom if you want to push it a little further, so you can take it beyond what that low $70 buy-in implies. The Athlon II X3 425's attractive price tag completely edges out the Athlon II dual-core models from our list of recommendations.

Best Gaming CPU for ~$85: The Athlon II X3 440 recently dropped in price to $75 in response to the Athlon II X3 445 model replacing it. While we like the lower price, we're going to lean toward the faster model this time around.

Best Gaming CPU for $115: At $115, the Core i3-530 deserves a solid recommendation as a gaming processor. It consistently beat the Athlon II X3 445, and came surprisingly close to challenging the Phenom II X4 940 on a number of occasions. The only downside is that this dual-core, Hyper-Threaded processor doesn't handle multitasking as well as a true quad- or even triple-core processor, like the Athlon II X3. Nevertheless, its basic gaming ability can not be refuted.

Best Gaming CPU for $140: The Phenom II X4 945 offers AMD's flagship CPU architecture combined with a high 3 GHz clock speed, all for the reasonable price of $140. There is no other CPU at this price point that performs as well when gaming or when multitasking.

Best Gaming CPU for $160: A former flagship of AMD's Phenom II family, the Phenom II X4 955 BE has been relegated to second-place status by the newer Phenom II X4 965 BE model. Now at $160, it offers a very compelling price/performance ratio for a true quad-core unlocked processor with gobs of cache.

Best Gaming CPU for $180: While the Phenom II X4 955 and 965 both share an unlocked multiplier, the new revision 965 model's C3 stepping has been shown to be quite overclock-friendly compared to previous models. If you're looking for an AMD processor with maximum overclocking headroom, just make sure you're buying the new 125 W C3 stepping of the processor, not the older 140 W version.

Best Gaming CPU for $200: The new Core i5 brings top-of-the-line Nehalem-class performance at a $200 price point. It's so good that we awarded it our Recommended Buy honor after seeing it stand up to more expensive CPUs in games and other demanding apps. For those desiring the best possible performance, the Core i5-750 can be overclocked to great effect, and when pushed, will perform similarly to the $1,000 Core i7-975 Extreme Edition at the more expensive CPU's stock settings.

Best Gaming CPU for $295: Intel's Core i7 has proven itself to be the most powerful gaming CPU option available, based on the data we have gathered. The Core i7-930 is a great choice for systems coupled with multiple graphics cards in an SLI or CrossFire configuration. The motherboards and DDR3 RAM that the i7 architecture requires will bring the total platform cost higher than other systems, but the resulting performance should be worth the purchase price.

Best Gaming CPU for $999: This six-core monster has stolen the bragging rights for the world's fastest CPU from the Core i7-975 Extreme. Despite the fact that most games don't utilize more than three CPU cores, this is the fastest gaming CPU currently available for purchase as our tests have shown.