hey all, what i'm wondering about at the moment is a conflict between two processors. I'm on a budget and have found two decent looking processors and whilst i'm a PC enthusiast, i've never put one together before and am still getting to grips with some of the specs. I'm a gamer and so that's what the system is being built for. I've decided to opt for AMD's athlon 64 x2 due to the fact there are some great deals out there on them and they seem to be quite decent as processors. I know they're not as stable as intel's but i'm not building a supercomputer. Here are the two processors:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+) £68.99 inc VAT

- Dual-core Technology
- 2.70Ghz clock speed (AM2 Socket)
- Multiplier unlocked
- 3.0MB Total Cache (L2+L3)
- Cool & Quiet Technology for Energy Efficiency
- Enhanced Virus Protection
- 64-bit Technology
- Hyper Transport Technology
- Virtualization technology




AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6400+ 3.20GHz (Socket AM2) £74.74 inc VAT

- Dual-core Technology
- 3.20Ghz clock speed (AM2 Socket)
- Cool & Quiet Technology for Energy Efficiency
- Enhanced Virus Protection
- 64-bit Technology
- Hyper Transport Technology
- Virtualization technology

i'm not too worried about the unlocked multiplier, as i've not tweaked with overclocking yet. the 0.5GHz difference tells me the second wil run faster, but can anyone explain to me what the 6400+ and 7750+ values mean and are they related to processor speed? on top of that, what kind of value of cache speed would be a significant increase? Finally, which would you advise me on buying? Thanks very much for any replies, sorry i rambled on a bit.

7750 were the old phenom bin chips if i remember right, they were just a way to sell unused silicon pretty much. Get the 6400 and call it a year.

hi Sky,
The 7750 is a new cpu (Dec 08) and is K-10 Architecture. It has improvments over the K8 generation (the X2 6400 is one of them) hyper transport 3.0,L3 cache, SSE4A instruction set, and increased memory bandwidth among others, and keeps up with the intel E5200. its about a 20% improvement over the K8 X2 counterpart. if your into overclocking it can be pushed up over 3.5 Ghz. and what super said, it is saved from the scrap bin and had two faulty cores disabled. if were me i would pay the extra 8 quid for the 7750, but thats just me

The 7750 is the better chip to get. You can also get it cheaper here.

Thanks guys, will the 7750 be able to run games like crysis/far cry 2 relatively smoothly? doesn't matter to me what detail

Yes. Game performance depends far more on the GPU, so either CPU will do fine.

cool, thanks alot