# Processor speed vs number of cores



## pauhana01 (Nov 25, 2010)

Been reading this forum and various others prior to building a new system.  Want it primarily for use with LR V3.

Am going to build a AMD system.   Have been looking at the following CPU possibilities

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz

AMD Phenom II X4 97' Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz

AMD Phenom II X6 1'75T Thuban 3.'GHz

Plan on 8 mb of RAM.

My confusion is should I be looking at number of cores or speed of CPU as the primary factor?  Have never overclocked so not sure if I will try this time around or not.  

At this point am a bit confused as which direction to go.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 26, 2010)

I haven't been Windows based for a long time, but when I was spec'ing out my latest Mac, a faster processor with lower number of cores was a better bet (past 4 core, if I remember rightly)


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## Jim Wilde (Nov 26, 2010)

I'm certainly no expert in this (or any other!) area, but you might want to have a look at the CPU benchmark data here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html#

Although the AMDs still lag behind the Intel i7 range on performance, on the Price/Performance chart they certainly blow Intel away. More interestingly, and perhaps more pertinent to your uncertainty, it seems that the Phenom 1'75T out-performs (by some margin) the 965 and 97' AND is better on the Price/Performance chart. Having narrowed you choice down to those 3, it seems to me that the 1'75 would be the better option.


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