Our First Gaming CPU for the Money Article
I approached writing an article about the best CPUs for the money with a great deal of caution. I write the Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money monthly piece and it's pretty straightforward—graphics cards are used to get higher frame rates in games, so all I really have to look at is the price/performance ratio in games and come up with what I think are the best buys. There are a lot more variables, but at the root it comes down to game performance and entry price.
On the other hand, a CPU can be used for a great many things. Anything and everything done on a PC is at least somewhat dependent on CPU performance, including writing documents, image editing, games, database queries, Internet use, server apps, scientific calculations...the list goes on and on. In truth, it's nearly impossible to make recommendations that will apply universally in light of the many different usage models that exist.
We therefore have to focus on a particular aspect of CPU performance that we can better measure, compare, and assess. Why not gaming? People are interested in the best graphics card they can get to game, so it stands to reason that they're also interested in the best gaming CPU their money can buy.
This still leaves us with the task of measuring CPU gaming performance versus price to come up with results on which we can base recommendations. With CPUs, this is a little tricky, as certain games favor multiple cores, clock speed, cache, and even a specific architecture.
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