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CPU For The Sims 3 & 4 - AMD or Intel?

Toothless

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Where is your evidence or reasoning?

Oh I don't know...just like every review and benchmark published for the last 3 years. Also your post, and subsequently mine, add no value to this thread.
 
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I thought you wanted to stay under $300? You should buy the best Motherboard chipset first, IMO, and then a CPU. You can always drop in a better cpu later, but a motherboard is a much bigger PIA. Plus...Overclocking.

Yeah, I do want to stay under $300, you're right. I'm not sure I'd be able to do that if I bought an i5-4460 (or one of the K CPUs, even though it looks like newegg is having a sale on the 4690K @ $209) AND a good Z97/87 board.

In my book I think you have enough for your setup right now and should just attempt to bump to 4.0ghz as that is not asking an extreme amount even with that board.

Though since you want to upgrade, I would say you can invest in a decent board and then throw a nice enough CPU to get you by for now with an upgrade later if you need it. I agree on getting something like an inexpensive Z97 board and a Pentium G3258, its a beast and can overclock enough to make up for the fact its a dual core. I have built a couple machines (One for myself recently) and honestly you can get a lot of performance out of that chip on top of it being only around 60 bucks.

That little Pentium-K does look pretty amazing considering its price. If I got that one, I'd be able to spend more on the motherboard as well. Sounds like a pretty sweet setup. Would it bottleneck on an R9 280X though?
 
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To make it clear, I want to keep this conversation civil. I know the whole AMD vs Intel thing is hotly debated, but I'm here for honest, helpful advice, not to hear that AMD sucks or Intel sucks. So please, keep it civil.

I'm an avid player of The Sims 3 franchise - I currently own every Expansion Pack (there are 11 of them) and 4 Stuff Packs (things that add new things like lots, clothing or objects to the main game; I own 4 of these, but there a total of 9 of these.) In addition to this, I have about 3.75 GBs worth of mods and other custom content for the game. Unfortunately, it's been a great while since I was able to play the game smoothly - after just 15 minutes of playing, I get HORRIBLE lag and stuttering, which forces me to stop playing. Granted, this game isn't very demanding with just the base Sims 3 game, but once you get to where I'm at, it becomes harder to run smoothly. Because I believe this game to be more reliant on the CPU than the GPU, I believe my CPU may have something to do with the horrible lag issues I'm dealing with. If you look at my system specs, you'll see I'm running an FX-6100. Yes, I'm running a "Faildozer" as it's so lovingly called. ;)


I come here asking for help on a possible CPU upgrade, because for the life of me, I can't exactly find CPU benchmarks for this game (understandably so; it isn't exactly a AAA title) and I don't want to screw up on this CPU like I did with the 6100 (yes, in hindsight, I would have never gotten it, knowing what I know now.) I do play other games, but they are more GPU dependent than CPU dependent like the Sims 3 is; just got a 280X about a week or so ago, so I'm not worried about the GPU. Anyway, I'm looking at either an FX-6350 or 8320 on the AMD side, or anything from an i3 to a non-K i5 and H97 or Z87 board. What would you guys suggest? Right now I'm leaning towards the Intel choice because it offers a better upgrade path, but it would also require getting a new board. I wouldn't have to do that with the AMD obviously.

I sincerely value your opinions after you all were so helpful in helping choose a GPU upgrade from my 7790. :)

Gmr_Chick, I'm going to go out on a limb and ask if you have checked into whether the problem could be something like this:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/936498-the-sims-3/66633324

rather than the CPU. It seems many people with super powerful CPUs run into huge lag due to characters getting stuck in certain parts of the map. The reason I'm asking you this is because I came across a youtube video of a guy with an AMD 7850K APU running the game without issue at 1080p high detail, and his CPU and GPU are definitely not more powerful than yours:


Hope you figure it out!
 
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Yep, I have tried all that. :) Got a bunch of mods installed that helps with the problem a bit, but in general, it basically comes down to EA not optimizing the various hoods properly (the routing I spoke of near the beginning of this thread). What I gather from the video, just by looking at the bit in which he clicks on the options, is that he probably has only the base and *maybe* some of the less-demanding EPs (ones like Ambitions or Generations, two of which didn't really add anything dynamic like, say, World Adventures or especially Seasons, did.) and his amount of custom content - whether he plays "vanilla" with no mods or user-created content or not - could also have an impact on performance as well. Generally, as a rule, the base game should run fine with an APU like the 7850K, but once more Expansion Packs and Stuff Packs are introduced - especially the late ones like Supernatural, Seasons, Island Paradise, etc.,, APUs aren't even close to running the game properly, even with settings turned down.

I have a saying when it comes to this game specifically, and that is that a person could have a rig equal to a super computer and STILL not run the damn thing without some kind of problem. :laugh:

I suspect the horrible game performance could be attributed to several factors, one being EA's horrible optimization, the other being the game probably runs better with something like a dual-core with high single core/thread performance or a quad core with great performance as well, rather than something with more cores but bad single thread performance, like mine for instance. :laugh:
 
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I have Sims 3 (updated to latest versions of most if not all expansions and a ton of custom content) and Sims 4 (updated all the way) installed on my computer, much to my significant other's delight. My configuration is listed, so check it out for reference.

I can tell you from personal experience that trying to keep up with EA's halfhearted stabs and lukewarm potshots at bug squashing and optimization is next to impossible.
While not the fastest ever, my machine isn't exactly slow by any stretch of imagination. Yet it struggles in the Sims 3, and pretty obviously too. Trying not to be lazy, I tried running vanilla TS3 (no custom or official expansions/content added), fully updated, and it runs no better. Graphic settings had little to no effect (it seems the HD7950 is more than adequate at 1080p), and various neighborhoods have shown no clear performance pattern - sometimes everything runs smoothly while other times it's laggy, choppy and skippy.

OCing my CPU further, to 4.4 GHz, netted no appreciable gains. Also tried moving another 8GB dual channel kit from a second machine, no tangible difference.

Sims 4 on the other hand runs smooth and crisp right out of the gate. Possibly Maxis' deeper involvement played a role there.

If you'd like to stay under budget and don't much care for typical AAA titles (especially latest CryEngine, Unreal Engine etc. games) I suppose the Anniversary Pentium will do just fine. However, there are games out there - current, today's games - which will flat out refuse to even start with less than 4 cores. Some of them can be coaxed to accept 2C/4T CPUs, but with a visible performance hit. Perhaps holding out a bit longer + maybe selling your current parts to get some funds back, thus attaining needed funds for an i5 and a solid motherboard, might be prudent...

## EDIT ##

Oh, one more thing. Compared to using a standard HDD, having a fast SSD helps alleviate some missing texture problems and helps, to a degree, with lots of scrolling the screen around. It doesn't do much to help with load times, though. This refers to the Sims 3, of course.

The Sims 4 both loads much faster and clearly reads terrain data quicker with an SSD, so it's a worthy investment. Not to mention overall system speedup elsewhere...
 
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If you'd like to stay under budget and don't much care for typical AAA titles (especially latest CryEngine, Unreal Engine etc. games) I suppose the Anniversary Pentium will do just fine. However, there are games out there - current, today's games - which will flat out refuse to even start with less than 4 cores.

This. One consideration to add to this is the current generation of consoles. With both having 8 cores with relatively low single thread performance, it will become paramount that the developers make use of as many cores as possible to improve performance. This will be especially true later in the generations lifespan. Since most games these days are either ports or development was heavily aligned to consoles, it's going to become even more important to have a computer capable of running at least 4 threads. As such, a Pentium Anniversary Edition may become the limiting factor in a system running future games. Having said that, it is relatively cheap, so many not be such a huge issue if a swap out is foreseeable.
 

Toothless

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This. One consideration to add to this is the current generation of consoles. With both having 8 cores with relatively low single thread performance, it will become paramount that the developers make use of as many cores as possible to improve performance. This will be especially true later in the generations lifespan. Since most games these days are either ports or development was heavily aligned to consoles, it's going to become even more important to have a computer capable of running at least 4 threads. As such, a Pentium Anniversary Edition may become the limiting factor in a system running future games. Having said that, it is relatively cheap, so many not be such a huge issue if a swap out is foreseeable.
Would be nice if games used more cores but were able to run on slower cores. Like a running normally on a quad-core @1ghz for older laptops and whatnot.
 
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Would be nice if games used more cores but were able to run on slower cores. Like a running normally on a quad-core @1ghz for older laptops and whatnot.

Still requires a main process so the cores would still need to provide strong performance. Besides, even the first proper mobile quad cores (Penryns) were clocked beyond 2GHz. I'm not familiar with any quad core mobile chip clocking that low under load, not even the Bay Trails do. Furthermore, slow single-threaded performance would not be the only limiting factor, stuff like lack of modern instructions, less cache, slower buses, etc, etc, would probably play a larger part, but of course this all goes full circle back to why said CPU would be slow in single-threaded performance to begin with.
 
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Thank you Naito, Lightbulbie and McSteel for your inputs. The SSD I'm definitely going to look into after I upgrade my CPU, because that damn Sims 3 takes FOREVER to load textures - and it does it almost constantly.

I know you guys mentioned the consoles of today, and how they may impact PC games to come. As far as I know, very few games, even today, even utilize more than 2 cores - BF4 comes to mind, as does Crysis 3, as two games that need all the cores they can get. While it would be easy for me to say that it doesn't really matter because I've no interest in playing those anyway, it's not that easy. So here's my dilemma: get a Pentium-K with a good Z97 board and overclock the heck out of it, or get an i3-4360 with a Z97 board, even though the i3 has no turbo, but does have a high base clock and 4 threads, or say screw it and get an i5 which has turbo and 4 actual cores, based on my needs TODAY? Because I don't want to be in this same position next year regretting the fact I got X instead of Y.

In a semi-related note, I was able to oc my FX to 3900.71 MHz.
 
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I know you guys mentioned the consoles of today, and how they may impact PC games to come. As far as I know, very few games, even today, even utilize more than 2 cores - BF4 comes to mind, as does Crysis 3, as two games that need all the cores they can get.

It's because managing multi-threaded programs can become very difficult and, if not optimized correctly, can lead to more issues and thus less performance than you would see with fewer threads/a single thread. As threads share resources with a 'primary thread' (aka process), techniques must be implemented to make sure each thread get's the data it needs without conflicting with other threads. If they do, you can easily have a crashing program on your hand, or if things like mutual exclusion, semaphores and the likes aren't implemented correctly, you can have thread deadlock, starvation, live lock and so forth - all of which will lead to inefficiencies. Scale all these up to something handling 3, 4 or more threads, and it becomes very difficult. Furthermore, it can also be dependent on how the OS handles these things, as it is usually the one in charge of handling multiple threads, the CPUs just provide the means to more effectively process them with features like SMT (e.g. HyperTreading). I like to say that it's one thing to master programming, but another thing to master concurrent processes. Mind you, it's been a while since I've done such a thing, and even then it was on a basic level, I would not call myself even intermediately skilled in regards to this stuff. If anyone disagrees, wants to clarify, or even expand upon what I just said, please feel free.


So here's my dilemma: get a Pentium-K with a good Z97 board and overclock the heck out of it, or get an i3-4360 with a Z97 board, even though the i3 has no turbo, but does have a high base clock and 4 threads, or say screw it and get an i5 which has turbo and 4 actual cores, based on my needs TODAY? Because I don't want to be in this same position next year regretting the fact I got X instead of Y.

Pentium K over i3; pure clock speed will out pace a locked i3 any day. I'd say spend the extra dough now on an i5 as it'll last you longer. Future-proofing is bulls#!t in my opinion as most people hold on to a PC maybe 3 or so years and, in this time, there could be a change in socket, one and a half tick-tock cycles, newer standards, etc, with almost none of it interchangeable between builds, but this is kinda different when it comes to mid-range/budget builds or are more likely to sit on the hardware longer. So if the i5 ain't gonna break your bank and you don't plan to upgrade the core system again in under two years, go with the best you can get right now. You don't have to go a Z97 either, if it is pushing you over your limit and you're not going to OC. Like I said previously, no point buying a cheap CPU now and upgrade it 18 months or so down the track, because it would just make more sense to put that money towards a new system, especially when you consider Intel CPUs hold their value fairly well and you won't be saving much. Say you purchased a Pentium K for $60, then a few months down the track pick up a Core i5 for $180, that's technically $240 you spent on CPUs for that system not including possible resale of first CPU. The difference between the two could have been saved for another component, say an SSD, or put towards your 'next computer fund'. I'm a bit scatterbrain today, so I might just be repeating myself and not making much sense so...

...Tl;dr: Unless you're willing to hold onto the core system (motherboard, RAM, etc) for 4 or more years, go ahead and buy the cheaper option now and save for an i5 down the track as it'll help negate the need for an upgrade later. If you're the kind of person who does not/are likely not to touch the core system once it's build over its lifespan, just buy the best you can now and save the coin until your next upgrade.
 

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Still requires a main process so the cores would still need to provide strong performance. Besides, even the first proper mobile quad cores (Penryns) were clocked beyond 2GHz. I'm not familiar with any quad core mobile chip clocking that low under load, not even the Bay Trails do. Furthermore, slow single-threaded performance would not be the only limiting factor, stuff like lack of modern instructions, less cache, slower buses, etc, etc, would probably play a larger part, but of course this all goes full circle back to why said CPU would be slow in single-threaded performance to begin with.
My laptop overheats unless I cap it off at 1.1ghz. Hence why the more core/ low clock games would help me a lot. :D
 
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Thanks for putting in perspective, Naito. Think I'll go for the highest non-K i5 I can get and pair it with a Z87 or H97 board. Other than that, the only other upgrade I see myself doing in the near future is getting an SSD.

And thus begins the more confusing search for a motherboard, lol.
 
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My laptop overheats unless I cap it off at 1.1ghz. Hence why the more core/ low clock games would help me a lot. :D

Don't mean to take Gmr_Chicks thread any more off topic than I already have, but I must ask; is it a HP by any chance?

And thus begins the more confusing search for a motherboard, lol.

What stores do you tend to buy PC stuff from? I'm not too familiar with US stores, but can have a look around at what they have and can give you my personal recommendations.
 

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Thanks for putting in perspective, Naito. Think I'll go for the highest non-K i5 I can get and pair it with a Z87 or H97 board. Other than that, the only other upgrade I see myself doing in the near future is getting an SSD.

And thus begins the more confusing search for a motherboard, lol.

Well if you're set on getting a Non-K then no point wasting money on a Zx7.
 
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Don't mean to take Gmr_Chicks thread any more off topic than I already have, but I must ask; is it a HP by any chance?

What stores do you tend to buy PC stuff from? I'm not too familiar with US stores, but can have a look around at what they have and can give you my personal recommendations.

Well, I buy parts from my local shop sometimes (Central Computers) but their online shop kinda blows; plus, they tend to charge a little more for certain things - like my current HD 7790 for example. MSRP on it was around $150, but they charged a whopping $170 for it, and like an idiot I bought it, lol. - but as far as etailers go, I really only buy from Newegg.

Where I live in California, there used to be a Micro Center, but I guess it left the area because of rent prices and the fact that people for some ungodly reason still buy most of their PC components from Fry's - wouldn't buy anything from there. WAY too many "Reduced Price" stickers on stuff for my liking...

The closest Micro Center to me now is down in Southern California. :cry:

Thank you for the help, Naito. If it helps, I'm looking for something either all black or black and green (not really a priority though), with at least 2 PCIe x16 slots, two USB 2.0 headers, ATX form factor, 3 chassis fan connectors, supports up to 32GB RAM and the like. Yeah, I'm clueless to a certain extent. :oops: :laugh:
 
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. If it helps, I'm looking for something either all black or black and green (not really a priority though), with at least 2 PCIe x16 slots, two USB 2.0 headers, ATX form factor, 3 chassis fan connectors, supports up to 32GB RAM and the like. Yeah, I'm clueless to a certain extent.

Well two PCIe x16 (at full speed) pretty much rules out anything under $100. I found this combo deal for $300 (after $20 mail-in rebate). Includes a Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H Black Edition which features two PCIe 3.0 16x slots (8x/8x in dual mode (same as two PCIe 2.0 16x)) and one PCIe 16x 2.0 slot (at 4x and disables x1 slots when populated). Also has 4 fan headers. Spend an extra $10 and get the 4690K and the same board from the combo; may be the slightly more "future proof" if you feel you may OC later on (as easy as installing software and pushing a button if you're not too keen doing it manually).
 

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In my book I think you have enough for your setup right now and should just attempt to bump to 4.0ghz as that is not asking an extreme amount even with that board.

Though since you want to upgrade, I would say you can invest in a decent board and then throw a nice enough CPU to get you by for now with an upgrade later if you need it. I agree on getting something like an inexpensive Z97 board and a Pentium G3258, its a beast and can overclock enough to make up for the fact its a dual core. I have built a couple machines (One for myself recently) and honestly you can get a lot of performance out of that chip on top of it being only around 60 bucks.
100% agree with this post.
first you need higher clocked core.
second g3258 is great for oc and great value for it's performance.
your upgrade path is easy with z97 even to 4690k or similar if you wish. i believe 60$ for a CPU isn't too expensive to play around, and if you sell it half price, the money spent i guess its worth it. for the experience you can get.
I'm noob for OC but that not to difficult.
 
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That little Pentium-K does look pretty amazing considering its price. If I got that one, I'd be able to spend more on the motherboard as well. Sounds like a pretty sweet setup. Would it bottleneck on an R9 280X though?
No not really, but you have to overclock it at least a bit preferably in the range of 4.0ghz-4.5ghz. I have made quite a few with that chip and all have been able to achieve at least 4.2ghz with reasonable voltages which gives superb gaming performance for what your buying. Heck it will match up to a i7 4790K in gaming performance in many if not most titles for less than 1/3 the price. The only real drawback is its low base core clocks with no boost and the fact its a dual core with no hyper threading. However most gaming is reliant on the first two cores anyway so it performs just fine.

To give you a good example here are some tests with the Pentium anniversary chip:

CPU intensive games
GPU Intensive games

I use one for myself in a set top box that doubles as a spare/portable gaming machine I take to LAN parties (Just built it within the last week) for someone who cannot bring something to game on or just wants to jump into some fun which right now I overclocked it to 4.0ghz on the stock cooler and the temps even under heaven stress testing keep up to 80c which considering the Intel stock cooler is horrible in my book (Well most stock coolers are not just intels) that's fantastic. You can easily buy something cheap like a Hyper212 Evo and overclock it to the limit without even worrying about a thing. If nothing else though, in a year or so when you have some spare cash you can buy a second hand i5 4690K (Or the likes) and then be set for a very long time. Even so the Pentium should be great for you and last quite a long time as well overclock. Mine plays BF4 when paired with an HD 7870Ghz Edition (R9 270X) on games like BF4 on ultra settings, League of Legends, and a few random games like DayZ without having any real problems.

Some great motherboards to consider (I currently have mine paired with this Gigabyte Gaming 5 but I got this on a special sale was the reasoning):
MSI Z97-G55 (My Favorite Z97 board for its value to price, it has everything you could possibly want in a gaming motherboard including 8 Phase VRM for overclocking, support for dual graphics cards from both NVidia and AMD, and a decent price). Currently out of stock but heres an alternate link to one on Amazon .
Asrock Fatal1ty Z97 (Nice gaming board for the price as well)
MSI Z97 SLI KRAIT (A special edition but its essentially the Z97-G55 with a different color scheme)
There are plenty of other great choices as well but these should at least give you an idea of what to look for.

I would still say your 6100 should be just fine if you can get it to 4.0ghz but because of that board it might hold back its potential for serious clocking as I would see 4.7-5.0ghz a possibility with that chip which would also give you great gaming performance with an R9 280X. But you would need a different board for that...
 
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Don't mean to take Gmr_Chicks thread any more off topic than I already have, but I must ask; is it a HP by any chance?
HP Pavilion G7 1368dx.
 

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OP, have you tried sims with that 3.9 OC? maybe you problem partly solved?
and @Naito he had some good points but one thing to have in mind, good mobo now, g3258 now and something like i5, but most likely cheaper in the future, prices do go down, so if we add some resale value, Op wont loose to much money on it anyway.
of course if budged allows buy at once all you can, but we talking like @GhostRyder said 1/3 of the price. How much is 4690k? ~ 200$, vs 60$ for g3258? + many games will run similar. pure budget minded logic

edit: and probably ssd can get into this budget: Pentium AE 60$+Mobo 120$+ SSD 60-90$
=240-270$
and hey what about this: sell you current cpu+mobo.
 

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OP, have you tried sims with that 3.9 OC? maybe you problem partly solved?
and @Naito he had some good points but one thing to have in mind, good mobo now, g3258 now and something like i5, but most likely cheaper in the future, prices do go down, so if we add some resale value, Op wont loose to much money on it anyway.
of course if budged allows buy at once all you can, but we talking like @GhostRyder said 1/3 of the price. How much is 4690k? ~ 200$, vs 60$ for g3258? + many games will run similar. pure budget minded logic

edit: and probably ssd can get into this budget: Pentium AE 60$+Mobo 120$+ SSD 60-90$
=240-270$
and hey what about this: sell you current cpu+mobo.
THIS THIS THIS THIS. Sell your old hardware (even on the forum) and have a bigger budget for your new stuff. @XSI made the best point right there and it's a working thing. I'm selling off my old stuff for my new stuff and it's how I gotta get by. No gaming on a desktop won't kill anyone.
 
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Thanks for all those good bits of info, guys. Really makes me glad that I came to this forum in the first place. I don't get the feeling that people are BSing me here as opposed to other forums. You guys seem to be very knowledgeable here. So thanks for that, and especially your patience. :)

All those boards sound like they're in the vicinity of what I'm interested in, especially that GIGABYTE board Naito mentioned in the combo deal. Don't know how many times I've looked at it on newegg in the last week or so, lol. The MSI boards mentioned by GhostRyder also look interesting. Definitely putting all three said boards on my short list. One question I do have is I've noticed it seems like every motherboard company and their grandma seems to have some sort of "gaming" motherboard series now - not to mention most all of them are black and red; think everyone jumped on the ROG themed bandwagon. Anyway, in what ways does a "gaming" motherboard differ from a regular board? I'm guessing it has something to do with multi-GPU setups and overclocking, but are "gaming" boards also built with better components/materials or something?
 
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One question I do have is I've noticed it seems like every motherboard company and their grandma seems to have some sort of "gaming" motherboard series now - not to mention most all of them are black and red; think everyone jumped on the ROG themed bandwagon. Anyway, in what ways does a "gaming" motherboard differ from a regular board? I'm guessing it has something to do with multi-GPU setups and overclocking, but are "gaming" boards also built with better components/materials or something?

Usually they are. Though OC-centric boards are even more so. This is because such boards are meant for power users, high-stress situations and achieving a meaningful performance advantage. All this requires quality components, engineering and QC. The flashy colors and tacky branding is meant for those who do not delve into the subject matter too deeply ;)
 
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Thanks for all those good bits of info, guys. Really makes me glad that I came to this forum in the first place. I don't get the feeling that people are BSing me here as opposed to other forums. You guys seem to be very knowledgeable here. So thanks for that, and especially your patience. :)

All those boards sound like they're in the vicinity of what I'm interested in, especially that GIGABYTE board Naito mentioned in the combo deal. Don't know how many times I've looked at it on newegg in the last week or so, lol. The MSI boards mentioned by GhostRyder also look interesting. Definitely putting all three said boards on my short list. One question I do have is I've noticed it seems like every motherboard company and their grandma seems to have some sort of "gaming" motherboard series now - not to mention most all of them are black and red; think everyone jumped on the ROG themed bandwagon. Anyway, in what ways does a "gaming" motherboard differ from a regular board? I'm guessing it has something to do with multi-GPU setups and overclocking, but are "gaming" boards also built with better components/materials or something?
Generally when a board is gaming its more just a name than anything to be honest. Lots of boards throw that label on it but generally the only major things you see on gaming boards is Kill LAN/WLAN (Which generally is nothing special, I own it on multiple machines and I can say its not making any differences enabled or disabled that I notice), the upper sound card is normally standard (They generally put a nicer integrated sound card but you can see which one is put on by reading, this is also not always guaranteed but I see it more often than naught), and generally the color scheme involves red. Gaming boards are not really different from non-gaming boards it just sometimes comes with a different set of apps/features and a special color scheme but they do not really improve the experience unless the specific board has a better VRM or some special settings for overclocking and a nicer sound card. I would not buy a board just for the gaming logo as plenty without it have better features than many of the gaming branded boards I see.

I am partial to red and black right now though for my next build in 4+ years I will probably try something different like white and black.
 
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