With Intel chips being faster, is AMD worth buying?

Kenshin

Lack of competitions from VIA, SiS, and Nvidia.

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ChristineBCW

Yes. I still think "Choose the motherboard" remains the bigger issue than a processor.

Zathros

I considered Intel for the first time, and the Inclusion of USB 3.0 in the MoBo was the selling point, AMD one. My Vantec 66 in 1 memory reader allows me to hot swap disc drives and the transfer rate is much quicker. I Universal reader has nothing stating that it can take advantage of USB 3.0, I just noticed the difference between downloading 10 G's of data two both machines. It might have been 20% faster, but this is not scientific. I use it primarily on the Asus MoBo machine now.

As a footnote, I tried one of the A series 6 core AMD machines. I could not get it to do anything. I returned it a day later for a full refund, with every periphery I purchased and ordered everything new again, going for the AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition (Deneb 45nm)and the Asus AMD Asus M5A9. I know some people who have radiators with liquid running through these machines, heavy gamers, with ridiculously priced video cards, again, not scientific, but my experience has been that the AMD card I used could take more abuse in temperature than the Intel's that were supposed to be within the competition range. Most of my friends have built 3 or 4 machines in the time I have had mine. They all returned to Intel, while my other friends continued to Rock on with their water cooled machines. So, in reality, I have to fall back on my own experience and gets what feels practical. I can't dump a lot of money into computers. I have others toys, that call to me. I have found over the last couple of years I am strangely far more attracted to the corporeal world, than the virtual. I get more satisfaction on a 100 mile ride on my Suzuki GS 750 ES, or my 450SL, or soon, my '73 MG Midget, and my Motorhome, which only gets 10 m.p.g. if the wind is blowing right. I am starting to build a sailboat too.

I guess the reason I mention all of this is that I read some comments here and it seems that it's "build Intel, can't recommend any AMD", when there are more than enough AMD processors that will fit people's budgets and do what they need, for a long time.

The propensity for building Intel only machines seemed to not serve the threads initial question,

With Intel chips being faster, is AMD worth buying?, the answer is YES, most software cannot take advantage of 4 cores, let alone 6, 8, etc. and you could save a lot of money and maybe, just maybe, move out of your mother's basement!

An AMD HDZ965FBK4DGM Phenom II X4 965 Processor - Quad Core, 6MB L3 Cache, 2MB L2 Cache, 3.40GHz, Socket AM3, 125W, No Fan, OEM for $109.00 in deflated U.S. dollars and:

ASUS M5A97 AMD 9 Series AM3+ Motherboard - ATX, Socket AM3+, AMD 970 Chipset, 2133MHz DDR3 (O.C.), SATA 6.0 Gb/s, 8-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, CrossFireX Ready for $99 dollars.

All for $208 bucks, and well on your way to a machine that will serve most of society for many years to come. The rest of the computer parts can be used from your old machine (yes, you will need a new O.S., W7 Professional 64 OEM Branded, $106.00, activates, great price) but that is the same whether you use Intel or AMD . This is inexpensive enough, has high quality components and you will not be able to build a Intel based machine near this price that can work this hard (or has USB 3.0). An Intel Core i5-3550 3.30 GHz Quad Core Processor alone now is costing $209, close to the price of the AMD processor and MoBo I mentioned. $100 dollars means something to many people. The software (the main programs I use, cost me $3000 dollars), so, $100 bucks means I can get a new set of Violin strings!

I use "IMHO" in the forum that I Moderate (essentially, the acting Administrator for a while) a lot. I found members taking what I write as being worth more than what it was, an opinion, being who I am in that community, they took my word as absolute.

I found that through reading this post, the answer is, in my opinion, YES, if you glean these fields for the information offered, and ignore the conclusions, it's YES, for all the same reasons as before. The questions could be a bit more qualified, that's always worth asking the O.P. (original poster) before answering. In My Honest Opinion. (smiley faces work well too)

When these processors run out, Phenom II X965's, and if AMD doesn't recover well from Intel's proven illegal dominance of the industry (they lost, remember how much they had to pay AMD), and AMD squanders, if it hasn't already, then, the next hope will be ARM processors. I would hate to see a world where Intel is the only deal in town. They will just push the price up and up, (Pom, Pom, pom, Intel Song)

If the CAD software I use can run off of the ARM chips by then, 4 years I estimate, then I may not have to buy an Intel. IMHO

SubZero

I have found limit with X4 965 and like.

If you have 4 dimss not 2 dimms it seem you can only run 1333mhz on some board. That limit is not existing with 990 chipset I believe.

Also, if I were to get Intel now for 3770k I would get ASRock Z77 Professional LGA 1155 motherboard. Very low out of way video for external connection, excellent legacy connection with floppy and ATA, one PS/2 connect for keyboard, dedicated USB channel for Mouse (with control software for those mouse ports), PCI Slots and a PCI-E x1.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157299

I see it can be had at CyberPowerPC.

But I have concern that CyberPowerPC wants extra $19 packaging just to have better chance for system not arriving broken. Plus another $19 to have wiring done nicely. Did those not used to be part of any normal build? Why send out system in bad packaging and risk DOA, especially with large and heavy CPU Cooler fan?

NBR

it's pretty hard to beat a Intel 'i3-2120' CPU as that offers a lot of punch for only $115-125. pretty hard to beat in terms of bang for the buck.

i got that CPU along with motherboard(ASUS P8H61-M LX Plus Rev3.0)/RAM (G.Skill 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1333mhz) upgrade ($230 total cost for those and CPU) about 2.5months ago now and it was a big upgrade over my old setup (which the core of it was built in March 2006) which was a AMD Athlon X2 3600+ (2.0ghz overclocked to 2.4Ghz) and my performance AT LEAST tripled and might be roughly 5 times faster based on video encoding with the x264.exe. but obviously with that the more cores you have the better with that.

i am just using my couple year old video card (i.e. Radeon 5670 512MB) with this setup as my CPU can comfortably run any game out there if paired with a good GPU which in my case my GPU is clearly the weak link in my system now as far as gaming goes. but this card is currently good enough for me so ill hold off on upgrading that for a while as i think this setup will hold out pretty well on games at least until the next gen consoles arrive.

so for $230 i basically got a new PC and got a big upgrade in overall system performance as i just swapped out my old CPU/Mobo/RAM for these new ones. it's pretty hard to complain at that price for what performance upgrade i got as that CPU pretty much beats all, or nearly all, of AMD"s CPU's in terms of gaming performance and for only $115-125 it's hard to complain.

it just seems Intel is noticeably ahead of AMD when you factor in performance to the watt and just in raw speed in general. the last time i built a PC, which was March 2006, AMD was the speed king and was ahead of Intel for years but not long after (roughly mid-2006) i got my CPU Intel came out with the core 2 duo line of CPU's and have been ahead of AMD ever since.

p.s. just going from 2GB of RAM on my old system to 8GB on this new system that works wonders as i can load anything now without having RAM issues as i can load up a game and exit it now and my system is still nice and snappy where as before, due to a obvious lack of RAM, Windows would become quite sluggish when exiting a game due to it reloading a lot of stuff from hard drive. and obviously... you need to be running 64bit OS if your on 4GB of RAM or more otherwise you can be pretty sure not all of the RAM will be used.

debro

In all honesty though, I had the first generation X2-3800 (that's DDR1 I recall) and the X2-3600 was released about 18 months later, and it was a HUGE downgrade in comparison, even though it was a second generation, Athlon X2 .. it was like comparing an Athlon to a low end 4rd generation celeron.

To suggest the X2-3600 was in any way a real CPU, is just not telling the whole story.

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NBR

@ Debro... it is a real CPU. plus with my 400mhz overclock (stock is 2.0ghz, i was at 2.4ghz) it's basically like those higher numbered CPU's just with a bit less cache which i suspect won't make much of a difference in real world speed since the 2.4ghz is in line with CPU's with noticeably higher numbers like in that AMD Athlon X2 4xxx+ ranges but the only differences is that they have more cache on CPU.

surely there can't be THAT much of a difference in real world speed when the CPU's are basically the same lacking some slight cache differences.

and yes, it's DDR1 as i had DDR 400mhz (PC 3200(i think it's called)) in it.

side note... when i first built that PC back in March 2006 it originally had a single core AMD Athlon 3500+ (Socket 939) which was 2.2ghz but i overclocked that to 2.4ghz and that was clearly a real CPU as it was $200-ish at the time i bought it and fairly high end like i was saying as back then AMD was faster than Intel. i would imagine that AMD X2 3600+ CPU is pretty much the same (especially considering Ghz was same (both 2.4ghz) after my overclocks) as that but with two cores (possibly minor cache fluctuations). which is definitely a real CPU.

debro

There surely was

The second Gen X2-3800 was a bit of a mixed bag for performance when compared against the 1st Gen X2-3800, but generally the 2G was a little bit faster in most things.

However, going from a 1st gen X2-3800+ to a second Gen X2-3600+ was like going from SSD to a 7200rpm HDD. Sloooooow Motion.

I was uber peeved, as I'd recommended/bought the PC with the X2-3600+ CPU for someone else, and it was like a slug.

Admittedly, perhaps the motherboard/ram combination/HDD(@7200) may also have had something to do with it, but the PC crawled, even on a fresh install. The reduced cache was an absolute killer for performance, or whatever crippling they did to it.

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NBR

you must have had some bad motherboard combo or something because...

so as you can see there is clearly a small gap in performance as that 5% is a worst case to and that was going by stock speeds as i bumped mine up 400mhz more than stock so i am sure with the 400mhz bump that will pretty much make it quicker than a stock 3800+ almost for sure.

source for that quote = http://goo.gl/ZeJXp

also, it appears you might have been right though about it not being a 'real CPU' with their "dual-core Sempron" remark in that quote. but at the end of the day... it still performs at a legitimate AMD Athlon X2 line of CPU's which basically makes it a real CPU.

even when you take a quick look at the gaming page of that article... at stock speeds the 3600+ is only around 3-4fps worse than the 3800+ which is very minimal. but bump up the Mhz and the 3600+ can comfortably top a 3800+ at stock speed.

p.s. but speaking of slow... one of my cousins seemed to have a bad setup as his PC crawled and i believe he had a similar single core as i did before i upgraded the CPU on mine and his i think was due to hard drive transfer speeds as to why his crawled and not the CPU itself as even burning DVD's it has issues keeping up with the speed needed to burn a DVD without it waiting for more data to arrive at the burner. his PC you could actually feel a noticeable difference but i am sure it was due to him having some so-so motherboard etc. my motherboard was pretty good (i.e. ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe)

debro

Quite possibly.
It was a Dell PC .. my workplace had a thing for Dell PC's at one point, something about making them all look the same .. which never worked out anyway, because dell kept changing the look of everything every few months.

I actually installed a few semprons in several cases, and they were quite decent, performance wise ...

This X2-3600 PC was a slug, even with replaced ram dimms, replaced HDD & dedicated video card .. yurck ..

Maybe I should just hate Dell, rather than the X2-3600 ...

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Kenshin

I can buy an Asus motherboard, Intel G620, and a Samsung 2GB DDR3 module for under US$100 today. G620 is only 100MHz lower than G630, and I have two G630's.

The Pentium G6xx series CPU's are the real winners of the most bang for the buck. That is, until the 'Celeron' or 'Pentium' classes of Ivy Bridge-based 22nm processors are released, but it looks like you two were talking about all those Hammer family processors.

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NBR

sure, there is probably slower CPU's than i3-2120 that might offer a bit more for your money (so you probably got me there ) but the i3-2120 offers more of your high end performance levels (but the low side of the high end) but without the high end costs of CPU's which are typically in the neighborhood of $200 (for a good Intel quad core) and the board i got can use the Ivy Bridge line of CPU's to, so future CPU upgrades are possible.

but you can seriously get a brand new ASUS board/RAM/CPU for literally $100 total cost? (if so, then ill definitely agree with you there as that would be really hard to beat for bang for the buck. but i figure what i got is more or less the best bang for the buck of the more higher end stuff is what i should have said )

taking a quick look on newegg...

Intel G620 Sandy Bridge CPU = $63.99 (without even looking at the ASUS board and RAM prices i think it's safe to say those will exceed $100 and for $4 more you can get the G630)

plus hyperthreading is a nice bonus of i3 line of CPU's which those G series CPU's don't have and while it don't really matter much for gaming and probably many other things, it does help with x264.exe to a noticeable degree from what i have read online.

but 2GB of RAM is pretty much not cutting it today (it's basically THE minimum nowadays for a modern PC to be at least functional running Vista/7).

4GB is about the minimum that i would recommend as with that you can comfortably do most tasks without RAM being a issue where as 2GB will run out as just running some basic apps along with a modern web browser can burn up 2GB quickly when you have a fair amount of tabs open as my browser (Pale Moon x64 (Firefox is basically the same though but no 64bit)) typically burns 500-700MB on average (when running for a while with many tabs open and random opening and closing of website it seems to stable out around there) and when you factor in OS and some other apps your system will definitely slow down due to lack of RAM as my old setup had 2GB of RAM and the RAM was definitely a issue for me and i would assume it will be for most people to although 2GB is still functional if your really trying to cut corners on $$$. but nowadays with DDR3 ram being cheap there's no reason to have less than 4GB of RAM and 8GB of RAM (i got mine for $36.99 but is $39.99 right now) would be a good idea to future proof the PC as far as RAM goes since we can safely assume most tasks won't get anywhere near 8GB into the foreseeable future so it will give you a nice buffer.

but even to play it safe as far as web browsers go... 1GB of RAM just for a web browser should give you a decent buffer as i would imagine most people probably won't exceed about 1GB for a web browser's RAM use. because mine like i was saying typically floats in the 500-700MB area (right now it's about 630-650MB) and if you load up youtube video those can burn up roughly another 100-200MB in the 'plugin-container.exe' section of the browser raising total RAM use in the 700MB-1GB area.

Kenshin

Maybe you are relatively new to my style of posting. If you were unaware, I live in South Korea and markets and economics here differ from those you have in the US. I started reading PC Magazine in 1990 and Computer Shopper and Windows Shoppers a little later and joined many US bbs communities so I'm accustomed to the North American markets and your line of arguments though.

Whether one wants to have or must have G630 Celeron / Pentium or i3 or i5 or i7 or even Xeon wasn't an issue I tried to address. I merely suggested there was another aspect in choosing the most for the least.

I have two G630's but also an i5 Sandy Bridge, a 3820 E, an Ivy Bridge, and some more. One of my motherboards are ready to have 64GB RAM, but I'm not buying 8GB modules because Samsung is reluctant yet to release 8GB modules at like US$30 to its domestic retail market. These I buy to test and to collect and sometimes also to give to friends and non-friends. The computers I use for most things actually are based on a i5 -2430M and a 530 Clockdale, both running Windows 7 installed on SSD's. An Ivy Bridge 3570K is clearly more efficient, but I'll probably switch to either 3820 E or 3570K when I get some TB SSD's.

I have to wonder why one would want to buy a G620 for over US$64, but then Intel likes to sell cheap processors at lower prices in some markets while selling higher-end processors at higher prices. I bought the 3820 E and many other products at much higher prices than you'd pay from newegg.com and amazon.com but I could buy SLC-only SSD's and some lower-end motherboards, cases, processors, fans, etc. at much lower prices. Corsair coolers, Cooler Master cases, G.Skill memory modules, they are like 50% more expensive. Sometimes I bought SCSI and RAID cards at double the usual international prices knowing exactly how much they cost at the sites linked on pricewatch.com. There was also a time when I ordered about 100 Crucial RAM modules almost at once from your Micron, directly. Monitors based on LG IPS panels of 1600*1200, 1920*1200, 2560*1440, 2560*1600, and so on can be bought at impossibly low prices here, lower than anywhere else in the world. That's possible here because of very low transportation and logistics costs and also because there are almost limitless supply of manufacturers usually working hard till 10 or 11 PM asking for little profits if any. Crucial and G.Skill memory modules and Antec and Lian-Li cases cost more here for similar reasons: nobody's willing to import them without expecting great profits.

What I would like to pay for a G620/G630 is about US$40 if sold separately. The price I quoted in the previous post was from a seller at Yongsan, South Korea's largest computer markets, and available just for several sets (including an Asus motherboard, but with an H61 chipset and without a DVI/DSUB connector). It's not of course fair to compare against a US-based newegg.com as Newegg usually includes 'handling fee' plus a lot of profits and shipping cost in their items. That's why US retail prices seem too high for small things but too cheap when you buy in bulk or order luxury products. Costco operates in Seoul the way they do in the US. Some things are cheaper, but not all, is why Costco is losing just the way Carre Four and Walmart lost. Only imported items at Carre Four and Walmart were cheaper while the local consumers were not familiar with the brand names of the imported products. Emart of Samsung is always the winner in the long run. (Samsung also owned 49% of Home Plus of British Tesco, but Tesco recently bought the remaining share.)

After all, that $40's closer to the OEM price of most of the computers sold worldwide which hasn't changed much since about 20 years ago. A low-end Ivy Bridge to take the place of G620 and G630 will also be marketed to retail at prices like US$50. At mass markets, a US$10 ODD will usually win the major marketshare against a $15 or $20 competing drive regardless of the supposedly added features, enhancements, quality, etc. Those things are valid for the sake of arguments and reviews for specific eyes only.

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alan1476

Why Toshiba( or was that TB meant to be Terabyte) SSD nand? I know most SSDs are made with Toshiba nand but why do you use it exclusively? Just trying to understand.

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Kenshin

Sorry, I meant TeraByte. I do think Toshiba is superior to the other four somewhat, but I prefer Samsung if I had to choose among the NAND suppliers. You know, I like to use the full names as often as possible to make names more consistent and easier for visitors and searchers of non-English browers to recognize. Most casual visitors are not aware of the difference of LG Electronics and LG business group, or the relationship of Hynix and SK business group though both such relationships can sometimes be more important in the technological value of each of the companies.

I'm very optimistic. I bought some 16GB SLC NAND SSD drives made by Mtron sometime between 2010 and 2011, not sure exactly when. Most major SSD drive makers are now selling 512GB drives for under US$1,000. OCZ sells some TB drives, but they are meant for enterprises and servers. The fact some US merchants are selling 512GB SSD's for under US$400 is significant as almost any end user can easily buy two and RAID them to make a single 1TB logical drive. I tried that with two Vertex 3 128GB drives and two Samsung 830 128GB drives. The newer Agility 4 also has higher IOPS. BTW, after writing the above, I now see this is an Overclocking forum.

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SubZero

After more hands on test I find for sure that I would recommend Intel

Intel 3770k would be good over anything AMD, imo.

Kenshin

I'd like to see some cheap 8-core Ivy Bridge processors.

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geno888

Me too

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ChristineBCW

I just wish Intel would have discovered SATA-3 a few years ago like AMD. AMD's 870 chipsets were hosting 6 SATA-3s - what? 3 years ago? Yes.

Even the newest Intel MB chipsets for the 2011 CPUs are still continuing this "Let's have more of the biggest bottleneck in the computer SATA-2 controllers than SATA-3's" idiocy.

This does, of course, help LSI, Adaptec, Promise, etc.

Reviewers can shine on fast CPUs all they want, but only Intel is promulgating more SATA-2s than -3s in their motherboard chipsets, making sure that the biggest bottleneck continues.

Kenshin

That was a brief time I wanted to buy AMD-based motherboards again. Most of the motherboards I bought around 2000 were for the "Hammer" series AMD processors based on SiS, VIA, and AMD chipsets.

Another good thing in the latest MacBook Pro is it has two Thunderbolt ports, instead of one.

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ChristineBCW

I want the best of both. Of course. Best CPUs, best RAM (please, no RAMBUS - they need not apply), the best HDs and storage controllers.

At the same time, it certainly leaves AMD's motherboards as strong contenders for small and home servers. Nothing like throwing a few crumbs for the squirrels...

yojimbo197

That's good because there's no stock Ethernet port on it. So you'll have to get a Thunderbolt to Ethernet converter. Another $30 for Apple. Cha-ching!

Also, don't they come with USB 3.0 ports? I bet Job is rolling over in his grave because he refused to institute USB 3.0. The optical Thunderbolt was trumpeted as next big thing. Until delays and technical problems forced them to switch to copper AND charge an arm and a leg for the connectors. I just don't see how they thought that was going to be appealing. "Yes, I'll spend 50-100 on a data cord. No problem." Baaaaaaaah.

Kenshin

Here's a good news for all the PC and smartphone users.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120821PB200.html

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tmc8080

Would be nice to be able to use both onboard video and a discrete card at the same time.. either as multi-monitor setups or SLI/combined power & processing sort of thing... more is always better ;-)

going back to the O/T, Intel is in pole position now, so the idea is buy as much computer as you can afford. The 3570k's seem to be a sweet spot on price now and have HD4000 which will run DX11 graphics (aka GAMES!!)

IMO, it's always worth it for several generations of standards/features on the motherboard to evolve before considering an "UPGRADE".. since sockets change, features change.. video evolves.. system bus & chipsets change.. (at least 3 or 4 main features)

Right now for me, it will be from usb 2 to usb 3, pcie 2.X to 3.0, sata 2 to sata 3 (600MB throughput, the 1-2-3 throughputs ar 150mb, 300mb 600mb), etc.. However, processor wise I can wait the 3-4 more years and maybe something else will evolve too.. before I splash my dough.. and who knows, maybe even some of these current standards & chips will evolve in the 3-4 years.. though, if I see a free ram after rebate deal, I might jump on that, preferably pc 1600+ ;-)

Kenshin

I'm not sure of the exact configuration, but it was probably Ivy Bridge 3570K + H77 + 27-inch Dual-Link DVI + 15-inch DSUB + 8600GT PCI Express Dual Dual-Link DVI card + Windows 8 beta. The onboard graphic does not support 2560*1440 Dual-Link DVI so I had to use a 8600GT Nvidia graphic instead and when I connected a 15-inch 1680*1050 monitor to the onboard DSUB, both monitors were automatically configured to optimum resolutions by Windows 8.

HD4000 - 1680*1050 - DSUB
8600GT - 2560*1440 - Dual-Link DVI

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