Phenom II 965 seems faster in some games than I7 920

[taggart6]

I'd be down to see Anubis and Nater each build a $500 budget build with their respective vendor choices. If only to actually see what you get if you go with either. Then have each point out the main selling points and main drawbacks. It's a great way to prove your point, provide some info back to the community, and maybe even keep things civilized.

Feel free for anyone else to jump in!

[Timman_24]

I'd be down to see Anubis and Nater each build a $500 budget build with their respective vendor choices. If only to actually see what you get if you go with either. Then have each point out the main selling points and main drawbacks. It's a great way to prove your point, provide some info back to the community, and maybe even keep things civilized.

Feel free for anyone else to jump in!

500 bucks is too light for any decent gaming machine. Just a good videocard would eat up almost 50% of that. I say around 600-700 would be a good fit for what they are arguing.

Good idea though, I would throw out my build too just for the hell of it. I am about ready to upgrade.

[Nater]

$500 is pretty weak, but for $800 sure. I consider $800 to be the entry for a decent performance computer. You just have to compromise too much below that. Would the cost include the price of a Windows license? My fanboi friend seems to think he doesn't have to pay for Windows. Are you going to judge build quality too? What about stability?

If I was going to build a $500 box, I'd probably use AMD since intel has overpriced it's dual core i5 chips. The high-end models are just under the i5 750, which is obviously pretty dumb.

[iamsostupid]

most users don't need dazzling performance per thread/per clock or HT. they just need cheap cores, and the Athlon II X3 and X4s are incredibly cheap for how well they do. even for modern games, CPUs have been fast enough for about 2 years.

There is an Athlon II X3 + Gigabyte 785G combo on newegg for $133. 2GB of some cheap DDR2-800 is $40, a 500GB disk for $50, $25 DVDRW, $20 gigabyte case, coolmax 80Plus 480W is $50... easy unlock + 3.6 GHz (coolermaster TX3 is $15 with free shipping).

That comes to 318 which would technically leave enough money for a radeon 4890 as long as you have the monitor, keyboard and mouse. If you need to squeeze a monitor into that $500 then I would say that a $500 gaming machine can't be done, because i don't consider running a radeon 4670 with a $90 17" monitor to be worth the money. I wouldn't even do 2GB, I would go with 4GB and eat the extra $40. I'm with nater but I think it can be done for $700.

skimping on the display is a serious offense, so you'd have to just get this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824005129
and deal with the IGP until you can afford a used 5770 or something.

[Boneycat]

There is an Athlon II X3 + Gigabyte 785G combo on newegg for $133. 2GB of some cheap DDR2-800 is $40, a 500GB disk for $50, $25 DVDRW, $20 gigabyte case, coolmax 80Plus 480W is $50... easy unlock + 3.6 GHz (coolermaster TX3 is $15 with free shipping).

You should write your own $500 budget gaming pc article for sharkyextreme! It's been missing an article on that for over a year now. For $133 that Athlon II X3 + Asus M4A785-M mobo is a pretty good looking bang for the buck. Especially if that last core could be unlocked.

[Learux]

At this point in time three cores is more then enough.

[iamsostupid]

checking newegg combos is standard procedure for long-time neweggheads... it's like do you want to pay extra or not

You should write your own $500 budget gaming pc article for sharkyextreme! It's been missing an article on that for over a year now. For $133 that Athlon II X3 + Asus M4A785-M mobo is a pretty good looking bang for the buck. Especially if that last core could be unlocked.

buyers guides everywhere, published by every site, are terrible. do not even bother reading them. they may get the CPU and chipset right for your purpose, but mostly I find myself disagreeing strongly with the rest of the choices (RAM, power, video, storage) both for reliability and performance reasons as well as recent changes in the market, especially in regard to newegg combos and promos. a buyer's guide could only be 2 weeks old but that is still out of date and you'll probably spend ~$100 extra for the same parts if only you'd been aware of what you needed and where it was marked down, or wost case the buyer's guide was written by a dumbass and completely steered you wrong. there are always peculiarities in everyone's need for a computer, and that is what dictates what the best value is. generally speaking, the Athlon II X3 is the perfect chip, but if I knew I was building something for a veteran overclocker/power user who had assured me that he would never play an RTS game while folding proteins, I would probably say get a i3+gigabyte P55 for ~$220. definitely more expensive than the Athlon II but if you have the desire, a 4.7+ GHz dual core nehalem with HT is possible and faster. In fact the i3 is faster clock-for-clock than the Athlon II X3 - even in some encoding scenarios, so it must be difficult to imagine what an additional 2 GHz would do. Put simply, no Athlon is competitive with that kind of performance per thread. The only thing (as far as overclockers care) AMD has going for them is the low cost. it's basically impossible to mention specific cases at such depth like this in a published buyer's guide, and no one would read them.

the general rule is that the widest CPU will last the longest in a computer because of its execution resources, but for the time being a staggering majority of programs are still not multithreaded and a very high frequency clarkdale is an intriguing interim solution, especially if it's a secondary computer and you already have a high-freq yorkfield or i7. this is all the 32nm we're getting this year so you may as well enjoy it. the funny part is that an intel dual core with HT is pretty much within the margin of error compared to a native AMD quad. except AMD has an absolute top end around 4 GHz and clarkdale's is 5 ghz.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=80&p2=118

your best bet if you want a good machine is to go on the forums here or at anandtech.com and make a thread. tell people what you need and what you do with the computer and just let them debate it until a settlement is reached. the benefit is twofold because they use realtime pricing/promos rather than data from 6 months ago. eventually someone like me or nater or learux chimes in and you wind up with a good build. it's just that nobody does that.

[anubis44]

The only fanboi here is you buddy, and you don't know what you're talking about, clearly. Giving me a 'lesson' on how GPUs do FP intensive tasks better than x86 (or any scalar architecture) only goes to show it.

Well, if you know what you're talking about, why did you imply NVidia's floating point was better than ATI's? If there's any difference in transcoding quality, it's a software issue, not a hardware issue, and I have yet to hear you admit that.

As for the borderline insane fanboy charge, I probably have more AMD and ATi hardware sitting in my closet than you've ever owned. This is just what I can remember off the top of my head:

AMD: Athlon 500MHz, Athlon 3700+, Opteron 165, Opteron 170, Athlon X2 4800+

ATi: Radeon 8500, Radeon 9700, X1900XTX, X1900XT CrossFire and I have a 4890 running in a PC.

I have four nVidia cards and three intel processors. Tell me how many intel processors you've owned before you start throwing the word fanboy around.

WOW! your computer hardware experience goes all the way back to 2000! That's REALLY impressive. As for me, well, I was learning to program in assembly language back in 1979 on my Texas Instruments 99/4A - first 16bit home computer. After that, I had an Apple II clone with a 6502 8-bit processor running at 2MHz (instead of the 1MHz clock rate Apple IIs used), a Commodore64 in 1983, an Amiga 1000 in 1985 with which I was doing ray tracing, an Amiga 2000, an Amiga 3000, then my first PC, which was an AMD 386/40MHz in 1991. I will not list all the processors/video cards I have had since then, since it would take up a couple of pages, but HOLY CRAP you need to realize there are people on this forum with more experience and background than you have. At least TRY to be respectful once in a while: you never know who you're talking to...

I buy the hardware that is going to suit me best when I'm buying. As far as CPUs goes, that's been intel for the last three years and I don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever. The next time I need a GPU, it'll probably be nVidia.

So you're not a fanboi and you only buy what's best. That's not really compatible with "It'll probably be nVidia" since you haven't actually seen the performance of their cards yet, and you're already talking about buying one.

GPU compute is 80% about software assuming the chips are compliant with the same IEEE specification... Then again, saying GPU compute is completely a software problem is also incorrect.

Then it's a good thing I never said that. Obviously, the hardware architecture is the primary factor, and at this point, AMD hardware is faster than NVidia, so really, it boils down to some coding for ATI - something that is picking up real steam right now.

All you can do is regurgitate some boilerplate explanation written in every article that mentions computation of GPUs.

And all you can do is skirt the issue that for some people, going AMD makes more sense than buying all new hardware to go Intel.

Now, back to the original argument about CPUs. The K10 architecture is just plain slower clock for clock than Nehalem. Period. Intel's speed more than makes up for the higher price of entry. AMD can only compete on price (desktops) or by using 50% more execution cores than intel (servers).

Intel's speed does NOT make up for the extra cost for certain situations. I'm not going to repeat this again. There are some people who can simply plop a Phenom II into their existing rig and be good to go. For many, many of them, that's the smartest choice. If you can't concede this, you're too immature for me to continue debating this issue.

[Nater]

Good god, I thought that you'd had enough of it. My computing experience goes back to the 386, but just because you've been doing something longer doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about.

I never said nVidia's floating point was better or implied so. I said nVidia cards were better at raw compute due to both hardware and software reasons in the majority of situations both consumer and professional. They don't have a decent video encoder, their F@H performance is horrible compared to nVidia (F@H is the only GPU compute code regularly used in the consumer world), they don't have robust CS solution, you don't see oil and gas companies running servers with Firestream cards. AMD has never had a decent software solution for running compute code in on their GPUs and they still don't, it shows.

Secondly, I don't recommend people buy nVidia cards for gaming right now anyway. That throws the whole fanboyism out the windows right there. If I was, I'd be trying to make the argument for Physx or some other ridiculous reason.

Finally, yes AMD presents a better value proposition if you're weren't bright enough to dump them after the Conroe came out. The only reason to build AMD is because they're less expensive, it always has been with a few exceptions. A Ford is cheaper than a Honda, but that's about all it has going for it. We all thought that AMD could compete with intel (finally) when they built the original K8. We were all wrong. Intel owns x86 and without a massive dose of hubris, they won't relinquish their performance edge again. It's pretty telling that AMD has resorted to law-suits instead of engineering to compete with intel. Usually when that happens, it's the beginning of the end. Luckily for AMD, intel can't really let them die.

[taggart6]

[Squirrel Meat]

I think this new Tom article shows what we are talking about:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...pu,2499-8.html

This is the games portion. They locked the clocks at 2.8ghz and tested the chips. The Intel chips pretty much dominated. Hyperthreading hurt the i7 on a few of the games tests. But if you turn that setting off it totally beats the AMD. This is properly what happened in that article the OP posted.

I personally think that article is a bit twisted. All the benchmarks are ran at 1280X1024 which most enthusiasts know the intel chips are faster. Its when you hit 1680x1050 and higher that they both even out almost exactly the same. Those are the resolutions that most of us gamers play at. In which case it dosent matter which chip you use. My general consensus is that if you just game and use basic desktop apps then an AMD chip will be more than sufficient. From what ive read, the core i7's do a bit better with multi-gpu setups as well but personally I dont care because if im running 2 high end cards ill be getting killer fps anyways. If you do anything with mid-high end multimedia then the core i7's will rock your socks off.

I do light movie encoding (nero9 and handbrake) and damn I wish my 4th core unlocked lol. But it still dosent warrant me jumping on a brand new i7 setup. Which is why im jumping on AMD's hexacore the moment it comes out. See for me, the reason why I stuck with AMD is because I had an old 570 chipset AM2 board that allowed me to throw in a x3 720be and oc it to 3.6 gig which made it easy to just grab an AM3 board and some tasty DDR3 when I had the money 6 months later.

Personally I think people really chew into benchmarks way to much. 90% of people with alot of enthusiasts as well wont hardly notice the difference unless you do high end multimedia like I said before. Synthetic benchmarks show the raw performance and 90% of the time (again unless your doing mid-high end multimedia) your not using the raw performance of your chip. Benchmarks are fun, yes. But they dont tell the whole story. Im sure most of you are smart enough to realize this but it seems like sometimes we forget lol. I do it to.

6 months ago if one of you told me that intel was the same price I would have told you to F off but now it seems totally viable. Honestly, if I was building a gaming rig for a friend I would go with whatever had a good deal on newegg or frys.

[RealBeast]

Yeah, but ain't it fun.

Now I remember carrying around long boxes of punch cards! Other than u549, who probably was at the Alamo, anyone else remember putting those big Xs across the side of the cards with a big ink pen so you could get an idea where one card went back into the pile?

Oh, and sadly, I recall my first external hard drive better than my first GF. She was a 10mb beauty (the HDD) from Warp Nine Engineering for only $995.

[anubis44]

Good god, I thought that you'd had enough of it.

Well, good god, I thought you would never concede buying AMD can sometimes make sense for some people. Congratulations on being able to finally to (grudgingly and critically) say so:

Finally, yes AMD presents a better value proposition if you're weren't bright enough to dump them after the Conroe came out.

Well, people who bought socket AM2/AM2+/AM3 will likely be able to go from, say, an A64 dual-core or Phenom I chip to a 6 core Thuban chip with the same hardware later this year. Yeah, that WAS pretty damned stupid of them to buy AMD... Well, at least it only took you until page 4 of the thread to make that tarnished concession, but hey, better late than never. See, I thought like me, you were here to help other people pick computer hardware, or to have good-faith discussions about computer hardware. It sounds instead like you're trying to wear me down through sheer obstinacy or something.

My computing experience goes back to the 386, but just because you've been doing something longer doesn't mean that you know what you're talking about.

I heartily agree. In fact, I would never have mentioned the extent of my experience until you decided to whip our your e-penis first in a silly attempt to intimidate me.

I never said nVidia's floating point was better or implied so. I said nVidia cards were better at raw compute due to both hardware and software reasons in the majority of situations both consumer and professional. They don't have a decent video encoder, their F@H performance is horrible compared to nVidia (F@H is the only GPU compute code regularly used in the consumer world), they don't have robust CS solution, you don't see oil and gas companies running servers with Firestream cards. AMD has never had a decent software solution for running compute code in on their GPUs and they still don't, it shows.

O.K., good points. I can see where you're coming from. It's in the pipeline, but yes, ATI is not yet their with there GPU compute support. They obviously will be very shortly, since their entire corporate strategy revolves around fusion of CPU and GPU computing, but you are right about this right this very minute.

The only reason to build AMD is because they're less expensive, it always has been with a few exceptions. A Ford is cheaper than a Honda, but that's about all it has going for it. We all thought that AMD could compete with intel (finally) when they built the original K8. We were all wrong. Intel owns x86 and without a massive dose of hubris, they won't relinquish their performance edge again. It's pretty telling that AMD has resorted to law-suits instead of engineering to compete with intel. Usually when that happens, it's the beginning of the end. Luckily for AMD, intel can't really let them die.

O.K., here's where I really have to say something. My 30 years of experience might not make me automatically more knowledgeable, but it does give me tremendous overview. I've been hearing people like you predict AMD's permanent submission to Intel for nearly 3 decades. When Intel released the 386, people thought AMD would be screwed. Same goes for the 486, and then, with the Pentium, pro-Intel idiots were saying 'O.K., now AMD's REALLY going down. Intel's in charge and STAYING there!' When AMD released the Athlon, these same fools looked pretty pathetic. The Pentium IV was supposed to bury the Athlon XP... until the Athlon 64 and A64 X2 crushed Intel's chips. Now, Intel has once again regained the upper hand, you pro-Intel enthusiasts are once again (for about the 5th or 6th time in 20 years) squawking about Intel's permanent superiority.

Try to imagine how you must sound to me when you say that it's likely Intel will continue to dominate into the future. It sounds ridiculous. AMD has, for over 20 years, been constrained by the need to coordinate design updates and releases with chip production capacity and technology updates within their own in-house manufacturing - no longer. AMD can now sub-contract to one of several different facilities and even release multiple product revisions within months of each other. They are no longer chained to the financial restrictions of having to produce chips in-house. To make matters worse for Intel, AMD probably has the very best microprocessor design team on the entire planet. These guys designed the Digital Alpha processor, and shortly after AMD gave them all jobs after Compaq bought out DEC, they designed the AMD Athlon and the Athlon 64. Now, the head of that Digital Alpha design team is at the helm of Advanced Micro Devices as CEO! Dirk Meyer is not some economist or marketing guru like most CEOs. The man is a microprocessor engineer, and he's now completely in charge AMD. Try to imagine how that changes the game here.

As strange as it may sound to you right now, I actually almost feel a little bit sorry for Intel, because what has been a serious but somewhat constrained competitor, AMD, is about to unleash some serious competition on them the likes of which they've never seen before. I predict that you're going to see AMD shattering sampling and product release schedules (like this):

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3736

in an almost unbelievable way, and that AMD's products are going to steadily out-maneuver and outperform Intel's over the coming months and years, but only time will tell.

[Nater]

It isn't ridiculous to assume intel will dominate the future when they have dominated the past. AMD has had a clearly faster processor for 3 years in 27 years of building x86 chips. They've been competitive on performance for a total of six out of 27 years. 11% and 22% of the time. Now they have no aces in the hole. They can't pillage the carcass of Alpha to build a new chip, they have to do it entirely on their own. They're not doing well.

AMD spent 1.8 billion on R&D in 2007, intel spend $5.9 billion. That's what it boils down to, intel has a lot more money. They have better fabs, they have a lot more engineers, they have a lot more resources. Intel builds a new microarchitecture every two years, AMD every four.

I've never once said that they would go away, simply because it is not in intel's interest to get rid of them. Without AMD, intel gets hit with massive anti-trust investigations. Much more serious charges than they're facing now. They'd face the real possibility of being split apart.

Intel wants AMD pushed to the margins and at under 20% market share. That's where they are now. Since they've dropped back to their usual spot in the market place, intel has stopped it's most aggressive pricing (look at the unusually high prices of Clarksdale desktop processors) and have relaxed the Tick-Tock cycle (Sandy Bridge to Q1) that was murdering AMD.

Could AMD pull a miracle again and produce a better chip than intel? Yes. Is it likely? No. Intel vs. AMD isn't like AMD(ATi) vs. nVidia. AMD has always been about cheap chips and intel has always been about performance. I don't see why people can't accept that. There is historically no trading of the performance crown, Intel almost always has it.

[anubis44]

Well, Nater, I must say this last post actually has the aura of civility about it that I was hoping for. Kudos to you for ratcheting down the bombast.

It isn't ridiculous to assume intel will dominate the future when they have dominated the past. AMD has had a clearly faster processor for 3 years in 27 years of building x86 chips. They've been competitive on performance for a total of six out of 27 years. 11% and 22% of the time.

It's not merely a question of percentages of times over the last 40 years that AMD has been ahead, it's the pattern of their trajectory. Until 1999, AMD was only ever playing catch-up. Before the Athlon, AMD never had the very fastest x86 processor: for the first 30 years (1969-1999) of AMD and Intel's existence, AMD was never ahead of Intel in terms of x86 performance at the top end. Then, with the Athlon, AMD actually moved ahead for the very first time ever, even if only briefly (they got to 1GHz before Intel in 2000). Then, with the Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64 X2, AMD actually moved ahead of Intel and remained there for 3 years. Yes, Intel regained the performance crown with the Conroe, but if this trend continues, AMD may regain the lead again and hold it for a while the next time it happens.

Now they have no aces in the hole. They can't pillage the carcass of Alpha to build a new chip, they have to do it entirely on their own. They're not doing well.

Well, I hardly call borrowing features from your OWN design pillaging. I'd call that re-using a good idea. Pillaging is grabbing features from a competitor's processor, like Intel ripping off Hypertransport, monolithic cache architecture on a multicore CPU (Phenom):

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-cpu,2041.html

and x86-64 instructions from the Athlon 64. Now THAT'S scavenging. But before you bury your fingers deep enough into your keyboard to draw blood rushing to respond, yes AMD ripped off Intel's original x86 architecture, too, and the 286, 386 and 486 designs. Nobody's innocent here.

Also, I'd ask you to remember that same Alpha design team now form the nucleus of AMD's processor design team. They did do it on their own before, and they have done it again and again.

Even if you don't agree with me about this, you also have to bear in mind that AMD doesn't have to have the very fastest CPU all the time in order to have the best value proposition at the right sweet spots. Just before the i5-750 came out, the $200-$300 sweetspot was won by the Phenom II X4 965. This is a very important price point, because it represents the best bang for the buck price range most of the time since about 1997. It is here that AMD can compete, and is continuing to do so.

AMD spent 1.8 billion on R&D in 2007, intel spend $5.9 billion. That's what it boils down to, intel has a lot more money. They have better fabs, they have a lot more engineers, they have a lot more resources. Intel builds a new microarchitecture every two years, AMD every four.

Actually, even you have to admit that's pretty amazing on AMD's part. Currently, AMD has a market capitalization of about $5.4 billion, while Intel's is about $114 billion. So the company who's market value is only 1/21 of Intel's is still able to spend nearly 1/3 the money on R&D. By any standard, I'd say that's impressive! Something else you should bear in mind is that money alone does not buy innovation - something a lot of companies have found out the hard way. If AMD's processor engineering teams are sufficiently well-paid and provided with adequate incentives and a supportive corporate culture, they have already demonstrated themselves able to out-innovate even larger teams with larger budgets. For example, Intel just poured a huge amount of money into Larabee, only to find out that designing a leading-edge GPU architecture is much harder than they thought. Tons of money and tons of skilled people didn't buy them success there.

I've never once said that they would go away, simply because it is not in intel's interest to get rid of them. Without AMD, intel gets hit with massive anti-trust investigations. Much more serious charges than they're facing now. They'd face the real possibility of being split apart.

So what you're really saying is that it's out of Intel's hands anyhow, and it has nothing to do with benevolence on Intel's part. I guess they've learned what every bully eventually learns - that there's always somebody bigger than you are (like national governments with anti-trust laws). Next point.

Intel wants AMD pushed to the margins and at under 20% market share. That's where they are now. Since they've dropped back to their usual spot in the market place, intel has stopped it's most aggressive pricing (look at the unusually high prices of Clarksdale desktop processors) and have relaxed the Tick-Tock cycle (Sandy Bridge to Q1) that was murdering AMD.

Actually, Intel would really like to see AMD at about 1-2% market share but technically still alive, sort of like VIA's x86 business, but they just can't seem to pull that off. The reason why is manifold. First, somehow AMD continues to maintain a competitive product lineup that is price-competitive with Intel's offerings. Secondly, Intel's customers understand what it will mean for them if Intel manages to push AMD right to the wall and out of the marketplace - much higher costs for Intel chips. When Dell, HP and others put AMD processors into several of their laptop, desktop and server lines, it ain't just charity brother, it's self-preservation!

Could AMD pull a miracle again and produce a better chip than intel? Yes. Is it likely? No. Intel vs. AMD isn't like AMD(ATi) vs. nVidia. AMD has always been about cheap chips and intel has always been about performance. I don't see why people can't accept that. There is historically no trading of the performance crown, Intel almost always has it.

The word 'no' and 'almost' are at logical odds in your last sentence. Either AMD has NEVER taken the performance crown (it has), or there IS trading of said crown. Can't have it both ways.

Still, at least you're sounding civil. It's becoming more enjoyable to debate this subject with you with each reply.