Is AMD currently competitive dollar for dollar with the Intel i7/i5s?

[MJZ]

Oh sure, I wasn't questioning that. Being that I was involved in dozens of these i5/i7/PIIX4 discussions, I am just curious as to how you decided the 920 was your only Intel option. The i5 is a great choice for $149, and the i7-860 goes for $229. So, I guess what I'm saying is:

149.99 Core i5-750
104.99 GIGABYTE P55M-UD2 Motherboard
254.98 Socket 1156 Total

165.99 Phenom II X4 955
89.99 GIGABYTE MA785GMT Motherboard
255.98 Socket AM3 Total

229.99 Core i7-860
104.99 GIGABYTE P55M-UD2 Motherboard
334.98 Socket 1156 Total

199.99 Core i7-920
169.99 MSI X58 Motherboard
369.98 Socket 1366 Total

Bang for you buck? How about an i5 system with an SSD?

Ah, I should mention I already have an 80GB G2 X-25M in my Laptop which I am taking out for the new build...

The other consideration is the board must be MIcro ATX and I would like to have an upgrade path (so LGA 1156 is not desireable in that effect).

 

[MJZ]

You're pairing an i5 with a cheap budget mobo (that will really only allow you to overclock on stock volts, raising voltage on low-end P55 boards is risky), and pairing the highest-end Phenom with an overpriced mATX mobo. Apples and oranges, man.

When you look at the cost/performance of a sub-$160 unlocked BE 550 and mobo, there's no comparison. Or, you could get an unlockable BE 720 and REAL motherboard for less than $180. That's 90+% of the performance for over 70% less money. There's really no comparison, even with the Microcenter price on the i5, since you'd have to pair the i5 with an average board just to get close to the same price. And the AMD systems come with a free game.

The point is that if you want the best price/performance, you have to go AMD. Intel really has nothing that can stand up to these unlockable processors. AMD processors completely dominate the budget sector, as long as you're an enthusiast.

Edit: this looks like a combo I could work with:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.308653

At $240, that is definitely nearly $200 cheaper than ($200* MA tax) + $210 EVGA X58Micro board!

 

[ordovician]

Edit: this looks like a combo I could work with:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.308653

At $240, that is definitely nearly $200 cheaper than ($200* MA tax) + $210 EVGA X58Micro board!

Meh, it's OK. Why not this? It's $20 cheaper. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.308581

Also, try to get a board that has an 8-pin EPS power connection, rather than a 4-pin. You'll get better power to the CPU for OCing. Also, overclocking on any motherboard without mosfet cooling is suicidal. Also, Black Editions are really not necessary. You can OC just fine by FSB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.299391

 

[MJZ]

Meh, it's OK. Why not this? It's $20 cheaper. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.308581

Also, try to get a board that has an 8-pin EPS power connection, rather than a 4-pin. You'll get better power to the CPU for OCing. Also, overclocking on any motherboard without mosfet cooling is suicidal. Also, Black Editions are really not necessary. You can OC just fine by FSB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.299391

DDR2 .. old board.

Where are the MOSFETs? Any chance you can stick on some Ramsinks for some better cooling?

 

[stateofjermaine]

You're pairing an i5 with a cheap budget mobo (that will really only allow you to overclock on stock volts, raising voltage on low-end P55 boards is risky), and pairing the highest-end Phenom with an overpriced mATX mobo. Apples and oranges, man.

You'll note that the suggested board is the one in my sig. I am perfectly happy with its overclocking ability. Also, you will note that I was simply comparing the processors the OP was considering (the 955 is no longer the highest-end Phenom, for the record). Whether you believe it is comparing apples and oranges or not (I don't see how), these are the options on the table. Heh, and $89.99 is overpriced? By what, ten bucks?

When you look at the cost/performance of a sub-$160 unlocked BE 550 and mobo, there's no comparison. Or, you could get an unlockable BE 720 and REAL motherboard for less than $180. That's 90+% of the performance for over 70% less money. There's really no comparison, even with the Micro Center price on the i5, since you'd have to pair the i5 with an average board just to get close to the same price. And the AMD systems come with a free game.

I would like to compare the performance of an i5 and a 550 BE, but for some reason no one bothers to compare them in any reviews. Honestly, I have no problem admitting that AMD has great budget processors for gaming, but the OP mentioned other CPU-intensive tasks (i.e. Photoshop, encoding/decoding), and for superior processing technology, Intel is clearly the current leader.

The point is that if you want the best price/performance, you have to go AMD. Intel really has nothing that can stand up to these unlockable processors. AMD processors completely dominate the budget sector, as long as you're an enthusiast.

I agree that if you want lower cost, you should go with AMD. But even if you choose to disregard my price comparisons, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find an unbiased enthusiast recommending a 550 BE over an i5 rig for cost/performance. And either way, the OP is not interested in either of these processors, so this conversation is fast becoming a waste of space.

 

[vjcsmoke]

Being an enthusiast has its roots in buying the cheaper product and pushing it beyond the limits of the more expensive product. Who would care about overclocking if you just went and bought the faster one to begin with?

Isn't buying a $200 i7 920 and then clocking it to outrun a $1000 i7 975 the same thing? Whatever part you overclock, you are trying to get better than stock performance. An enthusiast tries to get better performance out of what they have, whatever it is that they choose to buy. Whether it's an AMD or an Intel has nothing to do with that imo. Right now Intel is the performance king.

This has not always been the case. At one point AMD had very compelling performance vs dollars ratios with their CPUs. At that point I chose AMD because it made sense. And then the Intel Core 2s came out and changed the performance landscape. AMD couldn't catch up. Even with the Phenom IIs AMD has not caught up to i5/i7 cpu performance.

If you're only looking to save money on your cpu, then yes AMD has the chips that you want but they still don't beat Intel's offerings in terms of total perfrmance.

And although I own a 1366 i7 platform, I don't see a huge drawback in the 1156 platform not being slated to get hex-cores. Why? because higher clocked chips will still be released, and when the generation beyond hex-cores is released, you'll still need to buy an entirely new motherboard to run it anyways.

i5 systems are fast and cheap. Your only real expense there is the rising prices of DDR3 memory. In all other ways i5s have better performance and are competitive pricewise with any top line AMD offering.

Can AMD bring out a new chip to change things around? Sure they can, but I haven't seen it yet. and by the time it comes out, the question will be, can that chip beat Intel hex-core cpus?

 

[ordovician]

You'll note that the suggested board is the one in my sig. I am perfectly happy with its overclocking ability. Also, you will note that I was simply comparing the processors the OP was considering (the 955 is no longer the highest-end Phenom, for the record). Whether you believe it is comparing apples and oranges or not (I don't see how), these are the options on the table. Heh, and $89.99 is overpriced? By what, ten bucks?


I would like to compare the performance of an i5 and a 550 BE, but for some reason no one bothers to compare them in any reviews. Honestly, I have no problem admitting that AMD has great budget processors for gaming, but the OP mentioned other CPU-intensive tasks (i.e. Photoshop, encoding/decoding), and for superior processing technology, Intel is clearly the current leader.


I agree that if you want lower cost, you should go with AMD. But even if you choose to disregard my price comparisons, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find an unbiased enthusiast recommending a 550 BE over an i5 rig for cost/performance. And either way, the OP is not interested in either of these processors, so this conversation is fast becoming a waste of space.

Yeah, you're right.

 

[DanNeely]

with hexacores only roadmapped at the $1000 extreme price point I think even for this forum they're going to be a moot point for 99% of posters.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Can AMD bring out a new chip to change things around? Sure they can, but I haven't seen it yet. and by the time it comes out, the question will be, can that chip beat Intel hex-core cpus?

The thing is with Windows 7 now here , what else is there to get from the cpu but for gaming performance increase that usually means getting 80 frames per second instead of 60.

The whole computational field will shift as soon as you can use your graphicscard for number crunching .

The #1 reason for sticking with AMD is that Intel will screw us over with prices as soon as the competition is gone as we have seen at the start when the 1st Pentium arrived.

Intel is currently their own competitor, AMD just flat out refuses the comparison due to the lower cost of the platform.

 

[DanNeely]

Until GPU cores advance in capability significantly they're only going to be suitable for a the faction of scientific computing loads that have sequential memory access patterns and minimal to no cross thread communication needs. When those situations are not the case the applications will curl up and die in a sea of cache misses and blocked threads. A case in point I'm a major long term participant in the Einstein at Home project. About a year ago with nVidia assistance they attempted to port the Hierarchical all-sky Gravitation Wave Search application to CUDA. The port failed to run any faster than on a good CPU and the NV engineers were unable to improve it because the need for random memory access left most of the threads blocked at any given time.

Eventually this situation will improve; in theory the p1 cores in Larrabee could each run an independent CPU style work unit eliminating the blocking issues. Random memory access patterns or large a need for working sets would still be a potential problem since the amount of cache/memory bandwidth per core would still be significantly less than in a conventional CPU.

 

[Vengance_01]

Your best bang for your buck is a combo deal with the PII BE 550 and hope it un-locks. I got my G/F a MSI 785/710 cheapo M-ATX and BE 550 for 120$ after a 10$ MIR. 3.4GHZ Quad and PCI-Ex16 video slot on the cheap!

 

[MJZ]

The thing is with Windows 7 now here , what else is there to get from the cpu but for gaming performance increase that usually means getting 80 frames per second instead of 60.

The whole computational field will shift as soon as you can use your graphicscard for number crunching .

The #1 reason for sticking with AMD is that Intel will screw us over with prices as soon as the competition is gone as we have seen at the start when the 1st Pentium arrived.

Intel is currently their own competitor, AMD just flat out refuses the comparison due to the lower cost of the platform.

Thanks all, I ended up going with the i7 from Microcenter for $200 + tax.

The faster frames with the i7 I realized is probably critical once I start my Eyefinity array.

 

[Malakai]

in regards to gaming, a Phenom II X4 can hang right with, and even beat under some circumstances, an i5/i7 at similar clocks.

Dont go thinking 4ghz is an easy speed to reach on either amd or intel, i5's/7's and PhII X4's at 4ghz are quite rare for a reason.

In certain highly threaded cpu reliant tasks an i7 with hyperthreading will absolutely demolish an i5 or PhII so keep that in mind. It was not even a choice for me, as anything I do with my PC AMD does as or almost as good as the i* chips and cost considerably less. 100 dollar mobo, 160 dollar cpu, reused fast ddr2 that I paid a fraction of current costs for. Total win. I like any modern quad core cpu's for their longevity, they are a very worthwhile investment since they will last a long time, even several year old core2quad's still have the power to drive most any game with a fast gfx card; its only when you get up to multiple multi-gpu video cards where you start needing stuff like a 3.5-4ghz modern quad core, and its a negligable portion of the market actually runs stuff like that.


So to answer your question, unless you are encoding video or compressing files all day, or running multi threaded 3d rendering apps or something, a PhII X4 will serve you just as well. And in gaming you will not notice any difference except how much less your overall build cost was! Also a C3 X4 965BE is probably the easiest chip on the market to get to 4ghz, just simple multi adjustments you dont need to be messing with your fsb clocks And any 3ghz+ quad core is going to provide you with a totally snappy desktop environment and is even overkill for almost everything you do besides gaming!!

A quick comment on intel i5/i7 mobos: Top quality fully featured 790* boards are cheap on the amd side, 100-150 depending on how many pcie slots you need. The 100-150 dollar range i5 boards are real budget boards as far as features and stuff goes. And if you want 2 pcie x16 slots, its simply not possible on an i5 at any price range, you are stuck with a very pricey i7 board/setup. You can get dual x16, or 1 x16 2 x8 configs for 150 dollars with a 790fx board, and know it is also the top of the line stuff.

My customers right now are loving the 100 dollar Athlon II X4's, they are fantastic for your regular joe sixpack user. Absolutely stellar general desktop performance with the responsiveness only a quad core provides, for the cost of the total bottom of the barrel cpu of a year or 2+ ago. And of course also quite respectable gaming performance and great oc potential. So far I have built what, 3, no 4 boxes for custies with x4 n920's, 3 regular desktops and a media center pc. They are completely absolutely amazing for the price, and have the added benefit of requiring very light cooling and not making much heat. And with CNQ enabled coupled with win7 power save features, the systems are making less of a dent in peoples power bills as single core systems from a few years back.

I really <3 amd right now. From the enthusiast/gamer perspective I love them for giving me a high performance quad core box for much cheaper than I can get top of the line intel setup for.
But its even better for the regular web browsing youtube watching music listening word processing user out there, nothing can touch a 50 dollar x2 regor or 100 dollar x4 propus. An Athlon II x4 920 + 785g mobo is simply untouchable by anything else close to its price range. And the flexibility of using some new ddr3, or reusing your old ddr2, just adds to the greatness for regular people, as no one but a gamer or enthusiast is ever going to notice the diff between ddr2 800+ or ddr3.

 

[drescherjm]

in regards to gaming, a Phenom II X4 can hang right with, and even beat under some circumstances, an i5/i7 at similar clocks.

The key word is some.

Overall I put the Phenom 2 965 with its 3.4GHz clock in the same performance category as the 2.66GHz i7 920.

 

[ThisIsTheNewSound]

Dont go thinking 4ghz is an easy speed to reach on either amd or intel, i5's/7's and PhII X4's at 4ghz are quite rare for a reason.

Based on personal experience, and what I read on this forum, I would be quite surprised if you weren't able to reach 4.0 on an i7, assuming you have a decent aftermarket cooler on it.

 

[W.Feather]

i want to point out that 4.0 GHz on a Phenom II machine isnt exactly hard....ive had my PII X2 550 at 3.75 stable with stock cooler....once i upgrade it ill be going for 4..which I did post at, and boot into windows with, just not stable with acceptable temps

 

[Mr.HelloOperator]

In my opinion, when I invest in a computer I go all the way with the i7. Value wise, yea, you're probably getting more bang for your buck with the lower i5, but computer value drops so quickly. The extra ~$100 might give you a year longer.

Also, in the end it's not how good the hardware is, it's how you use it to its full advantage.