AMD Vs. Intel - Why the gulf in price?

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bradwitt

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Jan 17, 2014
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Hi all,

Ok, so looking online I can find AMD processors with 8 cores for less than £250, and for AMD they seem to be as good as it gets.

With Intel, you can pay up to £700 for a 6 core I7 processor.

Now I know this is a stupid question, but I guess I just don't understand what the extra money gets you?

If I'm looking to build a PC I can use to

- Write word docs
- Download/watch HD films
- Play MMO's + Football Manager

Would I be better off spending my money on RAM/graphics card and going for an AMD processoer? Or will I be massively missing out by avoiding Intel?

Thanks,
 
Solution
CaedenV
You get what you pay for?

Intel uses very large and efficient cores, where AMD uses much smaller and less efficient (but more numerous) cores.

Also, AMD "Cores" are not full "Cores". It is much more like Intel's Hyper-Threading technology where you have a main core, and then a much smaller sub-core. The difference is that if you want to run a thread on a HT core then it has to be specifically programed to do it properly, but AMD was smart enough to make it accessable to any thread, just like a normal processing core.

So essentially an 8 'core' AMD is really a 4 module 8 thread processor, much more similar to an intel quad core i7... except that each individual core is much less efficient, so in actuial use it tends to be about as...
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ronintexas

ronintexas

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Dec 10, 2012
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AMD makes great processors - and quite a few are great for gaming on a budget. Intel has the high end market - but you pay the price for the speed. The Core i5-3570k will give about the best performance on games today - so buying the high-end core i7 won't make the games play any faster....

GPU makes more bang for the buck on gaming - especially if you want higher end graphics and FPS.

Depending upon which MMO's you are playing, I am sure there are many that could recommend the best bang for the buck CPU/GPU combination that will give you everything you need.

For word documents - almost anything today works great there. Download/watching HD films almost any dual-core or better processor and GPU combination works great there as well. It comes down to the games you are playing.
 
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CaedenV

CaedenV

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Jun 14, 2011
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You get what you pay for?

Intel uses very large and efficient cores, where AMD uses much smaller and less efficient (but more numerous) cores.

Also, AMD "Cores" are not full "Cores". It is much more like Intel's Hyper-Threading technology where you have a main core, and then a much smaller sub-core. The difference is that if you want to run a thread on a HT core then it has to be specifically programed to do it properly, but AMD was smart enough to make it accessable to any thread, just like a normal processing core.

So essentially an 8 'core' AMD is really a 4 module 8 thread processor, much more similar to an intel quad core i7... except that each individual core is much less efficient, so in actuial use it tends to be about as performant as an Intel i5 in most workloads.


With all of that out of the way:
For the workload you are describing a 4-6 core AMD is probably going to be good enough. An Intel processor would have better single-thread performance, but I think we are finally at a point where even desktop power users would be better suited with a quad core device of some sort. Depending on which MMOs you play you could probably get away with an AMD APU and not even need a dedicated graphics card.
 
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bradwitt

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Jan 17, 2014
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Thanks Ronin,

At the moment I only really play Runescape, and I could probably manage that with the PC at my nans, which must have been built in Roman times...

The games I'd likely be playing are Football manager and MMO's such as Star Wars/WOW sort of titles.

If I went for a top AMD processor and threw in 8-16gb RAM, would that run multiple programs without a problem and cope with my needs?

Thanks,



 
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bradwitt

Honorable
Jan 17, 2014
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10,510
Thanks Caeden, that really helps...I hate not knowing what I'm talking about and that simplifies the differences between the two and I get why you would pay so much for intel now.

Cheers,
 
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