Intel D 820 or AMD 4200

[Drok]

Hi Everyone,

I am new here and I am not nearly as knowledgeable as a lot of you. I am having some trouble choosing the processor for the computer I am going to build. I am stuck between the Intel Pentium D 820 and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200.

I rarely play games and if I do they usually aren't very demanding ones. I will be encoding a lot of DVD video and I do work where I often have multiple applications running at the same time. If I get the AMD I will likely get a motherboard with an integrated video card, whereas if I get the Intel, I would get a Geforce 7300. Price aside, which processor do you guys think would be best for me?

Thanks,
Drok

 

[MU_Engineer]

The 4200 is a very good chip and faster all around than the 820. I don't game either and my 4200+ serves me well. It is also at least twice the price of the Pentium D 820. The Pentium D 930 is about as expensive as the 4200+ and will do at least as well in encoding, but overall it is slower and runs hotter.

Stay away from the 90nm 8xx series Pentium Ds since you said that price isn't a huge factor. The 8xx series is rather inexpensive but has pretty lackluster performance and runs very hot. The 9xx series Pentium Ds run cooler and perform better than the 8xx chips due to their 65nm architecture and 2x2MB L2. But the AMD dual-cores will clean the clock of any Pentium D within $200 of them.

 

[Scout]

Although the Smithfield will do relatively well with your DVD encoding, the Athlon will still be a bit faster I think. So if $$ isn't a problem, go with the X2.

 

[gOJDO]

What about Opteron 170?

 

[pat]

Hi Everyone,

I am new here and I am not nearly as knowledgeable as a lot of you. I am having some trouble choosing the processor for the computer I am going to build. I am stuck between the Intel Pentium D 820 and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200.

I rarely play games and if I do they usually aren't very demanding ones. I will be encoding a lot of DVD video and I do work where I often have multiple applications running at the same time. If I get the AMD I will likely get a motherboard with an integrated video card, whereas if I get the Intel, I would get a Geforce 7300. Price aside, which processor do you guys think would be best for me?

Thanks,
Drok

since you don't seem to need lot of graphic power, get the AMD, a nice passively cooled motherboard and a nice passively cooled video card.

Aim for a nice quiet PSU too.. You'll have one nice quiet machine that will outperform anything you can do with the 820D and much more quietly.