What should I go with?AMD or Intel?

The E6400 out performs the 4600+ in, well, everything. If you can afford it thats the one you should get.

Thanks.I forgot to mention that im not really into overclocking.

Thats a shame, the C2D's are great oc'ers.

It's not that I dont want to oc it,its mostly bacause I dont know how to do it and erm..Im abit scared.

C2D E6400

Toss a coin.      

No, actually, don't do that, that's a very bad idea. :wink:

Sound advice.

I am an AMD fan myself but going C2D anyways. They perform better than AMD for much less money invested.

Depends upon your computing environment and your wallet. Give us an idea what you would like to do with your computer and provide some details about your current system, i.e.:

What type of mobo?
RAM?
video subsystem?
OS?

Don't buy a bunch of new stuff unless you are a trust fund baby and the cash is burning a hole in your pocket!!

Gaming and surfing only.
Here are my specs:
Asus A8N-E mobo
2GB of RAM
ATI RX800XL(soon to be replaced with a 8800GTS)
XP SP2

If you go with AMD you may be able to keep your mobo. But unless you would like to be ridiculed you should go with E6400.

What about just upgrading the CPU in your board to a socket 939 Athlon 64 X2? The rest of your system is still pretty top-notch and it's not really time to replace all of it IMHO. Get an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ or 4800+ or an Opteron 180 or 185. All of those chips should serve you pretty well and be a decent upgrade over the 3500+ while not requiring you to buy a whole new board and RAM.

And unlike what BaronMatrix says, nobody should ridicule you if you do an upgrade to a newer AMD CPU in your current board. BM's a bit, er, melodramatic is the right word. He has himself gotten ridiculed for being a very enthusiastic AMD fan in the face of a bunch of very enthusiastic Intel fans. So don't mind what he says as it was a snipe at certain other forum fellows. If you want to upgrade your CPU to an X2, by all means do so (and I think that's actually the smartest move in your situation.)

I have yet to hear of any S939 NF4-based motherboards with a dual-core aware BIOS version that can't run a dual-core S939 Opteron.

Dual Core Opty's should now range in price between
$154 - $335 - - - - hurry if youin's be interested because the prices are going up

 

Sounds cool,but I will have to upgrade my mobo too!Or not?I think that it doesnt support X2 cpus.

Looks like it does support Athlon 64 X2s:

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=171&mod...

Look under the "CPU" heading.

Yer A-Seuss s939 is good to go dual core with the latest BIOS

Thanks alot I never thought of that!I might give the X2 a try.I hope I wont be dissapointed.

heh I just noticed something, if you change the digits in 6400 you get 4600, seem kinda coincidental?

Your mainboard supports dualcore CPUs.
I thought that you are going to sell your old stuff and buy new.
If you can just sell your old CPU and keep the mainboard, an Athlon64 X2 CPU will be the best choice.
5000+ is roughly performing same as E6400, although the E6300 is a 5000+ equivalent for gaming. Also, good choice would be the 4800+ 2.4GHz 2x1MB L2, which is marginaly slower than the 5000+, but is more worth for the money.
If you want to overclock your new CPU, Opteron 170 is the best choice with the best performance/price factor.

Good luck

That's true, but name one place where you can still find 170s

< ---- Not a Fan Boy but just got another Opty 170 4 days ago for $172.00

The Opty's will double your L2 cache over the Toledo X2.

And I've learned that for some folks an *OC* is never a simple thing but in the case of your mobo, an Opty and a few well-placed questions on the internets and yull be multi-task kickin' arse . . .

Here's a link for an Opteron 170:

NewEgg

the opty 170s are nice, but still, name one place that still has them at this point

I'm surprised, newegg had ran out a while ago on all their opty's, seems like they got a last second shipment as amd officially discontinued 939 I believe with the start of 2007

True no one SHOULD but that's not the case. A guy asked about a fan for 5000+ and was told he had to get Core 2 or he was wasting his money.

Well, its all who you talk to and whether you are friends with the people here. If the people here think you're a n00b and don't think you know you what you're doing, they're probably going to ridicule you regardless. But if you know the people and they trust your judgement, it might only be a simple question of why you bought it and when. I am an am2 user myself and its not to say the am2 is slow or anything, just conroe is a lot faster. I think getting a 939 opty 170 would be the smart choice here, because the opty's are proven ocers plus it is the smart decision because its a lot cheaper.

But if you know all the benchmarks and then still say amd is better just because you personally like amd more, than that's another story

The real problem I've been watching in these forums is that people come here asking for advice and in a sudden they're recommended to go with intel no matter what!

These are just intel's marketing trolls doing their job in a public forum where people come here for advice but instead they got mislead to buy intel and only intel. This is becoming a nasty habit in THG's forums.

Core2s are good in some apps and X2s are good for other type of apps. it all depends on the kind of apps you use for a living.

well I know that for the longest time amd used to kill intel at gaming, while intel used to beat amd at video encoding and other such apps. Now that amd has lost gaming to conroe, what really does it have? I am all for amd, but will not say that conroes are worse than amd, as that would be a flat out lie.

And less, I know there are trolls here that try to force you to get whatever they're marketing

I don't have any friends here. Shoot I don't have ANY friends because I'm often ill-tempered and liquored-up  

AMD versus Intel ??? WHO CARES !!! Get what you want and enjoy it.

We are all pawns in the manufacturers marketing games. Obsolescence drives profitability - or we would all be surfing on our Tandy 1000's.

Even though I'm still pissed at Intel for Rambus I run my OR840 every day! Some builds just work . . .

And don't get caught up in the hype . . . .

EDIT: Opps! Back to the thread. Go with the Opty 170 for $194!

I can see why

Actually, the Toledo core has 2x1MB of L2 cache.

If you have a good 939 skt board, and you upgrade to the newest bios for x2, go for the amd chip.
Or you can spend cash on a new motherboard, chip and ram.
It all depends on what you wish to spend.

DDR2 is still to expensive for me to go the Intel route.
I would not even bother with an AM2 right now, though this may change in the future.

Opps!

You are correct,sir . . .

Though some Toledo dies have 1/2 the cache disabled . . .


Edit: See Heyyou27 above.

Not to hi-jack the thread, but alng the same line, I'm looking to upgrade my system from a 3500+ 939 in the next 3 months or so. The system is used primarily for gaming. I'm looking at the E6400 or E6600. My question is does anyone know when AMD will be coming out with thier new processors that will compete with the Conroe, or should I just buy the Intel?

AMD will be launching Barcelona on the 2nd quarter of this year. Expect desktop variants on the 3rd quarter. For the while (and if you want), you can buy a cheap X2 processor for your s939 board and save all those bucks for when Agena (desktop variant of K8L) makes its debut on the desktop.

True, but if you wanted cheap, you get amd's 65nm lima single core cpu. That's gonna by like $50 at the most considering it's single core

I wonder how k8l is going to be though, its their only chance at competing with the dore micro-architecture, so they need it to be a big win, otherwise they're screwed until something like 2009 or so when their new arch whatever comes out. I think that the am2+ should turn out nice though, especially with ht3, because the amd's thought was lower clocks, faster connection bus and it worked against all the p4 and netburst/preslers, then the new ht3 should be a definite plus for their performance, because they have basically doubled their connection, so kinda effectively doubling their performance *in theory*, this is all in theory, for all we know, it might not make a difference, but it'd be cool if it did

I'm also guessing that AMD will make a better use of HT3.0 than what they did with previous offerings.

Well, what do you mean by previous offerings? Because only ht 1 and ht 2 are out right now.

I would suggest if you are a gamer go with the E6400 and if you dont play games get the X2 4600+. The X2 4600+ is about $30 cheaper on newegg and in none games they are about the same.

I don't see any reason for the 4600, the cache is too littele, with amd, imo you either go with the 4800 or the 3800, those are the two best deals you can get, one is only $130, while the other has twice the cache, which makes it better it most cases

the opty,s and toledo,s have the same l2 cache.

hell they are the same core,s.

  just seen your post  

True, just some of the toledo's have half the cache disabled. I believe it was manchester to truly only have 1mb cache

That is not true, the E6400 is faster than an X2 4600 in the vast majority of non gaming benchmarks/applications. The E6400 is actually around the same levels as an X2 5000+.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2903&p=...

In the non gaming tests, the E6400 is faster than the X2 4600+ in 7 out of 8 benches, with one essentially a tie.

Edit - damn typos. :wink:

That sounds about right, considering that the 6600 equals the fx-62 in most benchmarks

It used to be the other way around until the C2D was released. BM did everything within his power to dissuade people from purchasing them, even saying that they wouldn't be able to get their hands on one until Xmas. So what you see is a reaction to that.

Toledo has same cache as dualcore Opteron, 2x1MB L2.
Machester has 2x512kB L2. There are X2 3800+ and 4200+ with Toledo core, but with half L2 disabled.
The X2 models with 2x1MB are 90nm 4000+, 4400+, 4800+ and 5200+.

yeah, I wish the 65nm had the 2nm cache too

dont forget the fx-60  

which is what i have.
well its a 4400 oc,ed to 2.6.

i can consider it an fx60 cant i?
it makes me feel better that way  

The X2 4600 was stated by the OP's as the AMD choice. The X2 3800+ is better due to the given advantage of OCing and price. The small amount of OC one can gain from the X2 4800+ and the somewhat higher price would make this CPU a bad choice.