Greetings kind opinion-givers,

I am selecting AMD over Intel for philosophical reasons, so Intel supporters please don't hammer me.

I am looking for real-world opinions on which CPU to choose, the AMD Athlon X2 5600+, X2 6000+, or FX-62. The 5600+ has the benefit of using the full 800MHz DDR2 speed, compared to the 6000+ memory speed of 750MHz (it's the divider thing). Of course, the 6000+ operates at a higher frequency than the 5600+, but does that outweigh the RAM access speed? Finally, there's the FX-62, which is unlocked. The price difference is irrelevant.

I don't mind a little overclocking, but I will always choose stable operation over screaming performance.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Regards,

Altazi

I am not trying to hammer you but if price is irrelavent then why not just go with a hign end C2d or quad? Why are you sticking with AMD if I may inquire as to your philosophy?

What kind of person chooses the slower thing over the faster thing for philosophical reasons? Those proccesors are now expensive paperweights compared to the Core 2.

OK, thanks for that.

I have dealt with Intel professionally, and I have several "differences of opinion"

I am looking to build a system with a reasonable level of performance, half gaming and half engineering work. I expect to move most of these components to my wife's computer in a year or so.

Regards,

Altazi

AMD's have better price to performance ratio on the lower end. They are still a better deal than lower end C2D offerings.

@ OP, they will all perform very similar, in certain situations the 5600+ will surpass the 6000+ due to it's even multiplier (more RAM bandwidth) but the 6000+ beats it in most situations I believe. Check the CPU charts and see which one fits best. The FX-62 is pretty much useless since your not going to get much out of it by OCing.

The 5600+ and 6000+ processors are not AMD's lower end.

Lower end processors in general since they cost <$200, Intel's offerings in that price range aren't as good unless you OC the crap out of them and invest in a better cooler, mobo, etc.

As an owner of a C2D cpu and someone who recognizes the superiority of the C2D CPU, I don't get why you two have so much difficulty with his simple question.

To save him the trouble, I'm going to answer both of your comments, and then his (to the best of my ability).

Little - at least you were polite. He clearly doesn't want to go with an Intel CPU, and he can answer why for himself, but I'd suggest that having a duopoly is very, very, very much preferable to an Intel monopoly. I love my blazing c2d, but I know that if it weren't for AMD I would not be able to afford such a nice cpu. Supporting the underdog is a great thing, and frankly the C2Ds are not that much better than the X2s, despite what the fanboys want to say. Yes, they are better ... once you overclock, there is no comparison. If you don't, however, or if you don't overclock much, then the difference is relatively small. Most people won't notice it - only gamers with a high end GPU or people doing very demanding CPU intensive work will notice, and even then, it won't make or break much of anything. He is willing to overclock, sure, but it really doesn't matter - he stated he isn't going for the absolute highest performance, and he said that money isn't an issue so future upgrades probably aren't out of his means.

As for starcraftfanatic, those processors are actually fairly decent, priceerformance wise, if you don't intend to overclock. They're also much more energy efficient - most CPUs, remember, are not under load most of the time, and unless something has changed recently AMDs cpus use less power when idle (mobile's not included ... I just don't know about those). Additionally, as I stated before, supporting a company that needs support ... a company that WE NEED, for the sake of innovation and competitive prices ... at the cost of a small bit of CPU performance ... qualifies as a philosophical matter.

I wouldn't normally interject like this and answer for someone else, but it just galls me that he asked such a simple question, and that he asked sooo clearly to leave Intel out of it, and yet the first two posters (who are, with regards to the superiority of the C2D, correct) ignored what we could easily argue to be the most important part of his very concise and simple question.
And I hate fanboys for any company, be they the fools who denied the superior performance of the C2Ds even after it was evident that the benchmarks were no hoax, or the fools who insist that AMD X2 cpus have nothing to offer or that they are outdated, simply because they aren't the best (the fx-60 is better than the lower end C2Ds ... are those C2Ds paperweights if you don't overclock them? Or perhaps you are a fanboy ... I say "you" in a general sense. The sad thing is, the "you" to whom I am referring doesn't know that I mean him/her).

As for the original posters question, I'm not the most qualified to answer it, but I will offer this:
Running the memory in time with the CPU is good, but increasing the memory speed, independent of other factors, still yields some performance increase, according to the tests that I have read. Increasing the CPU speed, independent of the memory speed, also increases performance. If you aren't going for the greatest performance, I'd say you should go with 5600+ - you wont notice a huge stability difference, or any at all I should think, between those CPUs. Unless, of course, you plan on operating them at high ambient temps - then get the fx cpu and underclock and undervolt it.
I also doubt you will notice a big difference in performance between the 5600 and the fx cpu, but we'd really need to know what your plans for this computer are. Do you plan on playing games using a high end GPU? Get the fastest you can, in that case, and then overclock a little more (you may still end up bottlenecking your GPU).
If I were only willing to go with AMD, I'd get the 5600 today and a Barcelona CPU in a couple months. I certainly wouldn't worry much about using a 1:1 ratio, if performance is not absolutely vital.

Oh, and sorry if I was a little harsh, little_scrapper. You may not have answered his question, but you aren't obligated to - you just wanted to know why. I thought the phrasing of starcraft's post was a little abrasive, that's all.

I would recommend the 6000+, because when socket AM2 came out, Tom's Hardware did a benchmark comparing a Socket 939 Processor using DDR 400 , and an AM2 processor using DDR2 533 and DDR2 800. The difference in performance was negligible. So I don't think you'll see a difference between DDR2 750 and DDR2 800.

"Perfect is almost good enough." and you want to go with AMD. Your logic is absurd.

So the E6750 http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspe [...] ia=BA24051 is a lower end processor?

Hey Altazi... I've been looking at those processors for months and waiting for the prices to fall.

I'd go with the 6000+ if you want pure performance... on Newegg its $10 more than the 5600+, so why not?

If you want less power consumption, the 5600+ will be a bit better and might run cooler since it uses less juice. It does give the extra 50mhz in ram. Honestly the ram speed difference would be nominal. One thing to consider, I'm sure the next generation is right around the corner? Both are very fast... in my opinion...

I've been happily running my 2700+ (built Feb 2003) into the ground... I'm waiting for the next generation of AM2 sockets with the new PCI-Express socket to come out first. That could change things between the Intel vs AMD since AMD isn't rushing their new products but rather developing them fully. Intel has had a slight edge as long as I remember... but AMD has been the best value all round which why I've preferred them for 7 years. ;-)

Excuse me.
Burning your money on a lower performing CPU is foolish IMO.
Why not get the 6400+ Black Edition [url] http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33341/135/[/url]?

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_ [...] &chart=444

AMD is still the better deal.

And yes, the proc you chose is under $200, IDK why you have to ask me that.