CAN'T DECIDE, INTEL OR AMD?/????????????

[claytonian]

hi, i cant choose, and I need your help. Im looking to build a small gaming machine to play rts's at 10x7 and I have an 8500gt. The card i know is crippled, but it has served me just fine. I can either get the e2160/80 or the amd 5000BE. I know that they are both great oc'ers, but i want to know which i should get. I was leaning towards the intel because the biostar mobo i can get a combo with supports quad core, and the intel qc are way better than phenom. What do you guys think, and should i buy and am cooler if i get the intel?

 

[boonality]

Just from my recent experience in researching.

A GA-P35-DS3 ($90) with an E6750 ($190) is $280 together.

A gigabyte AM2 board ($90) with an A64 x2 6400+ ($170) is $260 together.

That's a $20 price difference. The ONLY area where the 6400+ beats the 6750 in all of Toms CPU charts is the price/performance ratio.

But it comes in ahead of the 6750 by mere 3-4 FPS in some games while the 6750 comes in a mere 3-4 FPS ahead of the 6400+ in some games.

But the 6750 smashed the 6400+ in the 115 page powerpoint to .pdf conversion or whatever.

So for me the intel is the better choice because teh motherboard is easy to overclock and there is support for Q6600 native and the P35 with new bios revision will support 45nm quads.

So that's what I've been researching... in fact I'm about to create a post in here to have a few experts look over my choices to make sure I'm making a decent decision for my build.

Good luck.

 

[pat]

Check for motherboard for AM2 with the AMD 780g chipset. This would make a perfect match with the BE and you'll save money for better video card later.

 

[buzznut]

I agree, upgrade path to q6600 makes more sense right now. More mature chipsets available for intel also would be a factor. I think phenoms will work better with the 45nm parts and better chipsets than currently available. Check back on phenom in about a year, haha.

 

[buzznut]

personnally, I wish I had the scratch right now for the AMD 5000BE and corsair ram combo from newegg right now, heckuva deal. I already have an AM2 board tho.

 

[claytonian]

so you guys are thinking intel? what benefits, other than .2 ghz do i get from the 80 over the 60? and should i buy an aftermarket cooler? have you guys heard anything about the transcend memory on newegg, is it any good?

thanks for the help so far, but i probably will still have more ?s

 

[shadowmaster625]

if you're spending $90 on an amd mobo, you're an idiot. Unless its a 780G with HDMI+VGA right on the mobo. That makes me salivate.

 

[jay2tall]

if you're spending $90 on an amd mobo, you're an idiot. Unless its a 780G with HDMI+VGA right on the mobo. That makes me salivate.

Ditto. I really like the specs of that board. HD3200 built into the board with VGA,DVI, & HMDI outputs. That's so awesome. You can make a cheap general use Vista machine that has a decent onboard video.

If I were building a gamer or mid-high end machine, GO INTEL.
If I were building a lower end non OC budet machine, I'd probably go AMD.

 

[boonality]

Wow, all i was doing was offering my point of view and based on my budget i chose to go with an intel chip. never knew it would start a flame war. sorry OP.

I was just stating that for the dual core line up, you get about the same performance out of AMD and intel, and they are about the same price. it's personal preference. In my own opinion, AMD is better... but that's because i have an A64 3700+ that I built in 2005 to outrun an aging P4 that i built in 2002 and it just spanks, even does pretty good nowadays. But fact is that intel kind of has an edge at the moment. the choice is yours.

 

[boonality]

BTW... I guess I'm an idiot for buying a $90 motherboard instead of a $200 motherboard... What kind of logic is that anyway?

 

[jay2tall]

BTW... I guess I'm an idiot for buying a $90 motherboard instead of a $200 motherboard... What kind of logic is that anyway?

economical logic? haha. I dunno to each their own I guess. I splurged on my last mobo, the one before that was a $60 VIA. That thing was bad JUJU. This one had build in wireless G, and at the time that was an $80 card itself if I got a PCI card and it overclocked well. Wish now I got an SLI board though... CRAP!

 

[claytonian]

hey, im loving the flame war, it gives me much info, keep going, thanks so far

 

[jay2tall]

Who's flaming? besides Ricky in the pink speedo over there in the corner? haha.

To the OP. You mentioned the 5000BE or the e2160? Dude the 5000BE is a whicked chip. I'd take it over any e2xxx or e4xxx intel. Once you hit the e6xxx and above intels you can kill AMD goodbye.

 

[boonality]

ya the AMD x2 5000 thru 6400 just kill the intel e2xxx and e4xxx series procs. But the intel e6xxx series compete fairly evenly but not clock for clock. For example I found that the E6750 is just about even with the 6400+ and the clock speeds are very different at 2.66 vs 3.2 respectively. But again, the price difference is very small.

 

[jay2tall]

ya the AMD x2 5000 thru 6400 just kill the intel e2xxx and e4xxx series procs. But the intel e6xxx series compete fairly evenly but not clock for clock. For example I found that the E6750 is just about even with the 6400+ and the clock speeds are very different at 2.66 vs 3.2 respectively. But again, the price difference is very small.

I agree. The intels have much more room to OC though. If you rating stock system I agree. I am not a complete fan of the E2xxx and e4xxx installs. I am on a e2160 right now for work and its fine, but I can tell when I launch certain things it chugs a little. It does run cool and quiet though. Not really a powerhouse or anything. I still like the AMD x2's in that area, but the e6xxx intels are just nice to play with.

 

[englandr753]

If you are looking for a budget gaming system definitely go with the BE5000. If budget isnt your issue then go Core 2 Duo or Q6600. I just switched from the AMD 6000+ to the Intel Q6600 and to tell you the truth they are both quite nice. I didnt really need to upgrade but the temptation was too great.

Was it worth it? Hmmm, maybe. It does run very nice and I have a higher end motherboard with my Intel setup so its not the perfect balanced comparrison anyway. With the AMD setup I had the Gigabyte M55-SLI board and now the EVGA 780i mobo that supports tri SLI. both good boards but not in the same class..

 

[EXT64]

I think in your case either would work fine. If you want really low power for good performance you could get the 4850e which is a 2.5GHz part that runs at 45W (as opposed to the 65W for the Intels and other AMDs). Just something to think about. Either choice would be fine, though.

 

[claytonian]

if i got the amd how long do yout hink it would be before i had to upgrade, to say a quad, or tri core proc?

 

[iluvgillgill]

for intel you can easily achieve high overclock with a decent aftermarket cooler.so performance/price is better than AMD.

 

[pat]

if i got the amd how long do yout hink it would be before i had to upgrade, to say a quad, or tri core proc?

Hard to tell..

Current apps don't really benefit from quad core. And given that my 4 years old 3200+ is still good with today's game, then I would say that the BE should last long enough for what you are doing. If you are happy with the 8500, then the BE will be more than enough.

It is easy to overestimate the power needed for today's computing, because all these new product you see happening all the time seem to have necessary feature. But it is not the case. Because to really benefit from a powerful cpu, you need a powerfull video card. and for that powerful video card, a good display to make it shine at these higher resolution. So, why not more RAM? And a fast HDD subsystem to keep these 4 cores busy..


when I push my phenom in rendering or encoding, while doing something else to keep it busy, it is severly limited by the poor HDD that have to keep multiple apps happy... Good thing I have a RAID card with a RAID 0 array, and a Raptor.. but still, if you could sometime hear the noise coming from the raptor when it is really busy, that is scary.

 

[blacksci]

Alot of people are using quads now, and so far not many complaints, except the amd camp, phenom wasnt what it should have been, nuff said. If you going to game, and want to push the bleeding edge, go with a dual core it will serve your purpose better. If you multi task quite a bit, and dont like to see it hinder your performance go with a quad. Im a heavy gamer and run a quad setup, i have no complaints, it plays games fantastic. But i cant obtain some of the higher clocks out there, although 3.2 serves me just fine.

 

[jprevost]

Ditto. I really like the specs of that board. HD3200 built into the board with VGA,DVI, & HMDI outputs. That's so awesome. You can make a cheap general use Vista machine that has a decent onboard video.

If I were building a gamer or mid-high end machine, GO INTEL.
If I were building a lower end non OC budet machine, I'd probably go AMD.

I looked into that board/chipset and I don't know where I stand. It's so specific that I would only use it for an HTPC that doesn't play newer game titles. Maybe counter-strike or dumbed down TF2 but even then it would probably be used to play frets-on-fire at most. The performance of that onboard video is questionable. It's "decent" in the fact that it has DVI and HDMI out but the performance is about on par with a Radeon HD 2400 PRO . This board/chipset is great if you want to package is in a small case.
TTOP (To The Original Poster); What graphics card are you looking at or what price range right now. If you aren't, I wouldn't invest in a new processor. That graphics card is most likely your bottle neck for rts's.
For the price of a BE AMD chip and 780G board (around $100) I would go with a cheaper AMD board like Geforce 6100 and add a stronger GPU like the 9600GT or if you don't plan on playing higher res, an 8600GT(S) would suffice for 10x7. I personally wouldn't upgrade from 8500 to 8600. My rule for NV brand is to jump at LEAST 1 generation. I went from Ti4200 to a 7600Gt to a 8800GT never spending more than $200. So for you, an 8500 would mean at least a 9600GT and that's how I'd do it.
Back to processor selection. If you want to get the most for your money then an older Intel board like an ASUS and an E2 or E4 series processor would overclock nicely. I'm running an e6300 @ 2.8GHz on a Asus P5B-E (965P chipset) and it's wonderful. With the 8800GT this system is finally done being upgraded. Consider this wisdom, upgrades are rare and hardly worth it, so limit them to 1 per system build and you'll likely accomplish it while saving big bucks. Don't think going from a cheap dual core to a quad later will be much help (what do you do with the dual core?). The best time to upgarde is during a repair. My 7600GT's fan got on my nerves and my Dad's computers motherboard with onboard video got cooked by a faulty hard drive. Perfect timing; I fix the fan by ripping apart the plastic, install a slightly larger CPU fan from like a celeron, and buy myself an 8800GT for less than $200.

 

[jay2tall]

^
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I did not intend for the 780G comment to be used for gaming at all. I just like it because I would NEVER install vista on anything that did not have at least a dedicated graphics card. This kills 2 birds with one stone. I believe it even has dedicated memory for the HD3200.

 

[guanyu210379]

Is this thread a war between AMD and INTEL fans? Cooollll!

 

[jay2tall]

Is this thread a war between AMD and INTEL fans? Cooollll!

Not at all I think it is more or less picking apart each of them and a few items. It's sorta like a brother & sister bickering back and forth more than anything.