AMD Phenom II vs Intel I7 (take price AND performance into account)

Which one do you guys think has a better price-performance ratios? The AMD Phenom II 920, or the Intel Core I7 920, remembering that price has to be a factor...

Depends on what you're doing

I have used both PhII 940 and i7 920, very hard (impossible) to notice any difference in speed.

For gaming, true (Aside from ridiculous multi GPU situations). I've got some Matlab code that runs MUCH faster though on an i7 (due to memory limitations), and for encoding or something like that, there is also a noticeable difference. It all depends on what you are doing.

You're not looking hard enough. Like someone said before. If you're running a SLI or Crossfire setup the I7 is the way to go. It's also a lot easier to get the I7 to 4ghz and beyond. Without drastic watercooling the P2 stops around 3.7-3.8Ghz.

Simply put:

SLI/CF or vid encoding - i7

Single card + most other stuff - Phenom II

This myth has been repeated so many times that many people just take it as a fact without bothering to actually look for any proof.

I did some analysis of 3DMark Vantage GPU scores available on their "ORB". With two and three card 4850 and 4870 cards on various CPU the results were actually very similar regardless of brand. Amusingly the results show that the i7 does not scale as well. (I attempted to use the most "average" scores available for the various CPU. Of course there are extremes; but even if you ignore the average and use the extreme results for both brands it does not support the myth.)

i would think one of the AM3 phenom II's would provide a better comparison. they have higher HT speeds, and more cache, which can help performance.

exactly

PS im impressed how everyone is being fairly factual (for the most part) and not just picking favorites. props guys

The PII AM3 quad core will be an interesting comparison with i7 as its more apples for apples.
Both will be quad core DDR3 based systems and flagship CPUs.

Its in great anticipation I await for AM3 quad core 3.2ghz out the box PII's to arrive on April the 20th so I can then decide what to build, i7 or PII...

My rig will be used 95% of the time for gaming, but I want something that will last as best as possible, intel or AMD doesnt matter either way to me.

I highly doubt that Intel would design a chipset for a single processor series. Links please.

Personally, from the reviews I've read cf / sli performance is more dependent on the chipset than the CPU used. As far as CPU performance goes, most reviews show the i7 out in front by a fair margin in most applications.

Overall, the Phenom II has a much better price-performance ratio because the Phenom II X4 920, decent AM2+ motherboard, and DDR2-1066 RAM are SO much less expensive than an i7 920, decent LGA1366 board, and DDR3-1066/1333 memory. The i7 920 is certainly faster than an X4 920, but unless you're doing a ton of video rendering or encoding (where the i7 really shines), it's not that much faster to warrant the extra price, in my opinion. Plus, the Phenom IIs use less power than i7s, run cooler, and overclock nearly as well.

@Croc: LGA1366 most certainly does have an upgrade planned. The X58 chipset is only going to be used on LGA1366, but Intel will continue to provide new chips for LGA1366 for some time. The next chip planned for LGA1366 is a 32 nm, six-core unit called Gulftown. Like the current Bloomfield i7s, Gulftown will be available in a few speed grades and will be the only new chip shipped for the socket at the time (there are supposedly not going to be any 32 nm quads for LGA1366, only the six-core.)

Granted MU.

Kassler is a amd fanboy. So that statement was directed towards him.


You can run a PII system and a sempron system and not notice the difference. He is/was just doing his normal troll post.

And in practical use as you say you wouldnt notice the difference between a Intel Pentium E2220 and a i7 extreme. Or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 and a PII 940 BE.

If this so called pratical use is all you need your machine to do you dont need any new cpus period. Yes most people are fine with Pent 4s and 512mb of ram.

The i7 just doesnt do well in benchmarks. It just doesnt do well in crap like 3dmark. It peforms in real world apps.

For the average person, of course PII is the better buy. I wouldnt even give the ave. person that much power myself.


But if you do do work with heavy cpu loads thats where the PII i7 convo should be. Is it worth it for you to spend extra on the intel for the performance increase? That depends on what your machine will do.

But anybody that says ohhhh hey I cant tell the difference between them is either a fanboy or somebody using a machine that is already more powerfull than they need. Or somebody that just likes to make there e-penis bigger.

Im about to upgrade my x2 6000 to phenom 2 955 at 3.2 ghz. Which has been reported to easily hit 4 ghz on air cooling. Price isnt known yet since it releases on April 20th. My guess is it will be below the i7 920 price of $288. I plan on OCing it to 4 ghz or higher and already have 4 Gb of DDR3 1333 memory and a DFI Socket AM3 motherboard from NewEgg. Just waiting on the release of the 955. Hopefully it will be under $250.

Athlon X2 users have been waiting for these bloody apps for years now. The Athlons are already independant core so how are these apps going to kill off their performance? If these multithread apps help Nehalem then I expect/suspect that they will also help the Athlon X2's. Thank the lord that we might finally be able to head off in the right direction now that someone has eventually seen the light and caught up.

lol soldier everytime, what is with you and including a picture of your set-up...i swear it's like you love tos how it off, it is nice though, not too much differnt than mine I guess, except for all the speakers.

Which mouse are u using btw, it's razer soemthing I know, but not sure whihc, how is the tracking in FPS and RTS's?

well since were showing off rigs lol,,

why the phenom 2 920 and not 940?

I'd wait for the D0 stepping of the i920 - Anandtech oced it to 4.3GHz on air stable. Besides, 2 or 3 weeks ago Microcenter had the C0 stepping for $199.99 .

Tankguys.com will guarantee a D0 stepping but they want $380 or some such. Better to go shopping at Microcenter and look for the SLBEJ label code, and save yourself some $$.

I did not miss the point. Your point is just flat out stupid.

The D0 stepping is a slight tweak to the original shipping version of the Core i7. New steppings are small tweaks that may do any number of things:

- Fix bugs that are present in the original stepping, such as how the B3 stepping of the original Phenom fixed the TLB bug.
- Tweak with the silicon to reduce thermal output, such as how the G0 stepping of the Core 2 Quad Q6600 brought the TDP down to 95 watts from the original B3 stepping's 105 watts.
- Provide an actual smaller silicon die for reduced-cache processors. An example is the B2-stepping Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6400s actually had 4 MB of L2 cache onboard, but half was disabled. An L2 stepping E6300 has a smaller die with only 2 MB of cache onboard.
- I am sure there are more that I didn't list, but you get the general idea.

Note that AMD and Intel handle steppings a little differently. Intel "starts" their steppings for a particular CPU line on a particular transistor size (such as 65 nm Pentium 4) with B0 and then goes up alphabetically and numerically from there as they continue to make tweaks. They restart their numbering/lettering when they get a new transistor size or start making a new CPU line (such as 65 nm Core 2). AMD starts their steppings for a particular CPU family (such as the K8 Athlon 64s) with a certain letter+number, such as B2 or C0. They only increment the number for new steppings of the same CPU line. It takes a process shrink or new major features to be added to increment the letter. An example of each:

Intel
1. 65 nm Pentium D initial shipping version: B1, fastest CPU was the 955EE.
- Revision C1 reduced the TDP in some chips from 130 W to 95 W and allowed Intel to ship the 965EE.
- Revision D1 reduced the TDP in some chips from 130 W to 95 W.
2. 65 nm Core 2 initial stepping version: B2, only Core 2 Duos shipped.
- Revision B3 allowed the Core 2 Quads.
- Revision L2 gave the 2 MB L2 parts a new, smaller die.
- Revision M0 reduced the minimum voltage on the chips considerably.
3. 45 nm Core 2 initial stepping: C0


AMD
1. Athlon 64 initial stepping: C0/CG
- Stepping D0 was the 90 nm 512 KB L2 Winchester Athlon 64s (no SSE3)
- Stepping E3 was 90 nm 512 KB L2 *with* SSE3.
- Stepping E4 introduced the X2 Manchester with 2x512 KB L2 and introduced the 1 MB L2 single-core San Diego.
- Stepping E6 introduced the X2 Toledo with 2x1 MB L2.
- Stepping F2 introduced DDR2 with Sockets AM2 and LGA1207.
- Stepping F3 introduced slightly faster versions of existing AM2/F CPUs.
- Stepping G1 introduced the first 65 nm chips.
- Stepping G2.introduced slightly faster versions of the existing CPUs.
2. Phenom initial stepping: B2
- Stepping B3 fixed the Phenom TLB bug.
- Stepping C2 introduced the 45 nm process, AM3/DDR3 support, and more L3 cache.