Amd or intel for future upgrating

ps-jl

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Jun 22, 2009
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I am planning on buying a pc. To be specific i will be using this pc for progamming applications, for gamming (occasionaly) and in the near future for grafic applications. howevere i can't figure out wether an intel i7 will have more possibilatys for upgading than a phenom II X4 or will tha i7 become obselete after sptember(as i know intel will have a new cpu ready by then).Finaly dose this play a viteal roll in the fight between choosing amd or intel cpu's???
 
Can't predict the future, but I would guess that AM3 would have a longer life. I don't think i7 will go away, but as soon as the replacement for the X58 chipset rolls around you'll probably need a newer motherboard for the newer CPUS. I'm sure LGA 1366 will be around for a while, but it's the life of the X58 chipset itself you should question especially when looking at Intels past behavior with LGA775. I also think that since they are going to release i7s on their mainstream LGA 1156 you will probably see a shift away from LGA 1366 until it goes away all together.
 
Well, you can put in Opteron processors into the 4x4 platform, but anyway ....

Yeah no one can predict the upgrade paths you may have. AMD really is pushing that it has an upgrade path. It's already accepted that any new AM3 CPUs will work in an AM2+ board so long as that board has the right BIOS updates. Bulldozer will not have a DDR2 controller and won't work with AM2+/AM2 boards but will work with AM3 boards provided the BIOS is updated.

As for Intel LGA 1366 is up in the air, especially with I7s for LGA 1156 coming about. Considering Intels past behavior of changing the pin layout so that a new CPU will not work with an older chipset of the same socket, I don't think the X58 chips will have much of an upgrade path.
 
Don't bother with upgrade path. Either way, for what you need (programing/gaming) i7 or Phenom II will be fine. The CPU in both cases will be enough to run your programing IDE,etc for a few years. As for gaming, you can upgrade the GPU for a few years as long as the GPU isn't bottle necked by the CPU and PCIe sticks around.