AMD Phenom II X4 940 vs Intel core2 duo e8500

It uses DDR3 if you buy a motherboard that requires DDR3, but DDR3 provides minimal benefits over DDR2.

You title refers to the AMD Phenom II X4 940 and the text to the AMD Phenom II X4 945. The CPU charts should help you decide: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] s,60.html.

E8500 would be best for games that use 2 or less cores (which is most games) because it will clock higher and is better clock for clock, core for core. But since you do vid editing I'd probably go with a quad. See if the progs you use for your editing use 4 cores and if so I'd go with the PII 945. Remember Q9550 is only $40 more and out-performs both in almost everything (besides a high OC on the E8500 in games/progs with 2 or less core optimization).

You have to compare the 9550 to the 955 BE phenom II...the numbers sorta give it away.


Anyway, http://www.anandtech.com/bench/def [...] p=88&p2=50

19 wins for the Phenom II, 13 wins for the 9550. Both cpu's are clearly very close in capability but the Phenom II just wins by a small margin in more.

ok so, lets say we make the comparison to the 9550 intel and 955 amd. we are getting the facts from anandtech showing the amd chip is slightly ahead. well at a 10 dollar less price tag on newegg, why don't i want to go amd? i can find similar motherboards and buy the same ram so all else being equal, the amd is newer and slightly on top. how close can the amd build come to an i7 build? is it worth it to spend a few extra dollars and get an i7 build? i am looking at a 800 dollar budget, os not included and i want to pop in at least a gtx260

Hi jkool55,
Actually the comparison should be between Intel's i7 vs AMD Phenom II, because they both are though competitors.

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Server Rentals

Actually, that was taken with the original 940 BE @3.7ghz, which only has a DDR2 controller, and the 945 and 955 BE have a higher overclocking margin than the 940 as the node matures.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] spx?i=3551

If you can't get at least 4.1ghz out of a 955 BE on decent air cooling you are probably doing something wrong. Getting 4ghz out of a 9550 takes a minor miracle. Even with both oc'd to the max, the 9550 only becomes 'as good as' the 955 BE.

Edit - having read some more on overclocking the 9550, there is no way at all that anyone can reasonably claim that overclocking a 9550 would give better results than overclocking a 955 BE in average cases.

get more cores, a dual core will make absolutely no sense 2 years from now

to me anything thats 300mhz above stock can be concidered a good oc

If you checked out that link I gave, you'd see that the 955 was at 3.8ghz at stock voltages. The average stock voltage OC on a 955 BE will be 3.6-3.7ghz.

I really don't believe that the average 9550 will overclock to 3.6ghz without a voltage increase. What fsb is that? Way more than the average FSB of an average intel mobo for sure.

I'm sure some 9550's will go to 4ghz, I'm just wondering what sort of mobo and memory is required in order to get there.

When I say 'average', what I mean is, I can plug my 940 BE into a $50 mobo and it will overclock to 3.7-3.8ghz. A 955 BE will probably go to 3.9ghz-4ghz in the same mobo. I think the average q9550 in an average intel mobo will be doing well and lucky to get to 3.4ghz.