Phenom vs i5 and price, i'm stuck

[trif]

after a fair bit of discussion here i settled on the i5 build below, however its a fair bit over budget, where the phenom i've just specced up isn't, suggestions on the below would be great
thanks,

work have given me a flexible ish budget of around £470, the good i5 build goes about £100 over but hopefully for significant performance increase which i can justify the cost to my boss with (ie its 50% better for just £100 more)

basically how do these two compare? The i5 is over budget and i wanna know howmuch better it will be

Use will be workstation for Database/spreadsheet work (And web/email/wordprocessor), so a fair calculation and Lots! of programs open at once (quite a bit of single thread calc as well as multi-thread)

graphically it just needs to cope with windows 7 Aero stuff on dual screen @ 1920x1080 (tho this is not a current requirement and the budget build sorta ignores it, i guess that 256Mb card would struggle?)

so yea, any tips to save money on the better build? Or am i not really gaining much?

(its basically how does the stock Phenom compare to the i5 when its 1Ghz overclocked? And will the other higher spec components make much difference?)

Processor £121.73 3.66 Ghz @ Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM 
Memory £165.52 (8GB) 2x Patriot Sector 5 Viper II 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel

Motherboard £72.36 Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Graphics £49.35 ASUS HD 4670 512MB DDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Hard Drive £36.78 Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

Power Supply £74.57 Corsair 650W TX Series PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail
Case £25.54 Casecom 6788 Black Mid Tower Case
Case fans £7.96 4x 120mm Black Case Fan - 4 pin connector (@ 5 volts)
Cooler £19.99 Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus


OR


Processor £122.01 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Memory £165.52 (8GB) 2x Patriot Sector 5 Viper II 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel

Motherboard £71.78 Asus M4A785TD-V EVO Socket AM3 onboard DVI VGA HDMI 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
Graphics £21.47 Asus HD 4350 Silent 256MB DDR2 VGA DVI HDMI Out Low Profile PCI-E Graphics Card
Hard Drive £36.78 Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

Power Supply £39.92 Corsair 400W CX PSU - 12cm Fan 80Plus Certified Efficiency 6x SATA 1x PCI-E
Case £9.99 Casecom KB-7720BK Black ATX Midi Tower Case - No PSU
Case fans £1.96 80mm Black Case Fan - 3pin Connector - Screws Included

 

[babachoo]

Just a quick GPU option, a 1GB card with HDMI out for $44, or $29 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127458

And I would personally recommend the 750 over the Phenom because it outperforms it. But for future-proofing, I would say that the Phenom might have a better chance of surviving longer because the 1156 seems to be fast approaching a dead end. Intel futureproofing lies within the 1366 socket at the moment.

 

[BohleyK]

Just a quick GPU option, a 1GB card with HDMI out for $44, or $29 after MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127458

And I would personally recommend the 750 over the Phenom because it outperforms it. But for future-proofing, I would say that the Phenom might have a better chance of surviving longer because the 1156 seems to be fast approaching a dead end. Intel futureproofing lies within the 1366 socket at the moment.

^Pretty much...

The i5 is the better immediate choice but an AM3 build has a solid upgrade path. Once you upgrade your CPU with the new SCORPIOUS chip due in 2011, just update your BIOS and you have a way better processor than the i5.

With your current build configurations on both platforms you should go with the Intel option. You should consider beefing up your GPU to at least a 4860 level if you intend on gaming. Also, your AMD build needs DDR3 memory I believe, not DDR2. You should also bump the PSU to 550W.

 

[trif]

i'll keep that gpu in mind as mine just went out of stock,

i dont see much upgrade in the future, at least not for 3 or 4 years and a new OS then it'll be time for all new hardware anyway,

those dimms are DDR3, sorry, didn't realise that was missed from the name,

and i dont plan on gaming at all so gpu was somewhere i really cut back

 

[geofelt]

Another option: i5-661:

I just helped a friend build a system primarily for scientific calculations. We used the new 32nm clarkdale i5-660. It ate up his work!
The onboard graphics worked perfectly on a 24" monitor, even playing civ4. The i5-661 with faster graphics is almost the same price.
It is a 2 core chip with hyperthreading . It starts clocked at 3.33, with turbo up to 3.7 It ran a 2m superpi almost as fast as my overclocked i7-920.
With such a cpu, you save on the need for a basic graphics card. We used a gigabyte H55 S2m micro board, but to get 8gb of ram, a slightly more expensive UD2h with 4 ram slots is needed.

Only if you run multicore enabled programs might a 4 core cpu be better.

 

[trif]

hmm, interesting, could stretch to that as i'd save money on a gfx card but i've heard using the onboard graphics really hurts the processor, ie windows aero would really slow it down (benches i saw basically wrote off the onboard gfx and used an addin card, then it got close to the 750, but its more expensive that way)

dunno if all thats true tho ^^

 

[geofelt]

hmm, interesting, could stretch to that as i'd save money on a gfx card but i've heard using the onboard graphics really hurts the processor, ie windows aero would really slow it down (benches i saw basically wrote off the onboard gfx and used an addin card, then it got close to the 750, but its more expensive that way)

dunno if all thats true tho ^^

With clarkdale, the gpu is a separate chip that is attached to the cpu on the same die. They are clocked independently. We eid not disable aero or any eye candy, and the graphics looked good and were snappy. I think it can handle monitors on two of the three outputs that it supports; dvi, hdmi, and vga. You will have the option to add a discrete graphics card later if you find the need.

Also, because the chips are 32nm, they run cooler and therefore quieter.

 

[ewood]

Considering what you said the system will be used for, both processors are more than powerful enough. Database/spreadsheat work are very light on the processor and word processing, web browsing and email require almost no cpu resources. As far as aero all the new intel on board graphics can handle it, but so can a an amd board with good on board graphics and that option will cost much less.

As far as I can see you can not justify the extra cost of the i5 because you simply don't the extra performance it offers. A dual core would be more than plenty, an phenom II x3 would be a good option and more than powerful enough. The new intel dual core/ quad thread chips are way to expensive for the performance they offer.

The pentium based on the same core would be plenty fast enough especially after you OCd it to 3ghz and upped the graphics clock to 800ish mhz. That would be the option I would choose.

 

[Dougie Fresh]

You're talking pretty basic usage. Given your requirements, I would think an Athlon II x4 with a 785G motherboard would more than suffice. Also, Core i3-530/H55 would be fine. Either of the IGPs in the aforementioned is going to run what you need. Just understand that dual-monitors in the 785G setup would need to be one digital (HDMI or DVI) and one analog (VGA). I have this setup running in my office PC and it works great. It might the same on the Core i3/H55 but since I don't have that I cannot say.