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Building new system - go with Core i7 or wait for amd x6

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Hello all , I finalized a new system config, based on core i7 930 with Asus P6X58D Premium mboard and 3x2 gb Gskills ripjaw series ddr3 ram. But recently I read about AMD Phenom II x6 launching this month. I want the best performing PC for heavy multi-tasking and gaming, also photoshopiing etc.. The AMD Processor i m interested in is the AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE running at 3.2 ghz, plus its now got Turbo core technology similar to intels turbo boost.

So should I go with core i7 930 or wait for Phenom II x6 1090T to launch. (launching on April 26).

More about : building system core wait amd

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CPUs Expert

I would say wait for the X6. in multi threaded apps it does better than an i7 960, and costs much less.

obviously non-multi-threaded apps is it's weakness (still strong), but for what you are doing with modern apps it is a better option.

EDIT: and you are supporting competition between AMD and Intel, which is only for the better

Depends.

In gaming, the i7 will likely win as games rarely use more than 3 cores. However, not a single game stresses current quad cores to its limits, so both the X6 and the i7 will do nicely.

Productivity apps are better threaded and will see a huge benefit from the added cores. X6 here, no doubt.

AM3 also offers better upgrade potential and a far lower platform cost.

If this didn't convince you, you're insane :p 
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one-shot said:
What parts are in the system you have now?


Well currently i m running a dying P-4 3 ghz processor on Intel 915 motherboard with 3gb ram and Nvidia 6600GT Gfx card.
CPUs Expert

well some dutch site I read on (tweakers.net) got their hands on the cpu, (3.2 ghz model), and they benchmarked it, no numbers though.

supposedly it was compared against the i7 960.

3dmark06 it did much better, as with other multi-threaded apps.
single threaded, or max 4 cores apps the intel obviously did better though.

best to wait indeed though.

but, would you not like to be able to say; "I have a six core computer"? :p 

Since the benchmarks are out now, they are pretty confusing, does anybody know how worst the Phenom X6 1090T is compared to core i7 930 gaming wise, and whether it can match up with it with a good gfx card.
CPUs Expert

You can make several good and bad points to sway you either way. In my opinion this is sort of like "what is best, a dual core processor or a quad for gaming?". Except we are now talking about a quad vs a hexacore. The i7 beats it out in some benches and visa versa. I am reading that some users are hitting 4.3ghz with this chip with little effort so if this is the case I believe I would sway toward the AMD offering.

Again, there is good and bad points and someone else can pop on here and give you reasons to go the i7 route so ultimately I think this is a decision for you to make. I am going with the X6 1090T myself but mainly due to the fact that the motherboards that I have for both of my Q9550's have crappy chipsets that are saturated too easily with the bandwidth of the SATA ports and the USB ports when transferring large bits of data. This has annoyed me for about a year now and when I built my x4 620 system and copied data to it and saw how fast data transferred to and from that system it finalized my decision to sell everything off and upgrade once more.

I also now am more into video editing now more than gaming and thats another huge reason for me to upgrade to the X6 1090T. But you may be strictly a gamer and if thats the case there are more reasons to go the i7 route for you than for me. But if the over clocking people claim they are getting is real I have a hard time thinking the X6 1090T shouldn't be considered. Generally the higher the frequency, the better the video card will shine and a X6 hitting 4.3 should be able to open up any current video card and let it shine to be all it can be. It would be nice to see some benchmarks with the X6 1090T and the i7 930 with 1,2 and 3 video cards to see how well they scale vs each other. With them at stock speeds then at max OC potential, that would be interesting...
CPUs Expert

The 1090T is just as good as the 930 in gaming, probably better. Ignore nonsense medium resolution benchmarks - the AMD's seem to have a hard cap that does not affect true resolution gaming in any way.

Also, check out this :-



20% faster than the i5 750, 5% faster than the i7 980X. There is no need to worry about gaming on Thuban, it's probably the best real gaming chip you can buy, unless you play Far Cry 2 all day (ever wondered why we see that benchmarked so much?).

englandr753 said:
You can make several good and bad points to sway you either way. In my opinion this is sort of like "what is best, a dual core processor or a quad for gaming?". Except we are now talking about a quad vs a hexacore. The i7 beats it out in some benches and visa versa. I am reading that some users are hitting 4.3ghz with this chip with little effort so if this is the case I believe I would sway toward the AMD offering.

Again, there is good and bad points and someone else can pop on here and give you reasons to go the i7 route so ultimately I think this is a decision for you to make. I am going with the X6 1090T myself but mainly due to the fact that the motherboards that I have for both of my Q9550's have crappy chipsets that are saturated too easily with the bandwidth of the SATA ports and the USB ports when transferring large bits of data. This has annoyed me for about a year now and when I built my x4 620 system and copied data to it and saw how fast data transferred to and from that system it finalized my decision to sell everything off and upgrade once more.

I also now am more into video editing now more than gaming and thats another huge reason for me to upgrade to the X6 1090T. But you may be strictly a gamer and if thats the case there are more reasons to go the i7 route for you than for me. But if the over clocking people claim they are getting is real I have a hard time thinking the X6 1090T shouldn't be considered. Generally the higher the frequency, the better the video card will shine and a X6 hitting 4.3 should be able to open up any current video card and let it shine to be all it can be. It would be nice to see some benchmarks with the X6 1090T and the i7 930 with 1,2 and 3 video cards to see how well they scale vs each other. With them at stock speeds then at max OC potential, that would be interesting...


That was a very comprehensive reply. thanks for that. Well basically i upgrade after 3-4 years, and again plan to run the new configuration for atleast 3 years down the line. So if i7 is good gaming wise and 1090t is gud multithreading wise, then i would probably want a chip which provides me the best balance between gaming and multitasking. I read a lot of reviews and forums since yesterday, and am still confused in the end. Some say even gaming wise amd beats the i7 whereas some say 1090t couldn't even match the i7 930 in multitasking. Exactly dunno which ones better????

jennyh said:
The 1090T is just as good as the 930 in gaming, probably better. Ignore nonsense medium resolution benchmarks - the AMD's seem to have a hard cap that does not affect true resolution gaming in any way.

Also, check out this :-

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/Data/2010_4_26/AMD-launches-the-Phenom-II-X6-Sexa-Core-CPU2c-We-take-it-for-a-spin/BC2.png

20% faster than the i5 750, 5% faster than the i7 980X. There is no need to worry about gaming on Thuban, it's probably the best real gaming chip you can buy, unless you play Far Cry 2 all day (ever wondered why we see that benchmarked so much?).



Can u tell me the source of that screenshot ?
CPUs Expert

booseek said:
Jenny, I'm thinking about the 1090T vs the i5/i7 myself. Do you know of any more gaming benchmarks at high resolutions and high quality presets? Maybe at similar clocks, too?


Here you go - http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_phenom2_x6_...

There's really not much between them, simple fact is any good quad core and even the better duals are all at the same level when it comes to high quality gaming. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking any recent quad or high end dual is good enough.

About the only advantage over the Intel platform over AMD currently is the flexibility of crossfire/SLI on the same board. If AMD played that game, that would be yet another bragging point dissolved.

Quote:
What is going on is very simple, the CPU is creating a bottleneck and as a result the GPU performance is being limited. If the Radeon HD 5870 can easily average 200fps at 1920x1200 but you limit it with a processor that will only allow for 100fps at 1024x768 then you are going to see virtually the same amount of frames being rendered at higher resolutions as the GPU is capable of much more.

So based on that look at the Unreal Tournament 3 results. The Core i7 980 XE allowed for 323fps at 1024x768 and 218fps at 1920x1200 as this is the limit of this GPU setup at this resolution. This limit was also reached with the Core i7 975 EE and Core i7 930 processors.

Now the Phenom II X6 1090T was only able to render 187fps at 1024x768 and we already know that the Radeon HD 5870 is capable of much more at this resolution. Therefore increasing the resolution is not going to see much of a drop in performance until the GPU once again becomes slower than the CPU. Given we have seen an average of 218fps at 1920x1200 with the Core i7 processors the Radeon HD 5870 is not going to be maxed out by the Phenom II X6 1090T using the quality settings which we tested with.

The above comment i got from one of the forums stuck in the same discussion as mine, I thought it would be wise enough to go with 1090T and save the remaining amount for a really gud gfx card, also from the reviews even though its slightly behind the i7 930 in some of the benches its also able to reach near the 980x, so i thought the x6 would provide me the best balance overall. But this comment totally proves the 1090t hopeless.
CPUs Expert

Dear oh dear.

AMD has some cool circuitry inside every chip they make. This little part of the chip allows it to sacrifice fps when it doesn't matter (ie, at anytime the fps totals are above 100), in order to boost fps when it does matter (ie, when games need to be boosted most around the 60fps area).

The evidence? You've already shown how Thuban falls behind at 200fps.





There is the evidence of AMD's plan. Make the cpu better at *real* and recent games - 20% faster in FC2 and BC2, not some ancient crap like UT3 which would run perfectly on a 5 year old laptop.
CPUs Expert

Whats interesting about this whole debate is that AMD has managed to release new products that are competitive at the top tier of Intels cpu offerings and everyone is scrambling around playing tug of war debating on exactly where these new chips fall in the performance arena.

The bottom line is, these are fast, affordable processors that you can't help but love.

Think of it this way. If these new AMD cpus were installed in a case with all of the latest components with windows 7 and a top video card of your choice and it had an Intel logo on it you would probably have nothing bad to say about the playability in games and productivity of work related tasks and you would be speechless when they told you it was an AMD system.

I agree that for someone to say this is a bad gaming cpu is a fanboy statement. The competition is sweet right now. = P
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