Is AMD really THAT bad?

[pkhamidar2com]

Hey i got a few questions

1) http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=188 (how is a dual core like that faster than an amd quad core?)

2) Do you think its worth it getting a phenom ii x4 955 or should i just get a athlon ii x4 645 (both are around the same clock speed although as i been told clock speed as little effect on speed)

3) Should i just skip getting amd and just stick to intel seeing as even though they have lower click speeds and all, they are way faster according to that anand tech thingy.


thanks. I might have some more questions later so yeah.

 

[simon12]

1 the Athlon wins 20 of the 26 tests, did you notice alot of them are lower no is better
2 The athlon does not have L3 cache or an unlocked multiplier. It you are not overclocking the Cache will give around a 10-15% performance gain depending on application see http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=188&i=2.3.4.5.6.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.34.35.36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.45.46 for comparison.
3 In the price range of the 955 (allowing for AMD motherboards being cheaper) you would be looking at an i3. The comparison is much more up and down see http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=143
If you can wait until around April the sandy bridge i3s will perform better for the same price (ish). Or if you can afford more now you could look at the i5 760.

 

[pkhamidar2com]

well im buying all this in the summer in about 4 months or so, so i dont know if the prices will change alot or not.

I was reccomended an i5 2500k. But i dont know which cpu to get. I want to spend around 90 - 100 pounds.

I like the athlon because its only like 80 quid so its really cheap.

What do you reccomend i do cus im really confused. I just want to get the one best for value and all. And on all those benchmarks the intels are wayyyy faster. like the dual cores beat the quadcores sometimes!

its strange.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

Re-read that comparison you linked to. The Athlon II CPU actually wins most of the tests. Hint: the higher score isn't always the winning score. Also note that the comparison doesn't have any gaming scores. AMD does pretty well in those too.

There's a $40 difference between the Athlon II and the Phenom II. Given that choice, I'd get the Phenom II.

I went a different way for my own system though -- my recent income tax refund allowed me to get an Intel Core i5 2500K system. Check out the comparison between the Phenom II 955 and the 2500K here. The 2500K wins every test, but costs $80 more.

Edit: Dang it -- got pulled AFK while doing my reply and got scooped! lol

 

[jj463rd]

If you pay attention in several months time AMD's new Bulldozer Zambezi CPU should be released.In a couple of months from now those older Phenom II's and Athlon II's will replaced by that more potent CPU by AMD.No one as of yet has any benchmark to compare it to the i5 2500k or i7-2600k so we will just have to wait and see.
In addition the Sandybridge LGA 1155 motherboards currently have a chip set problem which will take a few months to correct.So it will be quite interesting to see how both platforms (Intel's Sandy bridge and AMD's Bulldozer) will turn out.
So far though the benchmarks on the i5-2500K and i7-2600K are very impressive.

 

[fshaharyar]

JJ u are very much in line with the prospect of bulldozer but that is far ahead in time since there is a power play going on Llano which will be released a lot earlier than bulldozer's desktop variant which will be around Q3 or Q4 of 2011

just look this following article. and about the Sandy Bridge this will take about a time of 2 months or may be more just read the following article.


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4139/cougar-point-xps-l401x-i7-2630qm/4

 

[jj463rd]

I've heard that Zambezi will be released in Q2 of 2011.
JF-AMD states Client launch in Q2 2011

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/298612-28-bulldozer-showcased-cebit

The desktop version

http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/item/21753-amd-to-showcase-bulldozer-at-cebit




http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20101105133510_AMD_to_Start_Production_of_Desktop_Bulldozer_Microprocessors_in_April.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_microprocessors#Bulldozer_core_architecture_.28future.29

 

[pkhamidar2com]

how much will the new one be?
How many cores?
Will the other amd products go down in price?
What does Q1 Q2 and Q3 all mean?

thanks

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

Q1, Q2, Q3 = quarters of the year.
Jan Feb Mar = Q1
Apr May Jun = Q2
Jul Aug Sep = Q3
Oct Nov Dec = Q4

 

[loneninja]

how much will the new one be?
How many cores?
Will the other amd products go down in price?
What does Q1 Q2 and Q3 all mean?

thanks

You must be very new to the world of business, every financial year is broken into 4 quarters. Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4. I don't pay attention to the exact dates, but basically every 3 months is a new quarter, so Q2 is April-June.

I personally don't think Athlon II/Phenom II will drop in price with the initial launch of Bulldozer, it seems 8 core is the first to launch and I would hope that performs well enough for AMD to price it $300+. I expect the major Athlon II/Phenom II price drops when Llano hits market shortly after Bulldozer, as that will be replacing those chips in their current price bracket.

 

[jerryman]

Hey i got a few questions

1) http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=188 (how is a dual core like that faster than an amd quad core?)

2) Do you think its worth it getting a phenom ii x4 955 or should i just get a athlon ii x4 645 (both are around the same clock speed although as i been told clock speed as little effect on speed)

3) Should i just skip getting amd and just stick to intel seeing as even though they have lower click speeds and all, they are way faster according to that anand tech thingy.


thanks. I might have some more questions later so yeah.

AMD is not bad at all! you just stick with intel the 955 & the 965 are great for gaming you did not say what you are going to be doing that you need the speed for are you doing video editing rendering record movies burning DVD's at the same time if so intel is what you want something like i7 i5 you also forgot to say if you was building a new system or if you was trying to upgrade your current system

 

[MU_Engineer]

Hey i got a few questions

1) http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=188 (how is a dual core like that faster than an amd quad core?)

Like simon12 said, the Athlon II X4 wins 20 out of the 26 tests and is very clearly the faster CPU of the two. Four of the tests it does not win are SysMark 2007 tests, which are synthetic benchmarks and thus have no bearing on any real-world performance. So once you throw out the useless synthetic tests, the Athlon II X4 wins 19 out of 21 of the tests, and quite a few by a large margin. The other two tests the E8400 wins are the Photoshop retouch test and the Microsoft Excel 2007 Monte Carlo simulation, which are both very notably heavily optimized specifically for Intel CPUs. Also, realize that the E8400 is a fairly expensive high-end CPU while the Athlon II is not. The equivalent to the E8400 would be the Phenom II line, which has an additional 6 MB of L3 cache and up to about 10% higher performance than the Athlon IIs.

2) Do you think its worth it getting a phenom ii x4 955 or should i just get a athlon ii x4 645 (both are around the same clock speed although as i been told clock speed as little effect on speed)

Depends on how much you want to spend and if you want to overclock or not. Clock speed does have a good effect on performance since performance goes up linearly with clock speed- i.e. a 3.3 GHz CPU will be 10% faster than a 3.0 GHz CPU in all usage scenarios. The Phenom II also has the L3 cache, which can improve performance. If you want to overclock the 955 is a Black Edition CPU with an unlocked multiplier and will be a better overclocker than the Athlon II X4.

3) Should i just skip getting amd and just stick to intel seeing as even though they have lower click speeds and all, they are way faster according to that anand tech thingy.

Go back and look at the results you just pulled up. The AMD CPU is much faster than the Intel one- realize that in some of the cases, a longer bar is better and in others, a shorter one is better. Granted, the E8400 is not a new Intel CPU, go look at something like the i3-500 series or i5-600 series for a better comparison. I would not overlook AMD CPUs since they generally offer better performance for the dollar if you are not willing to spend more than $250 or so. Intel's fastest CPUs are faster than AMD's fastest, but you also have to pay more for them- Intel sells desktop CPUs for $1000 but AMD's top out at below $300. AMD also offers a better platform for the dollar as well, since you can go plug a $70 Athlon II X3 into an 890FX motherboard and get 2x16/16+2x8/4x8 lanes for multi-way CrossFire, but you have to pony up close to $300 for the i7-950 to put in an X58 motherboard to get more than 2x8 lanes of PCIe on an Intel platform. Also, the SATA ports on AMD motherboards won't fry on you either like they can on H67/P67 Sandy Bridge motherboards.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

also, when you look at games that take better advantage of 4 cores, the athlonx4 will beat intels dual core. I believe future games will take advantage of multiple cores more and more and you will then see better improvements for amd.

 

[pkhamidar2com]

How much do you guys think the phenom 955 will go down by after the release of the new bulldozer CPU?

 

[Chad Boga]

How much do you guys think the phenom 955 will go down by after the release of the new bulldozer CPU?

Keep in mind that even though BD's release is meant to be in Q2, it is far from certain that widespread availability will be occurring before Q3.

If you are going to go AMD, you probably should wait till AM3+ motherboards come out, so at least you then have the option down the track of a simple CPU upgrade, if you are into that kind of thing.

 

[pkhamidar2com]

oh ok, im guessing am3+ supports am4 processors? or not?

i dunno.

 

[MU_Engineer]

oh ok, im guessing am3+ supports am4 processors? or not?

i dunno.

Not a whole lot is known about anything beyond AM3+, so we don't know. AMD has said that future platforms will have further integration of GPU and other chipset functions into the CPU die/package, basically making a Fusion APU type of device with a larger number of more powerful cores than what "Zacate" and "Ontario" have. AM3+ Bulldozers are not supposed to have an APU but later ones probably will, so I am guessing there will be a new socket after AM3+ that breaks any sort of backwards compatibility since it needs to have a wildly different pinout to support the APU functions. However, that's just my speculation and only AMD insiders know for sure, and their NDAs keep them from telling.

 

[pkhamidar2com]

Best answer selected by pkhamidar2com.