AMD Pheonom II 955 Quad Core Processor versus Intel Cor i7 860 processor

Hello,

Which is the more powerful and versatile processor, or are they so close in the aspects that they are virtually the same (for the nongamer): AMD Pheonom II 955 Quad Core Processor or the Intel Cor i7 860 processor?

Here's a head to head comparison link of the two processors. Looks like the i7-860 is better, though the Athlon is probably $100 cheaper.

benchmarks

i5-2500k is HUGELY more versatile and productive -- Anandtech Bench Comparison

What are your uses? Are you overclocking?

For all we know a much less expensive CPU will be more than enough, or perhaps a 980X would be worth it for your uses.

But I guess in general, I would more or less recommend the following if you want quad cores and are not overclocking. All are worth their price (from newegg):

Athlon IIx4 640 3.0GHz -------> $100
\____ Identical to the phenom II models except it lacks L3 cache, which increases performance under certain uses especially with multi-media and gaming.

Phenom IIx4 955BE 3.2GHz -->$140
\____ The Phenom IIx4 955 is the highest end model worth the money. On average you will get 70% the performance of the i5 2500, I believe.

Core i5 2300 2.8GHz ----------->$185
Core i5 2400 3.1GHz ----------->$195
Core i5 2500 3.3GHz ----------->$210
\___ The core i5 2xxx models are currently the most powerful quad core processors available, sporting Turbo (increases performance for single threaded tasks). I cannot confirm but I believe they perform better with better power consumption as well.

Avoid the core i5 2xxxK models unless you are overclocking. The K models are identical to their non-K counterparts except they have an unlocked multiplier.

Psyllicon listed an excellent site for general comparisons. Though I don't trust their power consumption benchmarks (As an example, they show an Athlon II 240e using more power than an Athlon II 250 by a significant amount)

To directly answer your question as if the two processors are the same or not, no, the i7 is much faster. Would you notice? That depends entirely on what you are doing with the computer.