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Two builds: Intel or AMD?

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As much as I hate to perpetuate the cycle of new users joining this forum just to ask a single question, I have to do exactly that. And since I've gotten a veritable smorgasbord of information by lurking on these forums in the past few weeks, I figured you guys were the best ones to ask.

Like so many other newbies here, I'm making a jump into PC gaming. I've done a fair bit of gaming before, but this computer is mid-range at best and Civ5 and CS:GO has been pushing it to it's limits. With my tax return I'm rewarding myself for my hard work and building myself a new one.

I was going to just use AMD products to save on money, both CPU and GPU, but something was missing. And I won't lie, Nvidia's PhysX is the main reason for this question. I feel like that's the direction gaming is going and I'll be missing out by not having that capability in my build.

I've got two builds here, price difference between the two being less than $100. I'd just like the community's opinion on which one I should go with.

ASrock Z77 Extreme3 mobo
Intel i5 3570k Ivy Bridge
GTX 660ti FTW
16GB G.Skill RAM

or

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX mobo
AMD FX-8150
Radeon HD 7850
16GB G.Skill RAM

The system would mostly be used for high end gaming, light web browsing, and possibly a bit of video editing. So with that in mind, I'd like the community's opinion on which build I should go with. Also feel free to make suggestions to change up either build, as long as we can keep it in a similar price range. Thanks!

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Thanks for the quick response!

I figured 16GB was overkill, but RAM is relatively cheap and I figure it'll last me for awhile so I'm happy there. That was mostly included just so you guys could get a better idea of the core build.

To be honest, I was leaning more toward the Intel build as well. The main reason I was considering AMD products was to save money, pure and simple. But after reading several posts talking about the i5 being superior for gaming, and seeing PhysX in my games side by side with no PhysX, I figured the extra $100 would pay off in spades. I just wanted a few opinions first. Thanks again :p 

Of those two builds the intel is better . Especially as the AMD 8150 is an older cpu and since replaced by the 8350

The 8350 is roughly on par with a 3570k in 1080p gaming , but often better at encoding and editing .
If you are loading and working on large video files then 16 gig of RAM could be justified . Especially if you know the program you are using is 64 bit .

The 660ti is a lot stronger graphics card than the 7850 so that build will game much better
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Jmcglosson said:
Thanks for the quick response!

I figured 16GB was overkill, but RAM is relatively cheap and I figure it'll last me for awhile so I'm happy there. That was mostly included just so you guys could get a better idea of the core build.

To be honest, I was leaning more toward the Intel build as well. The main reason I was considering AMD products was to save money, pure and simple. But after reading several posts talking about the i5 being superior for gaming, and seeing PhysX in my games side by side with no PhysX, I figured the extra $100 would pay off in spades. I just wanted a few opinions first. Thanks again :p 



If it's cheap, you might get the 16GB, but 8GB is suffice even for a bit of editing.

Jmcglosson said:
As much as I hate to perpetuate the cycle of new users joining this forum just to ask a single question, I have to do exactly that. And since I've gotten a veritable smorgasbord of information by lurking on these forums in the past few weeks, I figured you guys were the best ones to ask.

Like so many other newbies here, I'm making a jump into PC gaming. I've done a fair bit of gaming before, but this computer is mid-range at best and Civ5 and CS:GO has been pushing it to it's limits. With my tax return I'm rewarding myself for my hard work and building myself a new one.

I was going to just use AMD products to save on money, both CPU and GPU, but something was missing. And I won't lie, Nvidia's PhysX is the main reason for this question. I feel like that's the direction gaming is going and I'll be missing out by not having that capability in my build.

I've got two builds here, price difference between the two being less than $100. I'd just like the community's opinion on which one I should go with.

ASrock Z77 Extreme3 mobo
Intel i5 3570k Ivy Bridge
GTX 660ti FTW
16GB G.Skill RAM

or

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX mobo
AMD FX-8150
Radeon HD 7850
16GB G.Skill RAM

The system would mostly be used for high end gaming, light web browsing, and possibly a bit of video editing. So with that in mind, I'd like the community's opinion on which build I should go with. Also feel free to make suggestions to change up either build, as long as we can keep it in a similar price range. Thanks!


Interesting question, both builds are good. However the processor you picked is an 8150 and that really isn't the greatest. If you change it to an 8350, and drop the sabertooth moneysink of a board, I would recommend the AMD build for the price/future. More and more game engines are utilizing 4+ cores and its showing in the benchmarks. the 8350 can overclock like a monster. Even then though the i5 build would be excellent. If the amd is cheaper, and you do streaming/as much multi-tasking as I do, the 8350 is the way to go.
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