Planning to upgrade soon. AMD or Intel?

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Xenomaniac

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 12, 2003
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I'm planning on updating my PC and I went on to Newegg to see what kind of bundles to get with processor and motherboard combos. Seems like AMD has really dropped the price when it comes to matching speeds with AMD and Intel. I've been an avid Intel user but I'm will to switch over if the price is right. Anything I should know between the two before I do any investment?
 
There's little real reason to go AMD, unless you simply want to support AMD.
 
Xenomaniac said:
Could you clarify a little more information? Details please.
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The desktop AM3 AMD chips run far hotter, pull more power...and still are nowhere near as fast as their Intel counterparts in most cases. Oh, and the AMD chips are not much cheaper either.
 
Personally, I always try to get the best CPU I can afford, as I usually use them for a long time while upgrading the graphic card more often. So I would chose Intel for the performance alone.
 
Intel hands down. AM3+ CPUs are just not as good as the Intel counterparts. When looking at Intel I recommend 2 processors that will be a fantastic bang for you buck and give you room to expand/overclock in the future.

Ivy Bridge : 3570k
Haswell : 4670k

Haswell is the latest Intel generation, and part of the "tick" cycle. Intel releases in a "Tick" "Tock" cycle. Ticks are generational leaps, performance increases. Tocks are usually die shrinks, power reduction and efficeincy.The 4670k on benchmarks is only about 12% faster than the Ivy Bridge it replaced, but .. keep in mind that the 3570k was a "tock" and increased performance over its Sandy Bridge counterpart. Thats not normal. So combining the perfmance increases of the Ivy Bridge 3570k and the Haswell 4670k, its nearly ~35% more performance between i5 generations. Thats pretty remarkable.

Right now you can find Haswell for the exact same price for Ivy Bridge. The Ivy Bridge platform is proven to be very low power consumption and the only minor drawback to Haswell is they tent to run a bit hot when overclocked very high. Not a deal breaker at all. Also, sock 1155 (Ivy Bridge) is being end of lifed by Intel so if you bought into Ivy Bridge now you will have no upgrade path out of that with a socket 1155 motherboard.

For this plus many other reasons I went with Haswell, socket 1150, Intel's go forward platform. No joke... I just installed my upgrade and this is my very first boot into Windows. Loving it so far.. My specs are in my sig.

I spent about ~$650 for CPU/motherboard/GPU/RAM. I upgraded from a Q6600, 5850 and 4Gb of DDR2. The difference is outrageous.
 
Skripka said:
The desktop AM3 AMD chips run far hotter, pull more power...and still are nowhere near as fast as their Intel counterparts in most cases. Oh, and the AMD chips are not much cheaper either.
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Yep. While AMD prices might initially seem good, you have to realize that their high end doesn't compete with Intel's high end. When you look at the numbers, you find that when you step down to an equal performance Intel chip, you are also near the same price.

AMD has just not been doing good with processor architecture lately, unfortunately. If you want better performance, it is Intel all the way.

This is particularly true in games since a lot of what AMD tries to offer is better multi-threaded support, but games don't make very efficient use of that. Less faster cores gives better performance in most games than more slower cores. That isn't universally true, but it is what you'll find with most games.

Also there's an inherent power/heat advantage on the Intel side since they are a node ahead. Intel CPUs are 22nm these days, AMD CPUs are 32nm. The smaller process means less power used at a given amount of transistors.
 
Sycraft said:
Yep. While AMD prices might initially seem good, you have to realize that their high end doesn't compete with Intel's high end. When you look at the numbers, you find that when you step down to an equal performance Intel chip, you are also near the same price.
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It isn't even that fair. You have to overclock AMD's top-end "enthusiast" desktop part quite a bit, in order to simply equal Intel's "mainstream" LGA1150 i7 unlocked-K edition parts at stock in all but the most highly threaded tasks....and those two parts are the same price.

Like I said. It isn't even fair.
 
Xenomaniac said:
Could you clarify a little more information? Details please.
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The benchmarkers out there will piss and moan that it amd is not as fast as intel. Truthfully if i sat anyone down in a blind test they would not be able to tell the difference between the two. Amd offers more cores for less money than intel and will give you close to the level of intels performance. The truth is multithreaded applications and games are the future. Fact of the matter is amd hardware is powering the ps4 and x1. Both systems feature an 8 core cpu and a radeon based gpu. This means all future games will be multithreaded and for developers doing shameless console ports will be even easier than ever before between ps4/x1 and the pc.
 
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maxius said:
the benchmarkers out there will piss and moan that it amd is not as fast as intel truthfully if i sat someone down in a blind test they would not be able to tell the difference between the two. the truth is amd offers more cores for less money than intel and will give you close to the level of intels performance. so for multithreaded tasks and games that incoming will be multithreaded amd has and will have an advantage. why do i say this amd is in the ps4 and x1 with an 8 core apu so a all games will be shameless console ports going forward and thus more multithreaded than ever before.
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It isn't benchmarkers...it is just about anyone concerned with an efficient system.

Does sheer core count actually tell anything regarding performance? Some facts for you, that may be unpleasant. An Intel 4c/8t SKU will spank the AMD 8c/8t offerings most of the time at most tasks be they everyday or benchmark. The Intel part will also run cooler below Tmax and suck much less power while still being as fast or faster at the same clockspeed. The Intel part will also not be any more expensive....saying otherwise is simply not true.

People have been talking about software going more multithreaded since Core2....it still hasn't happened much. Don't count on game devs bothering leveraging 8-cores. Devs are lazy, that is another unpleasant fact. Changing the stock CPU in consoles to magically make 8 cores available will not encourage devs to program for it....that requires rewriting their game engines which-did I mention devs are lazy?
 
Skripka said:
It isn't benchmarkers...it is just about anyone concerned with an efficient system.

Does sheer core count actually tell anything regarding performance? Some facts for you, that may be unpleasant. An Intel 4c/8t SKU will spank the AMD 8c/8t offerings most of the time at most tasks be they everyday or benchmark. The Intel part will also run cooler below Tmax and suck much less power while still being as fast or faster at the same clockspeed. The Intel part will also not be any more expensive....saying otherwise is simply not true.

People have been talking about software going more multithreaded since Core2....it still hasn't happened much. Don't count on game devs bothering leveraging 8-cores. Devs are lazy, that is another unpleasant fact. Changing the stock CPU in consoles to magically make 8 cores available will not encourage devs to program for it....that requires rewriting their game engines which-did I mention devs are lazy?
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It matters not if i sat you down in a blind test with the same hardware you would not be able to tell the difference as all benchmarks mean shit for real world usage.

The single threaded world is on its way out my friend the reason is the development community has to go multithreaded to maximize performance of their respective games on the consoles. As both have 8 x86 1.6ghz jaguar cpu's at their core. Like it or not multithreaded is the way the world is moving. Like it or not amd saw it coming for many years and since they have both major consoles on their hardware they are now ready to capitalize on it.
 
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maxius said:
It matters not if i sat you down in a blind test with the same hardware would you be able to tell the difference i do not think you would be able to at all as all benchmarks mean shit for real world usage.

The single threaded world is on its way out my friend the reason is the development community have to go multithreaded to maximize performance of their respective games on the consoles. As both have 8 x86 1.6ghz jaguar cpu's at their core its the way the world is going like it or not amd saw it coming for many years and is now ready to capitalize on it
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Sheer core count is not limiting games it is the GPU....Claiming otherwise is like saying my bike is slower than your car because my bike only has two wheels. In productivity a 4770K, as could a 3770K at stock can do the same things in half the time of an 8350. In a blind test...I'd think you'd notice it taking 20 seconds versus 30 seconds etc to apply a filter or to do a compile in Studio. AMD in performance is 2/3 generations behind in everything meaningful....although if all you do with your machine is run multithreaded Cinebench all day, I suppose AMD is the course to go.


Keep dreaming if you want. But just admit that you are.
 
Skripka said:
Sheer core count is not limiting games it is the GPU....Claiming otherwise is like saying my bike is slower than your car because my bike only has two wheels. In productivity a 4770K, as could a 3770K at stock can do the same things in half the time of an 8350. In a blind test...I'd think you'd notice it taking 20 seconds versus 30 seconds etc to apply a filter or to do a compile in Studio. AMD in performance is 2/3 generations behind in everything meaningful....although if all you do with your machine is run multithreaded Cinebench all day, I suppose AMD is the course to go.


Keep dreaming if you want. But just admit that you are.
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Then why did sony and microsoft go with an 8 core cpu at the heart of their systems why not a lesser number why did they both need 8 amd cpu cores then?
 
maxius said:
Then why did sony and microsoft go with an 8 core cpu at the heart of their systems why not a lesser number why did they need 8?
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Who said they ever "needed" 8? Most console games are nowhere near maxing a quad core now. Companies bid to get the best performaing/PR-sounding hardware they can. AMD probably cut Sony/Microsoft a sweet business deal to load custom 8-core APUs into their consoles...a deal that AMD will probably loose lots of money on in the long run.

Because let's face it. On the surface it sounds cool to have 8c/8t just like a V8 in a car sounds cool, unless you know a bit about AMD's architectural failings from Bulldozer until know.
 
Skripka said:
Who said they ever "needed" 8? Most console games are nowhere near maxing a quad core now. Companies bid to get the best sounding hardware they can. AMD probably cut Sony/Microsoft a sweet business deal to load custom 8-core APUs into their consoles...a deal that AMD will probably loose money on in the long run.

Because let's face it. On the surface it sounds cool to have 8c/8t just like a V8 in a car sounds cool, unless you know a bit about AMD's architectural failings from Bulldozer until know.
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your argument is invalid is it not ironic here that both console manufactures went with 8 amd cpu's you keep skirting the fucking question and tossing up bullshit to justify your denial its funny. It is not cause its cool to have 8 cores its cause they see the future is multithreaded and amd offered the best technology to meet both their needs.

Bulldozer did what it needed to do it was not a failure by any account as intel has a process advantage that they have been leveraging for many years 22nm chips vs 32nm chips i say amd has been doing rather well against this disadvantage as profits are going up and losses are going down.
 
Amd has already moved on from high end consumer cpus, I doubt we will be getting much in the future. Piledriver and buldozer were both flops for them with terrible direction.

AMD doesnt have to match intel spec per spec, but they tried to, did a good job with the phenoms then took a crap and came out with buldozer.

Im a huge fan of their apu's, everyday computing in a single chip that wont break the bank, wont break any records and wont leave you dissatisfied.

Also, just because consoles have 8 cores doesnt mean developers will use all 8 cores. 99%of the time games are gpu limited, not cpu limited. Would be insanely wasteful to code a game to utilize 6 threads just because you could but gain nothing from it.
 
maxius said:
your argument is invalid is it not ironic here that both console manufactures went with 8 amd cpu's you keep skirting the fucking question and tossing up bullshit to justify your denial its funny. It is not cause its cool to have 8 cores its cause they see the future is multithreaded and amd offered the best technology to meet both their needs.

Bulldozer did what it needed to do it was not a failure by any account as intel has a process advantage that they have been leveraging for many years 22nm chips vs 32nm chips i say amd has been doing rather well against this disadvantage as profits are going up and losses are going down.
Click to expand...

The red part tells me you either are trolling, or are beyond hope.

Either have a nice day, I'm done with you.
 
Will an amd apu with HUMA do anything for PC gaming? Or will Intel cpu + fastest gpu always win by a landslide?
 
Trimlock said:
Amd has already moved on from high end consumer cpus, I doubt we will be getting much in the future. Piledriver and buldozer were both flops for them with terrible direction.

AMD doesnt have to match intel spec per spec, but they tried to, did a good job with the phenoms then took a crap and came out with buldozer.

Im a huge fan of their apu's, everyday computing in a single chip that wont break the bank, wont break any records and wont leave you dissatisfied.

Also, just because consoles have 8 cores doesnt mean developers will use all 8 cores. 99%of the time games are gpu limited, not cpu limited. Would be insanely wasteful to code a game to utilize 6 threads just because you could but gain nothing from it.
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Prove to me that bulldozer and piledriver were flops and that amd is leaving the high end market forever. By the way their stock is trending i can see you are definitely wrong.

Again what game is going to look better than the last gen on a 1.6ghz x86 cpu. without the use of all the available cpu cores. i can toss together an atom system with a titian for you i ask how will it perform? the titian will defiantly be cpu bound. the answer to the cpu bound question is omfg if the game actually uses all 8 cores to keep the gpu feed!
 
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Skripka said:
The red part tells me you either are trolling, or are beyond hope.

Either have a nice day, I'm done with you.
Click to expand...

Run from the truth like a scared little fanboy

elzeus said:
Will an amd apu with HUMA do anything for PC gaming? Or will Intel cpu + fastest gpu always win by a landslide?
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HUMA will be a vital part in amds next gpu's launching at the end of sept and kavari launching around the end of the year.
 
Xenomaniac said:
I'm planning on updating my PC and I went on to Newegg to see what kind of bundles to get with processor and motherboard combos. Seems like AMD has really dropped the price when it comes to matching speeds with AMD and Intel. I've been an avid Intel user but I'm will to switch over if the price is right. Anything I should know between the two before I do any investment?
Click to expand...

Both AMD and Intel have CPUs that are powerful enough for any PC game that is available currently. Its more about the GPU. Still, at the moment Intel Sandy Bridges and above are the king of performance in low threaded applications. Its single thread performance squashes AMD offerings. If you are into emulation, the choice is clear. Get the highest Sandy or Ivy bridge K version CPU you can afford, slap a good cooler on top of it and overclock it to oblivion.

However, times are changing in gaming world now that the next console generation is coming. The games will be heavily threaded and I presume the PC ports will also be. In those situations AMD actually does really well. It can actually keep up with Intel, more or less. Maybe their future offerings will even surpass them. Its hard to say if waiting is a good choice or no however.
 
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Gaming = Intel
Powersaving = Intel


I had a AMD 960T @ 3.9GHz and had been looking for an upgrade between the FX8350 and 4670K. Looking at actually gaming performance at single player 1080 resolution the FX8350 overclocked might be marginally faster, then looking at the 4670K it would appear not only my maximum FPS would go up nearly 30~40% but also the minimums.

I could instantly notice very smooth gameplay with Saints Row 3 vs more stuttery performance of the 960T oc'ed. Batman AC still has some hitching issues but further reading my pinpoint needing faster frequency ram.

So far it has gave new life to my GTX570 that I bought a few months back.

Looking at powersaving and my UPS readouts. AMD 960T idle always took 90~110w. New intel setup takes 50~60w at idle!!

Only change in my system has been the GA-Z78X-UD4H and 4670K and removed X-Fi soundcard and Intel 1Gbps nic card.
 
maxius said:
It matters not if i sat you down in a blind test with the same hardware you would not be able to tell the difference as all benchmarks mean shit for real world usage.

The single threaded world is on its way out my friend the reason is the development community has to go multithreaded to maximize performance of their respective games on the consoles. As both have 8 x86 1.6ghz jaguar cpu's at their core. Like it or not multithreaded is the way the world is moving. Like it or not amd saw it coming for many years and since they have both major consoles on their hardware they are now ready to capitalize on it.
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Yeah that sure did a lot of good for the PS3 with its 7 SPE cores (8 but 1 disabled). Core 2 Duo still won. It's been what, 7 years now? And Core 2 Quad has been available for 6, and what do we have to show for it? A handful of games, some prosumer level software, and benchmarks.
 
Xenomaniac said:
I'm planning on updating my PC and I went on to Newegg to see what kind of bundles to get with processor and motherboard combos. Seems like AMD has really dropped the price when it comes to matching speeds with AMD and Intel. I've been an avid Intel user but I'm will to switch over if the price is right. Anything I should know between the two before I do any investment?
Click to expand...


AMD is faster. Or was... Not sure for the new cpu with multi cores...
 
Take the Intel and AMD combo you are comparing at the same price range, and look up the benchmarks.
 
Mak54291 said:
AMD is faster. Or was... Not sure for the new cpu with multi cores...
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Was faster... about 7 years ago. Or was it longer? It has been a while. Typically in the sub $200 range AMD has good price/performance CPUs, but if you have more than that Intel tends to win price/performance wise.

When it comes to high end performance Intel is faster, cooler, and uses less power.
 
Trombe said:
Yeah that sure did a lot of good for the PS3 with its 7 SPE cores (8 but 1 disabled). Core 2 Duo still won. It's been what, 7 years now? And Core 2 Quad has been available for 6, and what do we have to show for it? A handful of games, some prosumer level software, and benchmarks.
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how long has it been since single core cpus havent been sold? Forever is my best guess. Now that consoles have even more cores we are going to see an evolution! Only those have been multi core too...
 
elzeus said:
Will an amd apu with HUMA do anything for PC gaming? Or will Intel cpu + fastest gpu always win by a landslide?
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Well apus werent ment to drive gaming scores up. They are cheap little processors that give people the ability to game without having to get a seperate gpu. Almost always this is cheaper, but I have a G620 and a low end gpu, paid less then $100 for both and get pretty "ok" gaming out of it.
 
Flogger23m said:
Was faster... about 7 years ago. Or was it longer? It has been a while. Typically in the sub $200 range AMD has good price/performance CPUs, but if you have more than that Intel tends to win price/performance wise.

When it comes to high end performance Intel is faster, cooler, and uses less power.
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Hasn't been faster for a long time. Now that isn't rally all that big a deal. For 99% of gaming, you can easily get a processor that is plenty fast enough. However the issue is that at a given price point, Intel has a processor that is more energy efficient and generally better performing. Makes it hard to recommend AMD. Their CPUs are fast enough to game on, don't get me wrong, but you can do better with your dollar with Intel.
 
maxius said:
HUMA will be a vital part in amds next gpu's launching at the end of sept and kavari launching around the end of the year.
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This is absolutely not true:

http://techreport.com/news/24737/amd-sheds-light-on-kaveri-uniform-memory-architecture

Will hUMA mean CPUs and discrete GPUs can share a unified pool of memory, too? Not quite. When the question came up during the briefing, AMD said hUMA "doesn't directly unify those pools, but it does put them in a unified address space." The company then stressed that bandwidth won't be consistent between the CPU and discrete GPU memory pools—that is, GDDR5 graphics memory will be quicker, while DDR3 system memory will lag behind, so some hoop-jumping will still be required. (As an interesting side note, AMD then added that "people will be able to build APUs with either type of memory [DDR or GDDR] and then share any type of memory between the different processing cores on the APU.")
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Basically this can enhance performance on certain compute workloads, but AMD has not offered any "hard" performance numbers, only tantalizing new spec sheets. It will do absolutely nothing for your average gamer, because it will be some time before we switch to IGP.
 
The 8 core processor used in next gen consoles are not high performance 8 core processors. They are APU designed for compact system.

A desktop processor has better IPC, and they can easily run at 2x or more than the operating frequency of these console APU. So the performance throughput of a performance desktop CPU will still be higher than these APU without the need for equal core numbers.
 
Is that AMD fan boy in this thread really trying to say that AMD > Intel because you wouldn't notice the difference between the 8 core 1.6 ghz processor going in the new consoles and a 2600k?
 
tehslippery said:
Is that AMD fan boy in this thread really trying to say that AMD > Intel because you wouldn't notice the difference between the 8 core 1.6 ghz processor going in the new consoles and a 2600k?
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True believers will go through some amazing mental gymnastics to try and justify the superiority of their position.
 
depends what the OP use the computer for.
Gaming atm Intel allows you higher fps in average.
 
It used to be AMD was awesome then the Core 2's came out and obliterated AMD and they have never came back, I think as time has gone by AMD has slipped farther and farther away from Intel in performance and now intel completely crushes AMD in power usage. I would love to support them but I always buy the best thing that I can get with my money and it hasnt been AMD in a while for CPUs.
 
Does the OP really have a 8800GT+775 2 Core 1.8GHz CPU for his current build?

Because if that's what you have anything from last 2 years, from either company will blow that shit outta the water.
 
Sycraft said:
True believers will go through some amazing mental gymnastics to try and justify the superiority of their position.
Click to expand...


People will stick to an under dog and justify any means possible, this was a big big big case back when ATI was crushing Nvidia during the 9700 vs dustbuster5800 days.

I'm still rooting for AMD, but outside of their APU's they don't have that compelling of a product and their motherboard issues are terrible. Obviously I'm not talking about their GPU division as they are still providing some kickass competition to the green team.
 
Trombe said:
Yeah that sure did a lot of good for the PS3 with its 7 SPE cores (8 but 1 disabled). Core 2 Duo still won. It's been what, 7 years now? And Core 2 Quad has been available for 6, and what do we have to show for it? A handful of games, some prosumer level software, and benchmarks.
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Yup.

I fail to see the argument in how the next gen consoles having 8 weak cores, will somehow magically make AMD faster. These days, I only recommend AMD cpu's if you're on a tight budget.
Flopper said:
depends what the OP use the computer for.
Gaming atm Intel allows you higher fps in average.
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Higher minimum fps as well, which is important for me.
 
So, do we have an idea how well the 8 cores in the new console will compare to the the triple core in the xbox 360? Heres hoping for better ai in new games.
 
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