$185 AMD chip vs. $185 Intel chip

I

InnocentNoobie

Limp Gawd
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I'm thinking of building soon, and am struck by the performance difference, according to some benchmark results at Tom's Hardware, between an AMD Phenom x4 9950 Black and an Intel E8500

Both chips:

Intel
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036&Tpk=e8500

AMD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103291

Benchmark results:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-17.html

Can someone please explain why everyone seems to be recommending Intel chips? The 9950 seems to be a much greater value.
 
Well, first off you're comparing a dual core to a quad core...

You can get a Q6600 for about the same price. You'll see most of the benchmarks in that review has the Q6600 beating the 9950.
 
That's not a fair comparison. Comparing a Quad core cpu with a Dual core cpu. Try comparing the Phenom 9950 to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 cpu.
 
Those are SYNTHETIC benchmarks which have no real bearing on real world apps. If you look at the gaming section of that review, you would see that all of the tested Intel CPUs beat out all the AMD CPUs tested in a majority of the games. It was only with Supreme Commander, one of the few games that take advantage of quad-cores, that some of the Intel dual-core CPUs lost.

As for multimedia editing and rendering apps in that review (Photoshop, Divx, Premier Pro) it's always been known that quad-cores are better choices over dual-cores for those purposes. However, if you do a fair comparison between the Q6600 and 9950 BE, you'll see that the Q6600 consistently bested the 9950BE.

So that's why we recommend the Q6600 over the 9950BE: Because it offers better performance for the price. Not to mention. you can OC the Q6600 pretty damn high. Now if you creating a pure gaming PC, then yes the E8400 would probably be recommended if the you tend to upgrade every two years or so.
 
So that's why we recommend the Q6600 over the 9950BE: Because it offers better performance for the price. Not to mention. you can OC the Q6600 pretty damn high. Now if you creating a pure gaming PC, then yes the E8400 would probably be recommended if the you tend to upgrade every two years or so.
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and by OCing the q6600 pretty damn high he means Ridiculously high, higher then any AMD processor can come close to. I can safely also say that the E8500 was stock clocked, which is a total disregard for it's potential which can hit 4Ghz on air
 
Danny Bui said:
Those are SYNTHETIC benchmarks which have no real bearing on real world apps. If you look at the gaming section of that review, you would see that all of the tested Intel CPUs beat out all the AMD CPUs tested in a majority of the games. It was only with Supreme Commander, one of the few games that take advantage of quad-cores, that some of the Intel dual-core CPUs lost.

As for multimedia editing and rendering apps in that review (Photoshop, Divx, Premier Pro) it's always been known that quad-cores are better choices over dual-cores for those purposes. However, if you do a fair comparison between the Q6600 and 9950 BE, you'll see that the Q6600 consistently bested the 9950BE.

So that's why we recommend the Q6600 over the 9950BE: Because it offers better performance for the price. Not to mention. you can OC the Q6600 pretty damn high. Now if you creating a pure gaming PC, then yes the E8400 would probably be recommended if the you tend to upgrade every two years or so.
Click to expand...
qft
 
etherone said:
and by OCing the q6600 pretty damn high he means Ridiculously high, higher then any AMD processor can come close to. I can safely also say that the E8500 was stock clocked, which is a total disregard for it's potential which can hit 4Ghz on air
Click to expand...

I thought the E8500 or E8400 was the better OCing chip, no?

And thanks for all the responses. You all make a very good point.
 
For the highest clock speed, yes, the E8400/E8500 is better than the Q6600. If you want a quadcore, then the Q6600 (kentsfield) is your best value since its the cheapest from Intel and can OC to 3.6Ghz... not much slower than what the newer quadcores (yorkfields) can reach.
 
enginurd said:
For the highest clock speed, yes, the E8400/E8500 is better than the Q6600. If you want a quadcore, then the Q6600 (kentsfield) is your best value since its the cheapest from Intel and can OC to 3.6Ghz... not much slower than what the newer quadcores (yorkfields) can reach.
Click to expand...

Which of course brings up the other hot debate right now E8x00 vs Q6600
 
GonzoP said:
Which of course brings up the other hot debate right now E8x00 vs Q6600
Click to expand...

Or it's brother argument: Dual-core VS Quad-core. Both of which have been covered/debated/bitched about throughout the forums in thousands of threads.
 
There's one other factor that I think needs to be included: the cost of the motherboard. Historically, boards for AMD processors have been less expensive than equivalent boards for Intel processors. I don't know if that's still the case--I haven't checked in a while--but it's worth considering.
 
Thats somewhat true but what are we talking about $20-40. Plenty of super high quality Intel P45 mobos from $90-140. Sure you got your $200+ models but if $$ is a concern you can get a solid mobo for around $100
 
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