Building a new system...been out of the game a long time who is on top?

[incomudro]

Been out for a long time now. Looking to build a system. Who is on top? Intel or AMD. I want a monster computer here people. I will be using it to do training for my MCITP training so ill be running VMWare with multiple instances of 2k3 server and 2k8 server at once along with being able to game when i want too. Build me a system here give me some options school me! looking to spend 2k~

 

[Athrix]

I can tell you I just put together a core i7 920, with 12gigs of ddr3 for working on very large format photoshop docs (1 gig+) and its amazingly fast.

If you want real world numbers and side by side comps look at some of the hardocp reviews. I've been doing a lot of research recently and the new intel stuff is taking the cake.

Toss in a nice SSD and push a 920 up to 3.6 or so and you'd be set.

 

[Flexion]

It sounds like you're going to be doing real work on this system. For a board, even though I personally use DFI, I would recommend an Asus or Intel for mission critical apps. I'd pick a 920 with that budget and shoot for a ultra stable OC of 3.6GHz and decent aircooling. With 12GB on the triple channel controller you'll breeze by VMs. I did this for a while on a Vista install just to screw around and the VMs and Host behaved as if they were running native.

It doesn't pay to get the more powerful chips, because the gulftown will be available sometime next year and the 920 can OC to surpass any of the other chips in the current line at stock for 1/2 to 1/4 of the price. Save your money for other components like an SSD or a quality PSU which is essential for running an i7.

 

[Zero82z]

For VMs, you want an i7. AMD's CPUs are considerably less powerful than Intel's high-end, and especially when it comes to multitasking and running large numbers of threads, since the i7 CPUs have Hyperthreading.