well in coming month m goin to build a new system, as the title says, i hav 2 choices AMD 955 or Intel i7 920
i hav seen benchies of these two, and in most games AMD 955 hav taken the lead, but wt if both of these r clocked at 4.0 ghz, will AMD still take the lead,
another thing which confuses me most is that how far AMD 955 wil go on air cooling,as we hav seen i7 920 doin wonders on air cooling
if i go wid AMD thn putting 8 gb ram wil realli worth it,and help to compete against i7 920 wid 6gb?

Well i just done a google comparing both, and ive been set on a I7 core build myself, but after reading this then AMD 955 is route for me now, and money saved can go towards the GPU

Have a read is very interesting
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=794&page=1

If you're building your system mainly for gaming, general consensus is that the Phenom II is better value. The Core i7 seems to have an advantage when it comes to CPU-intensive operations (encoding is the usual example, although I'm thinking/hoping that RAW file processing falls into this category, too! ).

paininlife said:

well in coming month m goin to build a new system, as the title says, i hav 2 choices AMD 955 or Intel i7 920
i hav seen benchies of these two, and in most games AMD 955 hav taken the lead, but wt if both of these r clocked at 4.0 ghz, will AMD still take the lead,
another thing which confuses me most is that how far AMD 955 wil go on air cooling,as we hav seen i7 920 doin wonders on air cooling
if i go wid AMD thn putting 8 gb ram wil realli worth it,and help to compete against i7 920 wid 6gb?

Click to expand...

go for amd if your a gamer

as for how far the 955 can go nobody knows, because if u get one yours may do 4.0+ghz with alittle voltage bump up where another may only do 3.6ghz

if u go for 8gb u will need to use more vcore, CPU-NB voltage which will make the OC harder.

I would have to agree. With gaming as the main usage here the Phenom 955 is the better option. Far cheaper to arrange a good setup and not really lagging much behind the i7.

I own the i7 and love it , but if I wanted to build a gaming rig the the P2 955 would be my choice.

McT

^^Catch? Don't you mean Cache?

The i5 750 looks like it may come in at the same cost as the PII955 but with virtually the same performance as a i7920 but clock even higher. would waiit a couple of weeks and see whatthe reviews say.

You're unlikely to get a PII much past 3.8Ghz with 100% stability so it's a moot point really.

Also in games such as World of Warcraft which are heavily CPU limited you'll get much better performance from an i7.

Phenom 2 are not very good overclockers contrary to what many say.

mmj_uk said:

You're unlikely to get a PII much past 3.8Ghz...

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I was looking at that, thinking "Pentium II, 3.8 GHz... WTF?"

gareth170 said:

go for amd if your a gamer

as for how far the 955 can go nobody knows, because if u get one yours may do 4.0+ghz with alittle voltage bump up where another may only do 3.6ghz

if u go for 8gb u will need to use more vcore, CPU-NB voltage which will make the OC harder.

Click to expand...

so u suggest to stick wid 4gb? as far as OC thn i wont b pushing it so hard nt more thn 3.8ghz

and yes m a gamer, nt into encoding, but i wil do sum Photoshop stuff,
yes i agree i can save few bucks wid AMD and get 1 of those 5xxx GPUs

gurusan said:

Phenom 2 are not very good overclockers contrary to what many say.

Click to expand...

same goes for i7? i seen most 3.4-3.6ghz

also its pot luck with ocing, he may get a good 955 clocker.

paininlife said:

so u suggest to stick wid 4gb? as far as OC thn i wont b pushing it so hard nt more thn 3.8ghz

and yes m a gamer, nt into encoding, but i wil do sum Photoshop stuff,
yes i agree i can save few bucks wid AMD and get 1 of those 5xxx GPUs

Click to expand...

example my 940 works fine at 3.7ghz with 1.46v , 2.6ghz nb 1.2v with 4gb ram, with 8gb it needs 1.5v for 3.7ghz, 2.6 nb 1.3v

gareth170 said:

same goes for i7? i seen most 3.4-3.6ghz

also its pot luck with ocing, he may get a good 955 clocker.

Click to expand...

i7's will generally do 3.8 minimum with a proper heatsink, which is why OCUK sell 3.8-4ghz bundles in such high quantity.

There isn't a Phenom II@4ghz bundle for obvious reasons.

mmj_uk said:

i7's will generally do 3.8 minimum with a proper heatsink, which is why OCUK sell 3.8-4ghz bundles in such high quantity.

There isn't a Phenom II@4ghz bundle for obvious reasons.

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just because ocuk don't have a Phenom II @ 4ghz bundle doesn't mean they can't do 4ghz+, i've seen some at 4ghz+

gareth170 said:

same goes for i7? i seen most 3.4-3.6ghz

also its pot luck with ocing, he may get a good 955 clocker.

Click to expand...

That is not true, C0 steppings will do 3.8ghz minimum, more like 4....D0 can do 4 minimum with many from 4.2-4.5, even seen 4.6 under water before. STABLE, not BS benching clocks or running stupid voltages like nearly all of the 4+ghz AMD clocks.

Phenom 2 sucks at clocking. I was about to switch to Phenom 2 but trying to locate a good chip was difficult, and even then these so-called "golden steppings" only clocked to about 4ghz maximum.

People talk about bang/buck but you are best off sticking with socket 775 if you want bang/buck. A simple p45 board costs no more than a decent AMD motherboard and will clock a Q9550 or Q9650 to 4GHz and beyond.

Or even a good stepping Q6600 clocks as high as Phenom 2 and performs basically the same as well

gareth170 said:

just because ocuk don't have a Phenom II @ 4ghz bundle doesn't mean they can't do 4ghz+, i've seen some at 4ghz+

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Likewise I've seen plenty of i7's at 4.5Ghz but it isn't reflective of what you can expect from the vast majority of retail samples with every day air cooling.

The chances of getting a Phenom II to 4Ghz without sacrificing stability are quite rare and often requires very specific conditions, if Phenoms reached 4ghz stably under air I don't see why OCUK wouldn't already be profiting from them.

mmj_uk said:

Also in games such as World of Warcraft which are heavily CPU limited you'll get much better performance from an i7.

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you would think but from old amd 6000+ to a 17 4.0ghz in wow there is little diff however this is down to wow as other games love my i7

to the op why are going quad for gaming get x3 for under £85 new wait until amd get a sure 4.0ghz clocker

^ dnt wana spend money again and again,and as i said i want perfomance
second thng is that personally i havnt seen any AMD pii more thn 4.0ghz, and thats in very rare cases , most of ppl hav attained 3.8 ghz and nt more thn that,

nw my main question wz that wat wil b the perfomance difference b/w these two @ 4.0 ghz and as its been answered, ther isnt much diff b/w these two
nw is AMD future proof lyk intel? as intel wil b releasing i9 on socket 1366 ,will amd b releasing 6 core processor on same socket?
@all ,lol guyz calm down, no need to fight over these CPUs, m nt a hardcore gamer or overclocker, i w il b hardly pushing my cpu @ 4.0 or 3.8 ghz

AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.4Ghz @ 1.325v stable + Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X 2GB 40fps @ 1900x1200 resolution in Crysis Benchmark.

AMD is no good for Gaming is it.