Budget gaming system - AMD or Intel?

archer_dan · 2 Nov 2008 at 00:21

I'm looking to replace my aging S939 based machine with something more capable of playing new games, and given that i haven't been keeping up with hardware recently, i'm hoping i could get some advice.

I've had a look around and come up with two potential builds, one is Core 2 based, the other is Phenom. They are almost identical in price. The Phenom system would be:

And for the Intel system, swap in the Q6600 and P5Q Deluxe for the AMD cpu and board.

I've currently got a HIS IceQ4 4850 that will move into this PC from my current set up, along with some HDD's.

I'd also be looking to put in a couple of 500GB drives in RAID 0 once i have the money, although i'm not sure if the performance gain would make it worth the cost?

So, couple of questions:

1. Is that more expensive RAM worth the increased cost over the standard OCZ kit, would it be worth getting a 1066MHz kit?

2. Which processor - Phenom 9950 or Core2 Q6600?

The main use of the PC will be playing games, and i haven't done any overclocking before, so i probably won't be pushing the machine to its limits - still i guess it may be worth investing in a 3rd party cooler for the CPU?

For now i'm looking to keep the cost at ~£500, plus ~£100 later for the pair of HDD's.

backtothefuture · 2 Nov 2008 at 02:52

good question.. i was about to ask the identical Q! ...
currently have a s939 Opty 170... getting a bit long in the tooth...

Was considering investing in an Intel based system since apparently they are much better overclockers (and on air as well) ...

Not sure whether Quad core is useful for gaming at the moment...do any games make use of it? Do any other progs (e.g. vid editing apps) make use of 4 cores at the moment as well?

You haven't mentioned OS...does anyone know whether Vista or XP pro will give better performance with these new gen chips? I know the latter is favoured due to less bugs and ease of use etc...!

Deimos · 2 Nov 2008 at 05:15

Go for the Intel version, lots of games make use of quad cores now. Crysis, fallout 3 among many others. Also with a quad core I have read somewhere, that if a game makes use of 2 cores...the idle cores can process OS tasks etc (unsure on that though).

Q6600 will clock to 3.2Ghz no problem, even the crappy overclockers. The phenom won't match that, performance per clock is also worse.

What graphics card you getting? or you got a nice one in your old 939 lol

postmanfw · 2 Nov 2008 at 05:52

Just come from an Opty 165 rig myself a few days ago and have to say i was blown away with the E8500 at stock.

Now priming at 4Ghz with only a slight increase in voltage required....happy days!!

Got board here for a "slight" reduction. Just the board on it own.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-363-AS

Realising now how much the opty (@2.95GHz) was holding back my graphic card.

archer_dan · 2 Nov 2008 at 09:05

backtothefuture said:
You haven't mentioned OS...does anyone know whether Vista or XP pro will give better performance with these new gen chips? I know the latter is favoured due to less bugs and ease of use etc...!

I'm running Vista (x64) and haven't had many problems.

Deimos said:
...Q6600 will clock to 3.2Ghz no problem, even the crappy overclockers. The phenom won't match that, performance per clock is also worse.

What graphics card you getting? or you got a nice one in your old 939 lol

- I'm surprised that the Phenom won't match a Q6600, given that its the very top of AMD's line and the Q6600 is quite old now. I had thought the Phenom might be easier to overclock, due to its unlocked multiplier? (As i said, i have no overclocking experience)

- Got a 4850 i'll be moving across, can't really afford anything better atm

postmanfw said:
Just come from an Opty 165 rig myself a few days ago and have to say i was blown away with the E8500 at stock.

Now priming at 4Ghz with only a slight increase in voltage required....happy days!!

Interesting, i hadn't considered a dual core as i thought a quad would be better for the future, anyone know the comparitive performance for the Core 2 Duo's and Quads? The E8500 is virtually the same price as the Q6600 as well.

archer_dan · 3 Nov 2008 at 00:38

Ok, so if i go for an intel chip, which seem to win the popular vote atm, since im primarily gaming not video encoding etc, i'll get more out of having a hicher clocked dual core over a lower clocked quad (say E8500 vs Q6600)?

Also, just to reiterate my previous question, would a 1066MHz ram kit offer a noticable.worthwhile performance boost over an 800MHz one?

gamesaregood · 3 Nov 2008 at 00:59

You should seriously consider AM2 rather than going over to Intel as S775 is now dead, the i7 use a new socket so there is no upgrade path. Whereas the Denebs (45nm) will soon be out on the AMD side and therefore offer a good upgrade path and are rumered to hit 4.3Ghz on air.

The 9950 Phenom & a good SB750 motherboard like the Asus M3A79-T Deluxe (Same price as the M3A32-MVP Deluxe above) will easy do 3.0Ghz and should get upto 3.5Ghz without too many problems and so long as you gd a fairly gd chip. Deimos is wrong when he says that performance per clock is worse, although this mabe the case at stock at 3.5Ghz the AMD would come out on top as they scale better from what I understand.

Darg · 3 Nov 2008 at 01:29

Socket 775 is nowhere near dead. The highest clocked Intel chips will most likely beat anything AMD can come out with in the forseeable future anyway.

There's no point paying the same price for something that just won't possibly perform as well. Even if the Denebs do do 4.3Ghz so what? It's not like Intel C2Ds can't do that now already.

And I'd be very surprised if there weren't a few new 775 cpus from Intel before they drop the socket completely.

The 1066 RAM will help when overclocking, basically it'll let you theoretically hit 533mhz on the FSB with the RAM on 1:1 ratio with the CPU without overstressing the RAM.

In practice the actual difference between 800mhz RAM and 1066mhz RAM is pretty negligible. It's the benefit when overclocking that's nice. Even if you have you RAM on a 1:1 ratio underclocked at say 950mhz that means you'll probably be able to tighten up the timings a bit.

Get a good 1066mhz RAM kit and a E7200 if you're comfortable overclocking or a E84/50 if you want something that's good on stock and can overclock a good bit too if you decide to down the road.

DrBombcrater · 3 Nov 2008 at 01:30

archer_dan said:
- I'm surprised that the Phenom won't match a Q6600, given that its the very top of AMD's line and the Q6600 is quite old now. I had thought the Phenom might be easier to overclock, due to its unlocked multiplier? (As i said, i have no overclocking experience)

For gaming a 9950 will do about as well as a Q6600, faster in some stuff and slower in others. But like gamesaregood says, socket AM2+ has an upgrade path whereas 775 doesn't. And provided you get a motherboard with the SB750 on it there's little difference between the Phenom and the current Q6600 batches in terms of overclocking.

Personally I'd take the Phenom. A couple of months ago I upgraded from a 3GHz Core2 Duo to a Phenom 9850 @ 3GHz and it's brilliant. The snappiest, most responsive system I've ever used.

Final8y · 3 Nov 2008 at 01:33

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=770

benjo · 3 Nov 2008 at 01:40

gamesaregood said:
You should seriously consider AM2 rather than going over to Intel as S775 is now dead, the i7 use a new socket so there is no upgrade path.

But how can you say it's dead, when it currently supercedes the whole of it's competetions offerings?

backtothefuture · 3 Nov 2008 at 02:36

is the Phenom a better all round performer than the Quad core if one wishes to do a bit of gaming (Crysis, FarCry2 ) but also a bit of video editing as well? (50% each)

EsaT · 3 Nov 2008 at 09:07

backtothefuture said:
is the Phenom a better all round performer than the Quad core if one wishes to do a bit of gaming (Crysis, FarCry2 ) but also a bit of video editing as well? (50% each)

Content encoding:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9400_8.html#sect0
Photoshop:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9400_10.html#sect0
Looks like HL2 and World in Conflict like big L2 of E8600. (first Yorkfield with full L2 is Q9450)
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9400_7.html

And power consumption... no competition in here, Phenom looks like Intel's NetBurst-panic releases when AMD was running the show:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9400_11.html#sect0

linktoinsanity · 3 Nov 2008 at 10:17

I'd go the Intel route. AMD cannot keep up with Intel right now. Socket 775 is nowhere near dead, you can still get the latest current CPUs (at the time of writing Nethanum, or whatever, isn't out yet), and the Core 2 line is much faster at most things than the Phenom.

Dual or Quad? Now that's a debate that's constantly coming up on these forums, near future I'd go Dual, due to higher clock speeds both at stock and overclocked. If you aren't planning to upgrade again in the next two years however, I'd go Quad, as more programs will start to utilise more cores. But I wouldn't go for the Q6600 these days, the 65nn cpus are old tech now. I'd go for a Q9xxx series quad.

archer_dan · 4 Nov 2008 at 00:00

I should probably mention that i have had my curret sytem for about two and a half years, and i'd ideally be looking for a system that won't need an upgrade for a year or more (at least not the whole system).

Also, will any of the Core 2's drop in price once the i7's hit shelves? I'll probably wait till end of the month to order anyway as i don't have time to build a new box over the next couple of weeks.

Overslop · 4 Nov 2008 at 00:12

Mattf121 said:
I'd go the Intel route. AMD cannot keep up with Intel right now. Socket 775 is nowhere near dead, you can still get the latest current CPUs (at the time of writing Nethanum, or whatever, isn't out yet), and the Core 2 line is much faster at most things than the Phenom.

Dual or Quad? Now that's a debate that's constantly coming up on these forums, near future I'd go Dual, due to higher clock speeds both at stock and overclocked. If you aren't planning to upgrade again in the next two years however, I'd go Quad, as more programs will start to utilise more cores. But I wouldn't go for the Q6600 these days, the 65nn cpus are old tech now. I'd go for a Q9xxx series quad.

Providing that it provides a higher clock, it doesn't really matter if it's 65nm does it?

mame · 4 Nov 2008 at 00:24

Neither. If you are wanting to build a budget gamer system then the intel e5200 would be the best buy at the moment.

Darg · 4 Nov 2008 at 01:37

mame said:
Neither. If you are wanting to build a budget gamer system then the intel e5200 would be the best buy at the moment.

Personally I'd say the E7200 would be the one I'd go for. Superb overclocking ability with such a high multiplier.

Squark · 6 Nov 2008 at 11:01

Get the X4

you know you want too!

Sometimes I feel like I'm single handedly keeping AMD/Ati going

EvilOne · 6 Nov 2008 at 11:15

archer_dan said:
1. Is that more expensive RAM worth the increased cost over the standard OCZ kit, would it be worth getting a 1066MHz kit?

2. Which processor - Phenom 9950 or Core2 Q6600?

The main use of the PC will be playing games

1. Not for X4 or Q6600, 1066MHz RAM isnt needed unless you plan to push higher then 3.6 overclock. 800MHz will be fine upto then.

2. Both of them will can keep up with your X2 in games. Both have the advantages and disadvantages, but dont think that the disscusion about which is 'better' would benifit this thread, as its already on 1000s of other threads