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Why is Phenom X4 so much cheaper than Core 2 Quad?

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26 Dec 2005
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Seriously I don't get it, isn't Phenom X4 AMD's solution to compete with Core 2 Quads? If so, why do they so much cheaper? Maybe their performance is bad?
 
Nope, they're just pretty good value for money.

That said, the p2 940 competes with the Q9550, and they are pretty similarly priced =\

The 955 black edition is cheaper than the 940 at OcUK though, which is a bit strange.
 
The Phenom 2 is much better than the C2Qs.

I think that's pushing it, £ for £ they're a little faster. Mhz for Mhz they are a little slower. They're a very good chioce if you don't intend to overclock.



Also, they suck in PhotoShop. The equivilent C2Qs are about 60% faster, everything else they pretty much trade blows.
 
yeah intel have always been beter for video/pic editing.
But the reviews I've seen have put the 955 ahead of the c2d and almost up to i7 levels. For most things.
 
I think that's pushing it, £ for £ they're a little faster. Mhz for Mhz they are a little slower. They're a very good chioce if you don't intend to overclock.



Also, they suck in PhotoShop. The equivilent C2Qs are about 60% faster, everything else they pretty much trade blows.

Dunno where you got the "If you don't intent to overclock" part, must be regarding the OLD PHENOMS and not the new ones.

If you look at the phonom II series and see in example worlds best avarage clocks, the phenoms II hang around at 6-6,6ghz while the i7 extreme 965 hangs at about 5,3-6.0 and the QX9770 @ 5.8-.6.1 . Not to mention that the price is nowhere comparable, 180 vs 300/800GBP.


I'm not saying that one or the other is better, they both have their ups and downs but the overclocking point is not valid anymore since Phenom II, they OC just fine if not better than their intel equivalents.

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Back to the op, AMD has ALWAYS been cheaper than intel since I remember, usually they were better in the top range but it's not always like that. However, intel is like Nokia or Nvidia, they just know that people are stupid and will buy overpriced products anyways just for the sake of having the logo or because their 11yr old son thinks that the more expensive the better.
 
Yeah, but it only costs 25% less than the faster base level i7.


I don't care either way, whicever you end up buying you'll get an excellent CPU. Competition can only be a good thing :D

If you look at the phonom II series and see in example worlds best avarage clocks, the phenoms II hang around at 6-6,6ghz while the i7 extreme 965 hangs at about 5,3-6.0 and the QX9770 @ 5.8-.6.1 . Not to mention that the price is nowhere comparable, 180 vs 300/800GBP.

That's great, if you have an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen.
 
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Yeah, but it only costs 25% less than the faster base level i7.


I don't care either way, whicever you end up buying you'll get an excellent CPU. Competition can only be a good thing :D



That's great, if you have an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen.


Yep, 25% on CPU, 100-150% on mobo and 200% on RAM, there you go, rig difference from 500 to 800GBP and apart from the few % difference in photoshop you will gain nothing extra.

That's why I'll never buy an i7 for gaming - total waste of money :-).
However, if I was doing professional video/graphic encoding - I would be glad to spend ~1500-2000 on nice i7 setup.

Intel just got used to have high prices and this season got their ass kicked a bit just like nvidia did with the release of radeon 48xx series. Yet, I don't think they care - they never did and I don't think they will because people will still buy their stuff.


Anyways enough of this before it turns out again to the old intel vs amd debate.

Just a short note to op:

Why is Armani, Versace, Porsche, Mercedes, Nokia & so on expensive?
They're good, they know that, and they've been in the industry for ages!
Same goes for Intel.

And they will not put cheaper prices because they know that they still have customers that don't give a damn about the price and they don't care that they could get something much cheaper which is almost as good or sometimes better - they don't know, they don't care, they just buy it !
 
I seen the pII 955 all over a =ly overclock Q9550 which is annoying...if I waited...lol

and the AMD seems to be faster in game with the same cards to :\ so I could have saved a lot of game money there :\
 
Yep, 25% on CPU, 100-150% on mobo and 200% on RAM, there you go, rig difference from 500 to 800GBP and apart from the few % difference in photoshop you will gain nothing extra.



Anyways enough of this before it turns out again to the old intel vs amd debate.

You say that but you're making up random numbers to help support AMD (whose products are excellent, I'm not disagreeing!).

I just specced two very similar systems, one P2 and one i7 and the i7 was £104 more (or roughly a 15.5% premium). :)
 
You say that but you're making up random numbers to help support AMD (whose products are excellent, I'm not disagreeing!).

I just specced two very similar systems, one P2 and one i7 and the i7 was £104 more (or roughly a 15.5% premium). :)

I seriously would like to know how did you get the 104GBP difference only.
Unless you have chosen expensive parts for the phenom rig and cheapo stuff for the i7, it's gonna be nowhere close.

I just did a short check on prices, and the difference between 955BE with cheap mobo and cheap ram, and cheapest possible i7920 with cheapest mobo and cheapest ram possible is 280GBP vs 430GBP, thats 150 difference on just the cheapest parts, and the price increases even more on better parts.

Ofcourse if you get a very good mobo + very good ram + most expensive phenom VS cheapest ram, cheapest mobo and cheapest i7, the difference will be minimal, but that's not really a comparison is it ? ; ).
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I've had and built over the years hundreds of PCs with BOTH AMD and INTEL parts, I'm not supporting any of them - just picking the one that's best for the situation.

And tbh, i7 is not the gaming CPU.

If there is anything else you would like to share with me, please carry it onto my e-mail, skype or whatever. This forum had enough of this kinds of posts ;).
 
I made it as equal as I could. I got the second cheapest board for each iirc, cheapest 4gb DDR2 8500 kit for the phenom and cheapest 3x1gb kit for the i7.

Edit:

The phenom has dropped by a few quid so the difference is £115 rather than £104 now with the same kit.

4sb9ys.jpg


2cifn6a.jpg


£115 is still not quite £300.
 
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Taking 6GB of ram rather than 3 would be better comparison to phenoms 4 ;-).
That would make it the 150 I've mention before. You could have taken the comparable clock phenom as well, giving there another 40 extra.

And for the 300+ diff, if you wanted to take better i7 and phenom parts than just the cheapest ones then you will be looking at ~100-140 for high end phenom mobo and ~250 for i7 one, 60-80 for phenom memory and ~200 for i7 one.

That's already making it a 300 and if you wanted to take better CPU as well it will make it additional 250 or so making it over 500 quid total difference.


And even 150-200 is a lot for ~650 rig. For this cash I could have gotten a good cooler and another GPU For crossfire giving it a lot more performance gain than just a few % better CPU.
 
AMD always was cheaper than Intel. Back in the day, you could put together an AthlonXP rig much more cheaply than a P4. Then they brought out the Athlon64 - since it was much better than anything Intel was selling, they could charge what they liked for it and their prices went up. But now Intel has the faster chips again, which means that they're the ones charging the premium prices.
 
For this cash I could have gotten a good cooler and another GPU For crossfire giving it a lot more performance gain than just a few % better CPU.

You're not assuming that computers are only used for computer games surely? For my purposes a 3.8ghz q9550 is bottlenecking an 8800gt, adding a second in sli really wouldn't help matters. An i7 might


My thoughts are that Phenom 2 has to be cheaper than the intel quad. It can't fight with i7 on a performance basis, so amd have lost those sales to intel. All its left with is the middle of the market, where its only option is to undercut intel on prices to ensure that they sell enough to remain competitive.

Seems a bit reflective of ati/nvidia, which I suppose is appropriate. Nvidia have got the high end, and charge what they like for it. Ati therefore undercut them at the mid range and low end.

Given amd & ati are now one group, and intel boards are now supporting sli, it kind of fits together neatly. I don't understand why Intel don't take the financial hit, sell P45 chipsets and core 2 quad at a loss and drive AMD out of the processor market. Perhaps they're not legally allowed to, any thoughts?
 
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Hmm i like that last thought JonJ678, but then Intel to consider a loss on thier products doesnt seem likely. Greed is greed:D or mayby im being too critical and their is a legal side to it:rolleyes:
 
You're not assuming that computers are only used for computer games surely? For my purposes a 3.8ghz q9550 is bottlenecking an 8800gt, adding a second in sli really wouldn't help matters. An i7 might


My thoughts are that Phenom 2 has to be cheaper than the intel quad. It can't fight with i7 on a performance basis, so amd have lost those sales to intel. All its left with is the middle of the market, where its only option is to undercut intel on prices to ensure that they sell enough to remain competitive.

Seems a bit reflective of ati/nvidia, which I suppose is appropriate. Nvidia have got the high end, and charge what they like for it. Ati therefore undercut them at the mid range and low end.

Given amd & ati are now one group, and intel boards are now supporting sli, it kind of fits together neatly. I don't understand why Intel don't take the financial hit, sell P45 chipsets and core 2 quad at a loss and drive AMD out of the processor market. Perhaps they're not legally allowed to, any thoughts?

Sounds like a good idea but i still think the core 2 range accounts for a massive amount of their profits still at this time so i don't think that would be a such a good idea. The i7 range is still purely for enthusiasts at the moment and only accounts for a small percentage. By the way i can't see how an 8800GT can possibly be bottlenecked by an overclocked q9550, surely you mean the other way round?
 
You're not assuming that computers are only used for computer games surely? For my purposes a 3.8ghz q9550 is bottlenecking an 8800gt, adding a second in sli really wouldn't help matters. An i7 might


My thoughts are that Phenom 2 has to be cheaper than the intel quad. It can't fight with i7 on a performance basis, so amd have lost those sales to intel. All its left with is the middle of the market, where its only option is to undercut intel on prices to ensure that they sell enough to remain competitive.

Seems a bit reflective of ati/nvidia, which I suppose is appropriate. Nvidia have got the high end, and charge what they like for it. Ati therefore undercut them at the mid range and low end.

Given amd & ati are now one group, and intel boards are now supporting sli, it kind of fits together neatly. I don't understand why Intel don't take the financial hit, sell P45 chipsets and core 2 quad at a loss and drive AMD out of the processor market. Perhaps they're not legally allowed to, any thoughts?

Sounds like a good idea but i still think the core 2 range accounts for a massive amount of their profits still at this time so i don't think that would be a such a good idea. The i7 range is still purely for enthusiasts at the moment and only accounts for a small percentage. By the way i can't see how an 8800GT can possibly be bottlenecked by an overclocked q9550, surely you mean the other way round?
 
Given amd & ati are now one group, and intel boards are now supporting sli, it kind of fits together neatly. I don't understand why Intel don't take the financial hit, sell P45 chipsets and core 2 quad at a loss and drive AMD out of the processor market. Perhaps they're not legally allowed to, any thoughts?

If Intel did adopt those tactics, and managed to drive AMD out of business, then they would be allowed to charge anything they liked, and the prices they charge would rocket.
 
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