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Intel i5 or Phenom II 965

ghop

ghop

ghop

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Joined
23 May 2008
Posts
393
Location
Essex
I'm upgrading my PC very soon but I can't decide what to go for! At first I was going to go with i5, then I heard about the socket problems which put me off, after that I was dead set on the PII 965 (125w version) but now I've been heavily swayed towards the i5 again. With the i5 I would buy a Gigabyte P55A-UD3R motherboard as they're supposed to be very good and definitely don't have the Foxconn sockets. If I were to go Phenom II I'd probably go a high end motherboard as well. Not sure exactly what I'd go for, probably a gigabyte of some description.

The i5 setup would generally cost me a bit more, about 60 quid more to be exact but the advantages of the i5 setup would be better performance and 2200mhz ram support (would be buying some 2000mhz sticks if I got the i5 setup) and the advantages of the PII setup would be proper support for crossfire and cost. Is it true that the i5 will overclock better though? I heard the 125w 965s were great for overclocking, but a friend on another forum has had lots of trouble reaching 4ghz with his and to get 4ghz he eventually had to change his chip for another one and buy a new motherboard.

Really confused as to what to go for at the moment! Help please :)
 
pieman109 said:
Ignoring performance figures atm, what are you gonna use the pc for?
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A bit of everything. I do quite a bit of photo editing in photoshop and am often editing/encoding videos, so I need something with a bit of speed for these uses. Going to be doing a lot of gaming too. I've been under the impression that the Phenom performs nearly identically if not slightly worse than the i5 for games, but the i5 surpasses it in everything else? Is this true?

Also, I already have a CPU cooler but it'll go on either so whatever I go for is fine in that respect.
 
whichever you fancy to be honest the pros for both.

in gaming im sorry but phenoms are the dogs they have a added smoothness is best way i can describe it

a new stepping 965 will be as quick as the i5 or quicker in gaming. depends on your game you play.

people are pro intel and the intels are better and slightly overclock higher . are you going extreme (are you going 4 gig plus ?) this is the thing 99.9 dont go over that

if you encode , photoshop ( like workswise) go intel if you game go p2 955 or 965 and say your cash.

ask people who have either tried the systems side by side or owned them theres nothing in it.
 
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i'd go i5 750.

most phenom ii 55/65 wont go above 3.8 stable
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With respects, dead wrong. 3.8 is dead easy, 4 is ok, above you begin to rely on having a good rig and a good chip, mo bo choice is also important but if you are getting a good one 4 should be no trouble, with only a zalman 9500 and noobish overclocking skills 4 stable is a breeze with decent ambient and cooling, see here for the forum on it.

http://forums.amd.com/forum/message...121873&STARTPAGE=51&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

If you do go AMD the 965 125 watt is the chip to get no doubt.

I am happy with the AMD for price performance, and it isnt overclocked. Having said that I believe the i5's and intels in general overclock massively better.
 
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Reason I'd like to go Intel again is because my current chip is, and has been fantastic. It overclocks like a dream and to be honest, overclocking my friends Phenom II was a right pain in comparison. I'm more leaning toward i5 at the moment. Gaming isn't all I do and they perform pretty much identically on the games front anyway.

To be honest, I'm still very tempted by AMD but at the moment, the i5 is the same price as the 965 on overclockers and I'd probably spend the same amount on the motherboard (maybe minus 20 quid or so) and ram if I got a Phenom system so price wise there's not much in it. I won't do any extreme overclocking. As for overclocking. If I can get 4ghz stable with good temps then sure, I'll stick with that, but a more realistic everyday overclock would be more like 3.8ghz or 3.7. That would be fine.

Also, I've heard that the i5s have some weird ram voltage limitation. Would this ram be ok if I got i5?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-037-GS

Thanks very much for the advice so far everyone :)
 
You could save a bit more by going AM2+, as you could use your existing memory (DDR2)which would save about £80 if ram was bought brand new, mobo and cpu bundle would come out at about £210 not including the heasink/fan
 
pieman109 said:
You could save a bit more by going AM2+, as you could use your existing memory (DDR2)which would save about £80 if ram was bought brand new, mobo and cpu bundle would come out at about £210 not including the heasink/fan
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Thanks for the suggestion, but I'd rather upgrade to the latest equipment :) No doubt at some point in the future I'll want to go 8 gigs of ram, and if I have DDR2 that'll be pretty difficult as it's already pretty much obsolete. I also reckon I could get a pretty penny for my current ram when it's this pricey. I'm not too bothered about saving money :p I did that last time which is why I have the cheapest motherboard possible and a bottom end dual core. This time I want to splash out and get something really nice :)
 
Why bring up the Foxconn issue? We all know it was some scaremongers trying to to get in on the We Cried Wolf Frist!

Not sure why your dead set on overclocking it to the max if your only looking to dabble in a few intensive tasks.

Most of the components in an i5 setup would be ~mid range just as Intel designed the platform to be. Your memory read/write would be limited by your cpu choice and your overclocking range would be limited by how little you spend on your mobo.

Remember to watch the spec on the mobo, poor components would hamper your OC and too much gloss (over featured) could be a waste of money.

ps you said you wanted to splash out, so you picked a UD3, which is among gigabytes cheapest option????
 
I picked a P55A-UD3R which is 125 quid. Not exactly cheap ;)

And I don't know a lot about the Foxconn issue but it still put me off! Also, I'm going to see how fast my chip can go when I get it, but for an everyday overclock I'll probably be sitting at around 3.6. That would be ideal. Although if I could get faster than that with good temps then whatever, the faster the better :p

I just read on the i5 750 page that it supported DDR3 800/1066/1333. No mention of any higher speeds in here? This worries me slightly as then there'll be no point in buying 2000mhz ram. And indeed no point in the P55A mobo supporting 2200mhz ram :( I want at least 1600mhz really.
 
Ended up going with i5. It was going to cost almost exactly the same so I weighed up the options, the only thing that I was going to really lose out on with PII was proper crossfire (I still got crossfire, but it's 16x and 4x, so not great) which I wasn't going to use anyway, and with the i5 I get a bit more raw power.

I got the i5 750 with a Gigabyte P55A-UD3 motherboard (looked pretty good, had SATA3 and USB3 so should be good for the future) and some Patriot 1600mhz 7-7-7-20 ram.

I hope I made the right choice! Thanks guys
 
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