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Which is better AMD or I5 for gaming and CAD?

I'd pick the i5 750 out of those 3.

Might be worth considering a full system build though. You might find other platform features swing it once you've budgeted for everything.
 
I'd pick the i5 750 out of those 3.

Might be worth considering a full system build though. You might find other platform features swing it once you've budgeted for everything.

Is there any reason particular you'd go for that one? I do have a system build proposal for each processor:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM £138.98
(£118.28) £138.98
(£118.28)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £127.99
(£108.93) £127.99
(£108.93)
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £112.98
(£96.15) £112.98
(£96.15)
Geil Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel (GV34GB1333C9DC) £81.99
(£69.78) £81.99
(£69.78)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £76.99
(£65.52) £76.99
(£65.52)
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD6401AALS) £50.98
(£43.39) £50.98
(£43.39)
Akasa Freedom Xone Case - Black £46.99
(£39.99) £46.99
(£39.99)
Akasa PaxPower 400W Ultra Quiet Power Supply £43.92
(£37.38) £43.92
(£37.38)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £18.99
(£16.16) £18.99
(£16.16)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.46) £16.99
(£14.46)

and

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition 3.40GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £143.98
(£122.54) £143.98
(£122.54)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £127.99
(£108.93) £127.99
(£108.93)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £85.99
(£73.18) £85.99
(£73.18)
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL) £84.99
(£72.33) £84.99
(£72.33)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £76.99
(£65.52) £76.99
(£65.52)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £42.99
(£36.59) £42.99
(£36.59)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £40.98
(£34.88) £40.98
(£34.88)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £39.99
(£34.03) £39.99
(£34.03)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £18.99
(£16.16) £18.99
(£16.16)
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM £18.99
(£16.16) £18.99
(£16.16)
 
I'd personally go for the i5 750 with a P55A-UD3 and 4gb of Corsair XMS3 :D Exactly what I've got and is very fast.
 
i5 750 is faster than the 965BE at stock and usually has more overclocking headroom (if you want to use it).

One thing that might swing it is socket AM3 looks like it's AMD's main socket of choice, until the CPUs get a graphics core on them. Hex core upgrades are pretty much guarenteed on AM3 as long as your mainboard supplier updates the BIOS.
 
An overclocked i5 750 will destroy the Phenom especially for CAD rendering, but if you run to plan to stay at stock there's probably not much between them.
 
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Budget is £600 but I need to include an operating system in that!

Seems the consensus is the I5 on the overclocking basis. I am a complete newb at computer builds and wouldnt know how to overclock!
 
Budget is £600 but I need to include an operating system in that!

Seems the consensus is the I5 on the overclocking basis. I am a complete newb at computer builds and wouldnt know how to overclock!

you press del after you press the on button then hit page up 20 times, save, and restart. done
 
Get the i5 750 it's easily the best i5 cpu. Anandbench to the rescue for some numbers :)

http://anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=102&p2=109&c=1

If you look at this, the AMD chip doesn't have that much of an advantage over the i5 despite it's 600MHz clock advantage and the i5 wins in a number of benchmarks & power consumption.

An overclocked i5 750 will destroy the Phenom especially for CAD rendering, but if you run to plan to stay at stock there's probably not much between them.

Overclocked to 3.2GHz it would beat the X4 965 hands down and you'd be able to probably hit 3.8GHz-4GHz with a bit of tweaking.
 
If you're relying on the cad in a professional sense then I suggest not overclocking much to begin with.

It's very important that it is entirely stable for such work. While this is entirely possible with overclocking, the testing is time consuming and troubleshooting slight instability can be difficult.

That you say cad + gaming suggests you're a student, in which case it's less expensive though equally frustrating to have it crash partway through a simulation. This would also suggest you've got enough down time to thoroughly test the overclock, in which case the 750 at 3.6 to 4.0ghz is probably what you want.
 
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