• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

AMD vs Intel

big.rich1976

big.rich1976

big.rich1976

Associate
Joined
21 Sep 2006
Posts
168
Location
Whittlesey
I am in the market for a upgrade, I want some honest opinions and experiences from people with both Intel and AMD CPU's. My last 2 PC's have been built around Intel, Namely the E2180 Core2Duo and the Q6600, Both great overlclockers with minimal problems. Im not adverse to AMD, Are there any motherboards and CPU's people would suggest? My PC is used for a variety of tasks, internet, Photography, Bit of gaming etc.

Anyway look forward to your opinions. The upgrade will consist of motherboard, CPU and ram and will add more bits in later on.
 
It's down to the type of games you play, your budget, the monitor you use etc.

Generally speaking for gaming:
a) if you mainly play the latest titles, particularly first-person games from EA and don't want to spend too much, build around the AMD FX6300 or FX8320;
b) if you play quite a lot of mmos and strategy games or any CPU demanding games that don't use more than 4 cores, then build around Intel Haswell i5 (socket 1150);
c) if you gaming on 120/144Hz monitor and planning on going crossfire/sli and pushing 100fps+, build around the Intel Haswell i7 4770K.

Regardless of which CPU you getting, you should overclock them to get the most out of them performance wise, so you should invest in a decent CPU cooler as well. For your normal usage and work, I don't think it matters too much whichever CPU you use.

Hope this will at least give you some ideas ;)
 
Last edited:
Depending on what your budget is, determines which path you should take really.

Intel has nothing really worth considering until you get to the i5 4670K/Xeon 4 core 8 Thread.

But then AMD's Piledriver 6 and 8 cores come under the i5 4670K price wise.
 
Budget of about £350 for Ram(8gb), CPU and motherboard. I was leaning towards a i5 3570K CPU, 8gb DDR3 ram and Asus motherboard. Im not a massive gamer(tend to play xbox more and old retro games) and do tend to dip in and out, However i am doing more photoshop/photography based work and looking into doing a bit of music making(something i did many years ago on my P75!) Great advice tho, I will certainly take a look at the AMD option, Its not abt saving money, However if i did spend less on a CPU i could maybe get a better motherboard and more ram, Overclocking is a must, Do like a challenge and a free upgrade, My Q6600 has done me proud on that front.
 
I wouldn't go for a 3570K unless you're getting it cheap.
It's fine performance, but 1155 is a dead platform, and its replacement is the 4670K.
 
I run Xeon 1230v2 (Haswell is v3)

if you're not worried about overclocking, it's a fine chip for the price. (4670K money, but 4770 performance) you can also get a cheaper H87 or B85 board with it, as compared to 4670K, where you need Z87.
 
Games are starting to use more cores, but AMD's IPC is still miles behind, so even in those 8 threaded games, the latest i5 doesn't really suffer.

But it comes at a premium obviously, whereas an FX8320 comes in 50 quid cheaper.
 
either go 8320 and oc or i5 4670k or 4770k

8 cores and games is basically sales talk (amd and consoles so people assume that it will effect pc. ) by the time you need more than four fast cores youll be upgraded one or two times ! consoles control games now ! and if the cpu they use is less than what most game with now how will the slow 8 core they use become any faster ?

it will be interesting in a couple of years to come back and laugh :D
 
4670K and FX8 offer similar peak theoretical performance, the major difference is with FX8 you need the software to make use all of the cores to realise it, whereas the 4670K runs everything equally well.

I'd still take an overclocked 4670K over anything AMD offer.
 
Are you upgrading your GPU? if not what are you running?

The most important part of any gaming rig is the GPU. The CPU very seldom comes into the equation more than the GPU and when it does AMD's IPC on Piledriver seems to be enough from all the testing I have done.

What I'm saying is that despite all of the horror stories I've still yet to find a game that brings my 8320 to its knees and doesn't result in playable frame rates. IIRC the lowest I've seen in anything so far was Crysis 3 and that was around 39. Given 27 FPS is an acceptable (yet not ideal) minimum given a Blu Ray plays at 24.3 FPS then it's more than safe.

It comes down to money. However I don't agree that the 4670k is worth having. I think up to and including the 4670k Intel make nothing worth buying in those brackets, they only really come into their own with the I7 which is miles faster than anything AMD make.

It's not that the 4670k is a bad chip, far from it. I just fail to see why in gaming it's worth £50+ more than the 8320 with a half decent clock speed. That's unless some one can prove otherwise of course but I've still not seen it yet.

The 4670k is safe though. The 8320 takes some knowledge and a half decent board.
 
Here are two options:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £65.99
Total : £285.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).




YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £65.99
Total : £371.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



One is a lot under budget, the other is a little over budget. The 4770K isn't feasible at ~£350.

Unless you're playing mainly RTS games I'd go for the 8320/8350 and get a decent cooler on top to overclock to 4.5-4.8GHz.
 
Brand new OEM 2600k off an auction site is a cheaper and better option.... How often do CPU's break?

Then You'll have more money for other parts and an i7 too over an i5
 
big.rich1976 said:
I am in the market for a upgrade, I want some honest opinions and experiences from people with both Intel and AMD CPU's. My last 2 PC's have been built around Intel, Namely the E2180 Core2Duo and the Q6600, Both great overlclockers with minimal problems. Im not adverse to AMD, Are there any motherboards and CPU's people would suggest? My PC is used for a variety of tasks, internet, Photography, Bit of gaming etc.

Anyway look forward to your opinions. The upgrade will consist of motherboard, CPU and ram and will add more bits in later on.
Click to expand...

a) If you do not look to upgrade your 5870, just stay where you are. Overclock the Q6600 to 3-3.2Ghz and relax until you can upgrade the GPU also.

The combination you have, is as good as it can get, and if you spend money either way (GPU or CPU) you going to see no serious improvements while losing money. Grabbing as second 5870 for peanuts and go CF is better option, along with overclocking the Q6600.

b) Or else you either go for 500-600 budget as bare minimum, with a GPU like a single 7950 or the cheapest 280X.
And if you consider to go for i7 4770K, there is sidestep to 4820K to consider also. Which as platform costs the same, and has better "subsystems".
More pci lanes, quad channel ram, better engineered CPU, upgrade path to 6 cores/12 threads, to name a few.
 
almighty15 said:
And by the looks of it AM3+ will not be getting Steam Roller making it pretty much a dead socket.
Click to expand...

No one buys a CPU and board based on what CPU they can replace the one they are buying with. From what I've seen 1150 could well work out to be a dead socket, yet that won't prevent people buying Haswell CPUs.

A computer purchase is always based on the now, and a bit of the future (as much as one can garner when looking at data). The 8320 does everything you could want it to 'as is' in the socket it fits, the same as any Haswell chip.

From all of the signs I can see? well it's looking like gaming is trying to finally eliminate the CPU completely so that you can piece together a fine gaming rig for not too much money. It was very similar back in the early 2000s with the Athlon XP. Most of the games then were hard coded to 30 FPS so a Radeon 9700 Pro was your elite card at around £190. Half of what a decent GPU costs now.

It's high time these hugely priced GPUs were asked some questions of, instead of being retired just because Intel and AMD and so on have itchy arses and want to keep screwing people over every six months by out dating cards that haven't even begun to be used properly.

The Xbox 360 is now at its death, however, look what it can do with the ancient neandethal like hardware FFS. That's simply devs being stuck on the same technology and having to use a bit of brain matter.

Roll on Mantle. It could finally put a bit of sense back into PC gaming. It really sucks that high end PC gaming has become so bloody elite and expensive. So many of my old gaming chums called PC gaming a day years ago now, just because they grew tired of the constant push to keep spending hideous amounts of money to remain in the game.
 
Wow thats a real eye opener right there, 100 quid difference between the intel and AMD spec, GPU currently is a ATI 5870, I have 2 options foor the GPU, add another 5870 in and run in crossfire or spec a new card, Its not critical straight away as im not a massive games player.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom