Does it matter?

[Catsick]

To a casual gamer, does it really matter whether it's Intel or AMD?
Have noticed there are some really good AMD chips out now alongside the Intel ones, but last I had was a 2ghz Amd dual core one although forgotten it's name now!

 

[Catsick]

i3 is only dual core though isn't it. Even though it does have 4 threads they aren't physical ones, so the chip is duplicating itself and doing more work than an i5 or i7 which have those 4 cores or am I totally wrong? lol

 

[Catsick]

So how do the Piledrivers fare against the current i7?

 

[Catsick]

What does casual gaming mean for you?

Just being able to pick any game up and play it without the worry about overclocking, heat, bottlenecking etc whilst staying within a budget.

 

[Catsick]

End of the day buy the best you can afford / willing to spend and then tweak the graphics to your machine.

This is what it's going to boil down to. The initial question was whether AMD were up to Intel standards now but it sounds like things aren't quite what they seem.
The budget will cover a very good Intel/nvidia system, but might opt more towards replacing items rather than a new full system.
Thanks all for your comments.