• 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.

Have I made a mistake in choosing AMD over Intel

At stock vs an E6300, your 4600X2 is probably quicker overall, though perhaps not in games.
That said, the Core 2's do have lots more over-clocking headroom. Still, given your situation & the fact that your setup is pretty good, I wouldn't bother.
As others have mentioned, AM2 will be around for a while, being compatable with AMD's next round of CPUs - so you have options in the future. I'd stick.
 
my mate matt just upgraded from a smithfield to a completely new rig, he has E6600, and im sorry to say 'whats the hype about' i see no difference at all in everyday use compaired to my X2, feels like the same system to be honest, yes i know in benchmarks conroe does better and it gets couple more FPS in games, but don't listen to the hype and think its 100% faster, you don't NEED conroe, your AM2 system will be fine :)
 
well i have a AMD 939 setup and my 3dmark score with 8800GTS is same as Core2duo 3/3.2ghz with 8800GTS.

My friend has a core2 (3.2ghz i think) setup i honestly dont see the difference between my setup and his.

I think he can shrink DVD to AVI/avi to DVD bit quicker
 
Yes you could have had a faster Core2Duo machine for the same money, but don't beat yourself up over it.

A good Athlon X2 AM2 will still pee all over today's applications, and you'll get serious punch in games.

Plus, as mentioned, you're set to just drop in a K8L CPU later on and away you go.

Easyrider is right, but then I think he just loves overclockable CPU's! :D
 
Come on now, stop making him feel better about going with AMD. We all know Core 2 Duo is the best cpu in the whole universe currently. :D

"I can give you what you want. I can give you what you need".
 
Last edited:
Quixote said:
At stock vs an E6300, your 4600X2 is probably quicker overall, though perhaps not in games.
That said, the Core 2's do have lots more over-clocking headroom.
Click to expand...

My E6400 at E6600 speed (2400Mhz less the 2MB extra Cache) rump whipped my previous Amd X2 4400 (DDR) easily the Amd X2 4400 was at 2600Mhz :eek:
 
apcreek said:
Well Ive reordered and have just had a ds3 and 6400 delivered, gonna run 3dmark06 now then rebuilt later today or tomorrow.

Will let you know how I get on.
Click to expand...

There probably won't be that much difference as 3DMark '06 is a graphics benchmark that really tests your graphics card, not your CPU. There are two CPU tests where the CPU is used to render the graphics rather than the GPU and my 3.6GHz E6600 still only manages to flicker between 1 and 2 frames per second.

Test using PC Mark '05 or SuperPi instead. The truth is that for general surfing and most computer usage, the AMDs are more than adequate. It's only for extremely computation intensive situations where Core2Duo wins out. When the computer is waiting for the graphics or the hard drive or you to do something, the extra oomph of the Core2Duo is wasted.

Most of the people I play online games with all had Socket 939 systems and I had a massively overclocked Intel P4 940. When Core2Duo came out we all upgraded. I think it's fair to say that once the benchmarks had been run and we all felt very smug, we started to notice that none of the systems 'felt' that much quicker. They definitely were that much faster, but web browsing was the same, online gaming was still limited waiting for the data to stream down and there really was no difference in things like Word and Excel.

I didn't even see a massive difference in my SAP client performance because I was only firing queries at the server and waiting for the result sets to come back. Programming compile times improved quite a bit and we did see a huge difference with the new Core2Duo Xeon servers when we loaded them up with 8Gb of RAM, because they were doing computationally intensive work.

In my old office we had 6 people. All the men (2 Sales/1 Analyst/2 Programmers) had E6600 Core2Duos with 2Gb RAM (not overclocked). The woman (PA) had a Celeron with 1Gb RAM in it. Guess who could type up a proposal fastest? The woman with the typing skills.

Any computer is only as fast as it's rate limiting step to finish a task. If the rate limiting step for what YOU want the computer for is the CPU, then Core2Duo will be MUCH faster. If it's not, then upgrading the CPU is a waste of money.
 
I went from a opteron 146 to a C2D e6400 then back to a opteron 148 @ 3.0Ghz and i would just like to say C2D is definatly mile's ahead. believe the hype because i am now getting rid of the 148 and going back to C2D.

There is no comparison. I dont think ive seen my C2D struggle at anything.

:D
 
xtr3eme said:
I went from a opteron 146 to a C2D e6400 then back to a opteron 148 @ 3.0Ghz and i would just like to say C2D is definatly mile's ahead. believe the hype because i am now getting rid of the 148 and going back to C2D.

There is no comparison. I dont think ive seen my C2D struggle at anything.

:D
Click to expand...

But your'e comparing a dual Core Intel to a single core AMD - what did you expect ?
 
“Have I made a mistake in choosing AMD over Intel …. “
Satisfaction do not come from comparing with/judging, others. It comes from comparing to our real needs. Fashion damages through giving momentary satisfaction to induce perpetual dis-satisfaction. Fashion over-excites receptors and numbs them so we need more to maintain the original requirement. Just like an addictive drug and alcohol comsumption, say, is drugging oneself. It never ends because fashion is not about our needs but about feeling inadequate when comparing with the greener grass and the greener grass is “Chasing the Rainbow”. There is no such thing. Fashion destroys the dignity within and is a real destructive force for it has no constructive qualities.

Something will always seem better for, “Around every bend, there is always a larger mountain”. Like status within evolution, when comparing a chimp and a human, say, some will look for similarities, like “lefties” trying to humanise chimps, and there will be “righties”, who will denigrate chimps as being inferior and to be exploited. [A common call-sign of the truly dumb whose perception of “democracy” is the opportunity to plunder, not morality, i.e doing the “right” thing]. Status within evolution, or an analogy of differences within any given matter under consideration, is to elicit/”teach” satisfaction. When we judge only our self and not others, only then can we find satisfaction. We can never find satisfaction when we compare for that is merely positioning for power and when power is transient [because we can only transform energy, not create it], the desire will repeat/cyclical. That which is cyclical is always transient/artificial/dead/imaginative/etc, whereas that which is permanent/progressive/living/real/ etc, is helical. The progression of simple harmonic motion. One reason why we all will progressively age and die [ be reborn again if we choose to evolve].

Our task is to be satisfied with what we’ve got should it satisfies our real needs. The time to seek change is when we need a truth, not an untruth.
 
apcreek said:
Well Ive reordered and have just had a ds3 and 6400 delivered, gonna run 3dmark06 now then rebuilt later today or tomorrow.

Will let you know how I get on.
Click to expand...

Way to fall for the C2D hype. I'm sorry, but an X2 4600 is more than good enough, and will be for a while. It's like swapping a 170mph Porsche for a 190mph Ferrari because it wasn't fast enough....when the speed limit is only 70mph anyway. Or something along those lines.

I think Intel would love to hire some of the people on here as PR consultants...
 
yes the conroe has more actual power but it really doesn't matter. general applications you WILL NOT see a difference.

if you're running your average say episode of lost will you feel the difference between your task manager saying your athlon is using 25% and your conroe is using 15%? no. will firefox open a page faster? no. will games improve the fps so much that a higher resolution is available to you? no, and anyone that tells you the answer to any of those is yes is flat out lying to you.

if you have a x1900xtx and you play fear at say 1680x1050 with aa/af set to mid and its playable but 1920x1200 isn't, then going from a x2 3800+ to a c2d clocked to 3Ghz WILL NOT suddenly let you play at a higher resolution, it might give you 5fps more at the same resolution, if you're lucky. the other games that are cpu limited such as supreme commander also WILL NOT let you play at a higher res, its just the difference between playable or not.

there are a load of threads across multiple forums where people have a low end cpu and have lots of supreme commander problems, even people with really good graphics cards and what do they say, something along the lines of "i don't know whats wrong, even if i drop the resolution down to low settings i still don't get good framerates". its because the gfx can cope at higher fps, the cpu just can't do the calculations for all the units fast enough. those are the few games that yes, a conroe overclocked will show a difference compared to a lowly clocked cpu, but a dual core ath x2 won't show a huge difference either.


overall, be honest, everyone in this thread, name the most cpu intensive programs you use and how often you use them.

games - cpu isn't a big deal as long as you have really any dual core cpu, and 99% of games will still run on most single core cpu's the same.

video encoding, small sizes the difference won't be dramatic, re-encoding big files will show pretty big differences in times though.

you get the drift, other than gaming how many of us really use the cpu for anything cpu intensive?
 
drunkenmaster said:
yes the conroe has more actual power but it really doesn't matter. general applications you WILL NOT see a difference.

if you're running your average say episode of lost will you feel the difference between your task manager saying your athlon is using 25% and your conroe is using 15%? no. will firefox open a page faster? no. will games improve the fps so much that a higher resolution is available to you? no, and anyone that tells you the answer to any of those is yes is flat out lying to you.

if you have a x1900xtx and you play fear at say 1680x1050 with aa/af set to mid and its playable but 1920x1200 isn't, then going from a x2 3800+ to a c2d clocked to 3Ghz WILL NOT suddenly let you play at a higher resolution, it might give you 5fps more at the same resolution, if you're lucky. the other games that are cpu limited such as supreme commander also WILL NOT let you play at a higher res, its just the difference between playable or not.

there are a load of threads across multiple forums where people have a low end cpu and have lots of supreme commander problems, even people with really good graphics cards and what do they say, something along the lines of "i don't know whats wrong, even if i drop the resolution down to low settings i still don't get good framerates". its because the gfx can cope at higher fps, the cpu just can't do the calculations for all the units fast enough. those are the few games that yes, a conroe overclocked will show a difference compared to a lowly clocked cpu, but a dual core ath x2 won't show a huge difference either.


overall, be honest, everyone in this thread, name the most cpu intensive programs you use and how often you use them.

games - cpu isn't a big deal as long as you have really any dual core cpu, and 99% of games will still run on most single core cpu's the same.

video encoding, small sizes the difference won't be dramatic, re-encoding big files will show pretty big differences in times though.

you get the drift, other than gaming how many of us really use the cpu for anything cpu intensive?
Click to expand...

If you where buying a new motherboard,cpu and ram tomorrow what would you buy?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom