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Intel i5 v AMD range
- Thread starter golwg
- Start date
If you don't plan to do encoding / rendering / or the like then you are crazy to buy either an i7 or i5 right now when the old C2Q / C2D and new AMD CPU have overall exactly the same performance in games / general use as them.
Not sure about this, but isn't it the case that if your monitor has a max of 60 Hz you will never see anything above 60 fps?
Whatever, unless you do anything remotely serious on your pc an AMD chip will be fine. More to the point it will allow you to invest the £s you save on things that will directly impact gaming for example - gfx cards.
One benchmark isn't exactly comprehensive either... if you look around overall there is limited difference in games between all the current CPU
That's what I've always believed and as I'll be getting some spare cash soon I'm going to start upgrading again. Instantly I go down the i5 route and start specing systems etc; but in the real world, purchasing an i5 is, technically, investing in old tech, the 1156 chip is not futureproof when compared to the 1366 and AM3 sockets... Because of that AMD seem to be winning yet again
Thanks.
Not sure about this, but isn't it the case that if your monitor has a max of 60 Hz you will never see anything above 60 fps?
Whatever, unless you do anything remotely serious on your pc an AMD chip will be fine. More to the point it will allow you to invest the £s you save on things that will directly impact gaming for example - gfx cards.
Completely true. If you use Vertical Sync. With vsync on, the FPS cannot get past the refresh rate, so you'll get a max of 60FPS. The minimum accepted playable FPS is 30, since most normal TV's used to run at 50Hz, but they'd repeat each frame once, so you'd actually get 25 different frames in a second. You need more than that to get a stable looking picture, hence the 30 mark.
If your PC gets 60FPS in your most demanding game, don't upgrade. Just get a CPU with enough speed (3Ghz+ when overclocked) and a decent graphics card, and you're gonna be fine.
Right but my point was in relation to those CPU charts trying to prove one was faster than another. All they show is that, yes the cheapest AMD chip is plenty fine for gaming. Spend the money elsewhere. As you say, the graphics card or a 100hz monitor might be more useful in the quest for consistently high fps.
One thing to note about those charts is they are displaying average fps, to get a good consistent gaming experience you should design a system to make sure the minimum FPS doesn't drop below 30 ish or you will see stuttering. So the cheapest AMD CPU may average 57 FPS but I bet there are times when the frame rate drops much lower. Now I'm sure that the GFX card will have the greatest influence on this but the CPU also play's its part.
Having said all that, going back to the op, I would say an overclocked 720BE would be good enough. But if he can easily afford it the 750 would be the better choice.
Having said all that, going back to the op, I would say an overclocked 720BE would be good enough. But if he can easily afford it the 750 would be the better choice.
Yes...
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
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- 33,188
Its faster in some things, certainly not in others.
Read anandtechs entire articles, they ALWAYS test not at the gpu limits in games so as to show the difference between cpu's in non gpu limited situations, there is never a single reason not to be running at gpu limited settings, ever. AT which point most of those graphs would end up within 4-5% of each other, sometimes less than 1%.
For gaming you'd be mad to spend a load on an expensive system, there really isn't a single game out there you can't max out on a £60 chip, if you get a low end quad core there won't be a game out there that can't be maxed out with it in the next couple years. Keeping in mind a much lower end chip, will also waste a lot less power idle, and when at load. An i7 muches quite a lot of power under load(so does a P2 quad) even when they are gpu limited all cores will be at full load voltage and clocks. A 65W quad is the way I'd go for power saving, performance, overclocking if you need it, more than enough for gaming.
Frankly if you have a c2d, or up, you're set for gaming, there aren't any amd/intel chips in the past couple years that can't overclock well enough to be fine in all games, certainly no more recent chips, if you have a quad an upgrade will bring you nothing at all.
But it depends, people brought up gaming and the OP hasn't said he wants it for anything else.
If you're gaming is the only intensive thing you do with your computer an I5 is quite literally peeing money down the drain. You really should let us know what your current setup is, a huge number of people need the bare minimum of upgrades to game and its usually their graphics card and not cpu/mem/mobo/system.
For gaming, I wouldn't spend anything over £100, its just not worth it at all, there is no situation, crossfire, quadfire, trip sli included that will benefit you. Sure in crossfire setups a i7 will show a difference at 1680x1050, if you game with quadfire/sli'd top end cards at a resolution that low you're a plonker.
The Bandit, its actually interesting but AMD often have very very good minimum framerates, they don't have the raw horsepower to get the highest maxes, but often match and can sometimes beat an i7 on minimums, plus many people have commented, including anandtech, that a P2 system can often feel smoother in games than an i7... if that was down to earlier drivers and they've changed their opinion now I don't know, but lots of people mentioned that early on.
Also remember that for the rest of this year, AMD will get 6 core cpu's, probably in the £150-300 bracket and will almost certainly spank anything Intel can offer in terms of i5/i3 and maybe i7 with ease(in some things it will spank it, in amd's weakest/i7 strongest area's it might not but should match it, beat it or come very close.
Intel will get a 6 core also, but being that it will be limited to $1000, its really not worth speaking about and will only be on the i7 platform iirc?
With the new i3's and i5's, bear in mind as of yet you can't turn off the intergrated gpu, which is apparently a bit bothersome, and its crap for gaming and really a waste of money for a gaming setup, though great value with a cheap specific mobo without an IGP on the mobo chipset.
End of this year pushing into next, most people will be wanting to upgrade to AMD's new architecture and redesigned/next gen clarkdale/quads/octo's from Intel which I'm not sure if they'll require new mobo's or not.
This year AMD has more upgradability if you can't afford $1000 cpu's.. IF you might want to upgrade later this year. I'd also go AMD for anything gaming, and anything low end, i5 setups really only if you absolutely require the extra cpu power, photoshop, encoding, 3d apps(NOT gaming), plenty of other things. Gaming, IE/Firefox, flash, youtube, save money and go AMD, a X4/X3 or a low low end Intel will do you fine.
Caporegime
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- 9 Nov 2009
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The Core i3 530 is around £100 and hence is not £65! Also the motherboards are expensive too and you would be lucky to get even the cheapest P55 motherboard for under £70 and these ones have a reduced feature set and budget construction - for example not having all solid capacitors in a £70 to £80 motherboard is a joke. Another funny thing is that just because a review shows that a certain chip can be overclocked a certain amount does not mean in reality it will do so.
Whether the overclock be stable under multiple runs of IBT,OCCT,Orthos and the Crysis Benchmark tool for a few hours though is another question.
The X3 720 beats the Core i5 530 in most games too:
http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7488
Even an X2 550BE will give you 76% to 96% of the framerates of a Core i3 540 for £40 less:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/clarkdale-review_9.html#sect0
Even the Athlon II X3 435 destroys the Pentium G6950 and is available for under £60 too from many retailers. Even the X3 425 which is available for around £55 would be probably worthy competition for the Pentium G6950.
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