Intel i7 bundles Vs AMD for gaming

abercromb · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:32

Hi all

I thought I would throw this out there and see what you fine folks thought.

I have been planning a new i7 920 gaming rig. They appear to be stunning. I was planning on hooking up a pair of 5870 sapphires and heading off into FPS heaven.

But I keep getting this nagging feeling that I am wasting a bit of cash on something I won't use? I won't be folding, not going to video edit or use heavy CPU programs apart from gaming.

Its going to be a DVD, Blue ray, Music, gaming rig. Pure entertainment, with the natural web serfing/life atached.

So am I wasting money on Intel when AMD willl do all I am asking for a lot less?

To add to that, as a self build newb. Can some one recommend a OcUk overclocked bundle for me to look over. I prefer for the experts to have clocked it then I can plug it all together and still get the feeling that I have made some massive contribution. Without the obvious fear that I have no clue how to overclock and am certain to blow up my new hardware :-)

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:38

Intel Bundle £550 down from £590 for TWO
AMD bundle £340 so yeah theres a couple of hundred quid difference for little (if any) difference in gaming, the Intel is clocked higher but Im sure you could push the AMD higher than what theyve clocked it to

BFG_9000 · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:39

AMD all the way

Rroff · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:41

An AMD setup is perfectly capable of playing any game out today with great framerates...

That said if you are serious about getting a couple of 5870s in crossfire in an enthusiast system - there is currently no alternative to an overclocked i7 setup... no AMD setup currently can fully utilise the power those GPUs can provide.

abercromb · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:42

One thing I forgot Is I was hoping to get 6 gig of ram or higher. I could be very wrong here and not need it in any way but in the past I assumed it helped.

that and if I add extra ram I thought i would have to redo the over clock a process I am very unsure about

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:42

Rroff said:
An AMD setup is perfectly capable of playing any game out today with great framerates...

That said if you are serious about getting a couple of 5870s in crossfire in an enthusiast system - there is currently no alternative to an overclocked i7 setup... no AMD setup currently can fully utilise the power those GPUs can provide.

Curious as to why you'd say this? Not saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure what you mean???
Edit: to clarify the crosshair mobo in that bundle runs xfire at x16/x16 so not sure what other limitations thered be to a dual 5870 set up

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:44

abercromb said:
One thing I forgot Is I was hoping to get 6 gig of ram or higher. I could be very wrong here and not need it in any way but in the past I assumed it helped.

that and if I add extra ram I thought i would have to redo the over clock a process I am very unsure about

again for gaming any more than 4 is mostly wasted, very few games require any more, I had 8 myself til recently and used 4 in a new build (seen as how DDR2 prices have sky rocketed) and I havent noticed any slowdown at all

Rroff · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:45

http://translate.google.com/transla...1404-FC2-und-Crysis-Warhead/Grafikkarte/Test/

Its not an ideal review by any means but it does give a good example of how an OC'd i7 scales over AMD cpus with just 1 GPU let alone 2x 5870.

When you bare in mind the i7 will go North of 4gig with relative ease and the AMDs are tapering off at 4gig - a lot of retail AMD chips won't actually go beyond 3.8-3.9 without serious cooling/extra voltage - and the scaling is still going on with 1x 5870 let alone 2... your not getting your moneys worth with an AMD and 5870 crossfire.

To pull the conclusion out of that article:

AMD itself is aware of the way of the superior processing power of Intel's Nehalem very well - not for nothing that the Canadians have used in their slide-show benchmarks of the Radeon HD 5870 is not the hotel's own flagship Phenom X4 BE 965, but a Core i7 965 EE. Because, as with any high-end card for the Radeon HD 5870: It is the fastest CPU (architecture) on the market, plus the true overclocking (fps) shows potential - but in practice, a potent upper-range CPU is usually the wiser, as a cheaper and usually just barely slower choice.

abercromb · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:47

Rroff said:
An AMD setup is perfectly capable of playing any game out today with great framerates...

That said if you are serious about getting a couple of 5870s in crossfire in an enthusiast system - there is currently no alternative to an overclocked i7 setup... no AMD setup currently can fully utilise the power those GPUs can provide.

Well I currently invest far to much time in a game called Age of conan a DX10 MMO. It has stunning graphics but needs a very high end rig just to avoid turning everything to minimum. This rig is for that game mainly and I would finaly like to avoid adjusting settings depending on what I'm doing in game. If Intel is the best for gaming then thats that way to go but not certain it is yet.

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:48

as far as I can tell thats comparing an OCd 920 vs a stock 965, hardly a fair comparison

drakt · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:52

Dont forget about longevity, The amd may be cheaper and perfectly capable of running the game you have now but in a year or so when new games come out it may stuggle a lot more than an i7 (also whack in a new gpu in a year or two to keep it going for longer!)

Rroff · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:53

95thrifles said:
as far as I can tell thats comparing an OCd 920 vs a stock 965, hardly a fair comparison

Its only a 100MHz difference CPU wise - but as I said its hardly an ideal review - the Q6600 is over 25% slower clock than the fastest AMD CPU and its still keeping up well - clock for clock it would be a good margin ahead.

95thrifles · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:55

Most reviews show that at higher resolutions (what most of us use) and in gpu demanding games (most modern games) youre getting into a gpu dependant scenario, and as such the cpu (assuming its capable which all these are) has little/no effect.

A quote from techreport
"True to form when a GPU becomes the primary constraint, the pack of CPUs begins to bunch together. Yes, Virginia, it's true: if your graphics card is too slow for the resoluton and quality settings you're using, a faster CPU won't do you much good when gaming. Shocking, I know.

Oddly, though, the CPUs don't quite converge on the same point. Instead, the Core i5 and i7 processors converge on a point about 10 FPS below the other quad-cores. I'm not sure what the story is here—could be some sort of platform optimization issue. We may have to investigate further when we have time, but we don't today"
Full link here

Rroff · 14 Oct 2009 at 18:00

Baring in mind the clock speed differences in the techreport article and the overclocking potential - clock for clock the Q9x50 CPUs still seem to be the best for gaming by quite a margin in that review.