Intel or amd ?

Scoob145

Scoob145

Scoob145

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5 Oct 2011
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Yes I'm sorry to say this is another intel vs amd thread :(

Basically I'm in the process of building a htpc that can play games as well . I already have purchased a corsair h60 CPU cooler and a 550wt modular power supply. I have been looking at the new range of trinity CPUs with the thought of adding a Asus 6670 ddr5 gfx card and 16gb ddr3 1866mhz ram.

The build itself will sit in a zalman hd503 case that I have already purchased. The question is tho I want my system to be quiet but powerfull enough to play the odd game on at 1080p resolution . My budget is £350 and I would need a motherboard , ram , CPU and GPu .

Please feel free to list specs and costs but I'm also looking for valid reasons why the intel might be better than the amd setup I have proposed

Thanks in advance
 
The whole point of using a Trinity CPU is that it is the best to use without an additional graphics card - as soon as you add the graphics card then Intel is the better choice.
 
Yeh I thought about that but with trinity and a £60 gfx card I would have crossfire performance no ? Or do u think the trinity chip would be powerful enough to game on ?
 
you are right with the crossfire
thats still only 7750 level performance tho i think

it will just come down to how high res you want to go and with all the sparklies turned on if amd/intel
 
I would like the sparkles and stuff :) who wouldn't lol . Would it be bette value to build I i5 system and get a dedicated gfx ? At the same time tho I need to worry about the heat and power consumption as it will be in a tv unit with very restricted airflow !

Please help me ocuk !
 
Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £101.99
(£84.99) £101.99
(£84.99)
AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £95.99
(£79.99) £95.99
(£79.99)
Asus HD 6670 SILENT EDITION 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £61.99
(£51.66) £61.99
(£51.66)
OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
(£39.99)
TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2133HC11DC01) £35.99
(£29.99) £35.99
(£29.99)
Sub Total : £286.62
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £59.22


That's the sort of setup I am looking at ? Any good ?
 
its good, nice parts
just dont expect it to play 1900 well
1600 should be fine
cant expect miracles here :)
 
you are saving quite a bit over going big gfx card tho...
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
1 x Intel Pentium G870 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £67.99
1 x Gigabyte B75M-D3H Intel B75 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £64.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £344.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).



if ur budget was less id say without a doubt go trinity :)
 
Better setup:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ Nexuiz & Sleeping Dogs PC Games £134.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £95.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77M-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £86.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £355.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).



A 60gb SSD will be quite small if you want to install a few games on it, do you already have some HDDs?
 
Are both those intel set ups not dual core ? Would the amd not be better in the long run as it is a quad core ? I wasn't expecting to be able to play the latest games at 100fps with full aa , just want normal gfx with a little sparkle .

As for storage Ssd is just boot drive with games running off normal hdd .
 
Problem is mel no one seems to own new trinity chips and I don't read benchmarks as being the performance that the chip or gfx has to offer as let's be honest they are not day to day usage of the setup . I'm leaning towards the amd setup more and more as it will be quiet I hope and have good performance . Doing a little research at the moment . If u find anything let me know please :)
 
Even as a dual core the i3 will have a less chance of bottlenecking the GPU due to higher IPC (Instructions Per Clock) performance. And with Trinity + 6670, you may hit crossfire problems such as the games poorly supporting it. More cores doesn't always mean better performance.

A10 vs i3 here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/677?vs=675

Trinity is honestly only good if you're on a really tight budget and don't mind sticking with the onboard GPU.

I've tweaked the spec to allow an SSD in:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ Nexuiz & Sleeping Dogs PC Games £134.99
1 x ASRock H77M Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £62.99
1 x Samsung 64GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC064D/EU) £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £351.35 (includes shipping : £9.50).

 
That's a great case for a HTPC.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £80.99
1 x Intel Pentium G860 3.00GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £61.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £354.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).



You can use full ATX mobos so might as well have the expansion available with the extra PCI slots. The Pentium G is much cheaper than the i3 but still more than capable for your needs. It lacks quick sync support but as I used an nvidia GPU you have cuda support which can help with video encoding, should you desire to rip your movie collection to it's storage.

As i'm using the Z77 mobo you could upgrade to an i5K once they go 2nd hand for a reasonable price. Even overclock it if you really wanted to. That CPU rips movies at an incredible speed. I encoded a 2hr movie on the fly from DVD in 20mins on a i5 2500K @4.4Ghz with quicksync enabled.

LucidMVP software can switch between the IGP and GPU as needed and even use the IGP to boost the dedicated GPU (think hybrid Xfire on the AMD platform but with any card you want). The MSI Frozr cooler is accepted to be quiet which is nice for a HTPC, the MSI frozr 660 is shorter than the reference design so will easily fit in your case (220mm i believe the card length is)
 
Last edited:
Scoob145 said:
So overall it's worth saving a little money and building intel i5 setup and maybe using a cheap gfx or on board hd gfx for a while ?
Click to expand...

You like the idea of ripping movies to the HTPC then?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £80.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £286.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).



Great offer on the i5K this week good £20ish off. I'd LOVE to see a build log for this with pretty pics. This would increase your post count to beyond 100 easily, that means free P&P and add then add a gaming GPU later without being penalised with postage :)

EDIT

Concerning the heat issue. Remember the CPU has speed step, so it will idle at a low speed not run flat out 24/7. When the rig knows you need the extra power it will automatically "rev it up". Even watching HD movies won't cause it to increase to max. My HTPC has a AMD 555BE @4.1Ghz. It idles at 800Mhz and revs to 2Ghz ish for HD movies and then flat out for gaming.
 
Last edited:
honosuseri said:
You like the idea of ripping movies to the HTPC then?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £80.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £286.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).



Great offer on the i5K this week good £20ish off. I'd LOVE to see a build log for this with pretty pics. This would increase your post count to beyond 100 easily, that means free P&P and add then add a gaming GPU later without being penalised with postage :)

EDIT

Concerning the heat issue. Remember the CPU has speed step, so it will idle at a low speed not run flat out 24/7. When the rig knows you need the extra power it will automatically "rev it up". Even watching HD movies won't cause it to increase to max. My HTPC has a AMD 555BE @4.1Ghz. It idles at 800Mhz and revs to 2Ghz ish for HD movies and then flat out for gaming.
Click to expand...

I think I'm sold on a i5k for performance aft reading reviews . Would be a shame to build the amd rig and then have to upgrade a year or so later as it wouldn't be able to fulfil my needs .

As for a build log ill start one when my case and other bits arrive this week . Is the ivy bridge better than the sandbridge processor ??
 
Yup, it has better IPC and runs cooler with less power usage on stock.

honosuseri's i5 spec looks perfect. With the H60 cooler you'll also be able to get a good nice overclock on it as well.
 
Was just thinking the same with the h60 . Not sure what motherboard to buy tho . Allways had Asus parts in the past and I can't say they have always been good :( gigabyte are good manufacturers nowadays aren't they ?
 
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