Intel v AMD

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Indeed. AMD are meant to be better for HTPC but for laptops I think the new IB mobile processors will probably out do the Llano processors but I guess we will find out soon enough.

Trinity looks OK. Better lightly threaded CPU perfomance,and better GPU performance overall than Llano with better battery life. Considering that AMD are still stuck on 32NM,the battery life improvements are decent IMHO.

The HD4000 IGP can catch up with the HD7660G in certain instances although it does seem to be a combination of the CPU performance of the Core i7 CPUs tested and some driver issues on the AMD side. However,the tests were 45W TDP Core i7 quad cores which probably will be in much higher level models than the 35W TDP A10 CPUs.

It will be interesting to see how the 35W TDP IB Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs do though. CPU performance will be lower overall than the Core i7 quad cores and the HD4000 IGPs in these have lower Turbo Boost frequencies(the lower TDP of these CPUs also means less higher frequency boosts I suspect).

Having said that the better OpenCL implementation on the AMD IGPs does seem to help performance on the CPU side with the A10.

Pricing is going to be the key IMHO.

I suspect it will be the same as before overall. You want mostly decent CPU performance,go with Intel,if you game on a budget then AMD looks better and if you are doing basic stuff,get the cheapest. I do think though if the Trinity laptops are priced well,they should be not too bad for all round use IMHO.

Then of course one should consider the clearance deals on the previous generation laptops which muddies the waters a bit.

 

[humbug]

Max of 5FPS' more for something that's meant to be high end over a mid range CPU. Not really great is it?

Forget about what sits where in what hierarchy.

Money talks, Intel have a £600 desktop part which is monstrosity fast, so what? its £600.

What we are talking about is £130 vs £170 / £180 or £200+ in the case of the 2600K

That's all that maters, if i need the performance of a £600 CPU i will buy that Intel, but i don't, and i don't do a lot of IPC dependant work.

All i do is brows the net, whatch a bit of Youtube, play DX11 games, a few other things and often all at the same time.

My CPU cores are more then capable of all that and because i have 6 of them i need not worry about what i'm doing all at the same time, i play BF3 while i wait for a BlueRay movie conversion to finish, while also listening with some music through WMP and about 2 dozen browser tabs open.

I paid £130 for it just before christmas, best £130 i ever spent.

 

[Ollie1132]

Forget about what sits where in what hierarchy.

Money talks, Intel have a £600 desktop part which is monstrosity fast, so what? its £600.

What we are talking about is £130 vs £170 / £180 or £200+ in the case of the 2600K

That's all that maters, if i need the performance of a £600 CPU i will buy that Intel, but i don't, and i don't do a lot of IPC dependant work.

All i do is brows the net, whatcha bit of you tube, play DX11 games, a few other things and often all at the same time.

My CPU cores are more then capable of all that and because i have 6 of them i need not worry about what i'm doing all at the same time, i play BF3 while i wait for a BlueRay movie conversion to finish, while also listening with some music through WMP and about 2 dozen browser tabs open.

£130 i paid for it just before christmas, best £130 i ever spent.

You may have 6 cores but you're probably not even utilising 4 of them fully. The £600 enthausists chips are well.. for the enthausists. For those that use really heavily threaded things and requires 64Gb of RAM and quad SLI/Xfire etc etc. Doesn't really come into it tbh. I personally would pay £150-170 for an i5 since in every day usage it would be utilised more often than the £130 6 core that you have. As it has been mentioned it's very specific things that actually make use of the AMD CPU's and to me the specific things aren't used often enough to be worth bothering about. But that is just me and like you say it is what people use for + budgeting that matters. But you could have paid £90 for an i3 that (unless you had tried the Phenom) I doubt you would really notice a difference in all honesty. I doubt I would notice a difference if someone swapped my i7 for a bulldozer. Minus in benchmarks then it would be obvious.

 

[humbug]

I think a 2 core CPU would struggle with the levels of multitasking i do, even if its IPC per core is 20% higher, there aren't enough threads to allocate once i get going.

 

[aln]

Indeed. AMD are meant to be better for HTPC but for laptops I think the new IB mobile processors will probably out do the Llano processors but I guess we will find out soon enough.

IB mobile are to up against Trinity, not Llano. Its all up in the air, but I think this is how it goes.

• IB will have a better CPU than Trinity, how much better, will remain to be seen but a per watt/price comparison is important for a laptop.
• Trinity will have a better GPU than IB, how much better, will remain to be seen but a per watt/price comparison is important for a laptop.
• Trinity appears to have better battery power usage than IB
• Trinity appears to have better image quality when compared to IB

Personally, I think the Intel CPU is overkill, especially for a laptop, it's not going to make a great deal of difference in general desktop usage. Trinity will be better when gaming, or anything else that uses the GPU, meaning the AMD APU offers better balance.

Of course, if you want mega high end gaming, or need to do a lot of heavy CPU lifting (and don't have a desktop, or workstation for that), then should be able to build a better high end Intel/discrete GPU, but you could also just pour boiling hot water on your lap.

With anything, it really depends what you're doing, but I personally think Trinity hits a sweet spot, and hope it's priced well.

 

[Ollie1132]

IB mobile are to up against Trinity, not Llano. Its all up in the air, but I think this is how it goes.

• IB will have a better CPU than Trinity, how much better, will remain to be seen but a per watt/price comparison is important for a laptop.
• Trinity will have a better GPU than IB, how much better, will remain to be seen but a per watt/price comparison is important for a laptop.
• Trinity appears to have better battery power usage than IB
• Trinity appears to have better image quality when compared to IB

Personally, I think the Intel CPU is overkill, especially for a laptop, it's not going to make a great deal of difference in general desktop usage. Trinity will be better when gaming, or anything else that uses the GPU, meaning the AMD APU offers better balance.

Of course, if you want mega high end gaming, or need to do a lot of heavy CPU lifting (and don't have a desktop, or workstation for that), then should be able to build a better high end Intel/discrete GPU, but you could also just pour boiling hot water on your lap.

With anything, it really depends what you're doing, but I personally think Trinity hits a sweet spot, and hope it's priced well.

I see

 

[humbug]

Trinity is up on Llano in IPC, but behind IB. So they have at least closed the gap somewhat.

As said before Trinity uses less battery power than IB, has a lower TDP, less heat and better IGP performance.

The consensus also is that a Trinity Laptop will be cheaper than an equivalent Intel.

Its much better than pretty much anyone expected.

 

[Krono5]

I have a Core i3 2100 myself and only a fanboi themselves would think it was faster than an FX8120 or a Phenom II X6 at everything

If you read again you'll note I was talking about the i5's and hadn't gotten onto the i3's yet. Like i said in an earlier post, AMD are good at very specific things that most of the population will never need.

I looked at your links, there testing mostly low threaded CPU Physx dependant games at lower resolution. a game running 1 or 2 threads will advantage higher IPC core CPU's. so an i3 even tho it only has 2 cores will do better, once more cores come in to play the i3 will fail.

Those benches are a bit useless unless your still using a CRT monitor and playing older generation games.

Its called CPU scaling, lower resolution off loads the work from the GPU onto the CPU, the higher the res the more the GPU comes into play and the more the CPU's compute core is sitting idle, unless its depends heavily on nVidias Physix, which is rear and becoming even more so.

One of your links shows (for example) Dirt3, @ 1600 x 900 or what ever it was...

Here is an example of that scaling where it meets the 2500K at higher (more relevant) res, in fact you can see that scaling in action all the way through those game benches, including some where the FX-8150 BEATS the 2500K once the res is high, higher frequency rendering is what seems to suit Bulldozer better.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_CPU_Scaling/9.html

Here is an example where in one game the FX-8150 BEATS A 2600K

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...rocessor-vs-core-i7-2600k-review-f1-2011.html

And another one....

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...-core-i7-2600k-review-total-war-shogun-2.html

Its not as straight forward as digging up a few half backed benches!

Thats where it's simply bottlenecked by the GPU and the CPU doesn't come into play.

I can just throw up this: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html

Now suddenly an A6 3650 is as good as an i7 2600k. However if this were BF3 multi that needs significantly more CPU power then you'd see a marked difference.

Skyrim as another example offloads all shadow rendering to the CPU hence Ultra quality shadows will hammer CPU's no matter the settings.

BTW the 8150 is £180 and more than a 3570k, it's the 8120 that is £130.

 

[humbug]

If you read again you'll note I was talking about the i5's and hadn't gotten onto the i3's yet. Like i said in an earlier post, AMD are good at very specific things that most of the population will never need.



Thats where it's simply bottlenecked by the GPU and the CPU doesn't come into play.

I can just throw up this: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html

Now suddenly an A6 3650 is as good as an i7 2600k. However if this were BF3 multi that needs significantly more CPU power then you'd see a marked difference.

Skyrim as another example offloads all shadow rendering to the CPU hence Ultra quality shadows will hammer CPU's no matter the settings.

BTW the 8150 is £180 and more than a 3570k, it's the 8120 that is £130.

You just reiterated my point, the CPU is pretty much irrelevant in most games, there are only a few specialised games where the CPU is important, and there of the older gen,- going out.

As your own link shows you don't need a 2500K, or even an FX-8150 or 8120 you would be fine with an FX-6100.

Having said that the FX-8150 still beats a 2500K or 2600K in some games, no mater what spin you put on it.

So the more expensive Intel the only thing for gaming? no, not at all.

 

[Bezzaboy1234]

Somehow I duobt this very much unless it's going to hit 90c under IBT. Most SB chips would be lucky to hit 4.2-4.3Ghz on a stock cooler with remotely reasonable temps with 4.4Ghz being golden chip territory.

Lol, My pc isn't for benching 24/7 its running fine at 65 idle and about 70/75 on Minecraft.

Im sure it would be much much lower than that on a decent air cooler or potential water cooling setup who knows, I'd probably be able to get even more out of the chip aswell

What you are chatting I don't know.

 

[Kitarist]

These days i would go Intel all the way!!!

 

[Krono5]

You just reiterated my point, the CPU is pretty much irrelevant in most games, there are only a few specialised games where the CPU is important, and there of the older gen,- going out.

As your own link shows you don't need a 2500K, or even an FX-8150 or 8120 you would be fine with an FX-6100.

Having said that the FX-8150 still beats a 2500K or 2600K in some games, no mater what spin you put on it.

So the more expensive Intel the only thing for gaming? no, not at all.

IN SP you'd be fine, in MP however it's a completely different story, add in that Skyrim is also very CPU dependant and considering those are the two most popular games of the past year. You can add SWtoR to that list as well as seen here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,review-32333-8.html plus countless other AAA games and it builds up a picture.

What you're also forgetting is longevity, with the FX chips sure they may run fine in some games at present, but I can guarantee that in 4 or 5 years when the IB's are still going strong everyone will be upgrading from AMD.

Also I wouldn't call those benchmarks beating, it was basically the same performance and the 3fps lead would bring into question the competency of the reviewers.

 

[Krono5]

Lol, My pc isn't for benching 24/7 its running fine at 65 idle and about 70/75 on Minecraft.

Im sure it would be much much lower than that on a decent air cooler or potential water cooling setup who knows, I'd probably be able to get even more out of the chip aswell

What you are chatting I don't know.

Hahaha, good luck with that

 

[humbug]

IN SP you'd be fine, in MP however it's a completely different story, add in that Skyrim is also very CPU dependant and considering those are the two most popular games of the past year. You can add SWtoR to that list as well as seen here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,review-32333-8.html plus countless other AAA games and it builds up a picture.

I have Skyrim, it plays smooth as silk, and just out of interest i put the setting and res right down to rock bottom to off load the work on to the CPU, its still smooth as silk.

i still don't see where i would have been better off spending £50 more for an Intel.

 

[MNA24]

Ignorance is bliss for me, the last intel chip i had was a 2.4ghz pentium 4, since then ive had a AMD x2 4800, Phenom I x3 720, Phenom II x 4 955 then i most recently purchased a "fail dozer" FX8150. Each and everyone of these chips have done what i wanted it to do and im non the wiser of what the intel camp offers as ive never returned and i dont feel im missing out despite how many people harp on about how Intel is better. So unless you have your calculator out crunching those numbers you really dont need to get your knickers in a twist about what CPU is inside your PC and how its benching as long as it does what you want it to do.

I see my pc as a hobby, I like to upgrade it and play games on it, dont see any point in creating "VS" scenarios which just get people onto their high horse or get their backs up about CPUs.

 

[humbug]

Ignorance is bliss for me, the last intel chip i had was a 2.4ghz pentium 4, since then ive had a AMD x2 4800, Phenom I x3 720, Phenom II x 4 955 then i most recently purchased a "fail dozer" FX8150. Each and everyone of these chips have done what i wanted it to do and im non the wiser of what the intel camp offers as ive never returned and i dont feel im missing out despite how many people harp on about how Intel is better. So unless you have your calulcator out crunching those numbers you really dont need to get your knickers in a twist about what CPU is inside your PC and how its benching as long as it does what you want it to do.

I see my pc as a hobby, I like to upgrade it and play games on it, dont see any point in creating "VS" scenarios which just get people onto their high horse or get their backs up about CPUs.

Yes, if it does the job you want it too why spend the extra cash, that's just keeping up with the Jones next door.

People feeding me junk about how i can't do the things i want because i don't have an Intel are either in lalaland or have some ridiculous agenda.

I have it, it does exactly what i need it to do and more, and it saved me a small fortune. Case closed.

 

[Bezzaboy1234]

Yes, if it does the job you want it too why spend the extra cash, that's just keeping up with the Jones next door.

People feeding me junk about how i can't do the things i want because i don't have an Intel are either in lalaland or have some ridiculous agenda.

I have it, it does exactly what i need it to do and more, and it saved me a small fortune. Case closed.

+ 1 to that, Athlon X3 saved me a small fortune for the HTPC build. And its a damn fine chip

 

[RizlaKing]

If and i admit at the minute it's a big if AMD were to regain the lead a lot of the so called intel diehards would soon switch and AMD would be all that got recommended. Use forums for user reviews and try and establish a trend with whatever product rather then going on a few people read the official reviews and buy what suits your needs i have zero brand loyalty because none of the companys have any loyalty to me.

Makes me laugh the people you get on forums that act as though your insultig a friend of theirs when talking about companys that would step on them and not even notice but thats people for you gotta love the variety of life .

 

[FoxEye]

Intel diehards? Where?

There are very few on here who feel loyalty to AMD or Intel. As you rightly said, brand loyalty is silly.

I think you'll find people are saying "go Intel" because it's simply the better choice at this moment.

Listen, I haven't bought an Intel chip since 1992. Therefore I've been buying AMD chips for the last two decades (and one Cyrix!). Yet I will soon be building an Intel rig for my brother and very possibly (probably) the same rig for myself.

I've supported AMD and been loyal to them for years. But right now, AMD can't compete.

Again, at every price point, 95% of users are better off buying Intel right now.

 

[Kitarist]

Yep i've beem an AMD user for years but this time it seems Intel will get my money. It's just a better value imho.