Advice: AMD vs Intel

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RoGuE
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Advice: AMD vs Intel

Post by RoGuE » Sun Nov 22, 2009 6:51 pm

Hey guys,

I've recently been contracted to build another system for a friend. He wants it to be as snappy as possible and preferably under $700 USD for everything in the case, including the case. For the past 4 or 5 years, I've been an intel guy..but lately, I've been noticing AMD processors especially cheap for a DDR3 system.

Here's what I've been looking at for his CPU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103674

Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

cb95014
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Post by cb95014 » Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:17 pm

1) Do you plan to overclock, or run stock? IMO, stock AMD is better value for a budget system, but if you O/C, the Intel parts are better value. Since the C2D, they all easily overclock like mad.

2) How much are you budgeting for the video card? That obviously has a *huge* impact on how much is left in your $700 bogey...

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Sun Nov 22, 2009 10:23 pm

Well yes, C2Q can OC well, but from what I read so can the Phenom II x4...and with the Phenom you get the added bonus of ddr3 platform, which is undeniably better performing than ddr2 platforms like the C2Q. All with the same price tag....

For the vid card, I was leaning toward an nvidia card. Price ranging from $120-160. He isn't going to be doing any serious gaming, and a card in that price range these days can handle 90% of games with one hand tied it's back.

Also, silence is a non-issue with this build. He simply doesn't care if it's dead silent, but I will do my best to make it quiet. He is more concerned with performance..

vonbosch
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Post by vonbosch » Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:57 am

Straight from leftfield... what about going with a cheaper processor and getting a SSD hard drive? I don't have one myself but I have been following the SSD coverage on Anandtech. By the sounds of it getting such a drive for boot and most commonly used programs seems to make a huge difference to responsiveness, not to mention boot times. Cutting back from the Phenom II you listed to an Althon II X2 250 will free up $100 and then maybe you could shoehorn something like this into the build,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227432

And I guess the Athlon II will perform much like your C2D before you overclocked it, did it seem slow at stock?

An SSD seems like a pretty crazy idea but I get the impression that it makes much more difference than a quad core processor ever would. And probably better than going from DDR2 to DDR3 memory as well. I understand that you might be hesitant to buy relatively untried tech for a friend.

Directly on topic I would be inclined to say that AMD is the best choice if Core i5/i7 are unneccesary/out of budget.

cb95014
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Post by cb95014 » Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:14 am

If you are near a Micro Center (there is one in Boston), the $150 i5-750 is very tough to beat for price/performance. Combine with a P55M-UD4 (*excellent* little board) and you have a terrific combination that will handle single or multi-threaded apps extremely well. This combination also over-clocks nicely. :)

In the $150 range, I currently recommend the HD5750 to friends. The cooler looks strange but works very well, and for casual gaming the 5750 will last a long time.

With a decent case/PS, I think you'd come in under your $700 budget and have an extremely "snappy" system.

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:54 am

vonbosch wrote:Straight from leftfield... what about going with a cheaper processor and getting a SSD hard drive?
Hmmmm..I hadn't even thought about this. The only thing I would be concerned with is that he's not really an end-user, and a lot of people I know simply don't know about choosing partitions to install on. (meaning he might install too many applications on the ssd, even if I warn him..)

Thanks for the suggestion though, because it's really not a bad idea at all...those dual core athlons are SUPER cheap. To answer your question, no, my c2d wasn't really "slow" at stock speed, but to do some number crunching I kicked it up to 3.6 and left it there haha. In fact, it's pretty hard to notice a difference when I don't run numbers or benchmark. It had minimal effect on gaming.

CB:

What is this Micro Center you speak of? Newegg has that cpu listed @ $200. I dig that Gigabite board, making his system mATX would be nice cause I could pickup a mini p180 (always wanted to see that case up close and personal haha)

Thanks for the suggestion on the GPU..I actually know almost nothing about ATI cards, and from the look of it, maybe I should change that. It seems that is the way to go for price/performance ratio as well. How are the drivers?

Trav1s
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Post by Trav1s » Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:10 am

http://microcenter.com/

It's another retailer that is found in the midwest and northeast. They have several stores in Central and Southern Ohio. NOt sure if the good price applies to online purchases or not :oops:

swivelguy2
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Post by swivelguy2 » Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:35 am

If I had to do it, I'd look at these two possibilities. Let's set aside $150 for the case+PSU and $30 for an optical drive, leaving $520 for components.

Option 1: Super cheap CPU, nice budget for extras:
- Athlon II X2 245 + Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H: $125
- 4 GB DDR2-800: $90
That leaves $305 to buy some sort of storage, a video card (optional), and whatever else is desired. If it were up to me, I'd probably do this:
- Kingston 40GB X25-m: $115
- Samsung F2 1TB 5400 RPM: $90
- Radeon HD 4350: $35
- Scythe Big Shuriken: $35

Option 2: Spring for the i5-750 and see if it fits in the budget:
- i5-750 $200
- GA-P55M-UD2: $110
- 4 GB DDR3-1333: $110
- Radeon HD 4350: $40
- Samsung F3 500 GB, 7200 RPM: $55
- Unfortunately, the budget ran out before we got to an aftermarket heatsink :(

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Mon Nov 23, 2009 2:49 pm

At a glance, the price/performance ratio of your option 1 looks alot higher..I think vonbosch made a good point, having the ssd would probably make a bigger difference in performance than having souped up ddr3 platform.

Swivel, question: What kind of frames/sec could I expect on a game like call of duty 4 (for example) from an HD 4350? I have no concept of what to compare it to, becasue I've always bough nvidia cards in the past...

Also, how are the drivers? And I can't seem to find that SSD you suggested..sure you got the part number correct?

swivelguy2
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Post by swivelguy2 » Mon Nov 23, 2009 3:17 pm

I have no idea about the actual performance of the HD4350, but it's probably the sort of card you wouldn't really want to play games on. It gets about a third the numbers in benchmarks that a 4670 does, so if casual gaming is desired, it would be wise to step up the GPU.

I lied about the name of the Kingston SSD. It's a 40GB version of Intel's X25-M which is why I called it that. The actual name is SSDNow V-Series and Newegg has it at $130 right now. Be warned that the other V-Series SSDs (64 and 128 GB) have the bad JMicron controller.

psiu
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Post by psiu » Mon Nov 23, 2009 4:27 pm

The 4350 will be a dog for games--glorified integrated graphics. Probably comparable to an Nvidia 9400.

If he's content with less eye candy for more demanding games, probably a 4670 or 9600 would be fine.

Certainly don't rule out an affordable C2D system. Also, does he need an OS license included in the total?

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Mon Nov 23, 2009 6:58 pm

psiu wrote:Certainly don't rule out an affordable C2D system. Also, does he need an OS license included in the total?
I believe he already picked up a $30 Windows 7 Pro license with his student email address. So the OS is already taken care of.

As of right now, I'm leaning towards the Athlon X2 build ($125 for cpu and mobo) With the savings, I could justify (and probably fit in the budget) a low capacity SSD, as long as I think he will be knowledgeable enough to use it strictly as an OS drive..

teejay
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Post by teejay » Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:53 pm

The SSD is a really good idea, I've compared otherwise identical high-end laptops with and without; the difference is very noticable.
In the "bang-for-buck" department you could also consider the Pentium Dual Core line, E5x00 (x = 2, 3, 4). The E5200 is ~$65 on newegg and usually overclocks like a charm (mine runs at 3.5 GHz without overvolting, stock is 2.5). A cpu like that would leave even more room for a nice video card or a bigger SSD.

Carpetsmoker
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Post by Carpetsmoker » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:34 pm

Actually, the Phenom II platforms with DDR3 aren't that much faster than the Phenom II platforms with DDR2 ... Some benchmarks claim DDR3 is even slower!
Also, DDR3 is more expensive ... Although not by much these days.

As a general AMD vs. Intel rule, AMD has a (much) better price/performance ratio than Intel, Athlon II and Phenom II CPU's are much cheaper than Core 2 CPU's while they ofter perform better.

However, Intel is the clear winner when it comes to speed. AMD doesn't really have anything to match the new I5/I7 series until at least end of 2010 ... (By which time Intel will have moved on)...

As for the SSD: it kind of depends what your friend will do with his or her system. Some people will benefit more from a faster CPU, some more from a SSD. It depends on the apps being used, OS being used, etc. and it's hard to make a general statement about that ...

RoGuE
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Post by RoGuE » Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:57 pm

Thanks so much for the reply carpet..

To answer your question, I believe he will be mostly doing audio work with this computer. He's into making/editing music, and he will be using win7 as his primary OS. Right now, I'm heavily leaning towards an Athlon II platform, and with the savings pick up a small SSD. My thinking is, for what he'll be doing, the bottleneck (by far) will be the hard drive. This will make it boot/shutdown much quicker, and let his most commonly used apps load like a dream.

Yeah, it might be a little less capable than an Intel rig while gaming, but in that department, it's been my experiance that a good graphics card is the biggest factor. A $140 card should be more than capable to tackle the kinds of games he will be playing.

cb95014
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Post by cb95014 » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:30 am

For a laptop, an SSD is a complete no-brainer. Nothing comes close to the improved performance because laptop HDDs are *all* terrible.

However I've built Win7 desktops with both SSD (Intel X25-M) and WD640 HDD boot drives, and without knowing ahead of time it is difficult to tell the difference. Boot time is virtually identical, and for large streaming writes (video, etc.) the HDD is faster. The main SSD advantage is that you can run scans in background without affecting performance, but for most desktop uses the cost/benefit is not there - *assuming* that you are using a good defrag tool like PerfectDisk. Also, you never want to get an SSD close to maximum capacity. Performance will crater.

For Win7, any decent CPU with 2GB+ memory will handle normal desktop use. But IMO the i5 chips have a number of significant advantages:
1) Combining quad core with the turbo mode provides excellent performance regardless of the application. Single-thread, fine. Multi-thread, even finer. :D
2) Incredibly low idle power.
3) Lots of future growth potential without swapping motherboards.
4) Excellent, much lower cost motherboards than any of the 1366 CPUs.
5) Over-clock like crazy if you want.

FWIW, the Micro Center ad with the special $150 i5-750 price is here:
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1d4 ... 1d452023/2
I'm not getting a commission, but have bought four of these... :lol:

I've never tried to order online from Micro Center, as they have a B&M store close to our house. Their "Boston" site is: 730 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139. Obviously I have no idea if this is close to you...

Carpetsmoker
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Post by Carpetsmoker » Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:13 pm

Yeah, it might be a little less capable than an Intel rig while gaming, but in that department, it's been my experiance that a good graphics card is the biggest factor. A $140 card should be more than capable to tackle the kinds of games he will be playing.
Indeed. For example I have an Asus A8N with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, which isn't very good. But I have a pretty new 9600GT video card, and I can run most games without problems. Although I must admit I don't play that many games ... Most recent ones are Fallout 3 and Dragon Age ... I did have some problems with Assassin's Creed, when there a lot of NPC's walking around the system would slow down (AI routines stress CPU too much I would guess).

In any case, the point is, if you have to choose between CPU and GPU for games, then go for the GPU!
Right now, I'm heavily leaning towards an Athlon II platform,
They don't seem that much slower than the Phenom II CPU's, very nice price/performance!
Here's a useful link for roughly comparing CPU performance btw.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

As for the I5: They seem nice at first glance, but I haven't really had the chance to look at them ...

danimal
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Post by danimal » Wed Nov 25, 2009 6:43 pm

RoGuE wrote:Well yes, C2Q can OC well, but from what I read so can the Phenom II x4...and with the Phenom you get the added bonus of ddr3 platform, which is undeniably better performing than ddr2 platforms like the C2Q. All with the same price tag...
ddr2 vs. ddr3 for the core2quad is strictly a function of which chipset you use, the cpu is not the defining factor.

i run seriously overclocked ddr3 with my q9400, but you'd be surprised at how little real-world performance difference it makes... i went with a ddr3 mb because it's the standard of the future.

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