Why buy AMD if Intel is so much faster?

[MadMax75th]

I was looking to order a new "desktop", my current one is about 6 years old but it was state of the art back when I bought it (X2 4800+ / ASUS A8N-SLI Delux). I use mine for gaming so, it needs to be fast. I have loved my AMD/asus combo and wanted to get a comperable new system. Hopwever, I just saw chart with the results of the "high end" CPU speeds and the fastest AMD processor made (Phenom 965) was rated 34th on the list! Everything above that was an Intel chip ... so my question(s) is/are :

1) why are the i7 Intel chips so much faster (around twice as fast it appears) than the Phenom (965...etc) Chips? (please try explaining the physical reasons that Intel works so much better)

2) considering the huge speed difference, why would a "gamer" buy an AMD chip over an Intel ? Please give me a reason besides price...unless that is the only reason.

Thank You Very Much,
Max

[wonderwrench]

The Intel i5/i7 is a much newer and better technology than what AMD has to offer at this time. If Intel never stumbles again as they did with the P4 I doubt AMD will ever be able to compete on the high end. Too bad because I always liked AMD.

Now about your new build. Plain and simple, if cost is not a concern go Intel i5/i7. If you want the most bang for the buck AMD will most likely be the way to go. If you are some where in the middle the choice will be harder.

I build PC's for friends and relatives. The first thing I ask is what are you going to use it for? How much do you have to spend. I know you want to play games so ask your self how much you have to spend. See if you can build a i5/i7 system with all the best stuff with the money. If you can good for you. If not you need to do some serious research.

Since you want to play games you need to figure the resolution you will be playing games at. AKA what monitor are you going to use on your new system? If you want to play newer games at 1920x1080 or higher resolution you are going to need as much CPU and GPU power you can get.
If you are going to play at 1440x900 or less games will play fine on a much lower spec'd machine. Say a lower end core 2 dual/quad or Athlon II/Phenom II. A Nvidia GTX 260 or higher or a AMD 4850 or higher would be plenty for the GPU.

Keep in mind you will want a 64 bit OS so you can use more than 3 gigs of ram. Get as much ram as you can. DX 11 and Win 7 is just around the corner. ATI already has their new DX 11 parts for sale aka the 5800 series. Nvidia may not come out with their DX 11 parts until next year?

Good luck

[David (PassMark)]

(Phenom 965) was rated 34th on the list!

Yes, but this make it sound worse than it is. Intel have released a huge number of different CPU models (especially when you include all the Xeon variants). So this adds to the appearance of dominance.

The charts also max out the CPU, using all available cores and hyperthreading. A typical game won't be able to fully use 8 cores, so the performance difference in real life will be smaller.

Still, if money is no object the i7 is the desktop chip to get at the moment.

[Madcatz]

I agree with passmark. No games yet really use a quad core CPU to its fullest extenet, atm its about 50% usage on all 4 cores. Another thing is how many GPU's are you going to be using? This is why I ask that:

Core 2 Duo's use the P45 chipset = 1 x16 PCI-E lane, or 2 x8 PCI-E lanes, so if you have two graphics cards, they are splitting the data lanes.

Core i5's use the P55 chipset which does the same thing as above.

Core i7 uses the x58 chipset, which gives 2 x16 lanes.

So if you only want one GPU, your best bet is the good ol Core 2 Duo E8500, it has a high clock rate which some games need, and the 16 lanes a single GPU should have. Core i5 is a good choice also, but that doesn't have the clock speed.

If you want two GPU's, then the i7 is going to jump out in front and start singing MC Hammer songs "can't touch this" lol