AMD or Intel?

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

As I said
ALL these cpu's have similar gaming performance;
Phenom X6 series cost $180-240
i5 750 $280
i5 2500S $230
i5 2400S $200
i7 875,870,860 $290
phenom II X4 955 $140
phenom II X4 965 $160

Why would you want to spend $100 more for a cpu when you gain nothing??
You could almost build a whole system around an phenom II X4 955 for just the price of an i7 875!! AND have almost identical gaming performance.

Whats the refresh rate on your monitor 60hz?? Then you cant display over 60 fps anyway. Playable frame rates are anything over 30. Do you need 200 fps or can you live with 60 (which is all you'll get with normal monitor).

1) I deliberately avoided the AMD versus Intel debate in the last post but if you MUST bring it up the Phenom X6 is based on a soon to be superseded chipset/socket and CPU with limited future upgrade possibilities. If you must do AMD then wait for Bulldozer which is due out shortly.

2) Most readers on this forum are thinking in terms of flight sims where the variation between processors is much greater than other games (which are generally GPU locked so processor makes minimal difference). Game review sites tend to mainly use first person shooter games for testing and in those games CPU does not matter. Even when they do test flightsims they rarely do the CPU intensive stuff like massed bombers that the typical simmer will regularly do.

3) Most people looking at SB processors are thinking of the K series which will overclock up around 5.0 Ghz with air cooling and way past that (6.0 Ghz and more) with a water block. Even running NO2 you would be pushing to overclock a current AMD to match SB 2500k/2600K overclocked performance.

4) Whilst wasting money is silly --- a difference of $100 is minimal compared to the cost of most other hobbies. In reality $100 buys me less than an hour of real time flying, a small fraction of the annual cost of owning a motorcycle and a similar small fraction of the coast of joining the local golf club.