MalVeauX
Senior member
Heya,
I've seen no real proof that shows an actual end-user significant difference between Intel and AMD when it comes to the casual computing you're speaking of. I use AMD myself right now simply because it's cheaper. I do those exact things you mentioned, all day. And I'm using an old AMD dual core right now. High def is not very demanding. Even an old AMD dual core system has more throughput bandwidth than a high def stream could hope to fill. Look at what the data rates of High def content actually is. It's slower than a USB junk drive's sequential read/write speeds. Get what I'm saying? Don't let the idea of high def and needing a killer system fool you; you don't need it. The only time it actually becomes important is when you're looking at bluray playback; in which case, you don't need a killer system, just a specific kind of GPU to handle it (which on board GPUs on modern boards actually handle, fine, funnily enough). So again, don't get caught up thinking you need way more than you do as you actually do not. Instead, spend all that extra cash on a nice big fat display. After all, that's what you actually see right? What's the point of high def if it's on a tiny little box that is your shoe size? Ya know?
Any modern dualcore platform will be overkill for what you're describing doing. So get whatever suits you. If you want Intel for the sake of branding, go for it. If you want to save a buck and get great performance none the less, AMD is there. Just go with what you want. You can certainly get perfectly good AMD motherboards with HDMI output (and audio over HDMI) to your HDMI capable HDTV. I would totally say to do that, if you're into HTPC. But that's not usefull for gaming, since you'd likely want a better discrete GPU option (like an HD4870 or a GTX260).
Very best,
I've seen no real proof that shows an actual end-user significant difference between Intel and AMD when it comes to the casual computing you're speaking of. I use AMD myself right now simply because it's cheaper. I do those exact things you mentioned, all day. And I'm using an old AMD dual core right now. High def is not very demanding. Even an old AMD dual core system has more throughput bandwidth than a high def stream could hope to fill. Look at what the data rates of High def content actually is. It's slower than a USB junk drive's sequential read/write speeds. Get what I'm saying? Don't let the idea of high def and needing a killer system fool you; you don't need it. The only time it actually becomes important is when you're looking at bluray playback; in which case, you don't need a killer system, just a specific kind of GPU to handle it (which on board GPUs on modern boards actually handle, fine, funnily enough). So again, don't get caught up thinking you need way more than you do as you actually do not. Instead, spend all that extra cash on a nice big fat display. After all, that's what you actually see right? What's the point of high def if it's on a tiny little box that is your shoe size? Ya know?
Any modern dualcore platform will be overkill for what you're describing doing. So get whatever suits you. If you want Intel for the sake of branding, go for it. If you want to save a buck and get great performance none the less, AMD is there. Just go with what you want. You can certainly get perfectly good AMD motherboards with HDMI output (and audio over HDMI) to your HDMI capable HDTV. I would totally say to do that, if you're into HTPC. But that's not usefull for gaming, since you'd likely want a better discrete GPU option (like an HD4870 or a GTX260).
Very best,
