Building a new Gaming PC. AMD or new Intel CPUs?

[IronMentality]

Hrm. Intel just released 64-bit chips and AMD has been known as the gaming king for as long as I can remember. Has Intel caught up at all, is heat still _that_ big of a problem with the Intel CPUs, and which route do you think I should go?

I don't like the fact there is no DDR2 support for AMD CPUs, I do believe DDR2 has been proven to show some performance jump.

I am not a fanboy either way. I've used both an AMD T-Bird and Intel Celeron 2.8 GHz D in two of the computers I've built for gaming and one strictly for my office.

I do plan on playing HL2, WOW, etc. so I want something that can really pump out the FPS. Thoughts, feelings, and opinions please?

 

[SrGuapo]

AMD... It is cheaper (much), faster, and much cooler running than a pentium 6xx. When a 3200+ winnie will outperform all of the intel CPUs at gaming, AMD is an obvious choice. the 6xx CPUs do support 64 bit and run a bit cooler than the 5xx but they are still slower than A64s in gaming. They are also ridiculously expensive compared to them.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: SrGuapo
AMD... It is cheaper (much), faster, and much cooler running than a pentium 6xx. When a 3200+ winnie will outperform all of the intel CPUs at gaming, AMD is an obvious choice. the 6xx CPUs do support 64 bit and run a bit cooler than the 5xx but they are still slower than A64s in gaming. They are also ridiculously expensive compared to them.

:thumbsup: true

 

[sandorski]

AMD and you are wrong about DDR2 it is not faster than DDR. In time DDR2 will be faster, but that time has yet to come.

 

[IronMentality]

So DDR2 533 shows no performance gains over current DDR400 memory on an equivalent priced Intel CPU chip compared to an AMD.

Anytime soon will AMD support DDR2 memory? I always said I was going to build AMD when it came time to do this, and it still looks like I should go that way it seems.

 

[CaBoOse999]

way more bang for your buck with AMD

 

[n7]

DDR2 RAM currently is useless.

You can check the benchmarks on this site proving that.

In a few years, i'm sure we'll be looking at DDR as SDRAM, & we'll all have DDR2 or better, but till it matures, it's not worth the money.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=9

The best part about that review is how in games, the A64 3200+ is right up there with the P4 660 (3.6GHz)

 

[Appledrop]

obviously amd!!!

 

[clarkey01]

I think Socket M2 or socket 900 will support DDR2/3 (Someone said they might skip DDR 2 all together) socket M2 is due 2006

 

[carlosd]

AMD, better gaming performance at much lower price and cooler. DDR2 is useless at the moment , but is more expensive than DDR2, so it's a waste of money in the meantime.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

AMD; no question.

 

[Duvie]

DDR2 is more needed for bandwidth starved P4's and tjeir quad pumped buses, but for amd with ample bandwidth already the latency penalty of the DDR2 would actually be worse for it....

Same for intel systems....unless you are running the 1066fsb chips I would actuallt bet performance is worse on p4's with DDR2 then DDR1....pC3200 running with the majority of 800fsb cpus at cas 2 will be far better then the cas3 (at best) you get from the rather expensive DDR2...

 

[stevty2889]

I would definatly go for the an A64 over a P4, especialy for gaming. The Prescott definatly has some heat issues. Some of them will run cooler than others. I'm on my 3rd prescott now, the first 2 ran kinda toasty, but didn't have any real issues, but I had to go to water cooling to keep my 3.4 from throttlling even underclocked to 3.2ghz, while using a thermalright xp-120, one of the best heatskinks out there. As for DDR2, it's latency problems make it generaly slower than DDR. I wouldn't use DDR2 for antything other than the 1066fsb chips, and only use it with them, because you have no choice.

 

[sangyup81]

AMD64 has an integrated memory controller. Even if DDR2 was faster than DDR, DDR2 on an Intel wouldn't be faster than DDR on an AMD64

 

[dannybin1742]

its a no brainer, A64 all the way, i don't know one review that has intel winning any majority of the benchmarks

 

[Painman]

In case no one's mentioned it yet, the best way to go for gaming is currently A64.

 

[EternusNox]

AMD

 

[RichUK]

O MAN AMD RUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLESS !!!!!!!!

cant someone please sticky something on this forum,because people keep asking this question!! Intel or AMD?, its well obvious its AMD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

I don't think there has been a time like now where even Intel fanboys can't say anything in their defense LOL. AMD!!!!!

 

[Leper Messiah]

lol. DDR2 is a non-issue for A64s. They (as Zebo and others have demostrated) thrive on low latency values to get their performance. I think most DDR2 runs like 4-4-4-12 or something obsene like that, and low latency DDR2 is still 3-3-3-10 or something. not good for AMD.

Oh. AMD pwns Intel for gaming. Straight up.