Stick with AMD or go back to Intel?

[Luthien]

Price performance and upgrade path being considered. Been with amd now for like 9 years or so and am considering switching back to intel. Not sure if I should or not.

AM2 motherboard and processor etc. prices look very good.

I have a question about ram that I don't know the answer to because I have slacked off keeping up with the hardware for a while now. Does amd setup benefit from the faster pc2 6200/800mhz ram like intel does or should I just get slower ram for an amd system because it doesnt take advantage of the speed of the ram? Not sure if I am asking that correctly. thanks

 

[Puffnstuff]

Amd still has faster memory throughput than intel does even though the c2d does everything else faster. If you are wanting to do a complete upgrade going c2d is the way to go. I just upgraded from an s939 opty 175 and I can see the difference.

 

[Luthien]

hmm, but am2 is cheaper a lot cheaper compairing price and speed.

am2 5600 $175
e6700 $337

and the am2 5600 is faster

I don't think going intel is worth it. Prices are just too good on the am2 side. I just looked this up so didn't know it before my post.

 

[Zinthar]

Actually, I was just looking at a series of benchmarks that put the 5600+ about 5-20% slower in pretty much ever test compared to the E6600. The E6700 should probably be 15-30% faster than the 5600+, and slightly faster than the 6000+ as well.

Still, E6600 does cost more than 5600+...but the C2D's seem to overclock more easily than the X2's, so you potentially can well exceed any X2 chip with some decent RAM and an E4400 for $40 cheaper than the 5600+.

But I think most important is to consider the future of both platforms, and the potential upgrade path (if there is one) for your motherboard.

I personally want to build a system with the most stable mobo I can get my hands on as I've had trouble with some of the cheaper ones in the past. Right now, that means I'm strongly considering the Bad Axe 2. I would be very interested in considering an AM2 board if it isn't likely to be quickly replaced by AM3 and if I can find a feature-rich and ultra-stable board.

 

[Butterbean]

If you want to read a little bit on where Intel is going the article below is a good one:

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12272

"Now, Intel has benchmarked a quad-core Penryn chip running at 3.33GHz with a 1333MHz front-side bus and 12MB of L2 cache. Compared to the existing Core 2 Extreme QX6800, which runs at 2.93GHz with a 1066MHz FSB and 8MB of cache, the 3.33GHz Penryn is reportedly 15% faster in imaging-related applications, 25% faster in 3D rendering apps, more than 40% faster in games, and more than 40% faster with video encoders optimized for Intel's upcoming SSE4 instruction set"

I really hope AMD can come up with something to stay in striking distance but its looking VERY bad.

 

[BladeVenom]

Will Penryn require new motherboards?

The nice thing about going with AMD is that their next generation processors, AM3, are suppose to work in AM2 motherboards.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

The nice thing about going with AMD is that their next generation processors, AM3, are suppose to work in AM2 motherboards.

Thats why I have an AMD and an Intel system... just in case the new AMD quad core cpus smoke intel. My current intel mobo will take the current quad core... but not sure about the next generation quads from intel.