what to get AM2, S939, conroe?

[ViviTheMage]

I have an athlon 2500 barton and have been following the intel/AMD circuit closley, but I see that intel breaks in some areas , as does AMD....but I noticed intel has the 65NM, but the FSB...is not that high.

What would you go for, (when the price cuts come for AMD) ?

I am a heavy gamer, plan on anty upping and grabbing a new board, cpu, ram, video card setup.


My only question is.... what CPU to get? I have allways been an AMD fan, allways, but it seems INTEL has taken the price to performance right now. any ideas on what I should buy and dont hesitate to give reasons why one is better then the other, please! i'd love to hear why.

 

[Keysplayr]

Link

Sit back, relax, and have a nice read.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I read that a little while ago .

thank you though, will stare at the benchmarks again haha.

 

[justly]

Quite simply, Conroe looks to be the best choice for a gamer. Both socket 939 and AM2 would still provide a good performance boost from your current system, although the only reason to consider socket 939 is if you have a very tight budget and DDR that can migrate to a new system.

Like I already stated, Conroe looks to be the best choice for a gamer, but that still means you may have some availability concerns (all Conroe models may not be readily available at launch, and motherboard selection could also be limited). This could be enough of a reason for some people to at least have an alternate AM2 system in mind. I also know some people don?t like to jump on 1st generation equipment (like motherboards) for fear that they may be bug ridden. AM2 is a fairly new platform as well but the chipsets (with the exception of nvidias newest chipsets) have already been tested on the 939 platform so there may be a slightly reduced risk of buggy AM2 platforms.

If the Conroe model you are considering is available at launch along with a motherboard you feel comfortable with (quality, features and price) it is hard to argue against getting a Conroe with gaming in mind (at least from most articles about Conroe).

 

[theprodigalrebel]

AM2 = Available now. Price will become very, very attractive a week from now. When gaming at high-res & high-IQ, virtually impossible to tell apart from a Conroe during blind-testing.
Core 2 Duo = Lots of skepticism about pricing/availabilty after the launch on 27th July. But it is the best damn CPU out there and has a commanding advantage in all productivity/encoding software.