Anyone else tired of these stupid logo's?

i make no apologies that i like amd and ati. however, if i had the money right now to build a new rig, i would buy an i5 and an h55 board.

now, my amd pc would be my main rig, but i would like the chance to have an i5 and see what it can do.

Frostmourne said:

Even better, the upgrade path is virtually assured - my AM3 board will easily take any upgrades, BIOS updates assumed.

In all fairness, even as an avid systems builder I have never once upgraded a CPU in a computer and continued to use the same system board. Of course, I usually like to keep the old computer around and build a new one upgrading everything else down the line.

I am rather annoyed by those ads, but just generally ignore them.

As for the AMD vs Intel, well...
I got my Q8200 for about $120. Now, I could have spent $400+ on the extreme clocked one, or I could buy the SAME DAMN CHIP for 1/4 the cost and OC it for the SAME result (thats what different clock speeds on those mean, its just OCed vs not OCed).
I look at number of cores more than clock speed. Thats what really matters. The difference between 2 and 3 GHz is smaller than most people (even hardcore gamers) will notice on a quad core.

~Lordbob

Frostmourne said:

the Q8200 will never be a gamer's chip with 4MB of cache. Clock+core is the key.

If clock and core is the key...why did you mention the 4MB of L2 cache on the Q8200. The Phenom 965 only has 4 x 512KB cache at the L2 level...if you want to nitpick.

Frostmourne said:

Partially correct - that is the size of the L2 cache, but it also has 6MB of L3 cache, which the Q8200 is missing. Core also would include cache and L3 is important for games.

If I remember correctly, the P4's had L3 cache and then with the Core 2 Duo's and Core 2 Quads..which were great for gaming when released, the L3 cache was dropped. Now with the Core i# series, it's back again. It's fundamental architecture which really matters. The AMD Athlon X2 64's were phenominal for gaming and crushed the Pentium 4's...but once the Core 2 Duo arrived, it was quite some time when AMD was really lacking. From what I have found the Phenom II's are indeed quality chips.... And even without the L3 cache, those Core 2 Duo's and Core 2 Quads were originally the CPU's to beat.

Personally, I'm rocking a Q9550 with 12MB of L2 cache...and no L3 cache. It meets all of my needs, overclocked easily to 3.2ghz (400FSB x 8.0) and runs perfectly fine with a stock Intel Cooler. And it was only $209 when I bought it in July of 2009.

Frostmourne said:

True, but the extra L3 does count depending on games - by CPU architecture do you think AMD dropping SSE 4.1 and higher instead of copying Intel's extensions plays a factor in games? AMD has introduced its own extensions instead.

But back in the day when clock speed was all that mattered it was a power race to see who could hit 1Ghz first. AMD accomplished that with the Thunderbird CPU..which I have a 933Mhz version of still at home. Then shortly after hitting 1Ghz, Intel just kept going and going and going. Now, AMD had to renumber their CPU's to 2200+...to convince people of the performance even though they now maintained that clock speed didn't really matter......(of course when they tried to break 1Ghz...it mattered). Technologies flip flop and people push numbers and marketing jargon to set their product apart.