New Build Phenom II or i7

[sammorris]

Ah, the usual AMD fanboy that assumes because I claim an Intel is better I don't know what I'm talking about.
Also, the Q9300 is not a Phenom II rival, nor is it priced as such. The Q8400/9400 are. And they beat it. Not by much, but they do, and use less power and create less heat doing so.

When the 955BE comes out I expect it to challenge the Q9550, and lose. Not by much, but I reckon it will, and the Q9650 will remain in a class of its own.

[scaryjim]

the Q9300 is not a Phenom II rival, nor is it priced as such.

Quick Products google: Lowest Q9300 price £161. Scan Phenom II 940BE price: £167.

Nuff sed.

[moogle]

I forsee a fanboy war!

[sammorris]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...che-95W-Retail

Also, the Q9300 is still £6 cheaper
I had AMD fans in another forum going mad over how the X2 7750 was £3 cheaper than the E5200.

[dangel]

Meh, go intel, go AMD. Just pick value for money, for purpose intended. I'm nuts - i'll go for pretty much anything new and shiny but i7 still seems like a lot of money for no perceptable gain (given what I do with my PCs at home). I think i'd still go for C2Q for gaming but AMD look good for HTPC type stuff, or people just doing noddy bits and bobs (surfing/email) - those them thar integrated graphics chipsets make them quite appealing I guess. Atom+Ion would appeal there too but it's a bit pricey (and slower) as yet.

[jim]

i7 clearly outperforms everything else out there, but the problem is always going to be that processor speeds never make that much difference in the real world. If a file takes 3 minutes to RAR as opposed to 2 minutes, is it really going to change your life? And in games, the graphics will always be more important than the CPU in a properly spec'd build. Probably the only reason I ever need a fast processor is to run PCSX2.

i7 sounds nice, but I just don't think there's any way I'd appreciate the difference between it and my current Q9550 - certainly not if I contemplated spending the money on a Vertex SSD / GTX 260 instead.

[sammorris]

At top end, there is a significant difference to be had from higher end processors in games, trust me. But for the medium-high user, A Core 2 Quad will get you by fine.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ah, the usual AMD fanboy that assumes because I claim an Intel is better I don't know what I'm talking about.
Also, the Q9300 is not a Phenom II rival, nor is it priced as such. The Q8400/9400 are. And they beat it. Not by much, but they do, and use less power and create less heat doing so.

When the 955BE comes out I expect it to challenge the Q9550, and lose. Not by much, but I reckon it will, and the Q9650 will remain in a class of its own.

You talk like an Intel fanboy!! You are also making blanket statements about people too. Considering that scaryjim and I both use the Q6600 in our main builds means we are not being biased unlike you are!!

You really need to check you facts correctly!

Here are some reviews:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16147/4

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...d-920-review/1

In games the Phenom II X4 940 is around the same speed as a Q9400 or even faster.

The Q9400 costs £185:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...ache-8x-Retail

Hence the Phenom II X4 940 is better value for money and also comes with a much better stock heatsink too unlike the standard Core2 quad ones.

Phenom II X4 heatsink



Q9450 heatsink





Also both reviews show idle power consumption to be about the same as the Core2 quads with load consumption being about 10W to 20W more.

[sammorris]

Handy you brought up the page from TheTechReport that shows the Phenom II in the best light (Yes, I've read those benchmarks before)

Overall, the idle power consumption is similar, but the load consumption is a fair bit higher, 25W in Techreport's cinebench article (I've criticised Bit-Tech's rather odd looking power measurements before, A core i7 doesn't use less power than a Q6700, it uses much more).
25W in a folding/SETI rig for example adds up to £30 a year.

We also haven't covered the overclocking base. Granted, far more people run CPUs stock than overclock, but overclocking is a big market these days (especially with people who come to forums like Hexus for advice rather than just buy a Dell), and when put in an overclocking system the AMDs still fall to pieces. The Phenom II is miles better than the original in that regard, but a Q9300/9400/8300/8400 can be overclocked to astonishing levels with a £35-£40 HSF. The AMDs will just about reach the best Core 2s when Stock if you do this.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Handy you brought up the page from TheTechReport that shows the Phenom II in the best light (Yes, I've read those benchmarks before)

Overall, the idle power consumption is similar, but the load consumption is a fair bit higher, 25W in Techreport's cinebench article (I've criticised Bit-Tech's rather odd looking power measurements before, A core i7 doesn't use less power than a Q6700, it uses much more).
25W in a folding/SETI rig for example adds up to £30 a year.

If the idle power consumption is similar it makes no difference TBH and also not all of us keep our PCs on 24/7. If anything a more efficient PSU is more important.

The vast number of people do NOT keep their main PCs on 24/7! You want to know why?? Even at idle a PC will add signifcantly to your electrcity bills.

Also most people are NOT going to be continuously having their CPUs at 100% activity are they?? If this was the case all of us would be ditching our older CPUs for shiny newer ones.

The only PC we keep on 24/7 is the server and we made sure that it uses low powered components(don't need a Phenom or Core2 quad for that BTW).

Also you have HD4870X2 cards which are not the most energy efficient beasts either so your argument does seem very biased TBH.

We also haven't covered the overclocking base. Granted, far more people run CPUs stock than overclock, but overclocking is a big market these days (especially with people who come to forums like Hexus for advice rather than just buy a Dell), and when put in an overclocking system the AMDs still fall to pieces. The Phenom II is miles better than the original in that regard, but a Q9300/9400/8300/8400 can be overclocked to astonishing levels with a £35-£40 HSF. The AMDs will just about reach the best Core 2s when Stock if you do this.

Most people will run their processors at stock speeds as overclocking is never a certainty and TBH most people cannot be arsed faffing around overclocking and doing stability tests.

Also spending £30+ on a better heatsink for you may not seem much but this maybe the difference between a GTX260/HD4870 and a GTS250/HD4850 which will make more real-life difference to the average user.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Handy you brought up the page from TheTechReport that shows the Phenom II in the best light (Yes, I've read those benchmarks before)

And the Bit-tech review was pretty favourable regarding their value too.

Guru3D too:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ph...-review-test/1

Another one:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...omii940/18.htm

[sammorris]

I don't go for energy efficiency at all, I go for performance. That's not the mindset of many people, however, and a cost saving in electricity is a definite plus point for the AMD.
I use a Core 2 simply because it delivers a performance level unattainable with any AMD processor, I'm willing to bet the 955 included as it will need to overclock to 4.5Ghz to match me.

Only when someone comes along and breaks the status quo do people suddenly do people seem to become so squirmy and argumentative.
Whatever, I'm done defending Intels. It's clear that it's an AMD only club round here. A shame, but that's what bias does.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's clear that it's an AMD only club round here.

Considering that most of us here use a mixture of BOTH AMD and Intel based builds for our purposes so stop making more blanket statements!!

A shame, but that's what bias does.

???????? You introduced the bias not any of us here. You kept on making blanket statements like this:

"The Phenoms use 50% more power (and thus create 50% more heat), cost slightly more, seem to have less reliable chipsets (the number of failed build threads I'm diagnosing at another forum with AMD 780/790 chipsets is alarming), and don't even perform as well. When the Core 2 Quad Q8400 comes out, there is no reason at all to buy a Phenom II. "

[sammorris]

Perhaps not quite 50%, but above the baseline level (the idle power of the X2, the lowest measurement) in the techreport's charts, a Core 2 Quad uses an extra 55W above this. A Phenom II uses 80. Now this doesn't consider the extra level, but at this stage, 80/55 = 1.455, so that 50% isn't as wild as you think it is.

The chipset issue is from real experience from people I know having to send boards back for failures. What was so wrong about that paragraph exactly?

By the way, did you consider that the Core 2s don't have a good cooler because they don't need it? Intel's coolers get smaller and smaller every day, and unless you overclock them they don't seem to overheat with them. I think Intel are using their stock coolers as an example to show how efficient their chips are (and don't forget how far a Core 2 will overclock with no voltage and therefore negligible heat increase). AMD on the other hand produce these big brutes to keep their hot chips in check.

[aidanjt]

No problem with the 780G chipset on my motherboard. BIOS-RAID management isn't as pretty as Intel's, but it does what it says on the tin.

[sammorris]

I'm not saying every one is bad, but I see a lot of failures.