what is better to play games on intel or Amd

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The power usage under load of a Q8200 is so low you can clock it pretty far without an aftermarket cooler. I'm not sure how true that is of an X3 720. The 705e maybe, but probably not the 720.

The X3 720 and even the Phenom II X4 940 have had reasonable overclocks with their stock coolers as many reviews have explored this and the X4 900 series have a very similar cooler to the earlier 9000 series which ran much hotter and consumed much more power under real world conditions. The same goes for overclocking with the Q8200 too from what I read too. However to get a higher overclock both need aftermarket coolers when people actually test their overclocks properly. The Q8200 does have lower power consumption than a Q6600 but Intel did decrease the size of the stock cooler considerably too and hence with overclocks over 3ghz with the stock cooler the temperatures are not that great unless you have a low VID example from what I have read in various forums. I was considering a Q8200 late last year for my backup computer but managed to get a cheap Q6600 instead for my main computer.

Also like I said before the TDP of the newer batch X4 945 has been reduced from 125w to 95w and even the former figure was a worst case scenario one:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/4072

Edit!

Here are some articles exploring the stock AMD cooling better:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16744/6

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/phenom-2-cnq-p1.html

The Phenom II X4 940 was overclocked to 3.5ghz using the stock cooler and the X3 720 overclocked to 3.7ghz using the stock cooler.

[sammorris]

The phenoms have a huge exponential voltage requirement barrier. 3.5 will run practically stock, 3.7 needs a substantial voltage hike, and 4ghz practically requires 2 volts. The same applies to the intels but to a lesser extent. The 95W TDP of the 945 is welcome, but it still looks around 10-15W above the intels and at high overclocks, the exponential rise on that is still considerable. The X4 945 is also £160, which is almost as much as a Q9550.
The new intel stock cooler really is dump compared to the old one, but it still does surprisingly well with quad cores. Of course, a £15 freezer 7 pro and job's a good-un, as they say

[sammorris]

here's an interesting little development - the Q8400 at £126 is now £7 cheaper than a Phenom II X4 940 at £133...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

here's an interesting little development - the Q8400 at £126 is now £7 cheaper than a Phenom II X4 940 at £133...

....and the Phenom II X4 940 is around the same speed as the higher cache Q9400 which is 6% faster on average than the Q8400. The Q8000 series is slower clock for clock than the Q9000. The Q9400 costs £141.

Anandtech



Edit the Phenom II X4 940 is better for gaming too!

Techreport

[sammorris]

Obviously the UT3 and Hl2 benches are irrelevant due to the frame rates, Crysis Warhead sees them pretty much equal, the only difference is Far Cry 2, and that's a strange game because it's not really the CPU it responds to, it's having DDR3 memory. DDR3 on an X4 805 beats DDR2 on an X4 940. Running a DDR3 board with an intel would probably reverse those results. There is also a substantial amount of inconsistency with FC2 as a benchmark which is why I don't really like it. The benchmark is known for frame rate dips which render minimum fps tests useless, and in thetechreport's test you've posted the i7 is at the top, in the bit-tech test it's at the bottom. Long story short, where it matters I don't think you'd see a difference with a Q8400 or X4 940 other than in WinRAR and Excel. I mostly extract rars which is disk-dependent not CPU-dependent like encoding them, so for me I'd never notice the difference at all - clearly that differs for some, but I think saying the X4 940 is faster than the Q8400 or vice versa is more like splitting hairs.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Phenom II X4 920 and 940 only can run DDR2 RAM and since DDR3 and DDR3 based motherboards are more expensive for both Intel and AMD the Phenom II X4 940 is better value for money IMHO.

[sammorris]

Indeed it can, and you'll notice in bit-tech's review the performance gap is not 31.6%, it's a mere 5.2%. Granted, this is a Q9450 not a Q9400, but the difference between them I can see isn't very much, it doesn't look as big as the gap between a Q8400 and Q9400, and in most situations that's already become apparent to be negligible. The X4 945 on DDR3 meanwhile scoots ahead, outperforming the 940 on DDR2 by 5.9%, where the Q9450 on DDR3 outperforms itself at DDR2 by 8.6%.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Phenom II X4 940 only has a DDR2 memory controller. Also the X4 945 pricing is an anomaly as the X4 955 BE is around £147 and is cheaper than the X4 945!!

Also the Q9450 is faster in some games than the Q9400 too. According to an article I read on Anandtech IIRC the Q9450 was 5% to 10% ahead in FarCry2 and Left 4 Dead. Crysis Warhead and Fallout 3 were around 3% to 4% faster on the Q9450. It seems games are sensitive to cache and this is not a new thing TBH. Exactly the same thing was seen with the Conroe too.

[sammorris]

mmm, Anandtech :S - anyone else made some comparisons?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

mmm, Anandtech :S - anyone else made some comparisons?

We will get a definite answer soon though when the Q9505 is released as this a 6mb cache version of the Q9550.

[sammorris]

That should be interesting. I didn't realise Intel were still developing 775 CPUs

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That should be interesting. I didn't realise Intel were still developing 775 CPUs

I think the Q9505 is being developed to take on the X4 955BE as the Q9550 is still priced higher. It will be also interesting to see the performance of the Athlon II X4 when it comes out. Hopefully it will have low power consumption and a sub £100 price too.

You gotta love all this competition though as it is good for the consumer in these turbulent times! Hopefully I can get a 8 core CPU running at 4ghz for under £100 in 2011!!

[sammorris]

Competition is good, but it would be nice for AMD to put out a true high end product, as an upgrade from my Q9550 would be nice, but there's nothing beyond it AMD yet offer, which is why everything beyond it is so expensive. AMD have so far forced the prices down on a lot of low-end, midrange and mid-high end products, but nothing for the true performance enthusiast

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Competition is good, but it would be nice for AMD to put out a true high end product, as an upgrade from my Q9550 would be nice, but there's nothing beyond it AMD yet offer, which is why everything beyond it is so expensive. AMD have so far forced the prices down on a lot of low-end, midrange and mid-high end products, but nothing for the true performance enthusiast

The sad thing is that Bulldozer is at least a year away so it looks like tweaked Phenoms for the time being. I suspect the Phenom II maybe the first quad core to reach 4ghz at stock speeds(not overclocked) from what I have heard and this why the recent reduction in TDP for the X4 945 is important for AMD. It looks like the old P4 vs Athlon competition but in reverse with Intel competing on clock efficiency whereas AMD are competing on megahertz!!

The Pentium 3 is also the granddaddy of all the modern Core2 CPUs. All hail the Pentium 3!!

[sammorris]

4Ghz stock? Well, we'll see about the 3.4, 3.6 and 3.8 versions first. I'm pretty sure Intel said they could get to 5Ghz+ with the Prescott, and 3.6 (3.8 for single) was about as far as they got. The TDP reduction is obviously mandatory for this, as that's the main problem with overclocking AMDs right now, ludicrous voltage and heat. The reversal as you say, is quite ironic

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The main problem with the Prescott was the production process AFAIK. If a 45nm Pentium 4 was made it would certainly would have reached 5ghz probably by now. I'm sure we will see a 4ghz Phenom as the 3.4ghz X4 965 is around the corner(and has the same TDP as the Phenom II X4 955).