Which of these would perform better overall?

[james.robinson]

Intel Pentium D 950 or AMD Athlon64 3800+ AM2

What do you think people?

Cheers,
James

[philipbain]

Lets see, the Pentium D 950 will comsume a LOT of power and runs hot whereas the X2 3800+ is a lot more frugal, also the 3800+ also has a lot more head-room in the overclocking stakes and has just been subject to a massive price cut which makes it exceptional value for money, particulary when you take into account how expensive an Intel motherboard is that supports a dual core CPU in comparison to the nForce 5 for AM2. Performance wise at standard clocks the PD 950 may have a slight edge in aps that play to it's strengths, such as media encoding, but the 3800+ is a more solid alrounder which will outperform the PD 950 with a nice safe overclock to 2.4GHz as well as costing less for the CPU and Motherboard (though DDR2-800 is a little more it also gives a benficial boost in bandwidth compared to DDR2-667 running on Intel platforms). I hope this has helped. Also check the Tom's Hardware CPU charts in the near future as they will be updating it with the AM2 Athlons and Intel Core 2 Duos.

[ExceededGoku]

Easily the 3800, to be brief.