[AamirM]

Pentium G620 is a latest Sandy Bridge-1155 processor. Meaning it can be installed on any SB board that supports the Core I-X series. >_>

[King]

It's rumored (or has it been confirmed?) that AMD is focusing on mobile CPUs and not going to be going after the desktop CPU performance crown in the future, which is sad because when there's decent competition the consumer (us) reaps the benefits, such as lower prices. If AMD folds, expect Intel's higher end CPUs to become more expensive. Don't get me wrong, I like AMD and want them to succeed (I have a Phenom II X6 processor right now) but I'm going to jump to Intel early next year. Intel consistently beats AMD in single threaded applications, for example.

Go Intel, it's worth it in the long run.

This post has been edited by King: 26 May 2012 - 03:59 PM

[Aerosol]

Guess I'm going Intel too then...

It's too bad. I liked the fact that the PC I put together was under $1000. Ah well.

[King]

I'll be lucky if my next CPU and motherboard's under $1,000. :P

[Aerosol]

I'd never pay that much for just a CPU and a mobo unless I absolutely required it. And adding in an Intel CPU and appropriate mobo only bumped the total system cost to $10 over my budget. That's not so bad.

This post has been edited by AerosolSP: 26 May 2012 - 04:30 PM

[Conan Kudo]

Hold on people! AMD may be gunning for the mobile CPU side, but on the desktop side, AMD is still working on it!

It's just that AMD is no longer working on dedicated CPUs anymore. The big focus now is on AMD's APU platform. They call it AMD FUSION (or AMD VISION), and it combines the Radeon GPU with the Phenom CPU onto a single chip that can be upgraded.

It's not fair to compare Sandy Bridge to Phenoms because they aren't equivalent. To compare perf-per-watt, you should be comparing the AMD Fusion APUs with Sandy Bridge. And in that space, AMD beats Intel. The raw GPU power of the Radeon platform way outperforms the Intel GMA platform.

AMD A8-3850 (Quad core 2.9GHz with Radeon HD 6550D), $110: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103942
Gigabyte GA-A75M-S2V FM1 motherboard, $65 after MIR: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128516

Compare that with the equivalent:

Intel Core i5-2300 (Quad core 2.8GHz with Intel GMA 2000), $180: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115076
Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V LGA 1155 motherboard, $70: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128540

Sure, Intel has more powerful CPU+GPU combos with Sandy Bridge, but they also a lot more expensive. The cheaper ones don't measure up performance wise to AMD's offerings either. And AMD has an ace in the hole, too: CrossFireX an AMD APU with dedicated Radeon HD GPU cards. You can never do that with Intel Sandy Bridge APUs. That means you can get triple performance instead of double performance, since you can combine two dedicated GPU cards with the GPU on the APU.

More and more high class programs are running code on the GPU using a GPGPU platform like OpenCL. This is done for codecs, for A/V processing, and for intense mathematical computation. Having a quality APU and GPU combination will mean more when you take those into account.

FYI: For those who want to be able to overclock, AMD has the AMD A8-3870K available for $120: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819106001

This post has been edited by Conan Kudo: 26 May 2012 - 05:59 PM

[HeartAttack]

AamirM, on 26 May 2012 - 03:27 PM, said:

Intel Core i3-2100

And benchmark comparision

Notice how it beats AMD by very good margins.

AMD has been beaten at its own game by Intel for a while now.

You are absolutely right in this regard. In a sense. Grasping at straws, I'd say one big thing that should be taken into account is overclockability. Most of these Intel chips are locked as to where AMD always has a "Black Edition" with an unlocked multiplier, tweakable to your hearts content. Most of them overclock extremely well, too, on air alone. Like I said before - core for core and clock for clock, Intel wins - but overclock the Phenom II and the Intel advantage becomes little to none.

Now, more importantly - the benchmarks between the two chips are hardly apples to apples. For one, you'll notice in the notes underneath each chip that the Intel chip had "turbo enabled" which automatically overclocks when stressed. The AMD chip is noted to not have any overclocking performed in any way. Also, the Intel chip was tested in a 64-bit version of Windows Vista as well as Windows7 x64 (which has vastly improved prefetching and scheduling features over Vista), and the Phenom II X2 was tested only in the 32-bit version of Vista and not in 7.

Quite simply: the benchmarks you've given are absolute garbage until we level the playing field a bit.

This post has been edited by HeartAttack: 26 May 2012 - 06:35 PM

[AamirM]

There is not much truth into that either. Intel is not trying to compete in the APU on desktop market with AMD to begin with. Secondly, your comparison isn't fair. Here is a similarly priced Intel combo for desktop that will eat your AMD APU combo for lunch...

Intel Pentium G620 Sandy Bridge $70
BIOSTAR H61MGC LGA 1155 $50
MSI Radeon HD6670 $75

As I said, it is hard to recommend any AMD product these days. It loses on every front to Intel.

[AamirM]

HeartAttack, on 26 May 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Quite simply: the benchmarks you've given are absolute garbage until we level the playing field a bit.

Are you serious? Ok then, here is the first search result I did of Core i3 2100 benchmarks. Though it doesn't compare 2100 to the Phenom II X2, it compares it against a QUAD CORE Phenom II X4 955 because...well, even THAT lost to this dual core processor. And this time Windows and all things were same. You're just trying to deny the facts here. Fanboy much?

If anyone still doesn't believe me, go google yourself because I am tired now. :P

EDIT: Oh, and as for your overclocking argument, instead of buying $30 cooler for overclocking your AMD, you can spend that $30 to get a higher factory clocked Intel processor so now your overclocked AMD loses again (and that without voiding your warranty and lower power AND potentially lower noise).

This post has been edited by AamirM: 26 May 2012 - 07:21 PM

[Aerosol]

Hmm. Those AMD APUs look interesting. They seem to be a bit behind when it comes to gaming performance though, but it's difficult to find benchmarks for them with setups that take advantage of Fusion's benefits. Atleast, if I'm right in saying that you won't really see performance gains in Fusion system until you start crossfiring 2 Radeon's with one of these APUs?

What I'm trying to say is that most things aren't really optimized for an APU like this so it's hard to recommend one for a gaming build, right now.

EDIT: And what happens if Intel and Nvidia decide to jump into bed together?

This post has been edited by AerosolSP: 26 May 2012 - 07:35 PM

[HeartAttack]

AamirM, on 26 May 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

HeartAttack, on 26 May 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Quite simply: the benchmarks you've given are absolute garbage until we level the playing field a bit.

Are you serious? Ok then, here is the first search result I did of Core i3 2100 benchmarks. Though it doesn't compare 2100 to the Phenom II X2, it compares it against a QUAD CORE Phenom II X4 955 because...well, even THAT lost to this dual core processor. And this time Windows and all things were same. You're just trying to deny the facts here. Fanboy much?

If anyone still doesn't believe me, go google yourself because I am tired now. :P

EDIT: Oh, and as for your overclocking argument, instead of buying $30 cooler for overclocking your AMD, you can spend that $30 to get a higher factory clocked Intel processor so now your overclocked AMD loses again (and that without voiding your warranty and lower power AND potentially lower noise).

I won't deny the facts at all - I even said you were right in that regard.

While Bulldozer is nothing amazing - the chips are dirt cheap and improve upon the Phenom chips - although they still don't beat out Intel's current offerings clock-for-clock, but do perform very well in highly threaded applications.

Also, notice I highlighted the words "this time" in your post above. I wasn't denying facts with the benchmark that YOU posted. That YOU linked to. The fact is that the benchmark comparison YOU linked to the first time was garbage, pure and simple

This post has been edited by HeartAttack: 26 May 2012 - 08:07 PM

[King]

It's looking like from potentially leaked information that Piledriver won't be amazing either. =\

[Thousand Pancake]

King, on 26 May 2012 - 10:02 PM, said:

It's looking like from potentially leaked information that Piledriver won't be amazing either. =\

No viable alternatives in X86 land make Thousand Pancake a sad panda.

When do you think ARM will become viable enough?

This post has been edited by Thousand Pancake: 28 May 2012 - 02:06 PM

[Overlord]

ARM will become viable as a main desktop platform about the same time people stop caring about x86 compatibility.

IE never =P

[Sik]

Overlord, on 28 May 2012 - 02:30 PM, said:

ARM will become viable as a main desktop platform about the same time people stop caring about x86 compatibility.

IE never =P

Unless Microsoft somehow manages to convince people that Metro is the best thing ever made so they drop their old stuff... (doubtful, but you can never tell, especially not with how confusing Microsoft's marketing is being lately)