Why AMD is better? My opinon, short and sweet.

AMD or Intel? What CPU is really "better"? Is one really better than the other? There are a lot of opinions out there on this topic and many good arguments on both sides of the fence. So I decided to go ahead and put my humble opinion out there and explain why I think AMD is the better choice for gaming and general computing.

Now I am not going to get into a long technical review of AMD architecture vs Intel, a lot of techno babble, or any of that jargon. I am going to explain the real world reason why I always choose AMD over Intel each and every time I build a system.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying Intel makes "bad" processors, quite the contrary. I think Intel makes great products. I just like AMD more for the reasons I am about to cover below. So here it goes...

Price vs Quality:

One thing anyone can easily see is that if you take two comparable CPU's on a site such as Newegg, one AMD and one Intel, the AMD chips are most always much less expensive. So does this mean the AMD chips are of a lower quality than Intel? That could not be further from the truth.

I have been using AMD chips since the days of Socket 7 and not once has a single chip ever let me down, though in that same time I have had 2 Intel chips go bad, still not a bad track record considering. So from my own personal experience, both chips have about the same level of quality and longevity. So from a quality standpoint alone, does it not make more sense to buy the less expensive chip that is at the same level of quality as the more expensive one? I think so.

Price vs Performance:

This is by far one of the largest reasons I buy AMD over Intel. Often in the real world, you get what you pay for, thus items that cost less often are of a lower quality then other items of the same category. That is, of course, unless we are talking about AMD vs Intel.

So what about performance. This is where people often get defensive and fanboys on both sides will start a fact fight and defend their opinions quite aggressively. So I am going to simply put my own personal real world experiences to the test here and give you a breakdown of the results. You can take from it what you will.

Lets say you take two identical machines, one with an i7 or Core 2 Quad q9650 and an AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition and set them up side by side. Where the only difference between the two is the CPU and the motherboard of course.

Now lets take any game on the market and play them side by side. I challenge anyone to be able to see any performance difference between the two games. It's simply not going to happen. Sure the i7 has more raw power than the Phenom II, but no where near enough to compensate for the fact the cheapest i7 costs almost $400 more than the Phenom II 965.

The thing is, without detailed benchmarks, the end user would not be able to see the difference in his games performance between the two processors. The game will run great on both platforms and the users "gaming experience" will be the same on both chips . So why on Earth would someone opt to pay an extra $400 when your not going to get $400 more worth of performance?

I know some people just like to be able to say they have the power even though they wont need it. There is nothing wrong with that at all. I am just not one of those people. So this is where the price vs performance ratio wins out for me.

Even in everyday computing tasks such as web surfing, business applications, flash games and animations, video editing, watching movies, DVD authoring, and so on. An AMD Phenom X2 or greater will not let you down. Now unless your going to be rendering the next Pixar film on your home computer, there is no need to drop $600-$1000 on a CPU alone.

The Black Edition:

You may have noticed I have a Phenom X2 550 Black Edition logo at the top of this entry, that would because I happen to have that CPU in use here at home, with one difference. I am running it as an X4 Quad Core at stock speeds. The AMD Phenom Black Edition CPU's are an overclocker's dream. The 550 Callisto is a powerful dual core CPU that, with a little luck, can be made into a quad core Deneb with the right motherboard and BIOS version. This is because the other two cores are there, they are just disabled.

Of course, not all can be unlocked to an X4, some can only get a 3rd core running stable making it an X3. Where as some are stuck on a dual core because both of the disabled cores are truly defective. However the success rates for getting a fully stable quad core out of this CPU are very high, up close to 90%.

My unlock was stable after 5 hours of Prime95 and tested while playing ArmA 2. It worked like a charm. There is one drawback to unlocking those extra cores though, you loose the ability to monitor your CPU temps. Most modern motherboards however have a sensor under the socket that can be used to "estimate" your CPU temperature, in Everest Ultimate Edition it shows up as "Aux". All you do is compare the actual core temperatures to the sensor under the socket, under load, before you unlock your CPU. Note the difference so when you do the unlock, you can use the motherboard sensor to get an idea as to the CPU's temperature. This is important since your CPU will run hotter since there will be an extra core or two in there producing heat. With the proper cooling this is not an issue tough.

So something better than stock cooling is highly recommended. The " Zalman 9700 CPU cooler" is my personal recommendation. If want to research how to try your own unlock, check out this AMD Phenom II Core Unlocking Guide over at Overclock.net, everything you need to know is there!

So why bring this up? Even if your not lucky enough to unlock any of the other cores, this CPU is still more than capable, with other good hardware, of running any games on the market today. If you can unlock an extra core or two, all the better. So for less than $100 you have a CPU that can perform on par with Intel chips that cost much more. Such as an i5 or E8500 or E8600. Again, side by side your not going to be able to tell the difference.

Closing:

So in a nut shell, in a price vs performance comparison, AMD will always win hands down for me. I will be more than happy to put my overclocked Phenom II 550 quad core up against an i5 or i7 any day in any game and dare anyone to be able to say it does not run on par with the more expensive Intel chip. As long as both systems have comparable hardware across the board anyone will be hard pressed to be able to tell the difference based on "real world" use alone.

Isn't that what it's all about anyway, real world use? Even for a hardcore gamer like myself, the Intel line of chips simply can not offer up performance over the AMD line that can justify the sometimes massive cost differences.

So why not save a lot of money, buy AMD, and then drop that extra money into other hardware for your system? Such as a better video card, motherboard, or RAM? I think a lot of people forget there is a lot more to a system than the CPU alone.

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