intel sandy bridge or amd?

[Ishu Gupta]

Modern games will be limited by the GPU therefore the difference between CPUs won't even matter. He will hardly see a diff of 1-2 FPS, depending on the games core support.

And a quad core will be much better for day 2 day use.

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T, X4 970BE and Athlon II X4 645 processor review

x4 645 is 2FPS behind 980X, in Farcry 2, which is as good as SB,.
Its equal in Bad Company 2.

There is not any notable difference at FullHD resolutions with the reviewer's HD5870. A HD5770 will bottleneck it way before that.

@ utkarsh
Yep you can OC it and 3.4 - 3.5GHz should be OK.
BTW what's your budget?

 

[The_Man]

Modern games will be limited by the GPU therefore the difference between CPUs won't even matter

Agree.But it's difficult to ignore this kinda performance boost.

 

[skeletor]

The OP should mention his overall budget and fill in the PC questionnaire template.

 

[Cilus]

Now a days, going for a quad core is the best option. I know a faster dual core will give you higher performance in gaming, but again how much? the performance difference between a P II 555 and a Athlon II 635/640 is marginal, you won't get more than 10 fps, which is again the best case. Normally it is 5-6 fps max.

Need of Quad Core
1. For gaming:
All the next generations games are getting multi-core optimized.

Game Physics: Apart from nVidia's PhysX there are lot of Physics engine available like Bullet and Havoc. It is actually highly probable that most of the next generation games will use certain sort of Physics Engine, which again will be better for a multi-core CPU, where you can have a dedicated core to handle those heavy Physics calculations.

2. For other purpose
When you purchase a computer, even for the hardest core gamers, you are not gonna game all the times. When you will be running any productive software like Adobe Photoshops, running HD movies, editing a video or even running browsers and editing word documents, a quad processor will be a better than a little faster dual core for all the above mentioned applications.

So a quad core is the best option here.

 

[vickybat]

@vickybat
You don't need a sandybridge for playing games.Even a core 2 duo is enough.

Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3? : Why Pay More?

Average FPS Benchmarks: Single Radeon HD 5850 : Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3?

I agree that sandybridge CPUs are superior but how many people need it?
You should have a discrete card if you are a gamer.

It's better have an SB chip if you plan to buy a gx card with it.
Utkarsh is looking for a gaming PC.So he should go for config with a discrete card.
Utkarsh,you wont be able to play any complex games with this HD 2000/3000 because it's not designed for high-end gaming.An athlon quad is more than enough for you.Go for the Athlon+5770.
By the way,which Athlon II X4 model are you looking at.

Games are becoming multithreaded as we speak. Crysis 2 is going to use more than 4 cores and can need multiple threads. So a core 2 duo won't cut it in this case.

The cpu & gpu should be balanced. I won't recommend anyone to go with a athlon x4 and add a 6950, 6970 , 570 or 580 to it. Cpu will be a bottleneck for such fast cards. Have you seen a prebuild config like that before?

x4 can handle max upto a 6850 or at best 6870. Anything higher than that will be a bottleneck. Even i won't recommend a athlon x4 + 6870 but instead will recommend a phenom 2 955be + 6870.

Comparing sandybridge with athlon x4 is relatively pointless.

 

[Jaskanwar Singh]

thats what i call explanation cilus.

 

[vickybat]

Athlon with GPU > SB without GPU.

Although SB is a much better choice if you can/will add a graphic card later.

Athlon x4's should never be an option against sb cpu's unless there's a budget constraint.

If op can buy a sb cpu , then he/she should and save up and add a gpu later rather than opting for a athlonx4 + gpu.

There is no comparisons between the two.

 

[The_Man]

running HD movies, editing a video or even running browsers and editing word documents, a quad processor will be a better than a little faster dual core for all the above mentioned applications.

How much better?There will be no noticeable difference except in the case of video editing which not many users do.

By the way 10fps is not a small amount of performance boost.30 fps is considered to be the playable fps for any game.So 10 fps doesn't matter???
There will be significant difference between playing @20 fps and playing @30fps.

And talking about multicores.You will need it only if you run multiple giant multithreaded software in the background.

The OP should mention his overall budget and fill in the PC questionnaire template.

+1
You need a completely new system buddy.So mention your budget first and then the questionnaire.

 

[vickybat]

Now a days, going for a quad core is the best option. I know a faster dual core will give you higher performance in gaming, but again how much? the performance difference between a P II 555 and a Athlon II 635/640 is marginal, you won't get more than 10 fps, which is again the best case. Normally it is 5-6 fps max.

Need of Quad Core
1. For gaming:
All the next generations games are getting multi-core optimized.

Game Physics: Apart from nVidia's PhysX there are lot of Physics engine available like Bullet and Havoc. It is actually highly probable that most of the next generation games will use certain sort of Physics Engine, which again will be better for a multi-core CPU, where you can have a dedicated core to handle those heavy Physics calculations.

2. For other purpose
When you purchase a computer, even for the hardest core gamers, you are not gonna game all the times. When you will be running any productive software like Adobe Photoshops, running HD movies, editing a video or even running browsers and editing word documents, a quad processor will be a better than a little faster dual core for all the above mentioned applications.

So a quad core is the best option here.

Yup i agree every part of it. Apart bullet and havoc there will be in house physics engines as well with x86 codepath. Crysis 2 is a fine example and that explains why it needs 8 cpu threads.

So cpu+gpu should be balanced and a quad core should be bare minimum.

How much better?There will be no noticeable difference except in the case of video editing which not many users do.

By the way 10fps is not a small amount of performance boost.30 fps is considered to be the playable fps for any game.So 10 fps doesn't matter???
There will be significant difference between playing @20 fps and playing @30fps.

And talking about multicores.You will need it only if you run multiple giant multithreaded software in the background.

Might not be now but as games become more demanding, the gap will widen and fps will reduce. Two years back, games wer not utilizing more than two cores, but that scenario has changed greatly and will keep changing. So its better to opt something future proof.

 

[The_Man]

@vicky
Crysis 2
System Requirements

* OS: Windows XP (32-64 bit) / Windows Vista (32-64 bit) / Windows 7 (32-64 bit)
* CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0 GHz or better
* RAM: 2 GB XP / 3 GB Vista – Windows 7
* HDD: 9 GB free disk space
* Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9.0c

Note:I never said you can play using c2d with all settings enabled.But it's good enough and phenom X II 555BE is much better than that c2d.And that will be enough with a 5770.

Both are good but again for all day to day purposes a dual core is more than enough.It has been proven several times.Maybe op should wait for the SB i3.It's better than the quads & duals we're talking about here.
No more comments from me on this dual core vs quad core battle.Good Night!

 

[vickybat]

^^ Those are minimum and not optimum. Try running it at those specs and you'll understand. I have seen an 8600gt perform on a pentium d processor(smithfield) and on my core i5 750. The difference was significant even for older gen titles like "dead space".

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Yeah, it also says "Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory".

Minimum requirements are (almost) useless.
Atleast look at recommended specs.

 

[utkarsh009]

as of my budget, if i go for amd i can upgrade till phenom x6 in future (4-5 years) but if i chose intel i'll always remain low on no. of cores as i wont go beyond i5. so which one should i chose intel or amd? its as simple as that. and i am not planning for graphics card above hd 5770 until i complete my studies (i am in 9th std. so 3 years for completing school) after that i'll purchase a lappy with sandy bridge processor or i might even get one as a prize in national olympiads. when i was in 7th std. i got all india rank 3 in national cyber olympiad organised by SOF. and i was awarded a netbook (lenovo ideapad s10) and the topper got a notebook. so i may still get one!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Intel SB (i5 2400/2500k) is already ahead x6. So even if you upgrade later it (AMD) will still be slower than SB.

AIR 3. Cool. I got 531 and got just a gold medal.

 

[vickybat]

@ utkarsh009
Even a phenom2 x6 is no match for intel sandybridge. Its four cores are faster than amd's 6 cores in all applications. They are very efficient. Down the line, you can drop in 6 core sb cpu's if they launch for 1155 platform.

Lga2011 will see six and eight core sandybridge cpu's.

AIR 3. Cool. I got 531 and got just a gold medal.

Really ishu? Congrats mate. Thats brilliant stuff.

 

[Ishu Gupta]

Really ishu? Congrats mate. Thats brilliant stuff.

Not really. Its terribly easy and not many kids appear (20k-40k).

I'm hardly smart academically.

 

[utkarsh009]

so now i guess i3 sandy bridge is better than an amd (same price) equivalent. in that case i have a budget of 10 k for mobo + processor. quickly suggest an intel alternative and when should i purchase it? does amd plan to bring anything (what is bulldozer?) to combat sandy bridge? i'll be upgrading these components in april.

 

[vickybat]

Not really. Its terribly easy and not many kids appear (20k-40k).

I'm hardly smart academically.

I didn't get you. What exam are you exactly talking about here? Isn't it AIEEE?

so now i guess i3 sandy bridge is better than an amd (same price) equivalent. in that case i have a budget of 10 k for mobo + processor. quickly suggest an intel alternative and when should i purchase it? does amd plan to bring anything (what is bulldozer?) to combat sandy bridge? i'll be upgrading these components in april.

Well i would recommend x4 instead of i3. Sandybridge i5's and i7's are exceptional.

Bulldozer is a bit far away. Maybe Q3 2011.

 

[utkarsh009]

@Ishu: do you study in school? which class? @vickybat: what exactly bulldozer is? is it for servers or for pc usage?

 

[vickybat]

@ utkarsh009

Bulldozer is amd's new microarchitecture and cpu's based on this architecture be released sometime later this year. It will compete against intel's sandybridge microarchitecture cpu's.

Both bulldozer and sandybridge will have desktop , notebook and server processors.