That AMD looks way better on paper, is there something obvious I'm missing?
I haven't done any research into current AMD chips/chipsets in the past six months, so I can't say.
I've paid a small premium for Intel and haven't looked back. The last time I did my research, there was a big advantage to Intel, but I am not sure if that is still true.
My gut says i5, but I am not prepared to back that up at the moment.
i7 is only on the table if you can get one at the same pricepoint as an equivalent i5 or you can articulate the difference between the two and why it will matter to you.
i7 is only on the table if you can get one at the same pricepoint as an equivalent i5 or you can articulate the difference between the two and why it will matter to you.
I can only take advantage of the HT places where it's not needed, so I never considered i7s unless they were somehow cheaper. As for general AMD quality: Yup, that seems to be the common consensus. But this particular card outperforms every i5 when I looked at benchmarks earlier, and it is a bit cheaper, which is why I wanna be sure it's a bad choice before going with an i5.
Cores could matter, clock speed is irrelevant, specific cache sizes matters only in how the processor puts it to use and what the specific type of work being done is. I know this isn't the case with Intel or AMD, but I could stick a bizarre amount of cache into a design just to inflate such a number and not make much use of it.
Note: I want AMD to be as competitive as possible, but those sorts of things don't actually tell us much about its real-world use.
Apparently there is a lot of direct comparison between these two CPUs. What my ten minutes of research concludes is that the Intel is better, but not by much, so if you can get the AMD for a lot less money it may be worth it. However, you do have to consider that you'll have to get an AMD motherboard and such.
Apparently there is a lot of direct comparison between these two CPUs. What my ten minutes of research concludes is that the Intel is better, but not by much, so if you can get the AMD for a lot less money it may be worth it. However, you do have to consider that you'll have to get an AMD motherboard and such.
Apparently there is a lot of direct comparison between these two CPUs. What my ten minutes of research concludes is that the Intel is better, but not by much, so if you can get the AMD for a lot less money it may be worth it. However, you do have to consider that you'll have to get an AMD motherboard and such.
I know this isn't the case with Intel or AMD, but I could stick a bizarre amount of cache into a design just to inflate such a number and not make much use of it.
It would be fun to find out how much cache you would need to add for people to buy the the processor mainly on that fact alone. Then take the total number of additional people who would buy the processor, the actual profit from those sales, and subtract the added cost of the superfluous cache on all processors. I am guesstimating a huge loss, but you never know...
You're assuming it's trivially easy to add cache to the CPU and that it would actually result in numbers being inflated. They're already putting in as much cache as close to the CPU as is possible. That's why they already have multiple cache layers.
Yeah, the trade off would be transistors for cache in what I described. There are some use cases where more low level cache will out-perform more transistors, and other cases where more transistors will out-perform cache. It's a definite trade off thing depending on what particular instructions you want to perform with the CPU. And Intel and AMD are way better informed than I am about that.
Core numbers can not such a useful metric as lots of things you will do with the CPU is only going to take advantage of one or two. My AMD Quad does pretty well still and especially for the bundle price I got it for. Two cores is ok for light work but I'd say four for a good all round figure. Six could prove useful for certain tasks and eight should be kept for people specifically looking to do virtualization and heavily parallel tasks.
Cache can be a complicated number as it's not just how much cache but how it is organised and how the different cores are able to access it.
Second motherboard replacement got here yesterday. I'm going to install it tonight, and quietly pray that I don't bust my processor while removing and reapplying the thermal paste.
My laptop is using a second-gen i5. But if you look at my desktop processors, I'm going to an Ivy Bridge i5 from a single-core Celeron D.
Apparently there is a lot of direct comparison between these two CPUs. What my ten minutes of research concludes is that the Intel is better, but not by much, so if you can get the AMD for a lot less money it may be worth it. However, you do have to consider that you'll have to get an AMD motherboard and such.
The AMD FX 8350 only supports PCIe 2.0, just to give you a heads up. And the Intel allegedly outclasses the AMD in terms of single-core processing, if that is important to anything you'll be doing.
EDIT: In case you want my opinion, I'd go with the Intel.
What'd I'd really appreciate help with is choosing a motherboard. How does one go about doing that? I can look at the number of USB and SATA slots, but that's as far as my knowledge brings me.
Start by filtering for your form factor, socket, RAM clock speed, and whatever the latest northbridge is. (for Intels, that's the Z77 chipset.) If you want to buy a video card, make sure you have a PCIe 3.0 slot, and make sure you have a SATA 6 Gb/s port or two.
Beyond that, I'd say just organize them by user ratings and pick the best-rated one in your price range.
Well, the first half is obvious, but how do you determine if the more expensive, better rated one that also fits your needs is actually worth an additional hundred bucks?
Start by filtering for your form factor, socket, RAM clock speed, and whatever the latest northbridge is. (for Intels, that's the Z77 chipset.) If you want to buy a video card, make sure you have a PCIe 3.0 slot, and make sure you have a SATA 6 Gb/s port or two.
Beyond that, I'd say just organize them by user ratings and pick the best-rated one in your price range.
We decided to go with the AMD. I'm looking at motherboards, but they all come with PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, I don't see 3.0 slots.
Related to that, what does this mean? It sounds like it comes with 2 slots, one x16 and one x4. Does that matter? How much does that matter?
Well, the first half is obvious, but how do you determine if the more expensive, better rated one that also fits your needs is actually worth an additional hundred bucks?
It probably isn't, but it depends on your needs.
The starting question is this - how much do you use your CPU for tasks that use as much of its power as they can, and what kinds of tasks are those?
The main reason to have a faster CPU is saved time, but the biggest question of all is how much of that time is time you will actually benefit from.
Comments
I've paid a small premium for Intel and haven't looked back. The last time I did my research, there was a big advantage to Intel, but I am not sure if that is still true.
My gut says i5, but I am not prepared to back that up at the moment.
i7 is only on the table if you can get one at the same pricepoint as an equivalent i5 or you can articulate the difference between the two and why it will matter to you.
- Twice as many cores
- A clockspeed of 0.6 Ghz higher
- 8x as much L2 chache
- A third more L3 chache
Basically, all the numbers are higher.Note: I want AMD to be as competitive as possible, but those sorts of things don't actually tell us much about its real-world use.
So, in short, you'd say "If you want to save money, go AMD. If you want to be safe, go Intel"?
Two cores is ok for light work but I'd say four for a good all round figure. Six could prove useful for certain tasks and eight should be kept for people specifically looking to do virtualization and heavily parallel tasks.
Cache can be a complicated number as it's not just how much cache but how it is organised and how the different cores are able to access it.
My laptop is using a second-gen i5. But if you look at my desktop processors, I'm going to an Ivy Bridge i5 from a single-core Celeron D.
EDIT: In case you want my opinion, I'd go with the Intel.
Beyond that, I'd say just organize them by user ratings and pick the best-rated one in your price range.
Related to that, what does this mean?
It sounds like it comes with 2 slots, one x16 and one x4. Does that matter? How much does that matter?
The starting question is this - how much do you use your CPU for tasks that use as much of its power as they can, and what kinds of tasks are those?
The main reason to have a faster CPU is saved time, but the biggest question of all is how much of that time is time you will actually benefit from.