AMD or Intel? Your thoughts?

[locosway]

I've run AMD processors for some time. However, my last two computers have been Intel, and I've regretted it. The price to performance ratio is not there. If Intel is faster, I didn't notice it, and I sure as hell didn't notice it for the price difference.

AMD has a great offering, and with todays CPU speeds, unless you're doing tons of CPU operations, you won't notice the difference between the fastest Intel, or a moderate AMD, or visa versa. What's more limiting is your harddrive speed, and often your graphics card if you're gaming.

I use my computer a lot, and my processor rarely moves about 1GHz. Sure, I have a 2.13GHz dual core 64 bit processor, but it's all mostly wasted. All of the reviews I've recently read list the AMD X3 as being the best gaming CPU. Simply put, more cores is not better for gaming. Instead clock speed is, however there's a point where more clock speed doesn't net you a large enough improvement in performance to justify the cost.

Save the money on the CPU and get more RAM, a larger HDD, a faster video card, etc.

[locosway]

Intel is dominating these days

i7-920 OC'd (No water, just a very large cooler and case, Prolimatech Megahalems + Antec 1200) with Intel SSD here!

Family member works at Intel, and they are very generous with their discount. Now that I have gone SSD, I don't think I can ever go back

I'm not a fan of small storage capacity and limited read/writes to my hard drives. If anything I'd just run a 10k rpm drive instead.

[ZX-10R]

If you are doing nothing but browsing the web, opening MSFT docs, and nothing straining, then you won't know AMD from Intel. Hardcore gamer, workstation, graphics, etc. Intel...Yes, I was an AMD fan for a while but even I had to go to Intel to keep up when MW2 came out.

[locosway]

If you are doing nothing but browsing the web, opening MSFT docs, and nothing straining, then you won't know AMD from Intel. Hardcore gamer, workstation, graphics, etc. Intel...Yes, I was an AMD fan for a while but even I had to go to Intel to keep up when MW2 came out.

I game, edit video, and process photos. I see no reason to use Intel over AMD.

The only thing I could see locking me into Intel is if I was doing scientific computations that took a very long time. Then perhaps the .00001 ms difference could be noticed and tracked over a set period of time.

For home users, there's no chance in noticing. Slap a AMD sticker on a Intel box and no one would know.

[amd64]

I'm not a fan of small storage capacity and limited read/writes to my hard drives. If anything I'd just run a 10k rpm drive instead.

Most people running SSDs just keep the OS and apps on the SSD and use conventional HDs individually or in RAID arrays for mass storage. This could be limiting on laptops though...

I still run Raptors in RAID configs in most all my XP boxes. They were fast for their time. I've switched over to Intel SSDs since Win7 and TRIM, that addresses the hassle of doing partition alignments and other bs to use SSDs on pre-Win7 OSs.

[HK4113]

Most people running SSDs just keep the OS and apps on the SSD and use conventional HDs individually or in RAID arrays for mass storage.

I still run Raptors in RAID configs in most all my XP boxes. They were fast for their time. I've switched over to Intel SSDs since Win7 and TRIM, that addresses the hassle of doing partition alignments and other bs to use SSDs on pre-Win7 OSs.

Thats what I do. My ssd is for my OS only.

[locosway]

What's TRIM? I don't use Windows.

[jpparker88]

I personally just built a rig and went with AMD. I run mw2 and everything else on high settings. I might not see that much difference though because of my high end video card. I overclocked my processor and was even able to unlock another core, it just runs hotter than before now, but what overclocked machine doesn't? If you're just playing starcraft 2, than don't worry so much about the processor, I'd worry more about video card and RAM. And as always, it's not about the amount of memory in the video card, it's about the speed of that memory.

[amd64]

What's TRIM? I don't use Windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

other OSs support it too.