cheap quad cores

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:33 am

I'm seriously thinking about getting a quad rig in the new year (prices have already fallen by 1/2 in the last 3 months).

Would I be a fool to buy on the cheaper end of the scale?
ie, AMD Phenom 64 Quad 9500 (2.3ghz) skt AM2 @ £158.00
or Intel quad Q6600 (2.4ghz) LGA775 @ £173.00

I know obviously the Extreme versions for £300+ would be superior, but I don't have that kind of budget.

Obviously the performance will be way above my existing Athlon64 3500+ ... so investing would probably be worth it.

How do the AMD quads compare to Intel's ? I've always been an AMD fan, I think their performance/price ratio is way better then Intels.

Any advice? I feel I need to finalise my CPU decision before even considering other components.

IanT · Post by **IanT** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:48 am

I've personally never been a firm fan of either (not wanting to stray into the murky religious obsessions that some others seem to get stuck into). I was in the position of needing to upgrade about 18 months ago and I would have bought an AMD had Intel not just released the Core2Duo.

Based on some early rendering benchmarks (e.g. Povray, Lightwave, 3DSMax etc.), it seems the Q6600 happily outperforms the Phenom 9600 so if I had to buy either one of those now, it would have to be the Intel. Intels are also a dream to overclock... not sure who's tried it yet with the AMDs...

Ian.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:57 am

hey dougal...
Atm it seems your best choice price vs. performance is the Q6600.
Here in Germany the price is 215€ for a Q6600 vs. P9700 for 265€, boath with 4 x 2.4ghz.
Poorly the AMD CPU also doesn't performes as fine as the Intel one, and as IanT also told,
the Intel CPU'S are superb overclockers...

Here a link for a nice review: http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/477/

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:59 am

ZomB wrote:hey dougal...
Atm it seems your best choice price vs. performance is the Q6600.
Here in Germany the price is 215€ for a Q6600 vs. P9700 for 265€, boath with 4 x 2.4ghz.
Poorly the AMD CPU also doesn't performes as fine as the Intel one, and as IanT also told,
the Intel CPU'S are superb overclockers...

Here a link for a nice review: http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/477/

But if you buy a new Rig Dude, also think hard about the future of your system... how many generations of CPU's will your mainboard support???

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:15 am

re: future
well, both AM2 and LGA775 seem to be the current standard.

I'm currently on skt 939 and that's already pretty much obsolete; I've been running this motherboard for about 18 months.

Anyone know how long AM2/775 are likely to last? They've already been around for a little while, especially 775.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:37 am

dougal2 wrote:I'm currently on skt 939 and that's already pretty much obsolete; I've been running this motherboard for about 18 months.

Hey dougal...
having an AMD +3500 single core the best idea ist to update your system to an 939 dualcore CPU for really small money, and get a totally new rig next year.

939 CPU's arent produced anymore, so the only 939 CPU you get in a shop is the X2 +4200 with 2 x 2.2ghz for about 65€.
On eBay you also can get +4800 X2 with 2 x 2.4ghz for about 120€.

You'll get about 2 times the CPU performance for your system for only 65€
And can buy a 8 core system next year

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:01 am

yeah that's good reasoning ZomB, however I'm also on only 1gb ram and a GeForce 6200.

I'm happy to stick with what I've got for a couple of months more, but I can definitely feel it all getting a little long in the tooth.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:25 am

dougal2 wrote:yeah that's good reasoning ZomB, however I'm also on only 1gb ram and a GeForce 6200.

I'm happy to stick with what I've got for a couple of months more, but I can definitely feel it all getting a little long in the tooth.

The idea behind waiting on this, is to see what a future the actual AM2+ and 775 architecture have...
Just imagine to hear in Februar, that the upcoming CPU generation wont be supported by your Mainboard

Buying a new Rig is always like sex to a cheerleader squad on vigra for CG guys. But you have to think about the upgradeability of your rig in 1.5 years...
Perhaps you can find something about this on the Internet too (No, not about the Cheerleader thing!)

zsouthboy · Post by **zsouthboy** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:46 pm

dougal2:

Wait for someone to bench Indigo on a Phenom, then make a decision. I've been trying to find someone who actually has one (they're in short supply) to have them test.

This is coming from an AMD stockholder, too - (and their stock is in the toilet, wee!)

According to Anandtech, on high-end 3d rendering tests that they did, there's no benefit vs. a Q6600 or other Core2 chip:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=3153&p=8

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:07 pm

I found a brand new roadmap for AMD including Plans for 2008/2009.
So it seems AMD is staying with AM2+ until first quarter of 2009, then AM3 hits the market...

zsouthboy · Post by **zsouthboy** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:54 am

Yeah Amd moved from 939 at the memory manufacturers' behest only - the A64s were doing fine with DDR, however, 900-pound gorilla Intel was moving a ton of DDR2 boards and memory - so Amd switched to DDR2 (socket AM2, AM2+).

AM3 processors will be backward compatible with AM2(+) boards, AFAIK.

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:09 am

also, 775 seems to have been around for a while now; longer than AM2
(I recall building some 3ghz single core skt775 machines for my dad about 2 years ago).

I'm sorely tempted to go the AMD route if i decide to get a completely new rig.

Also, the overclocking of AMD vs Intel is a bit of a myth - I can easily get my athlon64 3500+ from 2.2ghz to 2.75ghz beyond which my RAM and PCI bus can't keep up.

In the past I also have managed to get an AthlonXP 1600 (1.4) up to 1.65.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:24 am

dougal2 wrote:Also, the overclocking of AMD vs Intel is a bit of a myth - I can easily get my athlon64 3500+ from 2.2ghz to 2.75ghz beyond which my RAM and PCI bus can't keep up.

the Q6600 can be easily overclocked from 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz thats an extra 600MHZ for each core so your total Ghz raises from 9.6Ghz to 12Ghz

Just check the web for overclocking reviews etc. for the Q6600.

The Phenom doesn't perform here this good, but an "Black Edition" with more potential is planed, als for the Phenom you can be overclocked each Core the way you like (on windows runtime!)

zsouthboy · Post by **zsouthboy** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:31 am

Overclocking headroom is dependent on the processor, the revision, and the phases of the moon - a general statement about overclocking like that isn't very good.

The Phenoms won't have a ton of headroom to start out with, because it's a brand new process, processor, and few revisions have been made.

Core2 has been around for a while now, and it'll overclock well - that means that the process is mature, the revisions are mature, and that they have a lot of headroom (room to grow a product line).

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:33 am

you can clock each core differently??!?!!?! that sounds like both asking for trouble and totally pointless in equal measures

edit: to be honest though i'm not that keen on overclocking... i can't stand fan noise

as long as it works well out of the box is all that really matters to me

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