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Universe Master
Jun 20, 2005

Darn Fine Pie

MeramJert posted:

There is absolutely no way getting a 2500k will only cost you $50-$100 more than an Athlon II x4 system

At Newegg, the 2500k is $125 dollars more than the cheapest Athlon II x4, and $85 dollars more than the most expensive.

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Sinestro
Oct 31, 2010

The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.

MeramJert posted:

There is absolutely no way getting a 2500k will only cost you $50-$100 more than an Athlon II x4 system

Parts that are the same:

Athlon II x4 system (Though, for :20bux: + :10bux:, you should go to a 965 instead if you must stick to AMD.)

Total cost: $988.91

2500k system

Total cost for system: $1,093.91

Cost difference from Athlon to 2500k: $26 $105

Chance of MeramJert still talking out his rear end: Priceless. 100%

Well, mate, I think $105 ≈ $100.

Sinestro fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Apr 1, 2011

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
The motherboard choice is a LITTLE disingenuous on the AMD side. A more appropriate choice would be a ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 AMD Motherboard for $92.99, that's $202.98 for the AMD CPU+mobo, $354.98 for the Intel CPU+mobo, a difference of $152.

Sinestro
Oct 31, 2010

The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.
I build systems on the side, so I was just copying from my log. :effort:

Sinestro fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Apr 1, 2011

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Universe Master posted:

At Newegg, the 2500k is $125 dollars more than the cheapest Athlon II x4, and $85 dollars more than the most expensive.

Yeah, but you're not going to be dropping $175 on a motherboard for an Athlon II system like that guy up there.

e: so basically no, I wasn't talking out of my rear end. That's one of the most expensive AM3 motherboards you can possibly buy on newegg, like in terms of place in the market you'd be going for a >$250 motherboard for the Intel processor

fart simpson fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Apr 1, 2011

Sinestro
Oct 31, 2010

The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.
Updated, and you still are in the buttspeak range. :owned:

probably drunk
Dec 25, 2009

by Lowtax
You are some pretty upset nerds right now!

Sinestro
Oct 31, 2010

The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.
Look at the forum name! Hardware is serious business. :smug:

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

MeramJert posted:

There is absolutely no way getting a 2500k will only cost you $50-$100 more than an Athlon II x4 system

It'll get you the processor, at least. :v:

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom
If I'm building an AMD budget gaming system, I'm not buying a 6950 or $130 worth of RAM.

Not A Gay Name
Nov 8, 2008

Gunjin posted:

If I'm building an AMD budget gaming system, I'm not buying a 6950 or $130 worth of RAM.

Especially considering you can get 2 sticks of G.Skill for ~$80 or, if Corsair is so bloody important, 4 sticks for $90.

I quit following prices for a while but it's good to see that DDR3 has finally come down quit a bit.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Ok, I shouldn't have said "absolutely", but I still wasn't talking out of my rear end. An Athlon II system will very likely be more than $100 cheaper than a 2500k system. I mean, you picked a more expensive motherboard for the AMD system than you did for the Intel system. That's straight up dishonest.

e: with your updated parts, you're not even correct about the final cost. Add up the numbers again, with the parts you've picked out the AMD system is $152 cheaper, not $105.

fart simpson fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Apr 1, 2011

Tragic Otter
Aug 3, 2000

MeramJert posted:

Ok, I shouldn't have said "absolutely", but I still wasn't talking out of my rear end. An Athlon II system will very likely be more than $100 cheaper than a 2500k system.

Does it really matter?

The AMD Athlon X4 system is going to be substantially slower. You'd only buy it if you can't afford the Intel. It's not even a "bang-for-your-buck" solution. It's just what you buy if you can't afford better.

ate shit on live tv
Feb 15, 2004

by Azathoth
Or if you are an irrational fanboy who doesn't understand that performance per core is more important than more cores.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Powercrazy posted:

Or if you are an irrational fanboy who doesn't understand that performance per core is more important than more cores.

Except for very few workloads. I found a few systems where a much faster (in 90% of stuff) 2-core system was a bit slower than a 4-core system in parallelizable stuff, like compiling a big project.

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Faceless Clock posted:

Does it really matter?

The AMD Athlon X4 system is going to be substantially slower. You'd only buy it if you can't afford the Intel. It's not even a "bang-for-your-buck" solution. It's just what you buy if you can't afford better.

That depends entirely on what you're doing. For most common desktop work, processor performance is close to irrelevant. An i3 or Athlon II will run Word, Powerpoint, and sane Excel just as well as an i7 or Xeon hexcore. And, as far as games are concerned, there aren't that many games which bottleneck on the CPU. If you drop the resolution to CRT-circa-1994 levels, or have some ridiculous $1500 3-GPU setup, you might shift the bottleneck back to the processor, but it's simply not a huge concern for the vast majority of users. Most people don't encode video or run CFD simulations on their desktop all day long.

Yes, the i5 quad is a substantially faster processor in benchmarks and CPU-heavy tasks. If you had an unlimited budget and simply wanted the best value-for-money on a general-purpose system, it would be a great choice. However, for a lot of users the Athlon II X4 will do just as well for less money. Given that budget almost always is of some concern, why not go for the option that effectively performs just as well for less money?

Powercrazy posted:

Or if you are an irrational fanboy who doesn't understand that performance per core is more important than more cores.

How do you figure? Sure, there are exceptions, but most stuff that leans hard on the CPU is written to take advantage of multiple cores these days. At that point, of course, both performance per core and number of cores play an important role in overall performance. Typical office crap is lightly threaded - but again, that's the stuff where even a $60-100 bargain basement CPU is more than enough to handle everything with flying colors.

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!
Some people want the very best and most powerful available, and that's cool because those high dollar sales help drive processor development.

I'm on a tight budget when it comes to computer expenditures and I find the performance to price ratio more favorable with AMD based systems.

Coredump
Dec 1, 2002

Faceless Clock posted:

Does it really matter?

The AMD Athlon X4 system is going to be substantially slower. You'd only buy it if you can't afford the Intel. It's not even a "bang-for-your-buck" solution. It's just what you buy if you can't afford better.

So wrong. So very wrong. Tech Report has covered this very subject in more thorough detail and Athalon x4 is a great system to build around on a budget.

Edit: Hey here's a link! http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/17 Ownage.

Edit 2: Hmmm. Techreport hasn't done their recommended system builds with Sandy Bridge... I may be talking a little out of my rear end. But the Athalon still gets the nod on their budget builds. http://techreport.com/articles.x/19868/2

Budget... Can't afford Intel... Ahh dammit all to hell I'm going home.

Coredump fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 1, 2011

Coredump
Dec 1, 2002

Dammit quote is not edit.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Coredump posted:

So wrong. So very wrong. Tech Report has covered this very subject in more thorough detail and Athalon x4 is a great system to build around on a budget.

Edit: Hey here's a link! http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448/17 Ownage.
That article is a year old, doesn't include the current generation of Intel processors, and STILL shows the Intel Core i5 750 as having the best performance/dollar when total system cost is factored in.

I mean, obviously if you can't afford $350 for your motherboard and CPU then AMD is going to give you compellingly better value than Intel will, and of course when I built a computer for my grandma I used an Athlon II X4 and the onboard video because she's barely going to use that CPU and the higher performance would have been wasted. If you do notice performance though, and you have the money, it's a little silly to say an i5 2500 wouldn't be worth it.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 1, 2011

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Alereon posted:

That article is a year old, doesn't include the current generation of Intel processors, and STILL shows the Intel Core i5 750 as having the best performance/dollar when total system cost is factored in.

I mean, obviously if you can't afford $350 for your motherboard and CPU then AMD is going to give you compellingly better value than Intel will, and of course when I built a computer for my grandma I used an Athlon II X4 and the onboard video because she's barely going to use that CPU and the higher performance would have been wasted. If you do notice performance though, and you have the money, it's a little silly to say an i5 2500 wouldn't be worth it.

Those "performance per dollar" numbers can be misleading, though. If you want to express things as a simple ratio, you have to distill "performance" into a single number, and that's always going to have issues. For instance, a lot of people don't give the slightest of shits about Folding@Home, but it's factored into the results. There are very few situations in which it matters whether it takes 16 or 20 seconds to encode a 10 minute MP3, but again, that's factored into the "performance" number.

Ultimately, it comes down to one question: what does the extra $100-150 over the minimum acceptable option get the user? For a whole lot of people, the answer is, "not much." Hell, probably half of the first world would be just fine with a wimpy little single-core ARM in an iPad 1 for their home computing needs. Most of the rest could get by just fine with a cheap dual-core/integrated-graphics laptop - and many of them do. Even gamers, and people who occasionally do things that require a fair amount of CPU power (like, say, video encoding) will for the most part be perfectly happy with an inexpensive quad core. There are certainly exceptions, but for the vast majority of the world and even a significant chunk of SH/SC types, "good enough, fast enough, and dirt cheap" wins out over "MAXIMUM X-TREME PERFORMANCE."

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!
An SSD for the OS drive is going to make a much more user perceivable difference in performance than the jump from an AMD chip to an Intel one.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
I was typing up a post but then I decided that instead we should all have a group hug and agree that if you wanna spend >$350 on your CPU and motherboard you should buy Intel, and if you don't you should buy AMD, and everyone can decide for themselves which group they fall into for their own reasons. Also I want to see an Intel Cedar Trail Aton and a 28nm die-shrunk AMD E-series duke it out for low-power x86 supremacy later this year or maybe next. My money is on the E-series because I still think Intel has no loving clue about the Atom.

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!
Group hugs and bulldozer news ITT.

madprocess
Sep 23, 2004

by Ozmaugh

Alereon posted:

I was typing up a post but then I decided that instead we should all have a group hug and agree that if you wanna spend >$350 on your CPU and motherboard you should buy Intel, and if you don't you should buy AMD, and everyone can decide for themselves which group they fall into for their own reasons. Also I want to see an Intel Cedar Trail Aton and a 28nm die-shrunk AMD E-series duke it out for low-power x86 supremacy later this year or maybe next. My money is on the E-series because I still think Intel has no loving clue about the Atom.

I'm sorry but I must inform you that if your son has requested a new "processor" from a company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the security features that American processor makers, such as Intel, use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and you will most likely be told that you have to order them from internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising him well.

                     
kidding of course
                     

Sinestro
Oct 31, 2010

The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.

madprocess posted:

I'm sorry but I must inform you that if your son has requested a new "processor" from a company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the security features that American processor makers, such as Intel, use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and you will most likely be told that you have to order them from internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising him well.

                     
kidding of course
                     


Is this a reference to something? If so, do tell.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

pienipple posted:

An SSD for the OS drive is going to make a much more user perceivable difference in performance than the jump from an AMD chip to an Intel one.

Yeah, I'd take the AMD system with an SSD over the Intel system without an SSD for the same price if I had a budget limit.

madprocess
Sep 23, 2004

by Ozmaugh

Nonpython posted:

Is this a reference to something? If so, do tell.

Oh it's a decade old slashdot troll or something parodying both the AMD/Intel rivalry and your standard fear mongering reporting about computers.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


Nonpython posted:

Is this a reference to something? If so, do tell.

http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

Man, that poo poo's old.

Edit: AOL :haw:

KillHour fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Apr 2, 2011

conntrack
Aug 8, 2003

by angerbeet

Nonpython posted:

Is this a reference to something? If so, do tell.

Sounded like most computer stores before the K7 cpus from amd. Sure you could buy amd if you wished your system to catch fire and kill your dog or any such helpful hints.

TreFitty
Jan 18, 2003

conntrack posted:

Sounded like most computer stores before the K7 cpus from amd. Sure you could buy amd if you wished your system to catch fire and kill your dog or any such helpful hints.
You're right. However, in all fairness VIA chipsets were complete crap even at the height of the Athlon craze. My first PC (not my first computer, but Windows PC) was an AMD K6-2 300 MHz and I loved that thing, but during the first couple of rounds of K7 CPU's I absolutely refused to get one even though the price:performance was great. I refused to go anywhere near a VIA chipset and still today I'm wary about that poo poo company. Oh, and that was your only option until nVidia came around with the nForce (and then I jumped in to AMD world again).

Instead I spent money that I didn't have as a High Schooler on a P3 w/ a BX chipset because I was tired of messing with poo poo and just wanted a computer that worked well without crashing or being a bitch about installing a new piece of hardware.

Right now I have a new i7 2600, but I'm really looking forward to see what AMD has with Bulldozer and other things. I want to see them be awesome.

TreFitty fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 2, 2011

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Couldn't you get a SiS chipset (lol) too, or did they come out after nforce?

TreFitty
Jan 18, 2003

MeramJert posted:

Couldn't you get a SiS chipset (lol) too, or did they come out after nforce?
Yea, SiS was always around and always horrible. They were around even pre-K7. AMD even had their own chipset for the first-gen K7's to fill the void which was also bad for I forgot what reasons.

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

conntrack posted:

Sounded like most computer stores before the K7 cpus from amd. Sure you could buy amd if you wished your system to catch fire and kill your dog or any such helpful hints.

Some computer users too. I remember a heated argument I had with one guy back in the Maximum PC Delphi Forums back circa 1999 about how he swore AMD processors was incompatible with some part of x86. He would post something as proof and I would post a screenshot with it running along with the win98 system properties screen running to show the processor. This went on at least 7-8 times and he still swore that I was doing something to make it work.

The time before K7 was interesting indeed when people swore that anything that wasn't Intel sucked.

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

TreFitty posted:

Yea, SiS was always around and always horrible. They were around even pre-K7. AMD even had their own chipset for the first-gen K7's to fill the void which was also bad for I forgot what reasons.

If I recall correctly, it did not support 4x AGP, and they tended to burn out, especially on systems past 1ghz.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
The AMD750 (Irongate) chipset was horribly unstable, mostly because it was the first generation chipset and the first one for the platform. People were still in the habit of using the same generic low-draw 250W power supply and generic PC100 RAM they would in a Pentium II system, which didn't work because AMD systems were a lot more sensitive. The Via KX133 was actually an improvement over Irongate, though it didn't support the "SuperBypass" tech AMD used to improve performance. By the time of the KT133A the Via chipsets actually made for a pretty reasonable platform, as long as you didn't have a Soundblaster Live! card.

rscott
Dec 10, 2009
Basically every AMD chipset up until the nForce 2 kind of sucked in its own way. Most of VIA's chipsets had lovely memory controller peformance, and most SiS stuff was terrifically unstable.

Wedesdo
Jun 15, 2001
I FUCKING WASTED 10 HOURS AND $40 TODAY. FUCK YOU FATE AND/OR FORTUNE AND/OR PROBABILITY AND/OR HEISENBURG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.

rscott posted:

most SiS stuff was terrifically unstable.

Counterpoint: ECS K7S5A :coolfish:

TreFitty
Jan 18, 2003

Wedesdo posted:

Counterpoint: ECS K7S5A :coolfish:
...if it wasn't DOA because it was ECS.

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fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

I had an ECS L7S7A2 back then that I got for dirt cheap and it lasted me 5 years with no stability problems. The audio in port on the back failed after 2 years but other than that it was perfect.

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