Pentium G860 (~$75) and Geforce GTX 560 Ti (~$170) should get close. You must have gotten a pretty good deal on the 6950 though.Originally Posted by Sparkasaurusmex
Still, I agree that AMD have been doing well on the graphics front lately, for the most part. It took too long for the HD 7000 series drivers to take full advantage of the hardware. But with the price cuts and free games, AMD graphics cards are pretty compelling right now.
The 6950 was $180 so I exaggerated for my argument's benefit on the price of the CPU. But I know when I looked into getting the CPU it was laughable how much more the comparable Intels cost. (same laughable price difference between 6950 and 680, though I don't know if they are comparable).
Basically I've been happy saving a couple hundred dollars when I build or upgrade by going ATI/AMD. And now I see that my budget for my next PC should be twice as much as usual considering how long it's been since I've had to upgrade anything besides getting the 6950 last year. Of course my actual budget doesn't really show that I've saved money by not upgrading :/
But yeah, if Intel/Nvidia builds are better I don't know, I haven't face to face compared.... but based on price and longevity of the hardware I've been using it's safe to say the AMD build has been stable and able to run new games at a mix of high/medium settings, all the real important settings on high, of course.
I have no brand loyalty, so if it looks like Nvidia or Intel will be able to compete based on price/performance I will easily build an Nvidia/Intel machine. (most likely it'll be a mix of Intel/AMD)
But it's always sad when a competition dies. Hopefully someone purchases AMD and keeps them competing with Intel and Nvidia... the cynic in me thinks Intel will probably be the corporation to buy AMD :/ (or some point in the future Microsoft Apple buys both of them)
Btw a friend of mine just spent 30 euros on a second hand phenom II x2 @3.5ghz (he was using an am2+ mobo and an old phenom x4 ) and now he is set for the majority of games with a super budget upgrade.
Amd value in the low end has always been great, and during the amd64 and phenom II era amd also kicked butt in the midrange and gamer market.
What a fool right soldat? to settle for the inferior product? A true pc pro would have gone for that i5 set up, amiright...
Yeah, an i5 with a 8800GT
I agree 100% with Finiky. I got a £650 PC with AMD for the exact reason that a level specc'ed Intel system was at least £100 if not £200 more and I'd get 2 cores not 3 (which I unlocked to 4 for free! :D ).
Now? Intel would probably be the same for a budget system I guess. Maybe creeping ahead. It will be very sad to see AMD go. Just think, why were your Intel systems so cheap and had such power? Because they had to make AMD look slow! Without AMD, they can just never release a better CPU. Want more speed? Oh, here is 0.1GHZ, want to pay more? Ok, you will, for half of what AMD would have driven them to do just out of competition. :(
PS, I always got AMD CPUs because they offered the best performance/price. GPU I get whichever is best price/performance (sometimes ATI sometimes NVidia). The only exception is faked benchmarks or duff production runs, I avoid any cards/CPUs that have those! So I'd not say I was a fanboy either. To prove the point, I specced up and built an i7 machine for someone for the exact reason they are not gaming, and the need for HT and extra power an i7 has over AMD (encoding etc).
Last edited by TechnicalBen; 14-11-2012 at 09:37 PM.
I'm not recommending an 'inferior' product - I'm USING one, which means I win that argument by default....
Once again reality trumps your fantasy - this is a K10N78 based system with an AMD 245, 4GB RAM and a 5670 - it cost me £285 just under 3 years ago and has played everything I've wanted it to play meanwhile (the only game it doesn't really run that well is NFS: The Run - and it plays it well enough).
If I wanted to improve it, I'd swap the CPU for a 965 (a massive leap in performance for £65) - the GPU is a bigger pain the arse because there are so few worthwhile items under £80 (the most I'd be willing to pay).
and theirin lies the elitism - I'm happy just playing games, I don't own a PC to get one-upmanship over console owners (I am, in fact, a console owner).
I've got one - surprise surprise surprise - again, I'm not an elitist...
My first laptop was 250mhz and cost £800 - my 2nd laptop was a whopping 400mhz and cost £1350. My first desktop was 233mhz and owed me £1100 by the time I'd thrown a GPU and a 3DFX card into it. I can do the 'I remember when computing was expensive' even more than that - at school I worked on a TRS-80 which owed the teacher (not the school, the teacher) £2500!!
You are WAY too hung up on "AMD stuff isn't as good as Intel" without seeing the "without competition, Intel will underperform and overcharge" - you ask for evidence and I point to the HDD market which went from 5 makers to 2 (and a bit) and the prices of HDDs went up 5-fold (and are still more than twice the price they were, several years later).
That is easily where CPU and GPU price/performance could go.
Believe me - there is no incentive for Intel to do jack-shit in the PC market without competition - and the PC market is already shrinking enough, we could seriously be back in the realm of £1000-1500 for a gaming PC and I think that would kill PC Gaming stone-dead.
Last edited by trjp; 14-11-2012 at 10:53 PM.
Creator of Steam Greenlight LITE
I'm not. All I really have to do is point at the benchmarks to demonstrate how laughably behind AMD are with their latest chips. The Phenom line (as I previously stated) has been their only worthwhile CPUs for a while now. But even then...
Which is why AMD are doing so well... oh, wait, they're not. Take a look at the Steam hardware survey for October 2012. Look at that - Intel is in the vast majority. Looking back at the trend it's been this way since May 2011, and probably extends further back. Granted part of that will be inflated by pre-built systems which mostly use Intel, but even so if AMD was as such good value for money as you suggested we'd expect a higher market share. But it isn't there, and AMD aren't going very well. Check out some of the CPU buying guides, and even on the low end AMD aren't getting much of a recommendation. Going back to October 2011 the AMD CPUs are a bit more prevalent at the low end, but at midrange the situation changes.
Oh, how quaint, baseless accusations of mental retardation. Really, you can't keep personal attacks out of this? Grow up. For the record, I run an i5 2500k right now. Up until the Core2Duo line I was using AMD CPUs because they were cheaper and offered better performance. I never said I'd recommend an i7 for gaming, you are literally making nonsense up. I'm not a fanboy of any side - I pick whatever gives me the best performance at a reasonable price point, and right now that's Intel. As for understanding how competition works - unlike some posters I'm not oversimplifying the issue and presuming that competition is the only reason why prices have gone down.
Regarding consoles etc - what I said was that if you're going to get a gaming PC just meeting console expectations is pointless. You really need to be able to push a high framerate at 1920x1080 at a visual fidelity greater than that of a console. If you're not going to meet that, you're missing out on a significant advantage inherent to PC gaming.
In any event if you're happy with your AMD CPU that's fine. But fewer people are buying them, their performance is getting worse, and it's hard to recommend investing in AMD CPUs and sockets if it's a dead end. To blindly discount Intel or continually claim AMD are the superior CPU reeks of fanboyism.
Hmm?
By the way, that's outdated. AMD launched a new processor generation in the meantime, achieving pretty decent improvements. They also launched their new processors at much lower prices than their predecessors arrived at.
Last edited by Sakkura; 15-11-2012 at 12:04 PM.
All I can mention is "Blast processing!"
(Cookie for anyone who gets the reference ;) )
Sorry, I only had a SNES.
I don't understand why amd hasn't been pulled up by its graphic chip sales. There is the PC market but they also made the Wii graphic chip, the Xbox 360 graphic chip, they are now doing the Wii U graphic chip and they will do the PS4 chip
And yet looking at the CPU chart from Tom's Hardware, which does list the new CPUs, there's still a bunch of Intels ahead of the Vishera. Also, this - the Skyrim benchmarks show that the FX-8350 is only slightly ahead of the Phenom II, and well behind the leading Intels (including a Sandy Bridge processor). Which highlights the significant weakness of the system particularly for gaming - it might be great for multi-threaded apps (which shows up in encoding etc) but games are still quite backwards in this regard. Also their power consumption is still pretty bad.
The only thing they really got right was pricing. Even though the Tom's Hardware review that you took those images from shows impressive multi-threaded performance (as we'd expect) the reviewer still, at the end of it, doesn't really recommend it. Particularly not as a gaming CPU.
Fanboy! (no seriously, it's shameful and I'm calling you out for what you are).
Gotten some lessons from kadayi for debate school I see, if you can't counter an argument just deflect and shift focus (amd marketshare lolz)
The phenom II line was the best performance/dollar from 2008 to 2011 (before that the phenom 1 line was shit, before that the amd64 line crapped all over intel's pentium 4, now bulldozer has been a huge failure) and offered more gaming performance than any gamer could need at the time.
This is a fact, not an opinion, you trying to deflect to current amd sales numbers (bulldozer is shit, I already said that too) will not make that fact go away. Since your entire argument is based upon the opposite, you are wrong, full stop.
You also claim amd is no better than playing on a console, which again is not only wrong, but shows how much of a blabbering intel fanboy you are. You don't know a thing about amd cpus and it shows, all your wisdom comes from forums apparently.
Back in early 2009 a 130 euro 3 core phenom II x3 at stock clocks (and it overclocks very well since it's a fully featured phenom II x4 955 with one core shut off, again AMD value not locking features like overclocking or cache sizes in their lower end parts) performed at about 65 percent of the quad core i7 920 It ran (and runs) multiplatform ports at 3-4x the framerate of the console games.
You don't have to regress to shitty console standards if you use amd, you blind fanboy, amd has provided very good cpu performance especially performance/dollar from 2008-2011. Just because another year has passed that performance has not stopped crapping on what you see on consoles.
Point is: every i7 920 owner back then admitted that they were futureproofing their pc as it was way more cpu performance than needed, and an oced phenom II at less than half the price performed close to that stock i7 920 performance, hence phenom II's were the best bang for buck no compromise gaming cpus at the time.
Noone claimed amd offers higher performance than intel, I also said that currently the i5 2500k offers good performance/value in the high end price bracket.
Having corrected your fanboy blabbering , back to the point :
What keeps and kept both amd and intel (amd have shown to be just as big of an asshole company when they released the hd 7xxx line at insultingly high prices in the 6 months before intel had a 28nm answer to compete with) in check, and what keeps prices in check, and the reason why you can currently buy intel cpus that perform well enough in the budget 100-200 euro segment, is COMPETITION. The moment either AMD or intel were to throw in the towel, all gamers and all consumers are fucked.
The only way you can be against AMD's presence and the competition that made pc gaming affordable (which is now steadily being undone, with a stalling cpu market , HDD monopoly and a gpu market where due to price fixing only performance/watt has gone up in 3 years, and not performance / dollar) is if you are either a complete idiot, or an ignorant fanboy.
It's time to owe up, admit you were wrong and were spouting bullshit, and pick one of the two.
In a world without competition from amd everyone is fucked, even intel fanboys like you, so stop acting against your own interests while I call you a fanboy one more time for good measure: fanboy.
Last edited by Finicky; 17-11-2012 at 02:22 AM.
Except I'm not a fanboy and have owned plenty of AMD hardware over the years.
And yet Intel still dominates. Go figure.
Wrong! Read it again! Actually 90% of your post can be referred back to that point. Perhaps if you stopped relying on childish accusations of "fanboy" you might be able to actually grasp the point of my posts? Take a look at some of the other posters and learn from how they argue.
Whoa, you sound like a broken record there, friend. Except as others have also demonstrated in this thread, competition clearly isn't the deciding factor. Improved manufacturing techniques, advancements in technology, the push for efficiency over raw power, all of this means nothing according to you. Even when AMD came out, the P4 prices were still on average a few hundred dollars extra, and that was back when the P4 was terrible compared to the Athlon CPUs.
Back in 1999 when the PIII first turned up (500Mhz) it retailed for over $1000 AUD. The Core i7 3960X right now retails for over $1000. Actually most of the ultra high-end Intel CPUs have done the same over the years, even when AMD was putting up a good fight. I can't remember 100% how much my CPUs have cost over the years, but in searching around AMD's "impact" on Intel affordability is being overstated. Intel CPUs have always been expensive, and during the P4 era it was unjustifiable (and you're still calling me a fanboy?) how much they cost versus the cheaper and faster AMD CPUs. Times have changed.
I never said that competition has nothing to do with costs but the statement that competition is the primary and only driving factor behind innovation or reduction in costs is a flat out misrepresentation of fact. It ignores everything else. There have been other companies out to challenge Intel over the years, either with x86 chips or competing architectures. The rise of ARM with the increase in mobile technology is one such challenger. Also here's an interesting review which suggests that innovation might be better off under an Intel monopoly, depending on the demand for microprocessors. It's true that competition does have an impact on pricing, but it's not the only impact. Intel CPU prices are still quite high, as they have been for years, and when AMD were unquestionably the best choice Intel's prices were still absurdly high. Clearly, other factors are just as important.
But no, it's easier to just dismiss all this and call the other side a fanboy. Ignore the fact that I've owned plenty of AMD/ATI devices over the years, no let's just focus on the fact that I refuse to cry for a company which is failing to compete and don't simplify things by jumping on the "oh god no competition that's the only deciding factor!" bandwagon.
I'd rather AMD didn't die (and that a third player came to the market) but if they're going to die because they can't get out a decent product that competes with Intel, then I'm not going to cry about it. It's got nothing to do with thinking no competition is good, and everything to do with AMD not putting out a good product.
Intel has a much bigger R&D budget, that is why they are leading. The problem with AMD is that they failed to catch up although they had plenty of time.
The largest performance improvement for Intel was socket 1366 followed by 1156. That's when things really got out of control as Phenom didn't even come close. Their 6-cores didn't fare better either. Then Intel moved on to Sandy Bridge and the "killer" 2500K which esentially negated AMD's price advantage. Bulldozer was supposed to go up against SB but it turned out to be a major dissapointment.
And what have they been doing ever since ? They had plenty of time to catch up but I guess too much damage has been done. Now Intel is esentially trolling us.
I really don't see the point of releasing a new socket in 2013 alongside another quad core CPU (instead of affordable 6-core or even 8-cores). Who is gonna upgrade ? The single core, dual core owners already moved to 1156 or 1366. The first generation quad owners (Q6600) got SB/IB and I'm not gonna drop $500 on a new motherboard and a 10% faster quad core CPU from my current I7 950 @ 4GHz.
Last edited by Wulfgar; 17-11-2012 at 03:32 AM.
Well to be fair that big research gap could equate to why AMD weren't able to keep up the distance, but in saying that Intel have released their fair share of crap over the years (the Atom line up until now has been a joke for example). Also AMD trying to push out with more cores isn't necessarily a bad move, it's just ahead of widespread software support (particularly in games, and since we're on a gaming forum...). Of course none of that excuses the fact that releasing something which is useful only in apps that rely heavily on multi-threaded applications that really use those extra cores is a bit foolish in the general consumer market, since it's not meeting people's needs.
But you can't criticise AMD! You're a fanboy if you do that!
How does the FX 8350 being slightly ahead of a Phenom II prove that AMD's processors are getting worse, though?
Power consumption is a total loss for AMD. Luckily, it's not the most important aspect of a consumer CPU.
As for a recommendation, an FX 6300 costs about the same as a Core i3-3220. That could be an interesting battle. For the rest, Intel still holds the upper hand for gaming, whereas AMD are now clearly offering more performance per dollar for multithreaded work.
Ehrm, if I have a choice between a 125 watt CPU and a 55 watt CPU, I'd go with the 55 watt CPU anyday. Energy is getting more and more expensive, and the 55 watt is cheaper in the long run.Power consumption is a total loss for AMD. Luckily, it's not the most important aspect of a consumer CPU.
We need to step-away from the benchmarks and hardware analyses which only a tiny-fraction of the PC buying public care about - and look at the most important thing here which is
"Without competition - the market will wither - progress will slow dramatically - prices will rise"
We're at the point on the PC-Console 'wave' that PCs outrank consoles but that will soon change. What we don't need is the PC going into reverse just at the point it's losing ground - the last time PCs were overtaken by consoles, the result was a dramatic drop in developers bothering with the PC - and we never really, fully recovered from that.
It doesn't matter where AMD are now - what Intel are doing or anything else. What matters is that competition is vital - without it the market will collapse.
Intel's graphic offerings may have improved but they are still awful - nVidia have disregarded low-end customers for years now - that could seriously leave a MASSIVE chunk of the PC market unable to access games at all!
AMD as a CPU and GPU vendor are a good thing even if their products aren't ideal - but you also need to remember that benchmarks and even price-performance graphs aren't as important as the fact there are alternatives.
Creator of Steam Greenlight LITE
And here you come full circle, same move you pulled at the beginning with that line "I'll pick the superior package", comfortably ignoring that that only existed because Intel had to scrap Netburst ahead of time, and would still ignore that even after it was explained to you.
Now AMD is foolish because they're trying to change the game ? Breaking news, it's exactly they have been doing for years on end.
They did CISC CPUs with RISC cores, went with IPC efficiency instead of raw clock speed, invented 64b, all years before it was fashionable. They came out with true multi-core CPUs so early that Intel could only respond, much later, by welding two CPUs on the same die. They had been investing on efficient mobile technology, when Intel still fooled itself with stuff like x86 on mobile.
So, let's ignore for a minute that differentiation is one the basic competitive strategies. They are consistently 'thinking different' because Intel is the 400 pound gorilla -with boatloads of money and clever people to throw at a problem- and when that didn't work right off the bat, they would mess with compilers to slow AMD down, or ask the guys at MS a 'favor'. Intel is so encysted in the hardware market that even in the dark age of Netburst, it would still be able to sell butchered, painfully slow space heaters like the Celeron by the buckets (and if Intel today is no longer selling totally crappy budget processors like they've done for countless years, it's because AMD's 'inferior products' were a lot of bang for the buck)
The only way the AMD can outrun Intel is to start running well before Intel even realizes there's a race. It's a very risky strategy, when they're so much smaller than Intel. Any mistake, any delay could kill them - and that's exactly what we're seeing now.
Kicking the underdog because it's fallen to the ground is non-sensical to say the least.
@trjp you make a number of compelling points. Regarding the lower end: firms which successfully enclose themselves in a quasi-monopolistic space are free to ignore it (Apple's a glowing example in the tech sector) but it doesn't stop there: look at low-end Android smartphones, money still buys very little compared to the mid-range.
In the current economic situation and its foreseeable consequences, the number of customers who will be forced to choose between the low end or not being customer at all, is only bound to increase - if AMD was taken out of the equation entirely, the only competition would be between full-fledged computing as we're used to it and mobile devices with all of the limitations that come with them.
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