This is a dangerous way to think in a big picture macro economics way. I heavily support amd because someone has to. If amd folds, Intel will be able to charge whatever they want. I flat out boycott Nvidia because of this, and would only consider Intel if I really needed a blazing fast machine (99% don't). My phenom 2 still keeps up fine to this day so I won't upgrade till at least next fall. Everyone knows Intel hardware is better, but Intel will have no reason to innovate if that happens until another chip manufacturer steps up to fill the void. Intel is only the best because they had to be if that makes sense. If the tables one day turn (they won't), I'd be Nvidia and Intel all the way. I'm not saying don't purchase Intel products, just try to support AMD whenever you can. This is just my philosophical stoner amateur economist view on the situation and I need to strongly reiterate that I judge no one for what parts they decide to purchase, just food for thought from the Devils advocate.
Honestly. You can boycott a company all you want, but if you buy worse hardware based on ideals you're boycotting yourself over anyone else.
I realize that those are very valid points, but BeamNG (and ROR) are really the only CPU intensive games I play, and I have had issues with Intels in the past, and my Athlon x2 5400+ is still happily chugging along after running for three years straight behind a dusty TV cabinet (long story), and the ten dollar difference is worth it due to my past issues with Intel. You do have a valid point and, yes, Intel is better for most people, but in my case, AMD was the way to go.
To each their own, I guess. I never was the 'vote with my wallet' type. If something is good, I buy it. If it's not, I don't.
I only vote with my wallet on something that's optional. If I don't like the practices a dev is carrying out with their game for example, I won't buy it. If it's something I need I let that all go out the window. When I'm using a computer for development work I *need* something powerful, especially in terms of single core performance. Because of that I haven't even considered AMD CPUs in my last two builds, and I only search Intel when recommending a computer to a friend because more likely than not they don't care outside of price.
I respect that entirely. In this regard you are the realist and I'm the idealist. As a programmer you think practically and purchase based on practical needs. I use my computer to play beamng and watch YouTube. I'm hoping the days when having a fast cpu is only needed for the professional sector and games use mostly the gpu for everything. I also believe the whole silicon substrate and transistor Era is coming to an end within a decade or so. Why use electrons when we can use photons .
I use AMD simply because I had to get mobo and cpu for under £100. Entire rig was less than £200. It's only through upgrades it's managed to get a case that doesn't look like shit, an 80+ power supply, 8gb of ram, more than 80gb of mechanical storage and a gpu at all. as such I have a triple core Athlon 2 with a 95w tdp on a budget motherboard that also is only rated for a 95w tdp and no stable overclock possible (even 5% is intermittent on whether it will post). damn I can't wait to go Intel. Thankfully it appears that when I do get spare budget for pc stuff I should be able to go all the way into decent Intel stuff, possibly even x series although I'll have to consider needs and offerings at the time. It will be a long time coming either way
You can go Intel for under £100: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/6sY623 Not sure when you bought it, though, the G3250 was only released in 2013 and non-Netbust Pentiums didn't exist at all before 2011.
2010 or 11. Trust me at the time. I couldn't get any better. entire rig, all of it. Came to under £200. Way under. I had no money of my own and don't come from a remotely well off background
Just as 6677 says, that's exactly the same reason I am running an AMD cpu, A few years back I got the motherboard for £65 and the CPU for £80 brand new. You can't come close to that with an Intel part (at least at the time). Plus with all that said the FX 8350 still has really good multi threaded performance (with both CPUs at stock clocks it gets about the same MT as an i7 3960x) It also doesn't cause bottleneck issues in any normal games outside of BeamNG, which it still plays pretty well.
Um, what. The 3960X gets nearly twice the MT score in Cinebench and 30-80% better scores in other benchmarks. Source An FX-8350 barely matches the MT performance of an i5-6400. ST performance is hilariously bad, even my 5 year old laptop is better.
Oh I was thinking it wasn't quite right, so fair enough. I was getting it from a CPU-Z test and this site: http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/97...s_Intel_Core_i7_Extreme_Edition_i7-3960X.html The CPU-Z test is stupidly inaccurate on single core too now that I think about it...
CPU-Z benchmark doesn't work well with HT, which makes MT scores on hyperthreaded CPUs very inaccurate. It's not great at ST either, but results are usually more accurate (I have no idea why the 3960X is scoring so low, that's lower than a G3250). If you want to compare CPUs more seriously Anandtech Bench is pretty good, since they have a lot of different benchmark scores.
ill chip in on this. My first rig i built was a budget build. amd fx6100, gtx 650, and other cheap parts(but still good). My view on the intel vs amd is if you need something cheap and not too demanding, say a nas, a workshop machine, maybe even a gpu render only box, go amd(though their cpus are not so good price/performance anymore i believe). If you are building a gaming rig, or need just better performance in general go intel. About the only reason i kept my old fx6100 chip is so i can overclock it. An OC in the range of 4.5ghz actually gives 10-15 more fps in beamng as well(your results may vary), which is pretty cool.
You can get a Skylake Pentium for $60 which is essentially an i5 cut in half. No point in buying AMD for a low budget PC. AMD CPUs only make sense on a ~$500 gaming PC. It's not enough to get an i5 or i3 and a decent GPU, and a 6-core FX is a better gaming CPU than a dual core Pentium (even though the Pentium has much better ST performance, 2 threads isn't really enough).
I actually decided to screw around on PC part picker after reading this comment, and lo and behold- a i3, 750 Ti PC at the low, low, price of around $430 (at time of posting), including a windows key from Kinguin. There is actually room to squeeze in a gtx 950/r7 370 in in place of the 750 and still have a buck or two left over. So at this point, there really is no good reason to pick an AMD CPU unless you are a serious fanboy. I'm not saying that about their graphics cards, but their CPUs are now completely obsolete. EDIT- here is the part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3Tgsyc
Well, I just tried it too. It is possible to build a $500 PC with an i3-6100 and R7 370. I've just updated my $500 build guide.
