Dantac wrote:
You would save yourself nearly 500 bucks by using an AMD chipset. Intel systems do indeed run 'faster' by about 15% compared to AMD ...but AMD is usually half the price. Considering the fact that systems become obsolete at around 6 years (meaning cpu & ram type) there's no reason to pay so much more for a mere 15% better performance. Heck, you just buy the one-step up AMD chip and still pay less than the intel equivalent.
The thing, though, is I wouldn't be surprised if AMD might not be at it for much longer. I was just reading today that AMD's stock just had a big plunge (it did go up a bit yesterday, but it fell down even lower) and they're burning through cash like nobody's business. There was a (apparently debunked) rumor I was reading about this morning concerning AMD teaming up with an investment bank to consider a sale of the company. Basically, though AMD made huge inroads back in the Athlon 64 days, Intel is exploiting an enormous R&D budget and market share, and in the wake of this competition I wonder how many more generations of performance-quality AMD processors there will be.
I'm an AMD guy also, so this worries me to an extent. You just have to wonder whether it's financially wise for them to keep building high-end CPUs.
That being said, if you can find an AMD Phenom II x4 processor, like the 955/960/965, those are fantastic processors. My desktop rig has a 960. With gaming it's the GPU that's more important anyways.
