AMD Phenom Quad

[chaos386]

The Intel 9450 is still faster, although it's about $100 more expensive. The AMD 9950 is closer in performance to a Q6600, which is about the same price for the retail version.

Also, the current Intel CPUs are much more overclockable, especially the 45nm ones.

[fluke667]

The Q9450 is faster and consumes less power than the AMD 9950. (95w against 140w)
Normaly i'm an AMD fan but i have to admit that the 45nm cpus from Intel are simply better at the moment.
That's why i got myself a Xeon 3350 (identical with the Q9450 apart from the name).

[Crazyjeeper]

Yeah, I used to be an AMD fan, but I bought an E8400.

[73GMCSprint]

I've been watching prices on these lately - I'll be upgrading sometime this summer - and another price factor you have to take into account is motherboards. Unless I've been reading things totally wrong, for comparably spec'ed mobos, the Intel-compatible board will run you 50-100 $US more than an AMD board. I was heavily leaning toward Intel until I saw that the mobo price difference was so big.

[Vette Boss]

If all that's putting you off the price of an Intel chip, is the motherboard just look at cheaper ones. Most of them have features you don't really need. The Asus P5Q-E is a good example, it's got plenty of useful features, but at $150 it's not a real budget stretcher.

[m4v1s]

to be fair, a lot of the tests are single threaded tests which do better with higher clock speeds. so the lower clocked quad cores will be predictably slower than the higher clocked dual cores. on the multi threaded tests the phenom x4s do better. c2s are still smashing anything AMD can ship.

[PaSSoA]

Cool... hopefully Intel will cut the price of their chips, will be keeping a close eye on the prices though, the new AMD chips look interesting...and I'm in in no hurry, can't play Crysis on High settings, but I'm happy with medium

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by m4v1s

to be fair, a lot of the tests are single threaded tests which do better with higher clock speeds. so the lower clocked quad cores will be predictably slower than the higher clocked dual cores. on the multi threaded tests the phenom x4s do better. c2s are still smashing anything AMD can ship.

Also, keep in mind that this thread has been bumped. It was oringinally posted right after the first Phenoms came out. They've gotten quite a bit better since then.

[awdrifter]

The 9950 is decent for non-overclockers. But when oc'd it's simply no match to the Q6600 oc.

[JayChou]

so, my computer has a phenom 9500 quadcore, is there anything I can do to make it more efficient?

[awdrifter]

If you mean using less power, probably not.

[Gabkicks]

AMD is still failing. Deneb test chip benchmarks have been leaked, but still nothing retail... I'm gonna build a new pc a month from now -_-

[PaSSoA]

Well, to make things worse for AMD, DreamWorks just dropped them and are going with Intel instead. Can't anything get worse for them?

DreamWorks executive on why it switched from AMD to Intel
Posted by Brooke Crothers

Intel has upstaged Advanced Micro Devices at DreamWorks Animation. The movie studio has decided to drop AMD and go with processors from Intel, citing better performance and a more promising roadmap.

DreamWorks specifically mentioned Intel's upcoming Nehalem processor and Larrabee graphics chip as reasons for the switch.

Intel and DreamWorks announced Tuesday that they had formed a strategic alliance for 3D filmmaking technology. DreamWorks plans to produce all its feature films in stereoscopic 3D--which requires the viewer to wear special glasses for enhanced 3D--beginning next year. Intel will provide DreamWorks with "the latest high-performance processing technologies, including future chips with multiple processing cores," the companies said.

This is a setback for AMD. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker rolled out its quad-core Barcelona last year at George Lucas' Lucasfilm campus in San Francisco to make a point: Barcelona would be big player in the movie industry. But a series of delays related to a processor bug put a damper on the high expectations for Barcelona.

"AMD maintained a long and fruitful relationship with DreamWorks Animation, beginning in early 2005. Earlier this year, AMD and DreamWorks decided not to extend our marketing and technology relationship. However, DreamWorks Animation is still an important and respected AMD customer and we look forward to having the opportunity to work with them again in the future," AMD said in a statement.

Essentially, DreamWorks looked down the road and liked what it saw coming from Intel better. "When we look at the Intel roadmap, it is more closely aligned with our needs," John Batter, president of production at DreamWorks Animations, said during a conversation with Nanotech: The Circuits blog. "The rendering times have been going up because of the complexity and richness of the images. Then you layer on top of that 3D. Something that's already growing--and doubling it."

Intel had the best technology, Batter said. "You need a lot more horsepower. On Intel's upcoming generation, the number of cores is going to help us satiate the big spike in our needs."

DreamWorks had been in a three-year partnership with AMD, Batter said.

He explained that Intel is also helping DreamWorks to redesign its animation tools. "Our animation tools are all proprietary here. Intel is rearchitecting our software tools...to take advantage of multicore and make our renderer highly scalable as well as making our character animation tools highly scalable."

DreamWorks uses rendering farms with as many as 5,000 cores to create animation and its tools need to be adapted to the increasing number of processor cores, Batter said. The Nehalem chip, for example, is expected to integrate as many as eight cores. Currently, Intel offers no more than four cores per chip. Larrabee is expected by many to offer as many as 32 cores.
Intel Nehalem architecture

Batter specifically mentioned both Nehalem and Larrabee as a reason for the switch to Intel. He said that Larrabee would be "complementary" to Intel's general-purpose CPUs.

Nehalem is due in the fourth quarter of this year and Larrabee is expected in the 2009-2010 time frame.

The first Intel-Dreamworks release will be Monsters vs. Aliens, which is slated to hit movie theaters in March 2009

[argatoga]

Cool down. This happens all the time. Intel and AMD have been going back and forth for well over a decade, I see no reason for any of them to disappear because of a bad CPU. The K5 was one of the shitiest CPUs ever made but AMD still managed to survive.

[Gabkicks]

did you guys see reports about the war between nvidia and ati being rigged... You think that spills over into CPU's?

[-Cpt. J.-]

Originally Posted by Gabkicks

did you guys see reports about the war between nvidia and ati being rigged... You think that spills over into CPU's?

Wot?
Links?

[devil500]

Originally Posted by Gabkicks

did you guys see reports about the war between nvidia and ati being rigged... You think that spills over into CPU's?

That's the side AMD is doing well on actually they seem to have really pushed ATI forward and AMD backward..I was building a rig a few weeks back, and was considering AMD, but they're performance really turned me off although I think they'll be back..

[jebjeb]

AMD has not handled the core race very well. Ever since the K6 I have been hard core AMD fan but saddly my next pc will be a Q6600 or a Q9300. You can now get a Q6600 For around $150 or less and even though it is an older chip in that price range it cant really be beat. I also had an issue with the first gen AMD dual core causing issues with an SQL server. Dont remeber the exact issue it was but after a few days of looking into it turned out was due to a new AMD dualcore client that got added to the network and the whole week after that the sql was having crc issues AMD even had a patch out to try and fix but it still didnt seem to work.

[argatoga]

Am I the only one who buys the best option regardless of vender? I am not sad for buying from either AMD or Intel. They have both made great and crap chips in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.