Your cheaper AMD rig isn’t too bad, but the 9850 is a power hog. The reason I went with the Wolfdale 45nm over the Q6600 is because it clocks higher and it runs at lower power. The other BIG reason is that it’s newer architecture with support for SSE4.1. So gaming wise it’s a bigger bang/buck gaming rig because its single thread performance is better than the Q6600 and much better than the AMD 9850. For a gaming rig, I prioritize single-thread performance above all. Now next month when the cheap 45nm Intel processors come out, I may update my configuration to run 45nm quad-core.

There is no way I’m buying an AMD X4 9850 power hog even if it was less than $200. The only reason I would buy this AMD "Barcelona" desktop CPU or the server version of it is if I ran an HPC memory bandwidth intensive application that needs a lot of memory bandwidth or if I needed something that was strictly a web server since AMD Barcelona does very good on SPECweb.

Also, that Intel P35 chipset has superior storage over the AMD chipset and storage performance is one of the most overlooked things in PC design.

Here’s a report from TechReport that analyzes the bang/buck value of CPUs between Intel and AMD

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14756/10

TR did a nice ‘bang for buck’ analysis here: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14756/10

AMD is simply out classed.

His love for intel goes beyond ANYTHING!!!!!

George Ou wrote:<>AMD’s 780g is a great chipset for everything but storage as it lacks RAID-5 capabilities. Couple that with the weaker CPU offerings and that’s why I’m sticking with Intel CPU plus NVIDIA integrated graphics. If I wanted a really nice system, it’d be Intel 45nm CPU plus NVIDIA discrete graphics and that’s the next build list I’m putting up.

If you don’t mind a little extra power consumption, you don’t mind having no RAID-5 capability, and you don’t mind weak overclocking, AMD X2 plus 780g is a very good solution that I would recommend.

This is of course, pure nonsense. I’ve never heard of anyone buying a $400 PC for either OC’ing or RAID 5. To make RAID 5 you would need two more of those $90 SATA drive which would add $180. Secondly, George has a big problem understanding graphics. He actually believes that an Intel G33 chipset is comparable to an AMD 690G. Yet, Anandtech says:

Half Life 2 is finally actually playable on integrated graphics, with AMD’s 690G bringing in a decent 54.1 fps compared to 33.3 with the GeForce 7050PV and a miserable 8.85 on Intel’s G33.

Keep in mind that the only difference between the 7050 and the 7150 is the 7050 is clocked at 500Mhz while 7150 is clocked at 630Mhz. This makes 7150 about 26% faster. So, we could expect 42 fps from the faster nVidia chipset. Clearly, this chipset is outclassed by AMD’s older 690G. However, there is really no reason to bother with that because for about the same $70 we can get a nice 7xx series board.

ECS A780GM-A AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard ……………………………… $70
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition …………….. $100
2 GB DDR2-800 DIMM …………………………………………………………………………….. $41
Athenatech A6605BB.450 Black SECC Steel ATX Mini Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply … $46
Western Digital 500 GB SATA hard drive (lowest power consumption) ……………………………. $90
LG 20X DVD burner, SATA ………………………………………………………………………… $32
———————————–
Sub total (including shipping) …………………………………………………………………….. $379

This system should be much easier to overclock since the Black Edition has an unlocked multiplier. If you don’t need to overclock then the equivalent AMD processor would be the 2.4Ghz X2 4600+ for $66 and we would save about $55 total. It probably doesn’t surprise people that we could come up with a better low end AMD system but what about George’s mid range system:

Build list for the biggest bang per buck gaming computer – $731

MSI (Intel P35) Neo2-FR LGA 775 motherboard with ICH9R RAID ……. $118
Intel E8200 Wolfdale 2.66GHz dual-core 45nm (Penryn class) ……….. $185
ECS N9600GT-512MX EDM GeForce 9600GT 512MB ($10 rebate) …….. $147
2 GB DDR2-800 DIMM …………………………………………………. $41
Cooler Master Elite 330 – ATX tower (in store pickup) ………………… $50
SeaSonic S12 II SS-330GB ATX12V 330W "80 Plus" Power Supply ……… $68
Western Digital 500 GB SATA hard drive (lowest power consumption) … $90
LG 20X DVD burner, SATA …………………………………………….. $32
———————————–
Sub total (including shipping) …………………………………………. $733

We’ll just replace the CPU and motherboard:

AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core … $235
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-S3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard ………$80

Not bad, we’ve only bumped the price by $12 but we have a full quad core with unlocked multiplier. Surely that is a better configuration. You could get a Q6600 for the Intel system if you bump the price by $34. I think most people would agree that this would make more sense.

AMD’s 780g is a great chipset for everything but storage as it lacks RAID-5 capabilities. Couple that with the weaker CPU offerings and that’s why I’m sticking with Intel CPU plus NVIDIA integrated graphics. If I wanted a really nice system, it’d be Intel 45nm CPU plus NVIDIA discrete graphics and that’s the next build list I’m putting up.

If you don’t mind a little extra power consumption, you don’t mind having no RAID-5 capability, and you don’t mind weak overclocking, AMD X2 plus 780g is a very good solution that I would recommend.

I’m working on a much nicer one that I hope I’ll be able to take retail.