# intel sandy bridge or amd?



## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

hey guys! i've still not upgraded my computer. now i am thinking about which one is better, an intel i3 (2core) sandy bridge or an amd athlon2 or phenom 2 with 4 cores for gaming purpose? also tell me about the prices of various UPS available in india with at least 15 min backup.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

sandybridge i5's are excellent. i3's are also good but are dual cores and pricey. fill in the pc questionnaire template.


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## desiibond (Feb 12, 2011)

I suppose you are aware of issues with Sandybridge and Intel recalling the chipsets. Better wait till this is fixed.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

ok! amd athlon2 x4 + ati radeon 5770= 11 k and intel sandy bridge i5= 11k. which of the 2 possibilities is better? also is AMD planning to bring something like sandy bridge?


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

for what purpose?Gaming?You don't need 4 cores for gaming.
You should go for the Athlon II quad+HD5770 combination.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

utkarsh009 said:


> ok! amd athlon2 x4 + ati radeon 5770= 11 k and intel sandy bridge i5= 11k. which of the 2 possibilities is better? also is AMD planning to bring something like sandy bridge?



amd athlon 2 x4 is no match for sandybridge i5 and they are not comparable. My i5 750 is also not comparable to sandybridge i5 and forget athlon 2 x4.

As desiibond said sandybridge is having motherboard sata 3 problems and intel has stopped production of p67 and h67 chipsets. Buy them in march or april when b3 revision arrives.  Sandybridge cpu's are fine but the mobo has having issues and that too only sata 3 ports. If you use only sata 6, then its good to go. But wait for revised boards.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

^^i am asking it wrt gaming and i paired athlon 2 with gfx card to compare with sandy bridge.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

^^ i am also talking about gaming and all perspectives. athlon x4 cannot be compared with sandybridge. The latter is very superior.

It depends on what you can get in your budget. Don't compare with sandybridge. There is nothing that can beat it as of now.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Athlon with GPU > SB without GPU.

Although SB is a much better choice if you can/will add a graphic card later.


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## sunny4691 (Feb 12, 2011)

IMO for a gamer, any cpu be it athlon or pentium or celeron with a good gpu is way better than a cpu without gpu.I had a celeron 420 with 9400gt and I have played crysis on it, my friend have a core2quad but he wasn't able to play it even in the lowest setting


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

@vickybat
You don't need a sandybridge for playing games.Even a core 2 duo is enough.

Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3? : Why Pay More?

Average FPS Benchmarks: Single Radeon HD 5850 : Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3?

I agree that sandybridge CPUs are superior but how many people need it?
You should have a discrete card if you are a gamer.

It's better have an SB chip if you plan to buy a gx card with it.
Utkarsh is looking for a gaming PC.So he should go for config with a discrete card.
Utkarsh,you wont be able to play any complex games with this HD 2000/3000 because it's not designed for high-end gaming.An athlon quad is more than enough for you.Go for the Athlon+5770.
By the way,which Athlon II X4 model are you looking at.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

ok! so you mean i can run all the games on my celeron D @2.4 GHz single core processor if i get a graphics card. if so then i think i should purchase a graphics card and a decent psu (if required) before getting my processor and other components upgraded! do you all agree with it? also, do amd and intel rigs have to use differnt graphic card or i can simply change from intel to amd anytime keeping the same graphics card? also tell me if there are any softwares to overclock my processor because my mobo (intel D845GVSR) doesn't support overclocking!!!!

@the_man: i am looking to purchase athlon II x4 635 @ 2.9 GHz.

@the_man: i am looking to purchase athlon II x4 635 @ 2.9 GHz.


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

no no.Celeron is an old CPU.That wont do the job.You will get bottlenecks buddy.Your CPU wont be able to keep up with the cards pace.
Edit:And your motherboard wont support any graphics card either.
You should get a better CPU+motherboard first.Then think about the graphics card. 
You don't need to buy separate graphics cards for different CPUs.
There's no point in overclocking that CPU of yours.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

ok, but one more question. do no.. of cores really matter for a gaming machine or is it the speed of a single core which matters more? in that case which one is better, amd phenom II x2 black edition or amd athlon II x4 . i heard somewhere that black edition means easily overclockable!!!!!! also tell if l3 cache in phenom II help to improve the gaming performance. and what do having more cores exactly help in?


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

No of cores doesn't really matter when it comes to Gaming.Most of the games that are in use today don't use more than 2 cores.The speed and performance of a single matters a lot.See here 

The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Notice the fps that i3 achieves.
Cache memory is very important for gaming.I'm not getting into the details but that's how it is.A CPU with a bigger cache will be a good gaming CPU.

Multiple cores are used by multithreaded applications ie software that can use multiple no.of cores.Majority of the software that we see today aren't multithreaded.
Photoshop,3DS Max,Maya etc are examples for multithreaded apps.
Will check the specs of those 2 CPUs and will post my view here.And multiple cores can be used for multitasking.I mean you can run many big applications in the background at the same time.

Athlon doesn't have L3 cache which is an issue.And I think you can unlock the Phenom to a quad which will be great.Even if you don't, you will get better gaming performance out of the Phenom.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Games are starting to use more cores and I think that you should get a quad core.


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

Yeah.But he might be able to unlock it to a quad.Even crysis runs better on the Phenom X II.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Very little chance of unlocking (luck). And Crysis is old, BC2 uses 4 cores and Crysis2 will use 8 cores.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

ok! i suppose quad core will be future-proof but can i overclock athlon II using gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H?


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

um...but then he should think about a better gx card too.Many people have unlocked it.So I wont say that there's little chance.There's a chance.Maybe 60%.
You decide Utkarsh.
Here's a link AMD's New Year Refresh: Athlon II X4 635, Phenom II X2 555, Athlon II X2 255 & Athlon II X3 440 - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News


See the results and decide.In my opinion,that's what you need.Go for the Phenom.And to play the most modern games that use 8 and more cores you will need a better GPU.So don't worry about it now.
Phenom 555 BE and the Athlon II X4 635 cost the same.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Modern games will be limited by the GPU therefore the difference between CPUs won't even matter. He will hardly see a diff of 1-2 FPS, depending on the games core support.

And a quad core will be much better for day 2 day use.

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T, X4 970BE and Athlon II X4 645 processor review

x4 645 is 2FPS behind 980X, in Farcry 2, which is as good as SB,.
Its equal in Bad Company 2.

There is not any notable difference at FullHD resolutions with the reviewer's HD5870. A HD5770 will bottleneck it way before that.

@ utkarsh
Yep you can OC it and 3.4 - 3.5GHz should be OK.
BTW what's your budget?


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

> Modern games will be limited by the GPU therefore the difference between CPUs won't even matter



Agree.But it's difficult to ignore this kinda performance boost.


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## ico (Feb 12, 2011)

The OP should mention his overall budget and fill in the PC questionnaire template.


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## Cilus (Feb 12, 2011)

Now a days, going for a quad core is the best option. I know a faster dual core will give you higher performance in gaming, but again how much? the performance difference between a P II 555 and a Athlon II 635/640 is marginal, you won't get more than 10 fps, which is again the best case. Normally it is 5-6 fps max.

*Need of Quad Core*
*1. For gaming*: 
All the next generations games are getting multi-core optimized.

Game Physics: Apart from nVidia's PhysX there are lot of Physics engine available like Bullet and Havoc. It is actually highly probable that most of the next generation games will use certain sort of Physics Engine, which again will be better for a multi-core CPU, where you can have a dedicated core to handle those heavy Physics calculations.

*2. For other purpose*
When you purchase a computer, even for the hardest core gamers, you are not gonna game all the times. When you will be running any productive software like Adobe Photoshops, running HD movies, editing a video or even running browsers and editing word documents, a quad processor will be a better than a little faster dual core for all the above mentioned applications.

So a quad core is the best option here.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

The_Man said:


> @vickybat
> You don't need a sandybridge for playing games.Even a core 2 duo is enough.
> 
> Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3? : Why Pay More?
> ...



Games are becoming multithreaded as we speak. Crysis 2 is going to use more than 4 cores and can need multiple threads. So a core 2 duo won't cut it in this case. 

The cpu & gpu should be balanced. I won't recommend anyone to go with a athlon x4 and add a 6950, 6970 , 570 or 580 to it. Cpu will be a bottleneck for such fast cards. Have you seen a prebuild config like that before?

x4 can handle max upto a 6850 or at best 6870. Anything higher than that will be a bottleneck. Even i won't recommend a athlon x4 + 6870 but instead will recommend a phenom 2 955be + 6870.

*Comparing sandybridge with athlon x4 is relatively pointless. *


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Feb 12, 2011)

thats what i call explanation cilus.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

Ishu Gupta said:


> Athlon with GPU > SB without GPU.
> 
> Although SB is a much better choice if you can/will add a graphic card later.



Athlon x4's should never be an option against sb cpu's unless there's a budget constraint.

If op can buy a sb cpu , then he/she should and save up and add a gpu later rather than opting for a athlonx4 + gpu.

There is no comparisons between the two.


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

> running HD movies, editing a video or even running browsers and editing word documents, a quad processor will be a better than a little faster dual core for all the above mentioned applications.


How much better?There will be no noticeable difference except in the case of video editing which not many users do.

By the way 10fps is not a small amount of performance boost.30 fps is considered to be the playable fps for any game.So 10 fps doesn't matter???
There will be significant difference between playing @20 fps and playing @30fps.

And talking about multicores.You will need it only if you run multiple giant multithreaded  software in the background.


			
				ico said:
			
		

> The OP should mention his overall budget and fill in the PC questionnaire template.


+1
You need a completely new system buddy.So mention your budget first and then the questionnaire.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

Cilus said:


> Now a days, going for a quad core is the best option. I know a faster dual core will give you higher performance in gaming, but again how much? the performance difference between a P II 555 and a Athlon II 635/640 is marginal, you won't get more than 10 fps, which is again the best case. Normally it is 5-6 fps max.
> 
> *Need of Quad Core*
> *1. For gaming*:
> ...



Yup i agree every part of it. Apart bullet and havoc there will be in house physics engines as well with x86 codepath. Crysis 2 is a fine example and that explains why it needs 8 cpu threads.

So cpu+gpu should be balanced and a quad core should be bare minimum.



The_Man said:


> How much better?There will be no noticeable difference except in the case of video editing which not many users do.
> 
> By the way 10fps is not a small amount of performance boost.30 fps is considered to be the playable fps for any game.So 10 fps doesn't matter???
> There will be significant difference between playing @20 fps and playing @30fps.
> ...




Might not be now but as games become more demanding, the gap will widen and fps will reduce. Two years back, games wer not utilizing more than two cores, but that scenario has changed greatly and will keep changing. So its better to opt something future proof.


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## The_Man (Feb 12, 2011)

@vicky
Crysis 2 
System Requirements

* OS: Windows XP (32-64 bit) / Windows Vista (32-64 bit) / Windows 7 (32-64 bit)
* CPU: *Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz*, AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0 GHz or better
* RAM: 2 GB XP / 3 GB Vista – Windows 7
* HDD: 9 GB free disk space
* Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9.0c

Note:I never said you can play using c2d with all settings enabled.But it's good enough and phenom X II 555BE is much better than that c2d.And that will be enough with a 5770. 

Both are good but again for all day to day purposes a dual core is more than enough.It has been proven several times.Maybe op should wait for the SB i3.It's better than the quads & duals we're talking about here. 
No more comments from me on this dual core vs quad core battle.Good Night!


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

^^ Those are minimum and not optimum. Try running it at those specs and you'll understand. I have seen an 8600gt perform on a pentium d processor(smithfield) and on my core i5 750. The difference was significant even for older gen titles like "*dead space*".


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Yeah, it also says "Graphics: 512 MB Graphics Memory". 

Minimum requirements are (almost) useless.
Atleast look at recommended specs.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

as of my budget, if i go for amd i can upgrade till phenom x6 in future (4-5 years) but if i chose intel i'll always remain low on no. of cores as i wont go beyond i5. so which one should i chose intel or amd? its as simple as that. and i am not planning for graphics card above hd 5770 until i complete my studies (i am in 9th std. so 3 years for completing school) after that i'll purchase a lappy with sandy bridge processor or i might even get one as a prize in national olympiads. when i was in 7th std. i got all india rank 3 in national cyber olympiad organised by SOF. and i was awarded a netbook (lenovo ideapad s10) and the topper got a notebook. so i may still get one!!!!!!!!!!


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

Intel SB (i5 2400/2500k) is already ahead x6. So even if you upgrade later it (AMD) will still be slower than SB.

AIR 3. Cool. I got 531 and got just a gold medal.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

*@ utkarsh009*
Even a phenom2 x6 is no match for intel sandybridge. Its four cores are faster than amd's 6 cores in all applications. They are very efficient. Down the line, you can drop in 6 core sb cpu's if they launch for 1155 platform.

Lga2011 will see six and eight core sandybridge cpu's.



Ishu Gupta said:


> AIR 3. Cool. I got 531 and got just a gold medal.



Really ishu? Congrats mate. Thats brilliant stuff.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

vickybat said:
			
		

> Really ishu?  Congrats mate. Thats brilliant stuff.


Not really. Its terribly easy and not many kids appear (20k-40k).

I'm hardly smart academically.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

so now i guess i3 sandy bridge is better than an amd (same price) equivalent. in that case i have a budget of 10 k for mobo + processor. quickly suggest an intel alternative and when should i purchase it? does amd plan to bring anything (what is bulldozer?) to combat sandy bridge? i'll be upgrading these components in april.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

Ishu Gupta said:


> Not really. Its terribly easy and not many kids appear (20k-40k).
> 
> I'm hardly smart academically.



I didn't get you. What exam are you exactly talking about here? Isn't it AIEEE?



utkarsh009 said:


> so now i guess i3 sandy bridge is better than an amd (same price) equivalent. in that case i have a budget of 10 k for mobo + processor. quickly suggest an intel alternative and when should i purchase it? does amd plan to bring anything (what is bulldozer?) to combat sandy bridge? i'll be upgrading these components in april.



Well i would recommend x4 instead of i3. Sandybridge i5's and i7's are exceptional.

Bulldozer is a bit far away. Maybe Q3 2011.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

@Ishu: do you study in school? which class?  @vickybat: what exactly bulldozer is? is it for servers or for pc usage?


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

*@ utkarsh009*

Bulldozer is *amd's* new microarchitecture and cpu's based on this architecture be released sometime later this year. It will compete against intel's *sandybridge *microarchitecture cpu's.

Both bulldozer and sandybridge will have desktop , notebook and server processors.


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

NCO is waaaay smaller than AIEEE. Waaaay easier too.
Its mostly logical type of exam. Complete the pattern, odd one out etc. And a part on computers (Which is an input device, Shortcut to run ppt presentaion etc).

I got these questions in ninth. Yes its that easy.

@ utkarsh
I finished school last year.


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## utkarsh009 (Feb 12, 2011)

@vickybat: will the bulldoser use the same AM3 sockets and 880g chipsets as available in gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H or will it release a new chipset or socket just like intel?


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## Ishu Gupta (Feb 12, 2011)

No, it'll use AM3+ and AM4.


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## vickybat (Feb 12, 2011)

^^ It will be amd's scorpios platform.


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## Cilus (Feb 13, 2011)

The_Man, not only video editing, but a lot of other applications are highly benifited from a quad core processor compared to a dual core one. The best example is Adobe Photoshop. It is a software, getting used by almost everybody in some extent. It is highly multi-threaded and take the full advantage of a quad core CPU.
2ndly it will help you to enhance your productivity. From Matlab, dot net to even Microsoft Office. Even the current generation Antivirus software like AVG are tremendously benefited from a quad core CPU and customers are often asked to invest for a processors having as many CPU cores possible.

The 10 FPS difference is the best case scenario, it is not 10 fps higher all the time. In 90% cases it is not over 6 fps.

just for 6 fps average, are you going to sacrifice the benefits of a quad core.

2ndly Tomshardware does also have 2 articles, CPU/GPU bottleneck story. muticore CPU also reduces the chance of bottleneck of GPU.
Read the part 1 and part 2. 
It clearly says that in current generation games a Tripple core is required in more than 90% cases to avoid bottleneck when paired with a decent set of cards. So don't you think all games that will be released within 1 years need more CPU cores?


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