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disolitude on 12 September 2013
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Viper1 said:
disolitude said:
Lol...I really don't get why everyone is saying go intel?

Not everyone is spending $1000+ dollars on a PC. There should be a rule around here saying that people who haven't used AMD CPUs and tested games, shouldn't give CPU advice.

If you're building a rig under a 500-600 dollars, AMD FX processors are more than a viable option.
Something like the FX-6300 for $120 and an MSI G46 SLI/Crossfire motherboard for 80 bucks will beat anything Intel at same price range. Especially since you can overclock any AMD processor to 4.5 Ghz.

I'd personally try to stretch my budget to about $600 and I'd get:
FX6300 - $120
MSI G46 mobo - $80
8 GB of RAM - $70
Small 64 GB SSd for boot/1TB for storage - $100
Good brand name PSU - $50
GTX 660 - $180

These prices are what we have in Canada, don't know what its like where you live...

You can add another GTX 660 down the road when you have for SLI as long as you get a decent 600Watt PSU.

People are saying go Intel with qualifiers.  Certainly not everybody has $1,000 to spend but even with an Intel PC, you still don't need to spend $1,000 anyway.  However, some people do want the best and until we know the budget or have some idea of what they intend to do with the PC, you pick what is best...which since 2006 has been Intel.

If resolution is low enough, as we now know it's just 1680 x 1050, then an AMD CPU will likely be fine....outside of very CPU intensive games.  I referenced and i7 earlier merely to show that even the top end mainstream Intel isn't all that expensive.  Do you need an i7 to game?  No.  Would it be a good choice to have 3-4 years down the road if you don't intend to upgrade by then?  Probably would be.   Never build just for today.  I build PC's for a living.  And unless someone is on a majorly tight budget, I almost always suggest Intel.  That extra $50-$100 (CPU and Mobo) might take a few more weeks to save up for but will extend the life of the PC much longer than the time it took to save up to begin with.

But he's saying he has $500 to spend on just the CPU.   With that in mind, I suggest a high end AMD and spend the difference on a good cooler, RAM and upper mid range GPU (resolution being what it is).

And agreed about the PSU.  Everyone should pay serious attention to the quality of the PSU they buy.  Hard to go wrong with something like Seasonic.


I replied to CGI with what I would reply with here as well.

I have used over a dozen CPUs to game and benchmark in the last 5 years or so, and I see people using "Don't buy AMD" as fear mongering like their PC will run out of juice in a few years or something. The fact that multithreaded applications in gaming are only now taking off, AMD 6 and 8 core CPUs are not anywhere close to being outdated. Even 4 core Phenoms have plenty of life left. 

Sure Starcraft 2 will never run good on AMD cpus since its a dual core application but something like Battlefield 3 uses 6 cores maximum and even with SLI 680s, AMD and Intel CPUs behave identical hence the CPU isn't the bottleneck. I'd be willing to bet that most future gaming titles will be more like Battlefield 3 and less like Starcraft 2.