If you're not looking for price wise. Go for Intel


I'd go for AMD since I have limited budget.

cool48,

For PC parts in Canada I recommend ncix.com (check their weekly sales page) or directcanada.com
These two are considered the 'newegg of Canada'.  I buy my PC related stuff from ncix all the time.

I don't know what you're going to use your PC for but a lot of PC enthsiasts would go with Intel Core 2 line up. They pretty much mop the floor with AMD procs.  But for budget builds, the AMDs are priced very competetively so they're not a bad choice either.  But I personally would go with a Intel COre 2 Duo.

 That was the case. Now its Intel that is changing sockets and AMD that is not. I've been looking into doing a new PC myself and saw the Intel and AMD roadmaps. 

If you want a "very high" end CPU and price is a small factor then Intel is the way to go, but if you just want a "high end" CPU there are options to be considered on both sides and AMD generally has the advantage because they offer great prices throughout their lineup. A lot of Intel's puffed up price problem with the C2D lineup is due to their popularity, which is warranted...just not at some of these prices.

Looking at the table if you're building a high end system you basically have only a couple of options and given your probable price range dual core is the only smart option. Imo the choices worth considering, in order of raw power, are E8400, E8200, E6750, 6400+ X2, and the 6000+ X2. But if you list them in order of "performance per $" it looks like this 6400+ X2, 6000+ X2, E6750, E8400, and E8200...almost exactly the reverse.

This presents an interesting choice for a lot of builders and to me at least I believe that unless your budget is no issue (in which case why not get a quad core?) I don't think the E8400 or E8200 are smart options for this build given they're both around a quarter of your budget most likely and have the worst "performance per $" ratings. Perhaps if you look over your build and you have extra cash in your budget you would come back but I generally loath to spend more than 20% of my budget on a CPU unless the applications the PC is going to be using are CPU intensive...and gaming really isn't, already things are moving heavily towards the GPU for things like physics.

I would say the best choices are either the E6750 or the 6400+ X2, and from that point I think it largely depends on preference and what you can find for motherboards. I would find the best intel and AMD mobo that is compatible with these CPUs (Socket LGA 775 and Socket AM2) and then pick between these 2 CPUs based on the mobo you liked best.

Its far from the floor mopping Ihara called it, AMD just offers phenominal prices relative to Intel and it makes them very attractive to gamers who don't require every ounce of power from their CPU.

Crysis CPU Usage: Link, Link, Link, and Link. The purple circles are where I was mowing down trees, the blue circles are grenades blowing apart houses and yellow is after I exited the game.

CPU usage wasn't maxed and framerates were solid. So my question is what is the point of lots of extra grunt for a gamer? Crysis has been repeatedly called a game that was built for the hardware of next year...so if modern CPUs are doing fine shouldn't a gamer focus his budget on a GPU? I would say yes but some people insist that you need more grunt (Tim Taylor for one =P).

PS - Sorry for the wordy responce.

AMD's have turbocache, so if you want a shitload more CACHE go for AMD.

But for anything else, Intel all the way.

I use a Quad core and they are pretty sweet,the place i work at got the new AMD Quad Cores in a few weeks ago, they are called Phenom, and they are supposed to be superb.