In the dual core arena, Intel is winning the area there in the performance-for-dollar ratio. Don't go AMD unless you're going to build a single core computer (which Athlon64 and Sempron are your best bets there)

Of course, given some time, this may change when AMD knocks out those tri-cores.

Intel by a wide margin. There's no competition at the moment - even AMD's lowered price structure doesn't allow their chips to really compete with anything Intel are offering.

I would wait until K-10 Barcelona (quad-core, servers) and Phenom (tri-core, home) are out.

I do not agree. Here in Europe there is no processor in the low midrange segment offered by Intel which could beat an AMD AthlonX2 6000 at the same price. If you want to go quadcore, Intel offers better products. Intel is best between 4 and 8 cores but if you want more or less, AMD is your choice.

http://www.nforcershq.com/article-topic-5.html
http://www.nforcershq.com/article8178.html
http://www.nforcershq.com/article8303.html

I've recently build myself a new Quadcore and, after having looked at the prices, decided to get myself an AMD x4 Black Edition.
Not only was it cheaper, it also has more interesting tweaking features and is more flexible when it comes to compatibility. I agree Intel chips are better (and cooler...and more expensive!) but I don't like what Intel is doing, making 2 new sockets almost annually, making their current generations technological dead ends.

I also have in the back of my mind that, years down the road, I'll want to tweak the hell out of this hardware. Well, maybe that's just me 😜

And I wanted a motherboard with onboard floppy controller! 😁

Tetrium wrote:

I agree Intel chips are better (and cooler...and more expensive!) but I don't like what Intel is doing, making 2 new sockets almost annually, making their current generations technological dead ends.

Good job on the new build but uhhh, I donno bout the dead end thing man. AMD's just as guilty. I'm still mad about them canning 939 abruptly. I built a socket 939 system in early 2006 back when it was the shizznitz. The motherboard got hit by lightning a year later and it was damn near impossible finding a replacement. Had to go AM2.

And when Phenom I first came out I remember that AM2 mobo compatibility sucked, especially with the 9850/9950s. Bios updates were spotty for the most part and though in theory most AM2 boards were supposed to work with the Phenoms, many didn't if they were not the right revision, or if they did, only the 95w processors worked and not the hot BE models (cause the boards lacked 125-140w rating).

Uhm, I just noticed I had replied to a 3 year old thread 😦

Well, they indeed canned 939 (and 754 for that matter) abruptly. A shame really, apart from the unavailability of more modern cpu's it's still a very nice platform to have.
But overall AMD sockets tended to last longer, sometimes only unofficially (like the ASUS A7V133 1.05 (without a dot) supporting Palomino's and higher and older socket 7 boards supporting K6-2).
Even in the case of LGA775, one of the few 'sockets' they kept running for longer, in most cases newer CPU's were also not backward compatible.
Let alone for example Socket 4 and Socket 423 which left the owner with virtually no upgrade path.
One thing Intel does but AMD doesn't (or much less often) is making a new generation of processors incompatible intentionally by changing a couple pins around like they did with the Tualatins

Tualatin also runs a lower voltage than any other Intel S370 CPU. That frequently necessitates a new voltage regulator, and this is not a move to make it incompatible intentionally but a result of 130nm.

Every socket or slot that had more than a year of life saw changes that made earlier implementations incompatible. I really think both companies are on equal terms for platform longevity...