my main system is a dual socket F. I love my dual quad core amd. I have a 5870 ati gpu in it. Mostly because nvidia was LATE and overpriced with the 480.

amd and intel seem to leapfrog each other. amd was king with the socket A, intel dominated with the core2 processor, amd is awesome price/performance right now, but the I7 is hard to touch in terms of sheer power. And the gap is widening. I see intel making a comeback for the next few years unless they do something stupid and shit the bed like they did with the original P4.

Quick Ot, can you play gta4 on that? I'm wondering if I can play gta4 on my setup. I bought it mostly for school, it's a laptop. Science school is out I want to test it's gaming capability.

luckybob wrote:

my main system is a dual socket F. I love my dual quad core amd.

My main system was a dual socket F for a while too, and I just got it back up and running... maybe I'll post that story some time. What motherboard/processor did you have set up? Mine was the Asus L1N64 with dual FX-74 chips (back when that was the latest thing).

Core i7 2600k. Price beats AMD for performance.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Another point regarding the "cost" issue. Whatever little money you can save by choosing a Phenom over a Sandy Bridge will end up costing you more through your electricity bill.

I couldn't believe how tiny the cooler for the i5 2500 CPU is. IMO performance per watt is the real benchmark to look at.

But most reviewers just brush over this aspect. Tomshardware does some good articles on this if you are interested.

Core i7 2600 max TDP=95W. My Phenom II x4 945 max TDP=95W. Even the Phenom II x6 1045T and 1065T are 95W. What 6 core Intel chip uses only 95W? On a per core basis, the Phenom II x6 1090T uses less power per core than the Core i7 2600. Core i7 2600 TDP per core= 23.75. Phenom II x6 1090T TDP per core= 20.83. Bullkdozer will bring those numbers even more in AMD's favor.

sliderider wrote:

Core i7 2600 max TDP=95W. My Phenom II x4 945 max TDP=95W.

Exactly my point!

Performance per watt is amazing with Intel at the moment. Best place to see this is in notebooks.

Also I question the 95W figure. The cooler has shrunk compared to the previous "95W" Intel stock coolers. I mean it's tiny!

Don't forget that Sandy Bridge comes with a GPU and that also needs power..

Intel is 32nm, AMD is still on 45nm.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Exactly my point! […]
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sliderider wrote:

Core i7 2600 max TDP=95W. My Phenom II x4 945 max TDP=95W.

Exactly my point!

Performance per watt is amazing with Intel at the moment. Best place to see this is in notebooks.

Also I question the 95W figure. The cooler has shrunk compared to the previous "95W" Intel stock coolers. I mean it's tiny!

But look at the difference in the price, not just for the chip but for the motherboard as well. You don't save anything because you pay the difference in power consumption up front.

sliderider wrote:

But look at the difference in the price, not just for the chip but for the motherboard as well.

Cheap as chips. As I mentioned earlier I built an i5 2500 system for a friend for AUD 500 bucks all up. That's with case, PSU, ODD, 8! GB Ram, 1TB, mainboard and all of that.

The i7 is a poor choice. HT is the main differenting feature, so I always recommend the i5 2500.

PC hardware is so cheap at the moment. Great time to build something!

PS: Here in Australia power cost has exploded and will just get worse.

The price difference you mention doesn't exist. It's an old AMD argument, that's simply not valid anymore.

The 1090 and i5 2500 sell for around 200 bucks. Boards can be had for under 100. It's even stephen at the moment...

Images speak louder than words.

1090 cooler:

Sandy Bridge cooler:

^ I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500k and this is the cooler I'm using:

To be fair its entirely overkill, I'm running at about 4.3GHz (a very conservative overclock for these chips) and I've yet to see it reach 50 degrees under load 😀

I think someone said it best earlier in this thread - back in the Netburst days, AMD was the go. But I've stuck with Intel since then since they've had the superior product.

however I really hope that AMD's next chip is a killer because its important to have strong competition in the desktop CPU market. If AMD decides to stop making CPU's then Intel will have a ball teaching us a lesson in monopoly economics.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Cheap as chips. As I mentioned earlier I built an i5 2500 system for a friend for AUD 500 bucks all up. That's with case, PSU, O […]
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sliderider wrote:

But look at the difference in the price, not just for the chip but for the motherboard as well.

Cheap as chips. As I mentioned earlier I built an i5 2500 system for a friend for AUD 500 bucks all up. That's with case, PSU, ODD, 8! GB Ram, 1TB, mainboard and all of that.

The i7 is a poor choice. HT is the main differenting feature, so I always recommend the i5 2500.

PC hardware is so cheap at the moment. Great time to build something!

PS: Here in Australia power cost has exploded and will just get worse.

The price difference you mention doesn't exist. It's an old AMD argument, that's simply not valid anymore.

The 1090 and i5 2500 sell for around 200 bucks. Boards can be had for under 100. It's even stephen at the moment...

I hope you did get him a decent PSU and not somekind of El Cheapo one that came with the case.

I checked some prices yesterday and the Intel boards are indeed as cheap as the AMD ones but theres still a few more considerations 😉
1)Even though the Intel and the AMD sets are similarly priced, if you need replacement parts, typically the Intel parts are more expensive to replace
2)AMD will leave you with a better upgrade path then Intel. This may not be relevant to many but it's something that's relevant to me though.

DonutKing wrote:

^ I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500k and this is the cooler I'm using: […]
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^ I'm running a Sandy Bridge 2500k and this is the cooler I'm using:

To be fair its entirely overkill, I'm running at about 4.3GHz (a very conservative overclock for these chips) and I've yet to see it reach 50 degrees under load 😀

I think someone said it best earlier in this thread - back in the Netburst days, AMD was the go. But I've stuck with Intel since then since they've had the superior product.

however I really hope that AMD's next chip is a killer because its important to have strong competition in the desktop CPU market. If AMD decides to stop making CPU's then Intel will have a ball teaching us a lesson in monopoly economics.

My god, and I thought my Scythe Mugen 2 was big 🤣!
Hold on, gonna take a quick pic...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Images speak louder than words. […]
Show full quote

Images speak louder than words.

1090 cooler:

Sandy Bridge cooler:

I think the AMD cooler looks a whole lot better then the Intel one.
Obviously the AMD one will produce more heat (when not throttled down!) but that has to do with Intel using a smaller production process then AMD.
Btw, even though the AMD stock cooler is pretty good at cooling the Phenom II's, at full speed they are too loud for my taste. Same can be said about the Intel stock coolers, they are always noisy when run at full speed and I've noticed the Intel HSF's tend to clog up more quickly with dust then the AMD ones and are harder to clean (Yup, kinda running out of ideas to keep bashing Intel hehe 😜 😜 😜 ).
One more thing, try finding a decent fan replacement for the Intel one. AMD uses standard fans and I've been using stock AMD heatsinks with more silent fans on older rigs 😉

Good point regarding replacing the fan. I have the stock cooler that came with my Phenom II 555 and during summer (it gets very hot here) that thing does like 6000 rpm 🤣

PS: That's will all four cores unlocked...

Alright, the pictures from my Sandy Bridge i5 2500K system :

The CPU heatsink - A CoolerMaster V6 GT :

This is a single-core multiple-finned heatsink with two fans - one on either side of it. The air-flow is from front backwards - air get sucked from the front, passses through the heatsink and is sucked and pushed away by the second fan on the other side of the heatsink, which in turn, is sucked by the 3rd fan fixed on the chassis at the back, and is pushed out.

And the views when I usually play at night with lights off :

The fan above is the same size as the huge fan seen in my classic system, which I posted in Marvin under Overclocking...Heat Thread.

It looks small here because of the relatively larger case. This casing also has another of that huge fan (without light) on the top, inside.

The temperature, after 30mins of playing Borderlands with crossfire enabled at 1920x1080 with all settings set to max (which will include the heat produced by the twin 6950s):

Though I am not a hardcore cooler, I'm still very much particular about the system and cpu temperature. I still haven't done any studies on the effects of temperature and multipliers and FSBs and so on, though.

The noise is remarkably quiet. It's even quieter than my classic system posted in marvin - mostly due to the noise produced by the socket 370 cooler's fan fixed on the socket 7 in that system.

Strange the case temps are 5c higher then the CPU temp though? 😕

Tetrium wrote:

Strange the case temps are 5c higher then the CPU temp though? 😕

There are other things that generate heat besides the CPU. I'd say the Crossfired video cards might have something to with it. By the power connectors they are either 6870's or 6950's and they can put off some heat. Not as bad as nVidia, but still a fair amount. We also don't know what the ambient temp in the room is.

@Malik Aren't things getting a little ridiculous when you need a fan bigger and more powerful than most hair dryer motors just to keep the CPU from overheating? The fan on my Phenom II isn't anywhere near as big as that. Any electricity you think you might be saving is being used up by the cooling fan on that monster.

A CPU can never be cooled by air if the surrounding air temp is higher then the temp of the CPU itself, no matter if you got an empty case or are running hexadeca-way crossfire

Tetrium wrote:

A CPU can never be cooled by air if the surrounding air temp is higher then the temp of the CPU itself, no matter if you got an empty case or are running hexadeca-way crossfire

When it's 100 degrees and you turn a fan on yourself, do you cool down or not? Your body temperature is only 98.6 so by your logic turning the fan on has no value whatsoever. The rush of moving air still pushes the heat your body radiates away from you even though the surrounding air is warmer.

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

A CPU can never be cooled by air if the surrounding air temp is higher then the temp of the CPU itself, no matter if you got an empty case or are running hexadeca-way crossfire

When it's 100 degrees and you turn a fan on yourself, do you cool down or not? Your body temperature is only 98.6 so by your logic turning the fan on has no value whatsoever. The rush of moving air still pushes the heat your body radiates away from you even though the surrounding air is warmer.

Not true, if the surrounding air is warmer then your body temperature, your body uses evaporizing sweatdrops to cool down. A CPU cooler can do no such thing 😜

Heatpipes use that evaporation mechanism (phase change) to do their really amazing magic. But yeah you aren't going below ambient with them. One of those laws of physics.