AMD X2 4400+ vs Phenom

D

DFinan

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 2, 2004
Messages
124
Ok question, I am looking at upgrading my system and have been considering a phenom spider system. I noticed that the only phenom processor i can find is rated at 2.2ghz which is actually slower then my current X24400 (939 pin cpu). Is the Phenom actually going to be an upgrade in overall performance?
 
Wait a year and they will cost $50 or then buy the 4ghz model.
 
Can you wait? Currently, C2D Quad is overpowering Phenom. Since you are changing MB, why not wait newer Phenom comming out? Or you can pick Intel Quad
 
Why are you getting a Phenom? Your upgrading everything already just get a Core 2 Quad instead as it overpowers the Phenom.
 
I don't get the people who proselytize for Intel in an AMD forum.

I personally have stuck with AMD because it has much better everyday responsiveness than any other chip. Currently I'm waiting for the B3 revision of Phenom in early February. That will be more than enough chip for most people. However, I can only speak for myself.
 
vista_blista said:
I don't get the people who proselytize for Intel in an AMD forum.

I personally have stuck with AMD because it has much better everyday responsiveness than any other chip. Currently I'm waiting for the B3 revision of Phenom in early February. That will be more than enough chip for most people. However, I can only speak for myself.
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but only a fool would spend equal or more money for less performance....i love to get just what i need too, but if CPU A is $200 and CPU B is $200 but CPU B is 20% faster.....guess what CPU i am buying, i give a XXXX who makes it, i am not wasting my money, i am not going to put up with lower performance per dollar for no reason at all other than to support the underdog....you know why? my single or two or three purchases wont make a darn difference for them, it's the OEM's that buy thousands upon thouands that make or break them.....so go ahead and waste your own money

i mean really, after all this time of nearly everyone here and in the enthusiast community completely ditching Intel and running A64 platforms....for all that time...and then Intel comes out with something much better...and then after even more time look at what your loyal AMD brought to the party....as a thank you for supporting them for all that time....look what they bring, a slower than the competition, buggy, more expensive waste of your money....yeah, thanks AMD, i think i'll buy yet another one of your CPU's...:rolleyes:

i am a bit upset because i really was expecting AMD to actually come back fighting...instead they just kept from falling off the map altogether.....thats doesnt deserve rewarding

i do realize we need competition, dont want a monopoly going on....but christ...make it interesting at least....make me WANT to spend my money elsewhere, make the competition NEED to make something even better, supporting the shortcomings of AMD only encourages more shortcomings IMO, speak with your wallet, if we dont buy it they will be forced to make something better, it's like hading an allowance to your son who did only as much as he had to to get by...he will never learn
 
nobody_here said:
but only a fool would spend equal or more money for less performance....i love to get just what i need too, but if CPU A is $200 and CPU B is $200 but CPU B is 20% faster.....guess what CPU i am buying, i give a XXXX who makes it, i am not wasting my money, i am not going to put up with lower performance per dollar for no reason at all other than to support the underdog....you know why? my single or two or three purchases wont make a darn difference for them, it's the OEM's that buy thousands upon thouands that make or break them.....so go ahead and waste your own money

i mean really, after all this time of nearly everyone here and in the enthusiast community completely ditching Intel and running A64 platforms....for all that time...and then Intel comes out with something much better...and then after even more time look at what your loyal AMD brought to the party....as a thank you for supporting them for all that time....look what they bring, a slower than the competition, buggy, more expensive waste of your money....yeah, thanks AMD, i think i'll buy yet another one of your CPU's...:rolleyes:

i am a bit upset because i really was expecting AMD to actually come back fighting...instead they just kept from falling off the map altogether.....thats doesnt deserve rewarding

i do realize we need competition, dont want a monopoly going on....but christ...make it interesting at least....make me WANT to spend my money elsewhere, make the competition NEED to make something even better, supporting the shortcomings of AMD only encourages more shortcomings IMO, speak with your wallet, if we dont buy it they will be forced to make something better, it's like hading an allowance to your son who did only as much as he had to to get by...he will never learn
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I'm intel now, so no fanboyism here...but what if the buyer doesn't care about the benches that intel dominates in like winrar file compression, but instead cares more about crysis, for example. Think everyone is caught up in the benches, when not realizing that if you're primarily a gamer...you really aren't going to notice the difference between a c2quad or a phenom.
 
conscript said:
I'm intel now, so no fanboyism here...but what if the buyer doesn't care about the benches that intel dominates in like winrar file compression, but instead cares more about crysis, for example. Think everyone is caught up in the benches, when not realizing that if you're primarily a gamer...you really aren't going to notice the difference between a c2quad or a phenom.
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ok, fair enough

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad and the Intel C2D Q6600 are both $260 right now at the egg and the Q6600 is faster in general, not just games or specific benchmarks

so why buy the Phenom CPU? why settle for less? and btw, you know Intel is ready to release their next line soon which will drive the price of the Q6600 even lower, further broadening the price/performance gap
 
vista_blista said:
Wasn't his question about X2 4400+ vs. Phenom? Where was Intel ever mentioned?
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you have to mention any CPU that offers anywhere near the same performance for the same price or else you are the one being one sided and keeping him from the truth about all of his options, which is worse than mentioning an Intel CPU in the AMD forums.....


he asked would the Phenom be an upgrade performance wise to his 4400..of course it will, but the 6600 would be an even bigger upgrade for the same money and without all the negative of the current Phenom's like the recently mentioned Errata which the fix for currently with this early CPU will end up hurting it's already sub par performance even more (by up to 10% is the claim)

heck....even take a look at all the feedback on newegg's listing....over and over, all over the web, you hear the same thing, it won't overclock worth a damn, costs as much as a Q6600 which will overclock till the cows come home, etc...etc....

the truth is good man, even if you don't like it, you need to be honest with people when you are giving purchasing advice
 
As long as you're not making it sound like the Phenom can't even play the games, I see no problem with presenting the other side.

The Phenom is a good purchase, the Core 2 is just a better one.
 
How about just answering his actual question without making any assumptons and without any agenda? Or is that too much to believe possible in an AMD forum?
 
conscript said:
I'm intel now, so no fanboyism here...but what if the buyer doesn't care about the benches that intel dominates in like winrar file compression, but instead cares more about crysis, for example. Think everyone is caught up in the benches, when not realizing that if you're primarily a gamer...you really aren't going to notice the difference between a c2quad or a phenom.
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crysis runs significantly faster on Core2 or Core Quad boxes than AMD.
 
vista_blista said:
How about just answering his actual question without making any assumptons and without any agenda? Or is that too much to believe possible in an AMD forum?
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The phenom is an upgrade from the OP current CPU. There are better upgrades for the same price. For instance, Intel offers several, specifically the Q6600, in this instance.
 
OP: I personally plan to keep my Opty 165 until Penryn or two Phenom revisions. If you are that set on upgrading, at least wait for one Phenom revision.

lopoetve said:
crysis runs significantly faster on Core2 or Core Quad boxes than AMD.
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http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQyMiw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Last benchmark, 1280x720 with Crysis. I would not call 8 FPS when OC'd significantly faster, and as resolution goes higher than that, the difference is even smaller.

It's absolutely true that Intel's processor is better, but the true limit of a machine while gaming will always be the video card.
 
vista_blista said:
How about just answering his actual question without making any assumptons and without any agenda? Or is that too much to believe possible in an AMD forum?
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then stop objecting man....the agenda is to offer him sound advice which means advising him on all of his options in that price range, he probably has been talking to someone like you previously that got him all excited about this Phenom CPU or Spider platform and intentionally never mentioned that he can get better performance for the money spent with a different CPU

why do you care that he might actually get a better deal by hearing the truth instead of your one-sided never presenting the other options bias? why do you insist on hiding the truth from him? are you so blind that you yourself cannot see that the Phenom, while not being bad, is not an equal to the Q6600 yet costs equally the same...???

Phenom would be a good $200 CPU i would say, maybe even $225 once they release the next revision that isn't buggy as the first

recommending a first run buggy underperforming overpriced cpu over a mature better performing equally priced CPU is just wrong....i dont care who you are a fan of

you do see whats in my rig right? AMD....like i said, i wish they would have come out with a CPU that beat the competition at a reasonable price, but they didn't
 
lopoetve said:
crysis runs significantly faster on Core2 or Core Quad boxes than AMD.
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167.jpg


168.jpg


169.jpg
 
wow...just wow. as far as the last post nice results. that 1fps! oh man would i love to only be able to see it! No sorry be sarcastic is not my style. Serious though, performance is close enough that if someone prefers one company over another there will be not real difference other than gluing yourself to benmark numbers. My favorite color is blue, but if blue in not the most popular do I need to switch? no. Maybe part of the problem is posters need to be more specific but I can assume since this is in an AMD forum that we are looking at AMD products. There are way too many things out there from which burger to eat or which car to drive where you can see a preference over a "better" product. So what do you do about it? nothing.

If the OP likes brand A, then help them with Brand A choices. And to the OP, if you want an overall opinion then you need to be specific and help reduce the lame Intel vs AMD crap that always goes on. thanks :D
 
how about some benchies from a place we have all heard of and can respect

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=6

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=7

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=8

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=9

Final Words

If you were looking for a changing of the guard today it's just not going to happen. Phenom is, clock for clock, slower than Core 2 and the chips aren't yet yielding well enough to boost clock speeds above what Intel is capable of. While AMD just introduced its first 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz quad-core CPUs today, Intel previewed its first 3.2GHz quad-core chips. We were expecting Intel to retain the high end performance crown, but also expected AMD to chip away at the lower end of the quad-core market - today's launch confirms that Intel is still the king of the quad-core market.

As we've seen from our mainstream CPU comparisons however, all of this could change with some clever pricing - something AMD seems to have forgone with its Phenom launch.

Phenom manages to fill a major gap in AMD's desktop CPU product lineup: the company can now offer quad-core CPUs. And with the needed updates to the K8 architecture AMD is now competitive in some areas that it sorely needed improving in. Windows Media and x264 encoding are both strong points of the Phenom architecture, making it on par with Intel's quad-core offerings. The same can be said about some games, but at the same time Intel really pulls ahead in our DivX and other game tests.

Inevitably some of these Phenoms will sell, even though Intel is currently faster and offers better overall price-performance (does anyone else feel weird reading that?). Honestly the only reason we can see to purchase a Phenom is if you currently own a Socket-AM2 motherboard; you may not get the same performance as a Core 2 Quad, but it won't cost as much since you should be able to just drop in a Phenom if you have BIOS support.

If you ask AMD, this is platform story; after all, who wouldn't want to combine a Phenom with the 790FX chipset and a pair of Radeon 3850 graphics cards. The problem is that you can pair up 3850s on an Intel chipset just as easily, leaving the biggest benefit to 790FX the ability to run 3 or 4 3850s, which we're not even sure is a good idea yet. There are some auto-overclocking features, but talking about Phenom's overclocking isn't really accenting one of its strong points. The platform sell is a great one to an OEM, but it's simply not compelling enough to the end user - if Phenom were more attractive, things would be different.

To make the CPU more attractive AMD desperately needs to drop the price, and from what we've heard, that will happen in Q1. From what we've seen, AMD needs to be at least 200MHz ahead of Intel in order to remain competitive - that means bringing out a Phenom 9900 that's cheaper than the Q6600, at least. If AMD can do that, it's quite possible that in early 2008 we'll have the first sub-$200 quad-core part as the 9500 drops in price.

Oh and just in case AMD is listening: the Phenom 9600 has no business being here, the extra 100MHz only clutters up the product line. Once the 9700 and 9900 are out let's try and stick to 200MHz increments shall we?

Here's what really frightens us: the way AMD has priced Phenom leaves Intel with a great opportunity to increase prices with Penryn without losing the leadership position. Intel could very well introduce the Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.33GHz) at $269 and still remain quite competitive with Phenom, moving the Q9450 into more expensive waters. Intel has't announced what it's doing with Penryn pricing in Q1, but our fear is that a weak showing from Phenom could result in an upward trend in processor prices. And this is exactly why we needed AMD to be more competitive with Phenom.

It's tough to believe that what we're looking at here is a farewell to the K8. When AMD first released the Athlon 64, its performance was absolutely mind blowing. It kept us from recommending Intel processors for at least 3 years; Phenom's arrival, however, is far more somber. Phenom has a difficult job to do, it needs to keep AMD afloat for the next year. Phenom is much like the solemn relative, visiting during a time of great sorrow within the family; let's hope for AMD's sake that it can lift spirits in the New Year.
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MrMike said:
OP: I personally plan to keep my Opty 165 until Penryn or two Phenom revisions. If you are that set on upgrading, at least wait for one Phenom revision.



http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQyMiw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Last benchmark, 1280x720 with Crysis. I would not call 8 FPS when OC'd significantly faster, and as resolution goes higher than that, the difference is even smaller.

It's absolutely true that Intel's processor is better, but the true limit of a machine while gaming will always be the video card.
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We're seeing more like 15fps differences in some threads in teh video card forum. Or more.

Hell, I've got an IDENTICAL system to my best friend, except I'm on an overclocked 5000+ Brisbane and he's on a stock Q6600, and I've got an 8800GT and he has a GTX. He EASILY out strips me for 15+ fps in crysis. That's NOT all the video card, I guarantee it.
 
Hell, I've got an IDENTICAL system to my best friend, except I'm on an overclocked 5000+ Brisbane and he's on a stock Q6600, and I've got an 8800GT and he has a GTX. He EASILY out strips me for 15+ fps in crysis. That's NOT all the video card, I guarantee it.[/QUOTE]

At which resolution are you comparing? And I'm sorry, but I doubt you have identical systems...Most people forget that the chipset plays a significant role in performance.
 
nobody_here said:
ok, fair enough

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad and the Intel C2D Q6600 are both $260 right now at the egg and the Q6600 is faster in general, not just games or specific benchmarks

so why buy the Phenom CPU? why settle for less? and btw, you know Intel is ready to release their next line soon which will drive the price of the Q6600 even lower, further broadening the price/performance gap
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because 790FX is superb.
 
overclockedpc said:
Hell, I've got an IDENTICAL system to my best friend, except I'm on an overclocked 5000+ Brisbane and he's on a stock Q6600, and I've got an 8800GT and he has a GTX. He EASILY out strips me for 15+ fps in crysis. That's NOT all the video card, I guarantee it.
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At which resolution are you comparing? And I'm sorry, but I doubt you have identical systems...Most people forget that the chipset plays a significant role in performance.[/QUOTE]

You will get a 15+fps difference if you use 1024x768 resolution with medium settings :p
 
MrWizard6600 said:
not a single long standing Hard OCP reader respects toms, lets just get that straight. They are about as slanted as you can get a review site, without being C-net (you hear they fired whats his name for reviewing a game a 6/10, whos producers just happened to sign a big dollar contract with cnet)
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LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Uhhhhhhhhhh

Tom's != Anandtech
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LOL, yeah, like LstOfTheBrunnenG said, those links are to anandtech's review.....have no clue where you got Tom's from...you didn't even have to click on the links i provided...all you had to do was look at them...they say anandtech.com
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by nobody_here
ok, fair enough

AMD Phenom 9500 Quad and the Intel C2D Q6600 are both $260 right now at the egg and the Q6600 is faster in general, not just games or specific benchmarks

so why buy the Phenom CPU? why settle for less? and btw, you know Intel is ready to release their next line soon which will drive the price of the Q6600 even lower, further broadening the price/performance gap


Ok im not bragging but i have AMD chips from the 1000mhz T-bird all the way up the food chain to 6000+ ..In between all these Chips i have had only one fail due to a bad fan , that was a XP2400+....Not too bad i would say,In short im patiently waiting for Phenom to mature with its small obstacle we see today.. X4 @2.3ghz is also a bit overpriced being released with little to no support..even at Vendor side of things it does really suck for now. No mobos work properly @ 2.4ghz or higher not 1 can stably Overclock! This is due to Bios limatations...I know ive seen them @2.8ghz unstable as Hell!!!!!

INTEL had its downs when first introduced Qseries!
Wow come to think of it the PIII/4 also didnt do so hot against the XPseries and X64's single cores either..I had PIII's and thats what made me switch to AMD permanently for gaming performance, Ive used AMD ever since...Almost bit on the Qwagon and im glad i did not go that way..

Im not going to change my Mobo for an INTEL MOBO ,just so i can have 4cores or Qcore , isnt worth it for me when my 6000+ games just as fast and its a X2 not a Quad..I also know that in 1months time we will really see the Phenom come to life....They are already vast improments to selttle this unfortunate problem.. AMD/and its vendors are working overtime to make things right!....I always give everyone a fair chance for my dollar before i decide on what to buy..Untill the new B3 is out the door and is shown to run substantially better i could only think to buy a ""Phenom X4 2.2ghz or 2.3ghz only if you are not going to overclock it""..Once the new 9600BE and upPhenoms arrive and the correct Bioses are out from the MoboVendors ,you will have a way better alternative than the Q66 easily...The prices should even be down by then as well.

I have nothing against INTEL or its Qseries chips,, but Competition is what makes these two companies!! Id buy a Q6600 for 4core only if i wasnt on a AMD platform .I can easily upgrade to Phenom vs Qseries, there for I have nothing to lose PURCHASING a PHENOM! Sometimes things dont go as planned and this is what it is taking for AMD to relize it needs to improve on the way it does new chip releases and not fall behind as it done..

Yes i will be getting a 9600 BE and possiably a new Mobo once things are kosher I am not happy with Phenom right now, but i am happy than every one of THE AMD products i have purchased is still going strong,this includes machines ive built for friends! That alone say's enuff for me to keep buying and trying thier product...

Note: If things go well "Intels new release" will lower the Phenom price tag and the 9500-9600 will still compete head to head for the low line x4core chip..Thus competing for the best current prices...Intel could cause people to buy Phenom...that would be good and thus we shall see
 
Thanks for all the performance info and opinions on the AMD and Intel products. I havent wed myself to purchasing one or the other but hadnt seen any real info on what if any performance gains I could expect out of the phenom processor. From what I could find I knew the intel offering would be faster.

Its a tough choice I really want to upgrade, my motherboard, processor and memory (still using DDR not DDR2). Just cant figure out which way to go. Plus I am hearing rumblings from bnoth manufacturers that another socket design change is coming. Oh the headaches. :)

Again thanks for the info.
 
At most do take your time ...if i were to up grade build new system right now ,i wouldnt dare! Just wait a 1 maybe 2 months if you can...Read all the benches and hear from people that get thier hands on the new stuff you are looking into..Then you can make the dreaded jumping in full throttle and bieng commited to INTEL or AMD decision:D...Stuff is changing way way to fast...
 
overclockedpc said:
At which resolution are you comparing? And I'm sorry, but I doubt you have identical systems...Most people forget that the chipset plays a significant role in performance.
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1680x1050.

And chipset is part of the Intel/AMD change also, you forget. If you get that much moving from a 570SLi to intel 965, that's part of the upgrade you get from switching from AMD to Intel.

We have the same ram @ the same speed, same video card, same base HD even. He just built it on a 965/Q6600, and I built mine on 570SLi and 5000+ (currently overclocked to 3ghz).

MrWizard6600 said:
because 790FX is superb.
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so are the intel boards, and they didn't give us the mess that was 690.
 
DFinan said:
Its a tough choice I really want to upgrade, my motherboard, processor and memory (still using DDR not DDR2). Just cant figure out which way to go. Plus I am hearing rumblings from bnoth manufacturers that another socket design change is coming. Oh the headaches. :)
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The introduction of socket changes will probably take about a year. On Intel platforms, that shouldn't happen before the release of Nehalem products. I'm not too certain about AMD, but things look clear until Bulldozer is released. Whatever you buy this year should be good at least until late Q4 '08, if not well into '09 as far as compatibility with future processors is concerned (providing current roadmaps hold).
 
First off, I too, have no idea how I got anand mixed up with toms. So I guess I'll default to: it was 2 frickin AM. Anand = good, toms = bad. I read anands reviews regularly. Always fun to make yourself look retarded on a public forum.

lopoetve said:
1680x1050.

And chipset is part of the Intel/AMD change also, you forget. If you get that much moving from a 570SLi to intel 965, that's part of the upgrade you get from switching from AMD to Intel.

We have the same ram @ the same speed, same video card, same base HD even. He just built it on a 965/Q6600, and I built mine on 570SLi and 5000+ (currently overclocked to 3ghz).



so are the intel boards, and they didn't give us the mess that was 690.
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no no, 790FX is superior to X38.. well for a gamer. the use of SB600 is questionable, so the board partners are really going to have to step up to match some of the features of X38. But 790FX has a couple really big things going for it over X38, the most of which is the excessive amount of pci-e lanes.

And I refuse to believe that you seriously get a 15fps differance between your 5000+ and Q6600. all of the reviews I've read and all the experiance I've got contradict your statement. There has to be some other differance.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
First off, I too, have no idea how I got anand mixed up with toms. So I guess I'll default to: it was 2 frickin AM. Anand = good, toms = bad. I read anands reviews regularly. Always fun to make yourself look retarded on a public forum.



no no, 790FX is superior to X38.. well for a gamer. the use of SB600 is questionable, so the board partners are really going to have to step up to match some of the features of X38. But 790FX has a couple really big things going for it over X38, the most of which is the excessive amount of pci-e lanes.

And I refuse to believe that you seriously get a 15fps differance between your 5000+ and Q6600. all of the reviews I've read and all the experiance I've got contradict your statement. There has to be some other differance.
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Check the video card forums, I've been having a nice long discussion with a guy ni there about it as well. Very similar systems, both with 8800GT's, and he's getting significantly better performance on his Q6600 than I am on my 5000+. Hell, I've even got twice the RAM he does too. There's something about the AMD setup with the 570SLi chipset that holds things back.

I don't really know what it is, or care, but everything else game wise I'm just as fast as the Quad folk, except they seriously outrun the AMD chips in crysis.
 
keep in mind Intel is switching to a new socket again relatively soon so unless you plan on upgrading again in a year AMD might actually be the more futureproof way to go.
 
Ok, since this topic has strayed far from the original post, here are my questions to the so-called "experts" touting Core 2 over Phenom:
  • What is it that makes a Phenom Quad perform slower than a Core 2 Quad at the same frequency?

    What performance detriment or enhancement is there between a native quad core (Phenom) and a non-native, dual-die quad core (Core 2)?

    What is it that tells the consumer in as plain English as possible that
    Core 2 Quad has these features that make it perform faster than a Phenom Quad?

    Are there significant design differences between the two CPUs in terms of how cache is arranged, ALUs, registers, FPUs, etc., etc. that makes one CPU perform faster than the other?
It is like comparing AMD/ATI HD 2000/3000 series GPUs to Nvidia's 8000 series. AMD/ATI chose to do something different in their architecture by designing a GPU that favors shader-based antialiasing instead of traditional antialiasing. They looked forward, not backwards. Yet, they are criticized and ridiculed for trying something new and different. Game developers also give the sense they are in cahoots with Nvidia when they program a game because no game that I know of implements shader antialiasing, thus the benchmarks show it. It makes Nvidia look great and AMD/ATI look terrible, yet the possibility of collusion and monopoly seems evident.

So, why ridicule a company trying something new different by implementing native quad core and better power consumption, or for a company looking forward not backwards? I find all these silly diatribes and criticisms silly, when in plain sight one is designing things differently than the competition. Maybe software hasn't caught up to native quad core designs or Intel is in collusion with software developers. Who knows?

But, the bottom line is this: What is all the criticism about that makes one processor look terrible or deficient to the other when they are both designed DIFFERENTLY?

EDIT: I have read all the reviews so far for Phenom and yet I have to see to one reviewer answer "Why?" Why is it that Phenom performs slower clock-for-clock at the same frequency? Why is it they perform differently at the same speeds yet are designed differently? Why?
 
octoberasian said:
It is like comparing AMD/ATI HD 2000/3000 series GPUs to Nvidia's 8000 series. AMD/ATI chose to do something different in their architecture by designing a GPU that favors shader-based antialiasing instead of traditional antialiasing. They looked forward, not backwards. Yet, they are criticized and ridiculed for trying something new and different. Game developers also give the sense they are in cahoots with Nvidia when they program a game because no game that I know of implements shader antialiasing, thus the benchmarks show it. It makes Nvidia look great and AMD/ATI look terrible, yet the possibility of collusion and monopoly seems evident.

So, why ridicule a company trying something new different by implementing native quad core and better power consumption, or for a company looking forward not backwards? I find all these silly diatribes and criticisms silly, when in plain sight one is designing things differently than the competition. Maybe software hasn't caught up to native quad core designs or Intel is in collusion with software developers. Who knows?
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For the first, it's because it performs slower. Design doesn't really matter, performance does from a consumer standpoint, and the ATi design is slower and offers no visable or usable benefit over the Nvidia offering.

For the second, Core Quad is just as much quad core as phenom. AMD's "native" designation is total horsehocky. 4 cores is 4 cores, no matter if they're designed that way from the start, or just 4 older cores on one piece of silicon. As long as there's not a performance decrease by combining the hardware, there is nothing to complain about. There's no "benefit" you can really program into the AMD design vs the intel design, at least not from any high level development point I can see (then again, I haven't done much core-level coding in a while).

And we ridicule them because again, it underperforms compared to the alternatives, and costs the same. Bang for the buck, Phenom lags behind the Core design. Why buy it? Innovation is great if you can leverage it to perform better than the competition (6800 series at release, 9700 series at release). If you can't, it's pointless for the consumer to care about. There needs to be a tangible benefit.
 
But, the bottom line is this: What is all the criticism about that makes one processor look terrible or deficient to the other when they are both designed DIFFERENTLY?
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The difference is not the issue here. You're analyzing the means, not the ends. That's a terrible thing to do... You can sing praise all you want for the technical marvels incorporated into AMD's Phenom... Yet, if the performance is lacking, the praise is unfounded.

We enthusiasts don't care about market PR. We know what's bullshit, and how to find meaning through the bullshit.

Netburst was "Different" than other similar intel (and AMD) architectures, yet it receieved a bunch of slack. Why? Because it DESERVED it.
 
lopoetve said:
We're seeing more like 15fps differences in some threads in teh video card forum. Or more.

Hell, I've got an IDENTICAL system to my best friend, except I'm on an overclocked 5000+ Brisbane and he's on a stock Q6600, and I've got an 8800GT and he has a GTX. He EASILY out strips me for 15+ fps in crysis. That's NOT all the video card, I guarantee it.
Click to expand...

Its all about the video card.
your friends 8800gtx is a lot faster than your 8800gt.

8800GTX!! has 128 stream units 384bit memory at 768mb.
your 8800gt has 112 stream units at 256bit memory at 512mb.

his card is higher-end than yours.
if you where to compare it to the 8800gts then you might have an edge.
8800gts has 96 stream units and 320bit memory at 640mb.

Also I play only in 1920x1080. Haven't see 1024x768 game in a couple years now.
 
octoberasian said:
What performance detriment or enhancement is there between a native quad core (Phenom) and a non-native, dual-die quad core (Core 2)?

What is it that tells the consumer in as plain English as possible that
Core 2 Quad has these features that make it perform faster than a Phenom Quad?

Are there significant design differences between the two CPUs in terms of how cache is arranged, ALUs, registers, FPUs, etc., etc. that makes one CPU perform faster than the other
Click to expand...

It's nothing to do with native versus non-native cores. It's all to do with the technology of the CPU's themselves. The Core archetecture just happens to get more instructions done in a clock cycle than the Athlon or the Phenom.
 
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