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I'm talkin Duel core CPU's here. I've heard good and bad about both, so I'm looking for your opinions.

We're looking to upgrade our motherboard and CPU sometime soon (and power supply, our +5 year old 500W isn't cutting it).
I'm just curious if either is clearly better than the other.

Intel was always better IMO but AMD has recently got pretty damn good. I'd go Intel just for security and compatability.

For mainstream uses I wouldn't worry too much about the technical differences (yes, Intel holds a technological edge right now). An AMD chip might be a bit cheaper than the equivalent Intel part. Intel does hold the significant market share advantage and is better recognized - but why let anyone else dictate what you use in your own machine. My current laptop and past computers have all used Intel chips (currently a dual core 2.16 GHz) but it's not like either choice will ruin anything you try to do (the average user wouldn't see a difference in operation).

* In principle I support a competitive AMD just for the sake of competition - to keep Intel honest and spur continuing development from both companies.

In laptops we have always had Intel, purely because they were more readily available. When it comes to our desktops, we've got a horrible collection of Intel/AMD sets over the years. The AMD stuff always worked pretty well, however it never integrated with the rest of the stuff as well as the Intel systems, AMD stuff was never as powerful or as usable as the Intel. personally i think the Intels worked better, but you have to be willing to pay the price for it. An AMD system will work pretty well for most needs however. It depends what your doing. If your gaming, or some other really high power tasks then the Intel might be worth the money, but for any less powerful tasks an AMD processor should be fine.

EDIT: actually, this laptop has a dual core AMD Athlon X2 Tk-57 1.9 ghz, and its always proved fairly good. Its obviously not the most powerful processor ever, however it runs vista fairly competently.

I'm basically looking for something that I won't have to upgrade in the foreseeable future, either for games or applications. So whatever I get it needs to have a long life.
I plan on getting something between a 2.5 - 3.0 Ghz Duel core. So yeah, pricey.

If you want it to last as long as possible, i'd say its safe to go for a Intel. maybe a 2.8 duel core.

Another thing that just came to mind, are modern duel cores more power hungry than a 6 year old single core?

stitch626 wrote:Another thing that just came to mind, are modern duel cores more power hungry than a 6 year old single core?

With modern tech they have significantly improved the performance-to-power-consumption ratio; typical Core 2 Duos for the desktop use around 65W (at peak) IIRC. I read that after the Pentium 4 series became so power hungry as Intel engineers ramped up the clock speeds that the company put an emphasis on greater efficiency in the "Core" architecture (which includes "Pentium dual core") - in fact one of the reasons for going to multi-core procs was to get greater performance without getting killed by the increasing energy needs of crazy clock speeds (plus they are good at multi-tasking, and will get better as more code is optimized to use multi-core procs).

This is a couple months old, but I figure I'd toss my 2 cents in for anyone looking. If you're looking for a mildly expensive, but excellent CPU, look no further than the intel Core 2 Duo E8400.

Here's a quick link from Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115037

Yeah, that's a little better than the one we are getting but with a much larger price tag. So I think I'll stick with my first choice, unless we scrounge up more money of course, in which case, that is an amazing CPU.

So which CPU are you nabbing?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=I69-7500

This one ^ It's really good for it's price... Just below the other one and 40 less...

Wow, that's an amazing CPU for 120 bucks. If I was going to build a computer now, I'd probably pick that one up.

I'm not TOO keen on the differences between the two, but the cashe and bus speeds seem considerably different (as opposed to the minute hertz difference). And from the comments it looks like the 8400 can clock 500 megs faster reasonably.

Still, 40 bucks is 40 bucks, and I doubt the difference in performance is worth it. Good call.

Yeah, the 40 bucks is going towards a $210 motherboard, that is amazing, I'll put it up for you to see when I get homefrom school. I can't get to tigerdirect from school