Bulldozer or Sandy Bridge?

[a0c]

So I have two options,

AMD FX-4100 on a ASUS M5A97
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
8GB RAM
CX500 PSU
NZXT Phantom 410 Case

or

Intel i5-2400 on a BIOSTAR H61MGC
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
8GB RAM
CX500 PSU
COOLER MASTER HAF 912 Case

They both cost around the same price (~$930 USD with a monitor, speakers, aftermarket cooler, keyboard, and a mouse) because I'm using a more costly motherboard and case for the Bulldozer build. I do realize the i5 is much more suited for gaming than the FX, but will the Bulldozer build be somehow better than the Sandy Bridge build because it has a much better motherboard? If not, how much worse will the Bulldozer be in performance because I'm leaning toward the FX at the moment (and plus the Phantom 410 looks nice).

 

[jeremyp1979]

IMO stay away from Biostar mobo's. I would strongly recommend going with SB over anything AMD, if you can swing the extra money.

 

[a0c]

IMO stay away from Biostar mobo's. I would strongly recommend going with SB over anything AMD, if you can swing the extra money.

I've looked all over for an Sandy Bridge mobo that costs about the same, but I haven't found anything. There seems to be a price jump between $50 Intel mobos and $150 Intel mobos, so would it be THAT much of a performance drop if I went with the Bulldozer?

 

[jeremyp1979]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_CPU_Scaling/
It's a pretty big performance increase, up to you if you want to spend the extra money for it or not.

Really soon(in the next few weeks) the i5 2550 should be coming out, and since it doesnt have integrated graphics, it should be a lot cheaper than the 2500k. You might wait until it comes out and build a system then.

 

[a0c]

Looked over the Battlefield 3 benchmarks, and it seems like there's less than a 1 FPS difference. I'll just wait around for the i5 2550 and see if it'll provide enough headroom for a ~$100 motherboard. Thanks for the reply.

 

[a0c]

Oh, one last thing: will the Bulldozer be able to play Skyrim and BF3 on High, maybe Ultra settings? I don't see why overkill with the Sandy Bridge if the slightly cheaper Bulldozer can handle those games easily at 40+ FPS on High settings (according to YouTube benchmarks). It also seems like the FX-4100 can be overclocked 4.0+ GHz stable.

 

[jeremyp1979]

You could actually go with the intel setup, as the processor is so cheap(relatively speaking), and have the chance to upgrade at a later time.

As little as a couple of months ago I was a hard core AMD fan, and wouldn't have even thought about building an AMD system, but frankly, the Intel processors just beat them hands down in nearly every test you can throw at em.

 

[a0c]

Best answer selected by a0c.

 

[jeremyp1979]

The only games where the SB would have a huge increase(>20%), are going to be the very cpu intensive games. With Skyrim it shouldnt be an issue. I'm not entirely sure about BF3, as i havent played it on either of my systems, but with lots of people around on multiplayer games, thats when your CPU is going to slow you down.

 

[SingingThroughTheStorm]

IMO stay away from Biostar mobo's. I would strongly recommend going with SB over anything AMD, if you can swing the extra money.

Why would you stay away from Biostar?