Intel i3 i5 i7 vs AMD Phenom 2x4

[Gordon Jennings]

Which is faster?
Which is better overall?

 

[p1n3apqlexpr3ss]

Fastest is the i7 975 extreme edition
Price/performance ratio, either a phenom II x4 955BE or a intel i5 750

 

[shubham1401]

All are good depending on budget.
i7 being the fastest.

 

[randomizer]

Depends on what you are doing, and how you define "better."

 

[andy5174]

Absolute performance wise:
i7-975 is the most powerful CPU for PC, but the LGA1366 i7-980X which is a 6-core CPU will be released soon.

Cost-performance ratio wise:
In the US, i5-750 is the best in cost-performance ratio and more than adequate for any job today.

In most other countries, PII-955 is the best in cost-performance ratio and sufficient when paired with single high end graphic card(HD5870) or two mid-range cards in CF(2x HD5770).

 

[keithlm]

Concerning "Cost Performance" ratio: In the United States the readily available prices are:

i5-750 : $195.00

PhII 945 : $150.00

PLEASE NOTE: The i5-750 with it's "turbo-feature" enabled is about equal to the Phenom II 940 @ 3.0 Ghz. (The 940 is an older version of the 945 that did not support AM3.)

This can easily be seen in the following Phoronix-test-suite comparison: http://cid-4ff12cafc7aafd28.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/merge-6106.pdf
(The PHII is on the left and the i5-750 is on the right. When only one result is shown that means the test was not run for the other chip.)

Please take note that is not a totally fair comparison since the i5-750 system has twice as much memory and it seems to be using a RAID-0 for the drive system versus a single drive for the AMD, which at least is an older Raptor. But even with those handicaps the Phenom II 940 has no problem competing with the i5-750. The i5-750 does better in the tests that the Intel chips are known to perform well at. (Super-Pi, FFmpeg, Byte, 7-zip etc.) But for the most part the Phenom II 940 @ 3.0Ghz performs better overall. Also notice that the AMD system had the "Cool'n'quiet' enabled which actually is detrimental to benchmark results; if the tester had disabled that feature the AMD results would have been between 3%-5% better.

BTW: If desired anybody can search the Phoronix database and get more results that would verify the values of the tests that are in that PDF. These two sets of results were chosen because it is the same version of Linux and the same version of Phoronix.

It is generally a good idea to ignore memory and disk benchmarks when doing a true comparison. (i.e., IOZONE, DBENCH, THREADED IO, BLOGBENCH TESTS.) Especially because of the differences in disk systems. (I.e. some people like to count how many tests are in a benchmark suite and then count how many one "wins" vs "loses" each chip has. But using that simpleton system without consideration of useless comparative tests would give misleading results.)

 

[andy5174]

Wait for i5-750 to drop back to $159.99 at Microcenter if you have one nearby.

Or you could grab a i7-860 for $200 at Microcenter.

 

[keithlm]

Wait for i5-750 to drop back to $159.99 at Microcenter if you have one nearby.

Or you could grab a i7-860 for $200 at Microcenter.

Since not everybody has a Microcenter near to them then it is not always cheaper to purchase from Microcenter so you can't really claim those prices objectively. (Yes I've seen several posters on this forum pretty much demand that everybody must use Microcenter.) It would cost me about $40.00 to drive round-trip to a Microcenter which kind of defeats the purpose of "saving".

The easy and readily available average price of the i7-860 is $280.00 and the i5-750 is $195.00


BTW: Here is a comparison of the i7-920 at 3.6Ghz against a Phenom II at 3.6Ghz. (The tester claimed it was running at 3.66Ghz but the testing system's system info said 3.6Ghz.) It performs better in 58% of the non-disk/non-memory benchmarks that can easily be compared. This is not as clear of a "win" as many people claim.

http://cid-4ff12cafc7aafd28.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/merge-9267.pdf