[citation][nom]ScrewySqrl[/nom]perhaps AMD has passed its peak and can no longer compete with Intel. we saw this in the 1990s with Cyrix, which made 386 and 486 chips that could compete with Intel's 80x86 line, but fell down after the 150 MHz point, then vanished.AMD bashed Intel aside with the Athlon series in 2005. But ever since every iteration is falling behind. the FX is a terrible chip as a flagship. Trinity is supposed to be better (especially with improvements to integer calculation), but it will, even if fixed, be a generation behind ivy bridge, maybe 2 if it still only compete with i7-920 of so.that far behind is a sign of dying.[/citation]
untill recently, and i even say now, amd still provides great value for their chips.
a 955 black costs 125$ and 965 costs 130
an i5 quad core at the lowest costs 190 with a 2500k costing 210
and an i7 costing 300$
id still go phenom over the i series as most things that the i series excels at can be off loaded to the gpu, and in many places the phenom option is only 10% slower. here lets do it this way
phenom 955 at 125, i5 at 190 and i7 at 300
for it to be wroth the cost, the i5 would need to be better than the 955 in everything by 53% and the i7 would need to be better by 240%
now to qualify this a bit, my only requirements for this were a quad core cpu, i went with the 955 because its an unlocked cpu, and to be fair its also the one i have, the i5 and i7 both needed to be quad core, and 3ghz, the personal minimum, in the i7 case, there wasnt anything lower than 300 and sandybridge, and under 3ghz.