Phenom II X4 965 vs Core i5 750

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merrill541

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Apr 13, 2010
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Hello everyone,

Which would be better for a gaming computer, the Phenom II X4 965 C3 or the Core i5 750? I would go with the Core i5 but I am wary of the reduced bandwidth with the discrete graphics card that I read about on the lga 1156 chipset. I plan on using the Radeon HD 5770 with this processor.

Thanks
 
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That's a tough question. For gaming.. I'd probably just get the Phenom II X4 (only if you're at least getting an AMD 790X chipset based motherboard at the very least).

If you're going to be using your PC for other things let us know (like 3D imaging, Multimedia encoding etc). Because taking other factors (other than gaming that is) into consideration will change the recommendation.

Peace.
 
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Depends on usage.

Phenom II lags behind in productivity apps, gaming performance is equal. So if you do lots of encoding and such the i5 is better.

As for your graphics card, keep this in mind:
- If you use one graphics card, it doesn't matter which one you use (all chipsets on the market today offer at least one full x16 path, so that's fine).
- For crossfire/SLI, neither is perfect, but the 790FX is better in that respect.

Overall, I'd sum it up like this:

- AM3 offer excellent upgrade paths
- i5 is more powerful in productivity and consumes less power
- Gaming performance is equal

So if upgrading is important, get the 965. If not, get the i5.
 
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You could go with the PII 955 and the bottleneck of your system will still be the gpu.
 
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both perform similar... but the core i5 has an pretty high overclocking headroom... why not wait for the thuban x6 processors ?? they are priced almost similarly... though i must admit they don't make any sense if the processors are used exclusively for gaming...
 
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Overall gaming performance is very similar between the two. The i5 is a little more expensive, but is also a little faster for non-gaming applications.
The x8/x8 bandwidth for SLI and Crossfire will not noticeably impact your performance with current GPUs (the 5970 maybe, but yeah), though as GPUs continue to get better, that could become an issue in the future.
The AMD setup is a better choice for upgradability as the AM3 socket is going to be continuing for now, and AMD has been good about making new CPU's compatible with older sockets. I would go AMD right now over the i5.
I would also wait a little bit longer for the 890FX chipset to come out and the Thuban processors- may not be what you get in the end, but may drop the prices on the stuff you are looking at now.
 
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With a 5770 they will perform almost exactly the same. Also- if you leave them at stock clock speeds, then they would perform about the same as well. The 965 stock clock is 3.4 as opposed to the i5 at 2.6, so clocked at 3.6 is only a 200MHz increase for the 965, and a 1000MHz increase for the i5. So yes- if you OC a bunch, the i5 will be a bit better, but if you leave them stock, you won't see much difference.
 
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Finally someone did this.

LegionHardware is the website JennyH used to claim was trust worthy... I wonder if she still thinks them to be trust worthy.

Remembering all the flack I used to take when I suggested that a GPU bottleneck was what was holding Core i7 back. What you also notice is that i5 is slightly faster than i7 at times while other times the i7 is faster than the i5 (I think that the conversion process I used to bang on about caused by an incompatibility between the PCI Express communication protocols and the QPi protocols is showing as well as the obvious 8x, 8x configuration limitation of the Lynnfield platform could explain why, in some cases, the i7 ends up quicker than the i5).

You just made my day.

Now here's the question.. should I go post hunting and expose JennyH here (for all the crap I had to endure from her regarding this) or should I let it go, sit back.. have a beer and relax?

Hmm... I think I'll let it go.
 
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JennyH is all about misrepresenting the respective positions of Intel and AMD.

Exposing her for what she is may save a noob from misdirecting their hard earned(and possibly in short supply) cash.

There is a public good involved in exposing her unreasonableness.

 
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I agree- let out what you know so that everyone can be informed about the issues. Like I said- that particular Legionhardware review is not a valid comparison. We all know that the i5 and i7 are faster, clock for clock, than the AMDs, but thats why they are clocked differently.

All things come down to this- for gaming the i5 and the phenom2 965 are pretty much even (there are plenty of Tom's reviews, as well as reviews elsewhere that show this pretty clearly.)
 
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Clock for clock applies to anyone overclocking considering both chips make it to 4ghz. Most of us OC.

Yeah Emo I jumped for joy when I found this. The first properly done article (according to jenny's view of 'proper') that shows AMDs gap in performance. Check out part one as well it shows more in depth i7/i3 vs phenom ii x2/x4

I actually made a "told ya so" thread a little while back hoping jenny would show up and try to bash legionhardware after praising them for their dreadedly bottlenecked article. Did she? No. 🙁
 
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Raidur- thats true, there is a bit of a difference, but really- the difference is not even enough to notice as they are all way into the playable range. Also note- at 2560x1600 at 4.0GHz, the Phenoms actually BEAT(average FPS) the i3 and i7 at equal clocks. Also note that Phenom II vs. i5 at 3.6 at 2560x1600, the difference is 1.7 FPS average. Really, all I'm getting at is that really, you will never notice the difference between an i5 and a PhenomII 965 when gaming, even when both OCed to 3.6 or 4.0 GHz.
Edit- also just realized that is 5870 crossfire. Move to a single card, and you'll see even less difference. The OP is even planning on a single 5770- you will see ZERO difference between the two with a 5770 at any reasonable resolution.
 
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Agreed fly.

This is where all of our old discussion was in the past.

Before all we had with 5870 xfire benches was 25x16 resolution, obviously bottlenecking the cards. Yes there are benches with lower resolutions to show the difference but it was argued that intel is "just better at lower resolutions!". So this is the first unflawed review with strong enough GPUs to show the difference between the CPUs.

Very true a single 5870 would warrant zero difference between the CPUs. (Besides cpu dependent games)

I'm just tired of seeing Phenom II = i5/i7 in gaming.

A couple years down the road when games/GPUs become a little more demanding we'll see i5 make more sense.

It iis true that in most situations they are equal, but this is only because both CPUs are very strong, and are overkill for most GPU setups.

I just want to see people seeing/understanding that they are not equal, and that intel is just overkill. They may be 'equal for your uses' but they are not nearly equal in terms of performance.

Every day I read here i7 = phenom ii in gaming. When it should be 'for YOU', or 'for NOW'.

Hell C2Q tops phenom ii if you OC, in gaming.
 
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Your source uses generic cpu titles and doesn’t have any chip at stock. What is it suppose to prove? A heavily overclocked i5 beats a lightly overclocked Phenom II X4. It also shows an underclocked i7 being beat by a Sempron 100……

Just because Jenny says it a good site doesn’t mean it is. Here is a bit better review.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5870-cpu-scaling_5.html#sect1
It doesn’t have the i5 but it does compare the PII x4 at stock to i7 at stock and overclocked. Go to the testbed and methods sections for all the information on the cpus. It shows the bottleneck shifting to the gpu as the resolution is increased.
 
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Also note that in that review for the 965 they used a AM2+ GX motherboard (8x/8x crossfire) and ddr2 ram and still perform quite well in crossfire. I'm sure if they would use a 790FX board and ddr3 ram it would be much better.
 
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Yeah I've tried that one llama but because of the AM2+ it was dismissed.

Jenny liked legion because of the GPU bottlenecked 5970 scaling article they did that showed Phenom II leading. I don't think it has much to do with the site itself.

Stock settings would be for those who aren't overclocking. I'd like to believe most of the people here and most of the people using 5870 crossfire would be doing at least a slight overclock. Especially considering you'll be bottlenecking the cards on any CPU @ stock. (Not including the extremes)
 
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I do believe that most people here do overclock, but overclocking isn’t a guarantee. That’s the only reason I see a run at stock being useful; the performance at stock is what you should expect and anything over is a plus.
 
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20%+ is pretty much guaranteed (most do it on stock voltage) on all intel CPUs (yorksfield/wolfdale and newer/better), and AMD gets 5-15% (5% comes from the high-stock Phenom II 965). This is all assuming the mobo/ram are up to the task of course.

I do agree overclocking is never a guarantee but iven never seen a CPU listed above go under those percentages.
 
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