Would You Buy A Core 2 Duo System Today?

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Would you buy Core 2 Duo today?

  • Yes, right away

    Votes: 103 25.8%

  • Yes, but with my next upgrade

    Votes: 158 39.6%

  • No. I''ll stick with AMD

    Votes: 83 20.8%

  • I don''t intend to buy anything

    Votes: 55 13.8%
  • Total voters
    399
I just wanted to add that I have a personal moral problem buying from a company which invests so heavily in a war-mongering, apartheid system.

Intel has a multi-billion dollar Fab plant in Israel. We are currently getting drawn into a WW3 and lost many lives in the 9-11 disaster because of Israel's influence in the USA through their powerful AIPAC lobby -- the most powerful in Washington -- and Jewish control of the media and politics. This is not good. I don't want my kids dying in some stupid war for Israel.

I hate to say it, because there are a lot of good people at Intel, but personally and morally I would never touch an Intel product.

AMD has huge Fab's in Dresden Germany and in Austin Texas. I can deal with that.
 
I'll be replacing my current rig, Athlon XP-M 2600+, with a Conroe E6600 sometime next month, or at the latest early September. I originally planned to build a new rig earlier this year, but after reading about both Conroe and AM2, I decided to wait.

I found the preliminary benchmarks released by Intel to be intriguing even though they were controlled result. Still, I think at that point I decide to kill my planned upgrade to an Athlon 64 X2 4600+. That decision basically solidified when AMD announced that there will not be any significant difference in performance between an AM2 and S939 Athlon of the same model.

The flood of reviews after the NDA expired, basically confirmed those results Intel released back in March. I expected the performance would be good, but lower than what Intel benchmarked. Apparently Intel didn't do too much exaggeration.

AMD's price cut's will make their CPUs more attractive, but I think overall Conroe offers the best bang for buck for most people who will be building a totally new system.
 
The next upgrade I make will be from the ground up, and based on what's actually around (and not what might hypothetically appear in the next 12 months or exists as an unsubstantiated rumour).

So, it'll be a Core Duo E6600 with a suitable motherboard, my existing 7900GT, 2GB RAM, a pair of SATA-II hard drives and an X-Fi sound card.
 
I'm in a crossroad in my life.
1 I could buy a Conroe computer with the basics.
2 Use my $3000 to buy a Stencel machine so I could make more money with Glass etching and my company will run faster. Then buy a better system with the money I made.
 
Is the fact that Intel has installed the "Trusted Platform Module" escaped everyone's notice, including the media and reviewers ????

Public opinion has beat this idea down every time it pops up, now Intel has married it to one of the most desirable chips in many years and managed to keep the whole thing quiet.

Now think about this... Apple will soon start using this Intel Core 2 Duo chip as well and that leaves only AMD as the lone holdout that has refused to install this "Cop on a chip".

Want to install your purchased copy of something on your other pc too? NOPE, none of that.
Did your brother drop by to install something he bought?
NOPE, none of that.
Got Media Licenses to match all those media files?
NOPE, none of that.
No telling what other uses the Movie, Record and Software industry has in store for us. I just know I dont want to be a part of it.

I for one, do not want anyone to be able to reach in my system and start disabling software. I buy tons of software and register almost none of it, that would probably set off a flag too.

Sure there's good reasons for having "Trusted Computing" on my PC. All the other crap they stuck in there has the smell of big Media and large Corporations all over it.

I've been waiting for months for the Conroe to be released, but now, I wouldnt touch it.

I'm buying whatever AMD is selling now.


Wake Up People - Google "Trusted Computing" and "Trusted Platform Module" if you want to get a taste of what Im talking about.
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Did it escape your notice that AMD was also a founding member of the TCG? No where in Intel's specs (or AMD's for that matter) do I see any mention of a TPM on the actual CPU, and I believe that this issue will be around for quite a while. Vista, for instance, will release with only a limited TPM capability, and that will have to be specifically activated by the user.

Haven't yet had the chance to see how many desktop MB manufacturers are implementating this, but I'm personally looking forward to complete implementation of this technology. Most of the servers we get at work today have the implementation enabled, to a lesser or greater degree, and we are somewhat more secure for it.

I'd love to have full implementation at home so that I'd not have to worry quite so much about malware, spyware, or the websites that I might do e-commerce with. I've personally had to have my credit card account stopped and a new card issued twice in the past 18 months. I do travel a bit, so might not be from a web site... But to lessen the risks that we all take would go a long way.

As to M$ and their blasted 'call Bill every day' implementation of WGA, that's not part of TPM.

If you're worried about TPM, keep your favourite non-tpm computer offline and don't worry about it. What no one can see won't hurt them. Pirate those DVD's... Use that pirated software... Me, I'd prefer to be a bit safer. I also feel I should pay for what I use, unless it's specifically released under a shareware or freeware license. (I love bitmeter....)

BTW, Apple's implementation will be a TPM chip on the MB.
 
like most i'm very impressed with conroe

BUT you'll find me in the camp that says don't trust iINTEL until there is a non-monopoly CPU market

-in the style of ATi/nVIDIA, that's what i would like to see

be careful buying iNTEL, we've all only just fostered something resembling competition

my two cents too
 
Nope. I recently asked the guys on the forum about my new PC I was planning to build. And because I am a Uni student who's independant, I couldn't afford much. I ended up buying an X2 4400 and 2GB RAM with some other goodies included.

Personally I would feel foolish to buy the best when it comes out, as they have several issues they will probably have to iron out, and also the price of "yesteryear's" hardware is infinately cheaper.

My best recommendation is for all potential customers to wait some time after the best of the best is released. I was reading a forum from another site the other day and a gentleman was urgent to replace his P4 3.6, and I thought that was rather ludicrous. The last-Gen P4 series, or AMD's lineup is not all of the sudden terrible due to this new release.

It is good practice to save those extra dollars, and if you're an avid gamer, put it towards a good video card, or more memory etc.
 
I'm sorry

but anyone who rushes out and buys a Core 2 that anything greater that 3200+ or P4 3ghz
is a fool.
It is comparable to Impulse shopping

This may sound strange to some people, but it is your best interests to wait 6 months to see how AMD settles in. and how well conroe Scale in future.

I'm Very Superstitious and believe in Dejavoo

The time before Athlon 64
Athlon XP pummeled Pentium 3
Pentium 3 walked over Pentium 4 Willamette
But enter Northwood 2.4GHZ+

Athlon XP became second class Numbers similar to what we see here with COnroe


Athlon 64 (K8) is here for the long haul Large speed bumps over the next 6 months should be expected its a matter of which one handles Higher Bandwidth needs

Does Athlon 64 Scale as high as we a led to believe thanks to ondie Memory Controller and Hypertransport?
What the Hell does Athlon 64 need with Dual Channel DDR2 at 800mhz, it clearly isnt using/saturating it, will it sometime soon?

I'm waiting months to make my decision.
Pentium Pro (P6) scaled from 200MHz to 1.4GHZ Pentium 3 (Tualitin)
Is K8 AMDs Pentium Pro?
 
carl0ski said:
I'm sorry

but anyone who rushes out and buys a Core 2 that anything greater that 3200+ or P4 3ghz
is a fool.
It is comparable to Impulse shopping

quote]

I whole heartedly agree with you. Its just a matter of whether your PC is doing its job, and the only reason I upgraded to my new Athlon system was because my last system died from a power surge. As I said earlier, It's good practice to save up those dollars and spend them on, for example, upgrading your current PC, or in my case, servicing my '83 Mazda 323 and paying next week's rent!

I will concede however, and admit that If I had no PC now and were in dire need of a powerful system, then Core 2 would certainly be worth a look.
Click to expand...
 
Rather than buying the new Core 2 Duo, I'll just see if overclocking my current PC will help it keep up. Maybe with liquid nitrogen cooling I'll finally be able to push this lil' 486 past 150MHz (AMD 486 to 586 133MHz Upgrade)
Click to expand...

I tried something similar once.

Remember Pentium 100Mhz? 1.5x66?

well i had a super Socket 7 Motherboard with overclocking of upto 133MHZ fsb.
whats 133mhz x 1.5
not bad for a pentium 1

oh well the k6-2 400 did 660mhz on that board :)
6 x 112MHZ


Shame the board needed minimum 2x mulitplier
dam lock Intel chips 🙁
 
Actually AMD wasnt a founding member, it was IBM, Intel, Microsoft. AMD signed on after the founding of the alliance, along with a boatload of other companies.

I bet you'll be loving it when you can no longer run Software thats not certified by the alliance as well eh? Such as Freeware, shareware, OS's that dont implement the 'Trusted computing Module'.

You are setting yourself up for a BIG fall, by letting big buisnesses dictate what you can, and cant run on your computers based on some silly certification. Read the articles on the web about the technology, become informed . . .

A few other things to think about, do WE really need every piece of hardware phoning home all_the_time ? Whats to stop these companies once they've got you in a choke hold, from using this technology in thier own favor, to potentialy steal data from your system, spy on your activities etc ? What happens when this technology somehow goes wrong, and suddenly that key you used to unlock the data on your HDD's no longer works ? Tough luck ?

I can go on for days about this 'technology', but it seems to favor the big buisnesses more than anything else, locking you into thier products. It my belief that perhaps, this is the right thing to do, but the wrong way to go about it.

Big buisness should NEVER have that much control over any one persons life. If you're an IT tech, systems admin, whatever, talk YOUR company into buying the technology, dont force the rest of us who know how to secure our systems already into the BS. Those of us, who arent lazy, and KNOW how to secure a system, would like a say in the matter also . . .
 
There is always a plan of "oh you should wait ot see the copmanies counter product." Well, alot of times people can't wait, or would rather not. I have no intention of waiting to see what AMD will crank out because in the here and now, when I have the ability to buy a Core 2 Duo, I will. You can always wait for the next chip, always wait for the competitions response, but at some point you just have to buy it. There is no best time anymore, just whenever you feel its time.

The policy of waiting 6 months - 1 year just for prices to drop is a bit ridiculous in my book, but nothing wrong with it. It is two diffrent sides of the same coin. Some people live on the edge of technology (early adopters) and some wait for product maturity (second movers), I prefer to be the former. That is just how I am. Is it more expensive? Quite, but it is the way I like to do things.

I have a Venice 3800+ OC'd and I am looking forward to a Core Duo 2 (or quad depending on timing). I could use the extra processing power. Am I a fool? Not by a long shot, just allocate my money diffrently than you. Nothing wrong, just 2 diffrent points in the marketing spectrum
 
There is always a plan of "oh you should wait ot see the copmanies counter product." Well, alot of times people can't wait, or would rather not. I have no intention of waiting to see what AMD will crank out because in the here and now, when I have the ability to buy a Core 2 Duo, I will. You can always wait for the next chip, always wait for the competitions response, but at some point you just have to buy it. There is no best time anymore, just whenever you feel its time.

The policy of waiting 6 months - 1 year just for prices to drop is a bit ridiculous in my book, but nothing wrong with it. It is two diffrent sides of the same coin. Some people live on the edge of technology (early adopters) and some wait for product maturity (second movers), I prefer to be the former. That is just how I am. Is it more expensive? Quite, but it is the way I like to do things.

I have a Venice 3800+ OC'd and I am looking forward to a Core Duo 2 (or quad depending on timing). I could use the extra processing power. Am I a fool? Not by a long shot, just allocate my money diffrently than you. Nothing wrong, just 2 diffrent points in the marketing spectrum
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll agree with most of what you said, well atleast about the 'waiting 6 months thing'. This is what I've done in the past myself, along with alot of other people, but current technology isnt like it was, say two years ago or so. Pretty much the 'waiting for the bugs to be ironed out' issue, is really no longer an issue.

However, I will wait until the hardware prices have leveled out, I see no need in paying an extra $200usd to get a CPU two weeks sooner. As you can see, by my sig, my system is somewhat outdated (although it still performs very well IMO), and while I do own a AM2 CPU already, Im still waiting on memory prices to drop a bit, along with a decent motherboard from my preffered manufactuer to arrive (hint: something ABIT, and nForce 590, with a secondary SIL 3132 HDD controller . . .).

Anyhow, thats how I am different from you, and probably some others 😉
 
Nice summary, good to see that opinions from both sides of the house have been covered.

I'm will be replacing my system in the next few weeks and for me it comes down to which will be the best SLI system for my 2 x 7800 GTX's.

I'll go with either a Conroe E6400 or X2 4600+ as they are the same money with an Intel or AMD Nforce 590 motherboard.

I think AMD cancelling the 2MB X2's such as the 4400+ is a huge mistake. Those CPU's may have made AMD look much better against the larger cache Conroes. Probably allows them to pump out more chips with less defects, thus reducing the burden of the price cuts, but it does hurt their performance figures even more.

I'll sit on the fence on which one to get until I see a review of the E6400 which will be the Conroe most of us on a budget will buy. A comparison with the X2 4600+ would even be better.

Conroe would still seem to have the edge in raw performance, but haven't seen anything on SLI which will be my deciding factor.

Personally I like having the price war back on again. If I do decide to go with an X2 they are much more affordable now then a few weeks ago, the more money in MY back pocket the better.
 
Nice summary, good to see that opinions from both sides of the house have been covered.

I'm will be replacing my system in the next few weeks and for me it comes down to which will be the best SLI system for my 2 x 7800 GTX's.

I'll go with either a Conroe E6400 or X2 4600+ as they are the same money with an Intel or AMD Nforce 590 motherboard.

I think AMD cancelling the 2MB X2's such as the 4400+ is a huge mistake. Those CPU's may have made AMD look much better against the larger cache Conroes. Probably allows them to pump out more chips with less defects, thus reducing the burden of the price cuts, but it does hurt their performance figures even more.

I'll sit on the fence on which one to get until I see a review of the E6400 which will be the Conroe most of us on a budget will buy. A comparison with the X2 4600+ would even be better.

Conroe would still seem to have the edge in raw performance, but haven't seen anything on SLI which will be my deciding factor.

Personally I like having the price war back on again. If I do decide to go with an X2 they are much more affordable now then a few weeks ago, the more money in MY back pocket the better.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking Intel doesnt support SLI.

[EDIT]

Ah, never mind, seems nVidia did Intels dirty work for them 😉 Another thing to think about, right now AMD has the upper hand in the memory bandwitdth department (atleast according to all the reviews they did), which may, or may not make much of a noticable difference ( I'm guessing not, but from first hand experience, I couldnt say).
 
I'll do the same as I've always done which is to pick, when I actually have every penny in my hand to spend, the best machine available for my budget (currently looking to H1 07).
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I totally agree. Get your budget together, and then LOOK. AMD isn't going to sit still folks. They have been hustling for the past 3-4 years now. They aren't going to stop now. The sad part is that for all of Intel's fumbling and lackluster products over the years, that they are still a mega-behemoth and were able to ride out of a horrible product line up relatively un-scathed. I am going to wait 3-4 months and see which platform gets me the most for my budget.
 
The conroe looks good for people that are going to build their first rigs. They might be students fresh out of college with their first decent job and have some $$$ to burn. Or, they might be working high schools kids or high school kids with access to their parents' money. The conroe will look mighty fine to these people.

Me? I've got a 939Dual-Sata2 mobo, a venice 3200+ cpu, and a Radeon 9800 Pro card. Got the 939dual cuz I couldn't get a new card. I think I will upgrade my video card to a nice pci-e (maybe a 7900 GT) before I would upgrade my whole system. After the card, with AMD's price cuts, a new x2 might suffice.

I just hope that AMD and Intel do not start acting like the airlines and price cut themselves to death. That would be dreadful for everybody.
 
I don't exactly understand the hype. Everything is just back to normal - Intel leads, AMD follows. Always been, always will be. Too little realism shown around.

It's not that AMD had better CPU. Intel had worse.

And expect even greater performance differences as software evolves.

Someone said, that Core 2 Duo is competting with something 2 years old and the lead is to be expected. But actually, Core is 12 years (think of its Pentuim Pro roots) old and is competting with something 7 years old (Athlon64 is basically the same as Athlon. The performance leap came solely from the integrated memory controller and more importantly, the addition of SSE2 block).

Been working on several AMD and Intel platformrs in the past 10 years and my personal machines always have been Intel - Pentium II, III and 4. The next one will be, of course, Core 2 Duo.

I'm deeply disappointed from all AMD machines I've been working on, because all of them have been obviously slower and far more unstable than Intel's.

One last point: Intel machines are longer lasting, not only because of their superior stability, but because of the new instruction sets Intel incorporate periodically: the software adopts them and runs faster, while on AMD platforms the support is lagging behind.
 
Patrick Schmid gave a pretty arrogant answer to SunAngel when he pointed out the recent headline of the Core review, "Core 2 Duo Knocks Out Athlon 64".

Not that it matters that much, but it's interesting to check out THG's headline at the first A64 review, September 23rd, 2003: "AMD's Athlon 64 Has Arrived: the Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 (and Intel's P4 Extreme)". Now, isn't that a bit more conservative? 8O
 
With the resources that Intel has on hand, they should be able to wipe the floor with AMD. With roughly six times the revenue and resulting profit, Intel can outspend AMD any day of the week. It's been nice to see AMD do what it has been able to do, considering the resources it has compared to Intel.
 
My question is this... are the Core 2s 64 bit? I mean Vista is coming out, and will take 64 bit and make it more mainstream. Or, if you aren't going the Windows route, then Linux has been 64 bit for some time.

So my question is, are the Core 2s 64 bit? Because if not then I'm sorry, but I will still regard the Intel processors as crippled, and cannot view Intel as having regained a leadership position. It is like someone in a wheelchair. Sure they may be able to spin those wheels really fast, but they are still missing half their functionality.
 
Someone said, that Core 2 Duo is competting with something 2 years old and the lead is to be expected. But actually, Core is 12 years (think of its Pentuim Pro roots) old and is competting with something 7 years old (Athlon64 is basically the same as Athlon. The performance leap came solely from the integrated memory controller and more importantly, the addition of SSE2 block).
Click to expand...

Alright, so Intel's new amazing architecture is something from 12 years ago, and AMD's is from 7 years ago. Or maybe we should say that they gave up on something good to muck around with Netburst for 5-6 years, only to realize that what they ended up was worse than something they were working with a decade before.
 
Patrick Schmid gave a pretty arrogant answer to SunAngel when he pointed out the recent headline of the Core review, "Core 2 Duo Knocks Out Athlon 64".

Not that it matters that much, but it's interesting to check out THG's headline at the first A64 review, September 23rd, 2003: "AMD's Athlon 64 Has Arrived: the Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 (and Intel's P4 Extreme)". Now, isn't that a bit more conservative? 8O
Click to expand...


lol, good spot, caught them with their pants down around their ankles.

Is TG aiming it's site at the typical "The Sun" reader now with these kinds of headlines? Come on TG back to some professional journalism please.
 
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