AMD or Intel?

[Slechtvalk]

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

ALL these cpu's have similar gaming performance;
Phenom X6 series cost $180-240
i5 750 $280
i5 2500S $230
i5 2400S $200
i7 875,870,860 $290
phenom II X4 955 $140
phenom II X4 965 $160

Why would you want to spend $100 more for a cpu when you gain nothing??
You could almost build a whole system around an phenom II X4 955 for just the price of an i7 875!! AND have almost identical gaming performance.

Most games are gpu depended, with lower resolutions (see below) you see big differences though. (flight)sims are really happy with a fast cpu, but you almost dont see reviews on that. So you would probaly see bigger differences with flight sims then for the examples below.

I saw a very big difference with rise of flight switching from a 8400 to a i7 860, using the same graphics card.

So the best bet you could do even when paying some more is the new sandy bridge processors (when playing simulation games) IMO.

It would for me; to feel if you are on the safe side, not regretting later on, you took a cheaper cpu, and after some time feeling bad you didnt took that faster cpu in this example the current AMD instead of the new sandy i5 or i7.

Test below used an ATI 5870 card. Oh and when buying a new graphics card be sure to get a 2 gig version..