FPSLabs : Smart Money - Why your next rig should use AMD

As someone who literally spends most of their life observing trends in the hardware world, it is surprisingly difficult to make decisions when it comes to purchasing a new computer. Just as you might expect a mediator to have a tough time concluding when they’ve heard both sides of the story and sympathize equally. We’ve seen highs and lows of all processors, all video cards, and all motherboards. We know the problems, we’ve read the reviews, and we know what everything is, or is not, capable of. We follow price changes religiously, and we know that a simple equation for calculating the value of a product is the single most important factor for driving sales of a product in today’s economy.

And that’s why, with all information considered carefully and mulled over with more scrutiny than most could scarcely comprehend, we can make recommendations on computer hardware that might seem to go either against the grain or against the very current of sanity. If you are buying a new computer today, tomorrow, later this week, or even a few months down the road, an AMD processor should be the backbone of your configuration. This choice might seem misinformed or misdirected, but, after all variables have been taken into consideration, the clear value choice in the processor market is invariably AMD.

Why? Phenom II, in part, and economics. It might be best if we go ahead and explain ourselves firstly. If you want the fastest computer possible to play games on and have the money for it, then you would be absolutely stupid to go with anything other than Intel’s latest Core i7 line. Further, there are a number of other instances in which selecting from Intel’s Core 2 lineup would be the wisest choice. Task-specific computers, like those that are used for gaming and gaming only, for example, might be best served by a high-clocked Core 2 Duo. But for budget conscience consumers, users looking for a complete all-around system, and anyone striving to stretch their funds in these very inelastic times, AMD.

When AMD’s new Phenom II came out, it was clear that the expectations and hopes built upon its considerable silicon were overly optimistic. No matter how you slice it, the flagship of the new processor line, the Phenom II X4 940, does not even hold a candle to the competition’s latest. It does, however swallow whole the once-significant gap between AMD processors and Intel processors. More importantly it provided redemption for a company that just over a year prior had gone through what was easily its most disappointing product launch ever. Phenom II could not only compete with Intel’s Core 2 Quad lineup, it could also be overclocked to heights unimaginable with the previous generation.

At launch, Phenom II was priced at $235 and $275 for the 920 and 940 models, respectively (PS: same name much?). Coming to blows with the competing products at this price point was not at all a promising proposition. Fortunately many of the reviews that were published on January 8th cast a favorable light on the new processors, and as a result, recommendations at the $275 and $235 price points poured in.

We won’t beat around the bush and say that the original Phenom parts were any kind of worthwhile products. They were slow, ran too hot, and did not offer any tangible advantages over their counterparts. In light of this information, you might expect that Phenom sat on store shelves untouched for more than a year while customers made the better choice. Well, and very much depending on who you ask, there actually were a couple of reasons that might inspire someone to want to buy a Phenom. AMD made several very smart moves between the Phenom and Phenom II launches. They started to aggressively push the “platform” marketing strategy, they released free, well-made software to allow for enthusiast-level tweaking capabilities, and they maintained lower price points across all platform components.

The value added to those who invest in AMD “platforms” comes in the form of increased usability. While there is some substance to this, a lot of the buzzwords used – like Fusion, and AMD GAME! – are purely marketing flub. AMD’s Fusion for Gaming utility does have its uses, but really the crown jewel of this software suite is AMD’s OverDrive. OverDrive lets you tweak the living daylights out of your system through a graphical interface that actually works. NVIDIA attempted something similar for its graphics cards and motherboards but failed with nTune, and Intel actually has a good solution with IDCC, but its applications are far too limited. OverDrive is what nTune wants to be when it grows up, and it came almost completely out of left field for a company that, in recent years at least, has not been exactly renowned for its friendliness towards overclocking.

What Phenom II brings to the field in terms of added value is primarily one thing: 45nm. A look at the most recent successful processor launches will make it quite clear that new manufacturing processes tend to open the door for all kinds of wonderful things. Lower heat, lower power demand, and greater overclocking headroom are three things that come to mind. You can also fit more stuff on the actual CPU die without making it any bigger physically. AMD did all this with Phenom II, and the result, unsurprisingly, is a shrunken down version of the original Phenom II, with much more L3 cache (2MB to 6MB), a lower heat envelope, significant overclocking headroom, and, most importantly, faster native clock speeds. Phenom II is certainly not a revolutionary part, as the name would suggest, it is simply an evolution of an architecture that had a lot of promise with poor execution. And, as you will find by reading reviews of the new chip, AMD made sure to correct that last bit.

So here’s the basic gist: the Phenom II X4 940 either stomps on or runs toe to toe with Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9400. It is also very close to the Q9550. The Phenom II X4 920 stomps on or runs toe to toe with Intel’s Q9300/Q8200. If we are looking at money alone, then Phenom II X4 is the better choice. However, as a result of very recent pricing adjustments, these products don’t just line up together anymore. Here is the adjusted pricing:

In terms of direct competition, its blatantly obvious what the better choice is. Total cost of ownership is less, too. Consider this: you can buy a Phenom II, a full-featured motherboard on, say, the AMD 790FX chipset, and 4GB of enthusiast DDR2 800 memory, for under $350. Considering the 790FX is the spiritual counterpart to Intel’s X38 chipset or the NVIDIA 780i chipset, you simply cannot piece together a similarly configured computer using a Core 2 Quad at the same price. Pair that $350 with your video card of choice, a hard drive, a case, a power supply, and an optical drive, and you have a terrifyingly fast system for well under $700.

Now let’s look outside of the money box and into other a couple of other areas. One of the side effects of AMD’s whole “platform” marketing strategy has been the rampant propagation of their graphics division into limelight. By literally all accounts, including those of a company who would rather not admit it so, AMD’s HD4800 series graphics cards are absolutely flying off the shelves. It is true that AMD no longer has the performance crown, but what they do have is an undeniably superior value in the high-performance and even extreme-performance sectors. Pairing an AMD graphics card with an AMD processor on an AMD board lets you in to what AMD considers an exclusive AMD club. You have these “AMD GAME!”, “Fusion for Gaming”, and “OverDrive” buzzwords floating around for long enough and it will tempt people to indulge. We have been singing the praises of two cards in particular, the original HD4850 and HD4870, for quite a while. They simply slayed and undercut the competition when launched, and continue to push the boundaries and the notion that great graphics performance does not have to come with a $500 price tag. Considering this, an all-AMD platform does not look too bad anymore.

As stated previously, there are some serious caveats to this AMD recommendation. If you have the money for the highest performance possible and are willing to spend it on a gaming computer, then you will have a very hard time finding anyone make a tangible argument against using Intel’s Core i7. DDR3 prices are dropping by the day, the Core i7-920 mops up with anything AMD can provide, and it easily cannibalizes Intel’s offerings in the under $300 segment. And, although X58 motherboards are still $199 at the least, you’re getting one hell of a motherboard for $199. You certainly can’t build an i7-based machine for under $700, but you can for under $1000, and surely there are and will be people doing just that. Additionally, if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that processor pricing is about as stable as a really fat bird (sorry, could not think of anything more clever to write here). Intel could drop the price of the Core i7-920 or the Core 2 Quad Q9550 and stamp everything that we’ve written in this article null and void. Who knows.

For now, unwaveringly, our recommendation lies with AMD and the new Phenom II X4 processors for your next build if you are looking for a strong system without going crazy on the money side. You can simply do too much with too little for it to be any other way.

Please leave your comments on this article. If we haven’t relayed the fact that we think we might be insane for making this recommendation already, then we’ll just come out and say it: We think we might be insane for making this recommendation. Keep us in check. We will address all concerns in a forthcoming article should it be necessary.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Support FPSLabs! Share and Enjoy: