Midrange CPU Roundup: It's Time to Buy

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/28/2007 2:00 AM EST
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  • Justice4all - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link

    I have to strongly disagree with the notion that the Nvidia chipsets listed in this article are "finicky", especially the Quadro based boards.

    I have 15 machines with the M2NBP VM CSM Asus boards running in an electrical engineering environment without a single failure. I also have at least that many M2N based boards running the same engineering applications (Matlab, Cadence, Visual Studio, etc...) with zero failures, BSOD's or issues of any kind. This is across all of the current flavors of Windows and Linux OS's. Multiple machines are also running VMWare with various virtual Linux or Windows based machines.

    Nearly every machine is either running the integrated graphics or an Nvidia based 6,7 or 8 GPU based card. While most of the machines are running Crucial memory (533,667,800) some are currently running with the no name brand sticks from my local parts distributor (the machine I'm typing this on). The only thing all these machines have in common is that they are built using Antec cases and power supplies, which may or may not be the key factor with my experience vs yours.

    All these variables with ZERO failures to date. No issues with drivers, applications or hardware failures period. 30+ machines is a fairly decent sampling IMO, and I think speaks more for the stability of these particular chipsets than what you've presented here. Unless of course your sampling was more than just one or two boards.

    Honestly, it sounds as though you either had issues with ESD or happened to get a bad board or two. If thats the case, I don't think painting the whole family as something to stay away from as being good advice.

    To put this into perspective, I maintain approx 200+ computers with all versions of the major operating systems on the market (Linux,Win,Sol). The computers are everything from tablets to server/workstations and run a large spectrum of the electrical engineering apps. The computers run the gamut from PII's to the latest quad cores. It has been my experience that the Nvidia based machines have been the most pleasurable machines to deal with to date.


    All that said, I still find your site to be very informative when I am trying make purchasing decisions for our department. The only reason for this comment was that it was so out of line with my experiences that I felt compelled to at least show some evidence to the contrary.
  • Zds - Sunday, November 11, 2007 - link

    Very nice and needed article indeed. Most of the systems I consult for friends fall into "bang for the buck" category, so this kind of round-up is just what was needed.

    The only thing I think should have been made clearer was the significance of the idle power consumption. Most of the systems built today spend most of their lifetime sitting idle. Web browsing, document writing, chatting, they all have the processor run practically with no load. So unless you are powering the machine only to game the load power consumption matters, and this kind of systems are very unsuitable for uses like that.

    So what IMO should be included would be power usage comparison with something like 90:10 weight between idle and load power consumption. It would reflect the true impact of these systems to your electricity bill and to the environment. And while electricity is still relatively cheap, altough coming up in price, environment is not. And with low-power system comes the additional advantage to your ears: less noise needed to keep it running.

    Another point is the discrete graphics card is not always an option, even if some light and casual gaming was planned as discrete graphics cards tend to either cost money or be noisy. Naturally there are passive discrete cards, and ones with otherwise acceptable cooling solutions, but those feats take the price of the system to a new level.

    So, with 90:10 idle:load weighting the ranking list would look like this:
    AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz) - 52.2W
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (690G) - 59.2W
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz) - 61.9W
    Intel Pentium E2160 (1.8GHz) - 62.2W
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2GHz) - 64.3W
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.0GHz) - 64.4W
    Intel Pentium E2140 (1.6GHz) - 64.8W
    Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz) - 67.5W

    Too bad there was no load number given to BE-2350 with 690G - it looks like the most promising combination out of these; enough graphics power for casual gaming and lowish power consumption.
  • ShawnD1 - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link

    Thank god he put overclocking as part of the review. It makes the review that much better.
  • Spoelie - Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - link

    "Half Life 2 is finally actually playable on integrated graphics"

    640x480 lowest quality settings??
    It depends on your definition of playable.
    I wouldn't call anything playable below 800x600 to 1024x768 on low to medium settings..
  • zargblatt - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    BOOO!

    This has the smell of intel fanboy. And it sertainly dont help that anandtech has been running Intel commercials for the last 3 months....

    Why are all the test intel stronghold such ad Divx encoding and 3D rendering? And do really midrange PC buyers use their computer for this?

    And why is terrible hardware chosen for AMD?

    I love the concept of comparing processors based on price. But the test has to be relevant to the user of this group, and the charts shouldnt be misleading. By that i mean adding an Intel prosessor way out of pricerange wich always top the charts will sertainly fool the casual reader. Pls remove the 6550 from the gaming tests.

    Also instead of 3d rendering test wich supports sse4, you should do office and web browser rendering tests instead. And adding a midrange gfx cardis much more realistic than a 8800GTX.

  • Justin Case - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    "unfortunately, Penryn will also improve DivX performance by around 10%"

    Unfortunately? Looks like a definite "fortunately" to me!

    A more relevant issue here is how DivX itself evolves. Changes to the software (ex., using SSE4 / SSE5) are likely to have a bigger impact on speed than changes to the CPU. In any case, x.264 is at least as important as DivX, these days.

    Also, this is not quite correct:

    "While we're hearing rumors that Phenom will clock higher than K8, Penryn will be on a cooler running 45nm process, which should allow for even higher clock speeds"

    With both manufacturers going for a "power-conscious" approach, heat is no longer the main determining factor for clock speeds. Phenom / Barcelona is having trouble scaling the clock speed but it is not running too hot. A smaller process by itself does not guarantee higher clock speeds. It does guarantee lower power consumption, though (unless they screw up royally), which can also be a relevant factor when picking a CPU. And, unlike the Xeons, Penryn isn't crippled by FB-DIMM power consumption, so direct CPU power comparisons are more relevant.
  • smokedturkey - Saturday, September 29, 2007 - link

    the ABIT NF-M2 nView is an awesome board, and with your "finicky" Geforce 6150 chipset. Took my Opty 1210 all the way to 3.1 ghz, and it runs Vista x64 and anything I could throw at it just fine. Haven't found memory it won't run nor software/hardware. +1 for Abit!
  • Schugy - Saturday, September 29, 2007 - link

    I don't overclock and I have bought only a few boards so far: The worst was the Asus A7V 133 1.05 (200 €) (didn't support a 2000+ Palomino) that doesn't run stable at all with an Athlon 900B. The total opposite is the cheap (55€) ASRock K7S8XE that runs perfectly stable with athcool energy saving enabled.
    Quite good is the K7S5A that isn't compatible with athcool. That's why the Athlon 900B uses more power than my Sempron 3000+ (Socket A) at idle.
    I'll wait until later revisions of the K10 are available to buy a new PC but it might once again have a SIS chipset on an ASRock mainboard. If you only care about stability you will buy the cheapest board that makes no problems.
    Of course I would reward modern voltage transformers and power saving integrated graphics with a few bucks, if there was a board with which I could integrated/dedicated graphics on the fly. (Wonder if X.org will ever support switching between SIS Mirage III/Ati Mobile Radeon and e.g. ATI 2600)
  • MarkerBCH - Saturday, September 29, 2007 - link

    What would be really valuable is benchmarks of these processors with a midrange GPU like the 860GT/S with default settings. These are the probable upgrades many of us with one of these processors are going to get, and it would be great to see which of these processors would be a bottleneck, and which of them wont.

    Plugging in a state of the art GPU and lower the resolution is great to see the differences between the processors, but it doesnt help us decide if a particular processor is underpowered for a given GPU or if the bottleneck lies elsewhere.
  • sprockkets - Saturday, September 29, 2007 - link

    It did work fine for me, although there are plenty comments about its pickyness on newegg's comments for the board. For me, the DVI didn't work, and who knows why.
  • sprockkets - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    how is it that on page 8 on the graph of the productivity score, that the 2.5ghz athlon scores better than the 2.6?
  • sprockkets - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    I may not consider Biostar a good brand in the past, but their TForce boards for the AMD690G and for the 7025 are excellent. And they have at least solid caps for where they matter most, near the cpu. Those are most likely to blow up.

    Just like the other article, if you want DVI or even HDMI, your motherboard from the Intel camp will cost $120. The worst part is the one from Gigabyte which has HDMI has only a 4x pci-e slot with a physical 16x slot. Good going!

    I'll choose to save $40. But if nVidia ever gets their chipsets for Intel out anytime soon, maybe then. When you use SuSE linux having nvidia as your video card greatly simplifies things.

    I'll second that as well: The Abit 6150 board with that heatpipe and Rubycon caps is awesome.
  • oreo81 - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Whats the deal with all of the prices slanted in Intel's favor?
    Prices direct from Newegg:
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz) $109.99 Anand's price $125 (+ $15)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5GHz) $99.99 Anand's price $115 (+ $15)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (2.3GHz) $84.99 Anand's price $94 (+ $9)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.1GHz) $74.00 (no 4000+) Anand's price $73
    AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz) $86.00 Anand's price $91 (+ $5)

    Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2GHz) $143.99 Anand's price $133 (- $11)
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.0GHz) $124.99 Anand's price $113 (- $12)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 (1.8GHz) $84.99 Anand's price $74 (- $11)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 (1.6GHz) $74.99 Anand's price $64 (- $11)

    Honestly, how can you compare low priced processors when the prices are obviously slanted in Intel's favor. When comparing the X2 5000+ to the E4500 (As the article does), there is a $34 price difference which could buy you a X2 5600+. Now don't go off about how this is one retailers prices bull crap, take a look around, the prices might be a little different, but the outcome is the same. Please Anandtech, give us a non biased processor match up.
  • wdb1966 - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    Better AMD motherboard choices could have been made too.
    Gigabyte's MA69GM-S2H and Abit's NF-M2 nView would have been the best and obvious choices...makes you wonder, eh?
  • FrankThoughts - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    How about we try for even more fair prices, eh? Newegg is just one source. Searching Google products I find:

    AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz) $109.99 @ Newegg (+$15 vs. AT)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5GHz) $99.99 @ Newegg (+$15 vs. AT)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (2.3GHz) $84.99 @ Newegg (+$9 vs. AT)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.0GHz) $68.99 @ eWiz (+$4 vs. AT)
    AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz) $86.00 @ Newegg (+$5 vs. AT)
    Average difference: +$9 extra cost on AT's quoted price

    Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33GHz) $170.99 @ Newegg
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2GHz) $125.00 @ eWiz (-$8 vs. AT)
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.0GHz) $123.99 @ xPCgear (+$11 vs. AT)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 (1.8GHz) $79.57 @ Provantage (+$6 vs. AT)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 (1.6GHz) $65.79 @ eWiz (+$2 vs. AT)
    Average difference: ~$3 savings on AT's quoted price

    Now while that might be unfair, let's consider that AT probably just looked at Intel and AMD prices rather than scouring the 'net to see what you might actually pay. Take that into account, and the price discrepancies aren't at all surprising. Demand for the Intel chips is a LOT higher than AMD parts, and thus many are actually selling at prices slightly higher than expected. On the AMD side, demand is going to be very low, especially on the higher priced parts, and to compensate the retailers have to slash prices.

    The bottom line doesn't change in the article, I don't think. If you're trying to save money, would you build someone a $66 E2140 system or a $69 X2 4000+? Or maybe that should be a $80 E2160 vs. the $85 4400+? Either way, I know which I would generally recommend. But there's a catch, of course: decent AMD platform motherboards are generally $20 cheaper as well.

    If you're overclocking -AT ALL-, there's no reason to even glance at AMD right now. Putting on the best HSF in the world isn't going to help AMD reach much higher, perhaps 2.8GHz if you're lucky. But $50 on cooling for a $80 CPU? Get real! You'd be looking at a Core 2 long before you reached that point (I hope, at least).

    Then the other concern is motherboards. Well, first, some of these boards (i.e. abit NF-M2 someone mentioned) is out of stock many places, and it's probably not being produced anymore. Others simply didn't meet their requirements, and I'm guessing Anand didn't want to try and review 20 possible motherboards prior to running benches. I don't really fault him for picking something that at least *worked*. The ASUS P5K-V might be more expensive, but it doesn't look like the Biostar G33 equivalent would have changed results much.

    Basically, the article gives a reasonable representation of the state of the CPU market in my experience. Prices are off a bit, but so what? I still wouldn't bother with an AMD CPU in most desktops right now. It's just not enough of a price benefit. They're not bad, but they're also not great either. Stock performance is about equal in terms of price, once everything is taken into account.
  • TheJian - Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - link

    You're totally off. Lets take a look at your pricing again:
    Provantage, Ewiz and xPCgear you quote DO NOT INCLUDE SHIPPING! I checked all and they are all $8! Guess we can toss all those out eh? They all end up ABOVE Newegg and newegg is 3 day shipping (FREE). Oh, BTW your provantage price doesn't even include a FAN! It's a freaking OEM price...ROFL.

    So lets go back to the newegg pricing:

    Whats the deal with all of the prices slanted in Intel's favor?
    Prices direct from Newegg:
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz) $109.99 Anand's price $125 (+ $15)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5GHz) $99.99 Anand's price $115 (+ $15)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (2.3GHz) $84.99 Anand's price $94 (+ $9)
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.1GHz) $74.00 (no 4000+) Anand's price $73
    AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz) $86.00 Anand's price $91 (+ $5)

    Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2GHz) $143.99 Anand's price $133 (- $11)
    Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.0GHz) $124.99 Anand's price $113 (- $12)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 (1.8GHz) $84.99 Anand's price $74 (- $11)
    Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 (1.6GHz) $74.99 Anand's price $64 (- $11)

    Looking at this AGAIN we see you should be comparing the 2.3ghz AMD to the 1.8ghz Intel (4400+ vs. E2160). I used these because we have exact pricing match here. Extrapolate as you desire for others. But you get the point. If we look at anand's benchmarks you can clearly see the 2.3ghz AMD would come out on top on ALMOST all benchmarks. A quick check shows the 4200+ at 2.2ghz wins nearly every benchmark in anand's tests vs the E2160 at 1.8ghz...I.E. another 100mhz would just make it even better for AMD likely giving them a victory across the board...NOT LOSING constantly.

    Taking another look at say the 5200/5000+ (brisbane or winsor...both $119/124) vs. Intel's E4400 (which is currently $129 not $125 quoted above..pricing changed a bit in a bad way so this is even more towards AMD) again all from newegg today: We see in Anandtech's article that performance is totally AMD in gaming (or one tie), slightly Intel in sysmark and a wash in media encoding depending on benchmark used (divx=Intel WMP9=AMD Quicktime=AMD Itunes=Intel). 3D rendering is 3 for AMD and 2 for Intel. Again a totally close race here slightly leaning towards AMD with more victories on their side. If you use correct pricing this article would come out a wash at best and not an Intel landslide as the article implies!

    I'm not even going to get into the board choices as the other guy hit it on the head already. HOWEVER, the entire crux of this article is PRICING. If you're starting off with completely slanted pricing in favor of Intel Anand's article is totally biased from the get go and utterly useless. I have no idea where he got his pricing but considering they quote newegg all the time in articles it seems fishy at best that they weren't used here. On top of that the perfect match for Intel's 4400 price was the 2.3ghz AMD and it's suspiciously missing from benchmarks. Granted it's because of pricing disparity if you believe the article, however I think I just blew that out of the water. Are we comparing PRICING I can buy or something bought in lots of a thousand which NONE of us finds useful? Nobody could argue about newegg pricing which is precisely why the other poster used them. EVERYBODY here knows who they are. I've never even heard of 2 of the places you quoted (only ewiz)...LOL.

    Do some homework before you spout this crap. Unlike you said this totally changes the article (as the previous poster stated...It's a HUGE difference). And you called him a fanboy?...LOL. "Prices are off a bit, but so what?"...ROFLMAO. Pricing is the whole point of this article, correct? Just about the only point I agree with you on is overclocking (which very few people do)...Oh and AMD boards are cheaper (you said $20...and thats about right...so AMD comes out even better then eh?). If you consider the $20 you said AMD boards save and put that $20 in the video card AMD blows Intel away for gaming. Which most of us use our pc's for eh? Word has all day to wait on you but in gaming the card matters more than cpu in 90% of the games.

    Considering 95% of the world doesn't overclock the above statements mean a lot. Having said that I bought a core2 4300 (1.8ghz) and run it at 3ghz on air. Only because I don't need more although it's cold and the fan never goes hot (even in TX...LOL). I have water i need to re-install (koolance) but since it's so cool I'll wait until I need above 3ghz before even bothering running water again in my system. Note I just upgraded from an X2 3800+ which I ran at 2.6ghz. :) Straight out of the box on both, didn't bother going past the bios for either. Boot, OC, prime95 x 2. HEHE. I really loved my X2 out of the box when I got it $350 for a cpu worth over $1000 at the time. I love my core2 also, $126 for a cpu worth $280 at the time and more if you consider it isn't even close to being tapped out on my DS3R gigabyte board.

    By the way Anand, you blew the watercooling article too. If you're going to be comparing expensive air and calling water crap you should at least compare air to a DECENT water cooler. Try a Koolance before calling water expensive and crappy under $300. I beg to differ and my Koolance is quiet also (300w waterblock from Koolance used)! What did you expect when you compare the best air coolers to the crappiest (is that a word?) watercooling out there? Which IMHO totally defeats the purpose of water to begin with...ROFL. Your two choices couldn't even cut a decent overclock. Bah...For most though, AIR is far better these days. But at $250 you can build way better (as stated in the comments on that article) or just buy a Koolance and get what watercooling was designed for! I hope you rewrite both articles as they should just be tossed out in their current form. Sorry about grammer or spelling it's 3am... :)
  • wdb1966 - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Now while that might be unfair, let's consider that AT probably just looked at Intel and AMD prices rather than scouring the 'net to see what you might actually pay. Take that into account, and the price discrepancies aren't at all surprising.


    The above pricing seems to be right from Newegg which I'm sure you're familiar with, no need to scour the net to cherry-pick prices.

    The blatant pro-Intel pricing (as well as poor hardware choices) cast doubt on the validity of the review as a whole.

    Sorry, but Anand blew it on this one.
  • FrankThoughts - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    Show me one point in the conclusion that's truly wrong and I might consider your post valid. As it stands, you're just another whiny AMD fanboi that's sad to see the truth. Hell, Anand was nicer than I would be, but then I overclock. Toss that out, and what do you get?

    First, you get a $170 CPU that beats the tar out of EVERY AMD CPU on the market. Yeah, that's great. Second, you get what amounts to a tie at most other price points. For less than $25 difference, what are you going to take? AMD? That's okay, I suppose, but the only interesting AMD chips that I see right now are the BE-23xx parts. The BE-2350 matches up against the E2160, and it's a pretty fair battle as long as you discount overclocking. Personally, I'd still take the E2160, though, since it delivers nearly the same performance and power characteristics as the BE-2350 (faster but slightly more power hungry) and it still has some killer overclocking.

    Until AMD actually gets Phenom out - and manages to compete on performance and power requirements (if it can) - the only thing AMD has going for it is price. Even that isn't really "going" for it, though, since Intel's Pentium Dual-Core line is very nearly the same and costs less to produce. AMD needs to get prices up, but unless they can become vastly superior they will be unable to do so. The writing, unfortunately, is on the wall: Welcome back to the value bin, AMD.

    K7 and K8 were a good run, but only until Intel released the Core architecture. K10 might be able to make this into a rematch of K7 vs. Pentium III, but that's about as close as I see it getting. Hopefully we don't see a return to the pre-K7 days. And for the record: K6, K6-II, and K6-II+/K6-III/K6-III+ were all completely lousy chips, I'm sorry to say. Anyone that says otherwise has their head rammed to far up AMD's hole to breathe, let alone think properly.
  • wdb1966 - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Although AMD remains very competitive in the vast majority of benchmarks, given the virtual price parity Intel's performance advantages in some tests make the Core 2 or Pentium Dual-Core a more sensible buy. Both the Core 2 Duo E4500 and Pentium E2160 are great choices, as are their lower clocked variants; it really boils down to price point.


    Thats my point, Anand got the prices wrong as well as the hardware used to test with, therefore the above statement is inaccurate.

    Do the Intel chips OC easier, yes absolutely...can AMD's also OC very well, yes given the right hardware.
  • FrankThoughts - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    Maybe it's just me, but my AMD overclocking results have been pretty lousy. X2 3800+... maxes out at around 2.6 GHz without exotic (at least very expensive air) cooling. I've got a 4400+ that just won't cooperate - on a 590 SLI board no less - when it comes to bumping up the clocks. That even has a Scythe Ninja on it. Maybe it's the board (Foxconn), or maybe claims of "easy 50% OC" on AMD are coming from people that put way more effort into it than me. My E4400, on the other hand, is running happily at 3.0 GHz with a $35 cooler in a Gigabyte DS3 board.

    The pricing stuff I already discussed. BE-2350 is the best AMD chip in this bracket, in my view. I run my systems 24/7 for the most part, often at pretty high loads (video transcoding of TV shows recorded by my PVR). So in one year, a 20W difference would pay for any price difference. But that's only when compared against AMD's own chips. The Core 2 Duo outperforms AMD quite easily in my video transcoding, making any minor power difference a moot point. (And that's before overclocking, which bumped the power use of my C2D 4400 up about 30W but made it over 50% faster.) My AMD system couldn't even keep up with the movie recording, as it was taking four hours to transcode a one hour show.

    So I say the BE-2350 is the best AMD chip for budget right now. That goes up against the Core 2 E2160, and in overall benches the E2160 wins.

    All components being equal, what you need to look at is mobo and CPU cost. Anand could have done more there, as I think AMD has a very strong case to make in that segment. However, I don't know that the mobo choices were bad in terms of performance. I'd pick AMD for features if all you need is a basic HTPC (without transcoding a ton of stuff), because HDMI is available on a lot more decent boards. G33 is junk, and pretty much requires a seperate GPU. The best HTPC boards for Intel right now sport an AMD chipset! NVIDIA may change that shortly, of course.

    What I'm getting at is that people seem to be focusing on the trees (one review) and complaining that it doesn't paint a clear picture of the entire forest. Well, the conclusion did just that for me. It mentioned how AMD has a MUCH more compelling IGP solution right now, but when it comes to the CPUs Intel is still ahead. I agree with that fully, which means that if I'm in the market for an IGP setup, I still seriously look at AMD.

    Outside of IGP, there aren't many markets where I'd look at them right now. If I add a discrete GPU for $100-$125 (HD 2600 or GF 8600 GT), I can surely spend a bit more on the CPU. And when I start looking at the $130-$170 CPUs (which are still quite reasonble IMO), suddenly AMD gets trounced.

    I guess I cut Anand and company a lot of slack, because there's a ton of stuff to look at for articles. You guys want the whole pie, and I'm happy with a small slice. Add the slices up, and you eventually get the whole anyway. Seriously, we're bitching and moaning about a $10-$15 discrepancy! On a PC that's still likely to cost $500-$750 before all is said and done. You want a budget burner sub-$500 PC? I think AMD has a very compelling case to be made (and the article seems to support this - at least when combined with a few of the micro ATX reviews). As soon as you hit $600, it gets a lot less clear, and by $750 I really see nothing AMD has that would entice me. Yet.
  • wdb1966 - Monday, October 1, 2007 - link

    Wow, very mature response.

    BTW, I'm an Intel user with a pair of Q6600 rigs as well as an older 939 rig.

    I stand by my comments, Anand got the pricing and hardware wrong, period.
  • AkumaX - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    are there any good intel matx mobos with hdmi (or integrated gfx?)

    that's the only reason why i would consider going with AMD, because cpu performance doesn't make that much of a big deal to me, but having onboard hdmi would (and a better integrated chipset overall)
  • ltcommanderdata - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Can we please get a review of the 14.31.1 XP driver for the GMA X3000 that enables hardware DX9.0c SM3.0 acceleration? I know you've switched over to Vista, but the 15.6 driver release notes don't mention that they added hardware acceleration so it looks like only the 14.31 and the newer 14.31.1 XP drivers have it. I would love to see a comparison between the GMA X3000, Xpress X1250, Geforce 7150, and a discrete X1300HM and 8500GT.

    You're probably saving the new drivers for an IGP review when the G35 GMA X3500 comes out (October 21?), but it would be nice to have numbers for the GMA X3000 too for comparison.
  • Leinad - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Would be wonderful to have a MB roundup to go along with a processor roundup.

    Please?
  • yyrkoon - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    quote:

    We ran into one problem where our GeForce 6150 motherboard wouldn't POST without a PCI Express graphics card installed unless we switched power supplies. Memory selection is also critical for ensuring proper operation, and these motherboards are very picky about what they will and won't work with. We'd strongly suggest consulting approved memory devices/vendors if you do end up going with any GeForce 6xxx based motherboards, or better yet, opt for something based on the AMD 690 or NVIDIA GeForce 7xxx chipsets.


    I feel that the mothernoards you used for your tests were not up to the task. Earlier this year, I went out on a limb(for my personal standards) in buying a very in-expencive motherboard in hopes of saving $20-$30 usd on my system costs. While I did not experience any of the issues you mention having with the Geforce 6000 chipset that you mentioned here, I found this board to be completely un-exceptable stability wise. Every 3-5 days, the system would lock up, or BSoD(and sometimes much sooner). This system board did not have any memory voltage adjustment settings what-so-ever, and this was probably a big part as why the motherboard would not run smoothly(the board defaulted my memory lower than it should have been). Overclocking this system board also proved to be fruitless, even though there were enough options(short of the memory voltage settings) to do so. This motherboard was also plauged by other problems, one of which where talking to the 'tech' staff at the manufactuer proved that I was obviously more knowledgable concerning their own hardware, and every other set of words out of this 'techs' mouth seemed to be 'This is a budget motherboard'. This is the responce I got even when asking for an updated BIOS link, and to this day, the BIOS for that board has never been updated.

    On the flip side, I purchased a similar board from a company that I trust, and have been dealing with for many years. This board was based on the 6150 chipset, has voltage settings for memory, and will easily overclock my AM2 1210 opteron to 3.0 Ghz(base frequency is 1.8Ghz). At current, the BIOS for this board has been revised 3-4 times, and while the motherboard has been phased out for a few months now, I suspect that the BIOS revisions will keep on comming based on past experiences with this company. This board has been very stable, with only a handful of BSoDs because of overclocking too high on the stock cooler, or a few other software related glitches. All while running WinXP Pro 32BIT with the /PAE boot option enabled. Also, since this motherboard OEM has a top notch Forum, and I have found this board to be virtualy trouble free(but not perfect), I have had no reason to even bother their tech representatives.

    These two different motherboards both used the same exact hardware on them, and the second one will work perfectly fine with Windows 2003, where as the first will not(no networking drivers).

    Leaving the two company names out of it, the moral of the story is; I had hoped to save myself $20-$30 usd, and it ended up costing me another $75 usd in the long run.

    Now naming names, the first board was an Asrock AM2NF-4G-SATA2, and the second board was an ABIT NF-M2 nView. Since I have named names yet again, I suspect a few 'Fan-boi' comments, but this is not about Fan-boi-ism; this is about an experience out of many similar in dealing with different companies over the past 13 years when purchasing parts for systems. Top Tier manufactuers are top tier for a reason . . . and trust me, I would rather pay less for another brand, for the same performance/stability, but it has been this users experiences(many times . . .) that I will be let down, and end up paying more in the long run to correct issues for sub standard parts/service.
  • Myrandex - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    I have sold many GeForce6150 based computers to people without a problem at all. I have not tried to overclock them, but from what I understand I hear that they perform better than the 70xx series of integrated GPU's (I could be remembering wrong). I have had some sweet Winfast Foxconn boards with Nvidia 6150 chipsets, but also that new AMD chipset is pretty good.
  • strikeback03 - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    We needed new workstations earlier this year for a couple of students, so I built 2 computers using really cheap components. Used ECS motherboards (nVidia 6100 chipset) with some cheap X2 processors and a GB of Corsair ValuRam, powered by a power supply included in a cheap Rosewill case. No overclocking (obviously) but everything has been stable so far.
  • yyrkoon - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    I have built quite a few systems for customers using ECS motherboards. Have also replaced a few motherboard from eMachines, and whatnot with ECS motherboards. They all seem to work fine, as I have had zero complaints so far.

    In my own personal machines however, I may require extra features that the average user may not, and my most recent personal purchase has exactly what I want, for a fair price, and stability second to none.

    Having said that, we here also avoid Asus motherboards like the plauge, as we have had bad experiences with their boards, with the most 4 recent boards made by them showing up DOA here in our shop. Obviously, I do realize since Asus seems to be a trend among the younger users I've seen post around, that I do not think they do not work all the time; this is just our experiences here.

    I really do not respect DFI, BIOSTAR, like other brands such as ABIT, Gigabyte, and MSI(for Intel based systems) though. But if a customer wants a 'cheap' PC, thats what they get . . . and we usually recommend Dell in this case anyhow.
  • leexgx - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    little picky on nvidia's drivers

    nvida chip set drivers are updated every year (thay never seem to bother to update them) so there chipset drivers will not allways have the Nvidia display drivers and even if it did the first thing i do any way is get the new video drivers as well and install them after chpset drivers no problem
  • ThatLukeGuy - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Just wondering about this part of the article:

    "We'd take the slowest Pentium Dual Core over the fastest available Pentium D, so stay away from the last remnants of the NetBurst architecture if you know what's best for you."

    I bought a Pentium D 805 Smithfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor a while ago as a stopgap for my new rig. Basically it was so I could use the system which had a 775 and wouldn't take my old P4, looking to upgrade to a Core 2 at the earliest opportunity. I found on the internet some information however that the Pentium D 805 was a diamond in the rough and could be easily overclocked to rival performance with some of Intel's extreme chips. Sure enough I got it to goto 3.2GHz without even changing anything but the FSB. Same cooling solution, same everything and the system is rock solid and pretty darn fast. Thus I decided to just stick with the Pentium D. Was I wrong to stay with it? Is going to the slowest Core 2 better than the setup I have now? Not trying to get in an argument, I'm honestly curious if I made a misjudgement and what the reasons for the slowest Core 2 being better than a Pentium D @ 3.2GHz (with supposed potential up to 3.6GHz or higher) are.
  • jonp - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    I too wonder about the Netburst admonition. There are probably millions of Netburst CPUs out there that are happily computing away with no thought of Anandtech at all; doing their thing; producing great results for their owners. The biggest concern I have seen is thermal and that, only in relation to overclocking. Assuming there are more than a few users that don't need to or want to overclock; then there are some great bargins in used Netburst Processors and accompanying motherboards.

    It doesn't appear to me that "...if you know what's best for you." is either technical, professional or helpful. Maybe it was meant as a joke...sorry it's not that funny.
  • HotdogIT - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Not trying to get in an argument, I'm honestly curious if I made a misjudgement and what the reasons for the slowest Core 2 being better than a Pentium D @ 3.2GHz (with supposed potential up to 3.6GHz or higher) are.


    Yes, you did. Given the combination of power usage savings, pure performance benefits, and overclocking ability (since you mentioned 3.6ghz on the Pentium D, I assume we can go with at least 2.4 out of an e2140, for comparisons sake), the C2D/Pentium E line is much better.

    The problem with a lot of the "lol Pentium D overclocking" articles is they fail to overclock what they're comparing against. You take a Pentium D 805 and OC it to 4ghz, sure, the performance delta over an e2140 will be big. But apply the same cooling and thought into OCing the e2140, and that delta will swing the other way.
  • ThatLukeGuy - Saturday, September 29, 2007 - link

    quote:

    But apply the same cooling and thought into OCing the e2140, and that delta will swing the other way.


    So what would make the most sense to change out the Pentium D805 to that would keep me at (or better yet raise the bar of) the performance I'm getting now? An OC'd e2140 or something higher up the ladder? I'm matching this to a 2gigs ram, an nice MSI SLI plat mobo, and an 8800gts320mb. I'd want something that wouldn't bottleneck the system which is what the P.D805 did when it was stock.
  • HotdogIT - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    quote:

    So what would make the most sense to change out the Pentium D805 to that would keep me at (or better yet raise the bar of) the performance I'm getting now? An OC'd e2140 or something higher up the ladder? I'm matching this to a 2gigs ram, an nice MSI SLI plat mobo, and an 8800gts320mb. I'd want something that wouldn't bottleneck the system which is what the P.D805 did when it was stock.


    It's going to depend on a lot of factors. If you're gaming, a change in the CPU may very well do very little in changing any performance; especially at a higher resolution, the CPU may make NO difference.

    I'd look into the e2140/e2160/e4X00 line, if you wanted to stay lower cost. At the VERY least, you'll get a boost in energy efficency: The Pentium Ds were and are power hogs, especially compared to the newer line.

    What performance did you see increase when you overclocked the Pentium D? Did gaming increase? If so, then a C2D based system would be much better, regardless of an overclock; Netburst just don't handle the games as well.

    If, somehow, you're running something that is AMAZINGLY well tuned for Netburst, you may see less of an increase. But these applications are rare these days, so I doubt you'd see that in most cases.
  • Parhelion69 - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Anand did you do the power consumption tests on the overclocked cpus? I think it's important to know, if you haven't, can't you at least give us a rought estimation? It'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
  • dm0r - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Thats a great article Anand, I missed this kind of roundup.Enjoyed a lot and the only thing is missing is the performance per watt, but anyway very good article.Thanks for sharing!
  • eetnoyer - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Why not throw in the 4200+? I know it's 90nm, but I just got one for $74, and (for me)it looks like the sweet spot of price/performance for AMD. And, given how well tuned their 90nm process is at EOL, I wouldn't be surprised to see power consumption close to that of the 65nm chips. If you want, you could use the 65W version (it's only a buck more).
  • Uter - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Anand, is the BE-2400 still coming out? Or, when you say that there are two Athlon X2 BE Processors, the BE-2350 and BE-2300, is that a subtle hint that we shouldn't expect to see it? I just want to make sure I pick one of these up while there are still available...
  • bogda - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    Oveclocking results are not fair. You chose horrible motherboards for AMD overclocking.
    For example, Biostar AMD motherboards cost 50-60 euros. They are much better overclockers than MSI or ASUS you chose. My Athlon BE-2300 easily overclocks from default 1,9GHz to over 2,8GHz with stock HSF.
  • wdb1966 - Sunday, September 30, 2007 - link

    I completely agree, the boards chosen for the AMD chips are horrible.
    Gigabyte's MA69GM-S2H and Abit's NF-M2 nView would have been far superior choices in every way...poor motherboard choices, very poor.
  • Darth Farter - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    why not the cool & quiet idle power numbers?
    seeing they're running at full speeds at idle is besides the point of an "idle" measurement in this age with powersavings...

    tnx though on the bios update request from asus... I want to tweak my timings too.

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    C&Q and EIST were both enabled for the idle and load power numbers. Actually all the benchmarks were run with those settings enabled.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • archcommus - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    I realize the benchmarks are run at 1024x768 to make the tests CPU-limited, does that mean all, or at least most, of the extra horsepower needed for resolutions above that comes from the GPU? If so, does that mean I could run games at 1280x1024 well with a high-end card and one of the AMD CPUs from this round-up? Or would that be a bad match-up? If that would work it's an appealing upgrade path alternative to jumping platforms.
  • nosfe - Friday, September 28, 2007 - link

    why not color code those performance graphs so that we can easily see which processors are competing at the same price

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