just wondering peoples opinions if AMD's new quad cores are worth the money or would it be better to stick with my dual core 4200?
the way I see it is simple it can't definitively outperform intel's one year old quads at this point. if you're looking into getting a quad, it's about the same cost to go for a q6600 + board and you'll be abel to voerclock that for notably bettter performance. as it is, phenom on average is 10% SLOWER per GHz than Core 2 and it doesn't clock as well. HUGE disappointment to me. I was hoping to get one so I coudl stick with my DDR2 for a while longer. I was hoping phenom would be competitive with nehalem (intel's next chip likely called Core 3 due out in Q4 08, it's allready taped out too.) now I'll likely just end up getting a 'cheap' dual core penryn, overclocking the sucker to hell, and holding out on it until it fries or I get fedup with performance and I buy a new system altogether and/or a then cheap quad.
As Xlink said, it's too behind Intel's offerings and cheap enough to be worth buying. I'd take a high end C2D over it any day.
The only thing that may save it is the supposed unlocked edition. If this thing turns out to be a crazy overclock (to this point it has not) then I can see buying it. However, it is ~13% slower than the Q6600 but it is conveniently priced around ~13% less.
I'll be blunt, fi AMD prices it right i'll buy it. but I'm not seeing that happen. yields are too low. eve if they charge like mad, they don't have the stock in hand nor the capacity to generate much more and as such they'll eb chargin high because inevitably some WILL need/want it. Phenom looks to be an excellent chip for server and supercomputer use. I'm not running a server. For the record, I'm hoping that the next revision of the chip is better. I'm heard AMD's 65nm process basicalyl sucks and AMD is looking to ramp up on 45nm in 08, so it might help greatly. IF 45nm phenom can scale to 4Ghz on lowend air cooling(inte's next gen chip penryn can) and it offers close performane/clock and is comeptatively priced... I"ll buy. Heck I HATE THE INTEL FSB SYSTEM. Never as stable or good as the HTT bus.I'll tolerate it but I'd prefer not to.
