Member Avatar for olddocks

which one is the best? i have seen many people talk AMD is a better catch for gaming than going for intel based CPUs. which one is better? Has anybody experienced this?

  • 4 Contributors
  • 6 Replies
  • 433 Views
  • 6 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by mikeandike22

Dani AI

Generated

Short answer in context: for mid‑2006 gaming the new Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe) was the best overall performer — it improved single‑thread IPC and efficiency enough to beat most Pentium 4 and many Athlon 64 parts in real game tests — while AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 remained the stronger value option and the older Pentium 4 NetBurst chips trailed on efficiency and gaming headroom. (tomshardware.com)

The reason the thread keeps circling back to the video card is correct: at playable resolutions and modern settings the GPU is usually the limiting factor, so upgrading the graphics card gives the biggest real‑world FPS gains in most titles. That’s why reviews from the period recommended pairing a midrange Core 2 (E6300/E6400) or a budget Athlon X2 with a stronger PCI‑Express GPU rather than chasing a top clocked P4. (anandtech.com)

A few practical, historically grounded points that expand the replies from , , and :

  • Athlon 64’s on‑die memory controller helped latency and gave solid single‑thread performance for its price. (arstechnica.com)
  • Core 2 Duo’s microarchitecture change delivered better IPC and lower power than NetBurst, which is why it leap‑frogged P4 in many gaming benchmarks. (anandtech.com)
  • PCI Express was the sensible upgrade path for high‑end GPUs; AGP still worked for budget builds but limited future upgrades. (anandtech.com)

Quick checklist for an effective upgrade plan: identify current bottleneck (low‑res high‑CPU usage vs high‑res GPU bound), match a balanced CPU+GPU (midrange C2D or X2 + stronger GPU gives best $/fps), confirm motherboard socket/BIOS and memory compatibility, and prioritize GPU if the goal is higher frame rates.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

You would want to get an Intel Core 2 Duo for gaming I would think it is currently the best processor out there.

Member Avatar for jo2995

Ya, the intel core 2 duo extreme is the fastest processors in the world right now, but amd processors are much cheaper.

Member Avatar for olddocks

mike, thanks for your response. i still think that for gaming the the agp or pci express card plays a big role, irrespective of processors. i have currently amd 2600 with geforce fx5200 and found games work fine. i am thinking of going to pci express gt 6800/250mb card with amd 3200+ processor than spending that much money on pentium processor.

any thoughts welcome. thanks

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

oh yes a deffinite upgrade for gaming performance. I used to have a 5200 card and it does a good job, but for the performance over cost you should deffinitely consider upgrading to a 6800 or better

Nvidia cards for under $50 7 series
Nvidia cards for under $50 6 series

For Nvidia cards I usually stay away from the PNY ones and tend to go with BFG if I can afford it but GIGABYTE, ASUS, and eVGA make good ones too (i dont know about all of them). Im mostly an Nvidia person always hated ATI (Nvidia is deff the choice for Linux users), but I am waiting to see what AMD does with the ATI brand now that they acquired it.

Member Avatar for pistolsnipe16

I personally love my AMD Athlon X2 5000+. But I also love my Core 2 Duo. If you want to save money go with AMD, they provide very competitive performance for much less money.

Member Avatar for mikeandike22

So far I havent heard anything about any upcoming cards from ATI after AMD acquired them and im waiting to see what they can pull together. Although it seems like a cool idea to bring better performance I would hate for Nvidia cards to stop working with AMD's and ATI cards not working with Intels as well as they would vice versa.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.