Member Avatar for fang755

i'm planning on building a new computer shortly and was looking at different processors. At first i was thinking about the amd athlon 64 x2, but a friend of mine said that the i should go with the core 2 duo. which is better and why? i'm not sure which i should go for.

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This thread is the classic 2006–2007 Core 2 Duo vs. Athlon 64 X2 debate. wanted a gaming box and rightly asked about intended use — that’s the single most important decision. Replies from and favored Intel; contemporary independent testing from the Conroe/Core 2 launch explains why. See a representative comparison from the time. (tomshardware.com)

Short technical summary: Intel’s Conroe/Core microarchitecture raised instructions-per-clock, improved branch prediction and cache design, and offered strong performance-per-watt and overclocking headroom. AMD’s K8 (Athlon 64) brought the on-die memory controller, which helped memory latency in some workloads, but Conroe’s per-core advantage translated to better game performance in many titles of that era. For the microarchitecture deep-dive and launch reviews, see AnandTech and the Core architecture notes. (anandtech.com)

Practical advice for a gamer in 2007: prioritize a GPU first, then pick the CPU that won’t bottleneck it. If budget allowed, mid/high Core 2 parts (E6600/E6700 families) were the safest bet for gaming and offered good overclocking value; if you were on a strict budget, balance a cheaper CPU with a stronger GPU and faster RAM. Platform, motherboard features and PSU are often more important than tiny CPU deltas. (anandtech.com)

To about the Athlon II 630: the Athlon II X4 630 (2.8 GHz, AM3 era) is a solid budget quad for threaded tasks like video encoding and mixing; AnandTech’s tests show good multi-thread value for the price. For low-latency multitrack recording, however, the audio interface, native ASIO drivers and buffer settings (track at ~64–128 samples; mix with larger buffers) plus fast storage matter more than raw core count. Use a modern ASIO-capable interface and an SSD for best results. (anandtech.com)

Final note: the specific Core 2 / Athlon 64 parts discussed here are legacy hardware. If someone is building today, look at current-generation CPUs and recent benchmarks rather than these vintage chips.

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Member Avatar for WebDave

What do you plan to do with the computer is more important. Is it going to be a gaming PC, or will be used for design & development.
Intel's Core 2 Duo is far more better than AMD's high-end Athlo.

Member Avatar for fang755

i plan on using it mostly for gaming. i will be doing some school work on it as well.

Member Avatar for Suspishio

WebDave has it right. Core2Duo is far better for gaming.

Certain AMD levels are better at internal memory access than Intel, but the benchmarks consistently favour Intel IMHO.

Member Avatar for jbennet

I have a core2, a P4HT and an AMDX2

In my experience the P4HT is margibnally better for some things than the AMDX2 but for others the AMDX2 beats it by a large margin

In terms of Core2 vs X2 i would say the Core2 is the best. For everything ive thrown at it the Core2 wins.

Member Avatar for h053d

Any thoughts on the AMD Athlon™ II 630 Quad-Core Processor...? I am trying to get a cheap machine that will record multitrack audio with a minimum amount of lag... Should also be able to handle video editing. And no, this machine will NEVER connect to the Virusweb (aka the Internet)...!

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