Quick question: Building a new PC, AMD or Intel?

[Piru]

intel. It has been the obvious choice since core2.

I'm still very happy with the E6320 running at 2.8GHz. My next system will likely be a Core i7 setup, though.

[Piru]

@quarkx

In most cases a single core processor still runs circles around Quad cores because only a single core is being used, and no Quad core yet has reached the highest speeds of a single core.

Which single core are you talking about exactly?

[Piru]

@quarkx

If you look at any quad core, each core speed is (and I could be wrong) I think the highest speed is around 2.6-2.8. IIRC the fastest single core speed was 3.8- 4 Ghz.

Single C2Q core at 2.66 GHz runs circles around single core P4 CPU at 3.8 GHz.

And you have 4 such cores, running much cooler and with less power usage.

I stopped paying any real attention to the intel processors since the Dual core change over

That's exactly when intel crushed AMD.

[Piru]

@smerf

Don't try to waste your money on more than 3 gigs of ram because windows will not recognize more than 3 gig.

64-bit Windows XP: 128GB
64-bit Windows Vista Home Basic: 8GB
64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium: 16GB
64-bit Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 128GB

Windows is just about useless in the 64 bit mode

Why's that?

[Piru]

@nine3o

Uh, if the memory is bad every OS will crash, including OS X.

Regarding overclocking: If your OC makes the system unstable "you're doing it wrong"(TM) and you should probably run your system at stock speed. Hint: You typically need to lower the FSB vs Memory ratio when raising the FSB (unless of course the rig supports insanely high memory clock and the memory chips are rated for the higher clock).

[Piru]

@Trev

I think it's also often necessary to raise the memory voltage on consumer boards when populating more than two slots, regardless of whether or not you overclock.

I've never heard of that before, and I've worked on a lot of systems. Is this something that is only needed for DDR3 setups?