Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 vs AMD Phenom II X4 920

[Umang]

hi,
i want to buy computer,with AMD Phenom II 920 but But all I hear are good things about the Phenom II. i require suggestion on two different CPUs ...

AMD Phenom II 920 or Intel Core 2 Duo E8500


What would you recommend me ..

[Russell]

Well one thing to try and see is the long term. The P2 can overclock on par with the E8400/500.

Few buddies have gotten theirs to 3.8ghz-4.0ghz on air. Which is as good as a the E8400 will overclock to. Also don't buy the E8500...not worth the extra cash. The E8400 is the same chip underclocked. You can easily overclock to 3.1ghz if you wanted too.


Comes down to overclocking + luck in the end. I would choose the Phenom 2 over E8400 but thats only because it can overclock just as well and I believe their will be quad gaming this year.

[Sebastian.j]

the new chips proved faster than older Phenoms, but the gap wasn't huge. The Phenom II X4 920, running at 2.8GHz, achieved a benchmark score of 1.62 - only around 5% faster than the 1.55 achieved by the 2.5GHz Phenom X4 9850.

In fact, that's a slightly smaller gap than you'd expect from a simple clock-speed boost. This may be down to teething troubles with BIOS support for the new chips, but another factor is probably the 9850's faster HyperTransport, clocked at 2GHz rather than the Phenom II's 1.8GHz.

Stepping up to the 3GHz part put more convincing distance between new chips and old, boosting the overall score to a respectable 1.71. And the Phenom II didn't stop there: the high-end X4 940 is a multiplier-unlocked Black Edition, enabling you to ramp the CPU clock up beyond its advertised speed.

[Joshua]

hi,
i strongly recommend a new Wolfdale based E8x00 series chip over the older Conroe based E6x00 series. Both deliver exceptional performance with plenty of headroom for overclocking but the Wolfdale chips will get you more speed for less power if you run them normally and if you're overclocking, they'll go further than ever before.

[Baltazar]

There is no such thing as "stability" in processors. Either processors work or they don't. Processors do not "die" or "break" unless they run without a heatsink.

For video editing (specifically real-time preview) you're going to need a good graphics card. For video rendering, you'll need a good CPU. The i7 will render the best of them, but it won't do anything else any better than the E8500.

AMD has a triple-core Phenom II that will give you an edge (+1 core), is cheap ($120), and matches the E8500 as well.

[MattyBoy]

There is no such thing as "stability" in processors. Either processors work or they don't. Processors do not "die" or "break" unless they run without a heatsink.

For video editing (specifically real-time preview) you're going to need a good graphics card. For video rendering, you'll need a good CPU. The AMD Phenom II X4 920 will render the best of them, but it won't do anything else any better than the E8500.

AMD has a triple-core Phenom II that will give you an edge (+1 core), is cheap ($120), and matches the E8500 as well.