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hey friends I am looking to upgrade my CPU. I know that there are wonderful options available in the market that I can purchase to fulfill my need. But I shortlisted to Intel i5 2500K and Amd FX-8120. Now I am confused between above mentioned CPUs. Can you help tell me which one I should purchase and why as well? I would really appreciated if you can provide brief idea on above mentioned topic. Thanks a lot in advance.
Amd FX-8120 is 8 core 3.1 Ghz and it is having L2 and L3 cache of 8MB. Where as Intel i5 2500K of quad core having clock speed of 3.3 ghz. As far as cache is concerned of 6 mb. We cannot say any CPU is great just because it is having higher number of cores. Now days several applications developed that are using multiple CPU cores at a time. According to me to have more CPU cores would not make any great impact on CPU performance if you are normal computer user. Most probably you will end the day by using couple of cores only. Even multiple core would not make any difference while playing video game as well. couple of cores would be enough for today’s world video games. An average use should look for quad core CPU there is no great advantage for the user who wanted to use quad core CPU.
While purchasing CPU essentially we should consider CPU clock speed or in simple terms we can say processor speed. In this particular thing AMD and Intel are having totally different from each other. A AMD CPU of having CPU clock of 3.1 Ghz is different from Intel CPU having same clock speed. Also it does not implies that if any CPU is having higher clock speed then it would faster than that of another. Why because CPU cache is making the huge difference in processing speed of it. Cori CPU of Sandy Bridge giving satisfactory processing speed.
As far as I know best CPU manufactured by AMD is FX 8150. It is having same processing speed as that of Intel i5 2500k or Intel i7 2600k. though there is difference between cache size of all 3 CPUs. Now coming to the point you should go for FX 8120. There is no need to think about Intel i5 2500k. Intel i7 2600k is really nice one if you wanted to get Hyper-threading as well as general usage.
From past Many years Intel people are producing great CPU. Those CPU works for several years and than that of AMD. If I am not wrong AMD CPUs are but faster as compared to Intel and it consumes low amount of power. I recommend that you should for AMD CPU. Also they are manufacturing great 64bit CPU.
You should not go for AMD CPU though it has higher clock. However AMD CPU supposed to be ineffective on the basis of per clock performance. Intel CPU has low clock speed but it seems to be effective per clock. You will noticed performance benefits when you are using threaded applications. But Intel Processors are having better architecture and it supposed to do better job per clock Cycles as compared to AMD. Apart from above mentioned points I wanted to draw your attention on the thing that what you are supposed to do on your computer. if you are not going to video rendering then it would be nice if you purchase i5 2500k.
You should consider following points to make selection between Amd FX-8120 and Intel i5-2500K. The cost factor means CPU price and operating cost. If we consider operating cost mean when CPU is idle then it would consume 30 watt of power and at peak it should eat 100 watts. So if you selected FX-8120 would add $50to $100 in total cost. Either of CPU should not bottleneck GPU speed and we are aware of the overall performance of game is graphic card. Apart from gaming performance I think Intel i5-2500K should be better CPU as compared to its competitors. Though you might face some issues due to software limitations. Also total number of cores are playing role in performance of software.
You should not forget motherboard on which you are going to place CPU. You should consider performance of motherboard chipset with rest of the hard ware parts such as USB devices . you should not forget Sata III implementations on motherboard. I noticed that AMD got several issues and due to those issues performance downstream not getting improved. Even they are not interested to work on desktop systems. We are having an issue with co-utilization GPU. Also we are getting several issues while we are switching between 2D and 3D graphics. Even Intel I5-2500k is moving around the same situation as manufacturer started to concentrate on IvyBridge.
Last but not least we should think about 3rd party support as well. right now most of users are having Intel say 60% or more I am not sure about. Rest of the people are using AMD CPU. So far there is no major issue in term of performance for major hardware as well as software products. However in future any difference happens that it could be deciding factor to select any of above. By going through all the above mentioned factors I decided to go for Intel i5-2500K.
If you wanted to overclock your CPU then you should go for i5-2500k. it will allow your CPU to overclock up to 4Ghz. It seems to be enough faster than that of AMD FX 8100. Also i5 is better than that of FX-8120. Right now FX-8120 is available in the market for $200 FX- 8150 is available for $260. Whereas to purchase Core i5 2500K you need to pay $230. So according Intel CPU are far better than that of AMD.
In my point of view Intel i5 2500k is best. AMD is good only when you live in a cold place.