Mainstream Quad-Core CPU Performance Comparison

"We are hardly going to suggest buying the AM3 version of these processors at a significant price difference to stick it on an old $60 motherboard."

To each his own. I would hardly suggest paying $300 on a new AM3 motherboard and DDR3 when you have a perfectly capable AM2+ mobo and 1066 DDR2 already. Just doesn't make sense unless you have lots of $$ to spend.. in that case go with Intel. BTY I happen to have a Gigabyte GA-MA790FX board..which is a well optioned mobo. No offence or anything. Techspots rocks. Usually your articles are excellent.

Steve: I do agree that the new core i5 are very interesting, but I think you dismiss the AMD offerings to fast. I just bought a Phenom II 945 for 160 and paired it with a 60 dollar AM2+ Gigabyte MB that I got 7 months ago. The processor is great and the MB is solid. You dismissed 60 dollar MB's earlier because they usually only have 1 PCI Express slot, but so what? I thought this article was for "mainstream." If that includes people who shell out for dual graphics cards then I have a completely different definition of the word.
Also the new Phenom II 945 that I got reduced the TDP from 125 to 95W, so that should help in the way of power consumption.
Now you say that someone lacks common sense because they use an AM3 CPU in an AM2+ board. Can I ask you though, lets say someone somehow is using the same CPU, GPU, and RAM in both an AM2+ board and an AM3 board. Other than extreme overclocking, would there really be any difference in performance? I stuck with AM2+ because the MB are a LOT cheaper and at the time I didn't think the price difference between DDR2 and DDR3 was worth it (I got 4GB of DDR2 for 20 dollars after rebates while 4GB of DDR3 was > 100 at the time). Thanks for the article.

You are comparing apples to oranges I think. The cheapest you can get a 790FX motherboard of any sort is $130 - $140. The AM3 boards that we suggested were just $40 US more, that is hardly going to break the bank and it allows you to jump on the latest platform. I would much prefer to recommend someone spends a little more to invest in the latest platform that will likely provide them with a better upgrade solution in the future.

As for the memory we price the same stuff for both the LGA1156 and AM3 platform and it was for quality memory. However you can buy crummy 4GB DDR2 and DDR3 memory kits for $40 - $50 so these days you are not really saving by going for DDR2 memory. Furthermore perfectly capable DDR2-1066 kits start at $65, just $15 more than the DDR3 memory we were recommending anyway.

Hi aaron86, I have spent the last month doing nothing but testing the Core i5 750 against the latest Phenom II X4 processors and trust me I am dismissing nothing fast.

That is great that you were able to buy a Phenom II X4 945 for $160, it’s a nice processor and with a $60 motherboard it will get the job done. In fact I have built similar systems for friends on tight budgets but for those looking to spend a little more I often advise they get a much better motherboard as I believe it is the last component you should skimp on.

I believe you are taking my issues with SLI out of context here, let me explain. I did not dismiss the cheap motherboard simply because it lacked a second PCI Express x16 slot. I recommended gamers and the like avoid them as they are “cheap” you get what you pay for. These boards lack SATA ports, many of the do not offer RAID, there is no Firewire, cheap onboard Audio, often poor overclocking and in many cases just two DIMM slots.

Of course if none of that bothers you then sure save the money but we are not going to assume that our readers do not want all these things. Furthermore how can we compare a full stocked P55 motherboard that has every single feature you could possibly want to a lemon?

“Now you say that someone lacks common sense because they use an AM3 CPU in an AM2+ board. Can I ask you though, lets say someone somehow is using the same CPU, GPU, and RAM in both an AM2+ board and an AM3 board. Other than extreme overclocking, would there really be any difference in performance?”

If you read our past AM3 processor reviews you will see that we strongly recommended using these processors on AM2 boards with DDR2 memory. This was because the AM3 platform only offers a slight performance advantage and at the time the boards and DDR3 memory was fetching quite a high price premium. However today that is no longer the case and with the AM3 platform and DDR3 being the way of the future why not invest now and save yourself money in the future?

At the end of the day we could have used a low-end budget motherboard with our $250 Phenom II X4 965 processor and we could have saved $20 on memory and when all is said and done the total build would be about $400.

So here is my new conclusion then, buy the Phenom II X4 965 with a cheap and nasty motherboard and DDR2 memory for $30 less than the faster significantly more efficient Core i5 750 with a high-end feature rich motherboard and DDR3 memory, you can’t go wrong. – (*Not necessarily the opinion of TechSpot).

On a side note you do not want to see how the Phenom II X4 945 compares to the Core i7 750, it gets absolutely destroyed. So if you were to build today saving even over $100 by going with the Phenom II X4 945 would not be worth it in my opinion unless you were looking for the cheapest possible build in which case why even by a quad-core processor in the first place?

I should also mention that I initially hated the LGA1156 platform and I hated even the very idea of it. Why does Intel need two platforms I keep saying? But now that I have seen the madness behind it the end result makes much more sense. The Core i5 750 is an impressive processor and I have found it to be clock for clock exactly the same as the Core i7 870 in almost every test.

Over at anandtech their Far Cry 2 bench is very different to this, there the Phenom II x4 wins the FPS race.. the same holds true in H.A.W.X. So, from a gamers point of view, which results should I trust?

Where are you looking? These results look very much like ours...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634&p=16

for me AMD is the way to go.intel,s CPU are good but for the $$$ and mobos its not for me. its a good post all to see.

Re. the chart on the first page of the article.
I believe the Max TDP on the i7 920 is 130W vs. 95W.

See http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=37147

Cheers.

Not sure where you are looking still but it doesn't matter, you cannot cross compare results using different hardware.

Why are you now randomly quoting TDP ratings that are given by the manufacture? When it comes to power consumption the Intel processors are much lower and much more efficient if you were trying to argue the point!??!!

Sorry Steve.. I should have been more precise. The Anandtech artickle I tried to referre to is this one on the Farcry 2 bench results:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&p=3

I think you should have mentioned, due to Intel's new roadmap, the i7 920 is proably going the way of the dodo.

because its being replaced by the i950