AMD still Competing on price

[Jimmy 2004]

techPowerUp! doesn't tend give much news attention to other site's reviews, other than listing them just under the date each day, but this is perhaps more interesting than most. Legit Reviews has posted an quite thorough comparison between the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 when it comes to gaming - two very similarly priced processors at $184 and $185 respectively. The conclusion by the author is that when running games with AA and AF at normal resolutions, the performance difference it too hard to call, which is somewhat justified. However, when you look deeper into the benchmarks it becomes quite clear that, on two very similar systems, AMD's offering is certainly victorious in the majority of benchmarks, often by quite a noticeable margin (15+ frames per second). In fact, the Core 2 Duo only outperformed the X2 on two tests: it had 0.1 more FPS in Call of Duty 2 with 4 x AA and 16 x AF, and 1 FPS more in Quake 4. Although this test doesn't allow for overclocking potential, it would certainly suggest that AMD may still offer more bang for your buck when it comes to gaming with CPUs costing around $200 at stock speeds.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[D007]

that makes the amd a hell of a buy for anyone who cant get a high end duo.. honestly thats impressive especially for the price..

 

[Namslas90]

No news here for the AMD boys. This has always been known, as far as I know.

 

[crow1001]

Considering the 5600 is running at 2.8ghz and the e6300 at 1.8Ghz, its no surprise the AMD beats it in a FEW benches, once you overclock the E6300 by a few GHz, the tables will turn dramatically.

 

[D007]

still a nice price difference lol.. i run an e6400 conroe set at 3.3 ghz atm.. but for the price thats alot of bang for the buck.. you gotta admit it..lol.. it's nice for people who aren't totally stressing max cpu power. Honestly in alot of cases I find I have way more cpu power than i need lol..

 

[Eric_Cartman]

yeah, nothing new here, the pricing for stock speeds is pretty reasonable

but once you overclock amd doesn't stand a chance

but then again amd isn't really in the business of pricing their products based on overclocking result since it matter to only a small fraction of their overall customer base

 

[kureng]

you get better performance and less cost with AMD...

 

[WarEagleAU]

Actually that is surprising news. It doesnt matter about raw speed, the 5600 is set to compete with a couple of the 6XXX range of C2D chips. The fact that it beats it on stock levels is surprising. I think it might have to do with the on die memory architecture and lack of dependency on a congested FSB.

Still interesting. I would have thought the C2D would layeth the smackdown on AMDs candy ass (yeah Im a fanboi saying that!)

 

[Eric_Cartman]

an interesting point:

a quick trip over to newegg reveals that the 5600+ oem goes for $185 there, while the e6300 $185 price point is for the retail version, the retail 5600+ is going for $199

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103770
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103771
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115005

 

[Jimmy 2004]

an interesting point:

a quick trip over to newegg reveals that the 5600+ oem goes for $185 there, while the e6300 $185 price point is for the retail version, the retail 5600+ is going for $199

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103770
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103771
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115005

Interesting find, I don't think the article mentions that - but if you look at the setup, you will find that the AMD CPU is cooled using a Zalman cooler, whilst the Core 2 Duo has an Intel cooler. Admittedly $15 isn't much, but I guess it sways the conclusion a little.

 

[v7100]

but you do realize that no everyone is comfortable with oc...

Considering the 5600 is running at 2.8ghz and the e6300 at 1.8Ghz, its no surprise the AMD beats it in a FEW benches, once you overclock the E6300 by a few GHz, the tables will turn dramatically.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

When the dust settles, what people want is a good performance at a low price. Not just a CPU at a low price point.

 

[Benpi]

I wan't AMD to stay in the game, but they just have to make more competitive procs. I would totally be AMDFTW if they had something as cheap-to-good ratio as the conroe.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

Interesting find, I don't think the article mentions that - but if you look at the setup, you will find that the AMD CPU is cooled using a Zalman cooler, whilst the Core 2 Duo has an Intel cooler. Admittedly $15 isn't much, but I guess it sways the conclusion a little.

the need to slap acooler on the 5600+ doesn't exactly help the price argument though, even if it is just a low end cooler it still raises the price of the 5600+, and there aren't many $15 coolers i would trust on a 5600+

 

[ryboto]

what I find more interesting out of this, is that you don't have to buy a 5600 to get the performance of the E6300. I imagine a 2.4-2.6ghz K8 will perform on par with the Core2 at 1.8ghz. So, in reality, you can buy an amd chip that will perform on par with the E6300(considering they're both at stock) for less than the cost of the intel offering.

I'd like to see the comparrison done with a slower amd part, like the
X2 4600 2.4ghz -$119
or the X2 5000(2x512kb cache 2.6ghz) - $159
X2 5200(2x1mb cache 2.6ghz -$169

Those are retail prices. It would also be interesting to compare these to the E4300($135 at the egg) as well, see how they all compare at stock using the same components, albiet different motherboards.

 

[Conti027]

Considering the 5600 is running at 2.8ghz and the e6300 at 1.8Ghz, its no surprise the AMD beats it in a FEW benches, once you overclock the E6300 by a few GHz, the tables will turn dramatically.

not everyone likes to overclock

 

[Eric_Cartman]

not everyone likes to overclock

correct, that is what AMD is banking on, and it will work because of the small number of overclockers out there compared to the rest of the consumers

but this is primarily a site devoted to overclocking, so that argument won't hold a lot of water around here

 

[Zubasa]

Now all AMD have to do is sell their 5.0Ghz X2's. Maybe then they could compete with the 3.8Ghz C2D. But wait.. they cant overclock their CPU's above 3.0Ghz.. oops.

The fact is many Allendales cant actually OC pass 2.8Ghz on stock volts

 

[SK-1]

Great read,...I wish they would have overclocked them both to the MAX,...then re-run all of the benchmarks.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Great read,...I wish they would have overclocked them both to the MAX,...then re-run all of the benchmarks.

It would be very interesting to see what us guys are getting for our money - I'm assuming the Core 2 Duo would win hands down, but it would still be interesting to see how large the gap is then.

 

[tkpenalty]

Well before the +5600 was double the price anyway so wtf?

 

[vlado79]

AMD Ws Intel

Motherboards are usualy cheaper for AMD. Up to 15% margin.