Anyone on the ball with the AMD vs Intel question?

klowne

Ok so while I used to be pretty up to date with computer hardware, 4 years of being a student has left me no time for games and no money for parts.

Anyway I've been offered a new computer as a birthday present, it needs to be cheap and I was trying to decide between these two bundles:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-120-OK
which comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB)

or this (about £20 cheaper)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-080-OK
which comes with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+

Any opinions?

mdbarber

not a huge difference on those, i think the amd has a little bit more umph on those actual models but tbh they both come with "budget boards", consider going asus/gigabyte or if budget is really tight go asrock.

screamager123

Stretch your budget a little if you can by about £30 and get a decent Motherboard, like the other poster suggested such as Gigabyte p35 chipset. Get the Intel as this is very easily to overclock to 3ghz with the the stock fan and still runs cool.

Decent Motherboard = upgradeable if needed in the future.

Good luck!

Lakeuk

What do you want to used the PC for, your current componants are very low spec.

Intel are king at the moment, but I'd stay clear of anything below the E6*** range as these are budget chip range.

The E6600 is very popular (I've had this a couple of years now), as is the Q6600 but probable out of your price range. E7200 is closer to E6600 performance but is cheaper at £83 online

buglawton

Watch out for noisy machines with 4 or more fast running fans - can get a bit wearying to hear

BillScarab

However the budget Intel Core 2 Duos overclock amazingly well so can be an excellent choice if budgets are tight.

klowne

Thanks for all of your advice. I think I might look around for a better motherboard, but given the prices will probably stick with the budget processor.

One more thing I forgot to ask - what are your favourite websites for buying parts?

Lakeuk

klowne wrote: »

One more thing I forgot to ask - what are your favourite websites for buying parts?

Ebuyer.com
Scan.co.uk (although postage is steep, so general go to the warehouse in Bolton)
Dab.com

buglawton

You could also have a look at the Novatech range from £350 to £1900
(was in their store buying bits - great place, only 3 bricks and mortar stores in the UK tho).

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/ranges.html?t=pc&c=gaming

tomsolomon

If your into gaming and overclocking I would imagine you to have a little experience in building your own PC's, or at least upgrading them.....

If you want a decent gaming system its going to cost an arm and a leg and you college grant to buy one, so why dont you build one????

Get a realy decent MOBO with a low end CPU and upgrade it later. Same with memory, HDD and graphics card.

I have used both AMD and Intel for gaming, and my personal choice would be to go for AMD just for the raw computing power and dedication to applications.

Graphics its got to be ATI, unless your MOBO chipset is NVidia of course.

This is a half decent board for around the money you are looking at..
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-4800X2-DUAL-CORE-CPU-ASUS-MOTHERBOARD-RAM-BUNDLE_W0QQitemZ170234127349QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170234127349&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C65%3A15&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
Its a bit of a dodgey price though to be looking at bundles if you had another £30 to £50 you could do loads better. AS for the bundles you have posted, I would be careful of buying anything for that price with top end memory.