http://www.legitreviews.com/article/490/1/
AMD Versus Intel at the $185 Price Point
The price war between AMD and Intel is raging more so now than it ever has and while that is bad news for them it happens to be great news for the consumer. Desktop processors prices have been slashed and the latest processors from AMD and Intel are now running on matured platforms with chipsets that have finally been debugged. With lower prices and solid platforms consumers will find that building a new gaming rig on a tight budget has never been easier than now.
With AMD's most recent price cuts they reduced prices on all of their series, but the sharpest cuts came on processors for AMD's desktop lineup. The most powerful processor in the X2 lineup, the X2 6000+, now costs $241, down 48 percent from $464 last month. The next most powerful chip, the X2 5600+, is now 42 percent cheaper at just $188. The prices of other desktop chips were cut between 20 and 40 percent. With these drastic price cuts the consumer is the winner as AMD revenues will continue to decrease as the price war continues.
Since many can't afford the highest price processors on the market we have focused on the sub $200 processors from AMD and Intel for an article that shows gaming performance between the two processors. To keep under the $200 budget we went with the $185 Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6300 and the $184 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5600+. Both of these processors are under $200 and are within just a dollar of each other, so when it comes to pricing alone it's an apple to apple comparison. Price is the only reason that these processors are being compared to each other, so please remember that this article is about the bang for your buck.
To keep the comparison as fair as possible each processor needs to be tested on a similiar platform. We loaded up each test system with the same 4GB of Corsair DOMINATOR PC2-10000C5 memory modules, XFX GeForce 8800GTX video card, 250GB Western Digital hard drives, Corsair 620HX power supply and Windows XP Professional. Since we are comparing gaming performance six popular game titles were loaded onto each system and 3DMark06 was included for good measure.
a resolution of 1600x1200 we see both processors taking a slight performance hit, but it all honesty it's not as big as we expected. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor E6300 and AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ both took more than a 2FPS performance hit, which leads us to believe that the frame rate is limited more by the processor than the video card in this situation.
3DMark 06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking and the latest version in the popular 3DMark series! 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, advanced SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today
Taking a closer look at the benchmark results we found that the CPU score shows why the overall score is the way it ended up. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor has more horsepower to get the job done over the Intel E6300.
It's obvious from our real-world game testing that when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled at normal resolutions that both the AMD and the Intel test systems performed too close to call a clear winner. In games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl that use deferred shading since it can't support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled we can notice some performance differences between AMD and Intel. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl it was clear that the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor was able to play the game with a higher frame rate.
When it comes to pricing the $183.99 AMD 5600+ processor and $168.99 DFI LanParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G motherboard brought the price of the pair to $352.98. On the other hand the $185 Intel C2D E6300 and $169.99 After Rebate EVGA 122-CK-NF67-A1 nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard totaled $354.99 Both the processors and motherboard used in this article were just a dollar apart from the competition, which made for a really great article based on price points.
As for which $185 Intel or AMD processor is better for desktop gaming rig it's a close call, but AMD pulled off more victories than Intel on the games that we benchmarked. Thanks to the huge price cut that AMD recently set in motion consumers get a ton for their money and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor is a heck of a bargain for those looking to build a gaming rig.
Rumors are going around that Intel is also going to be cutting prices and launching several new processors in the near future, which will then place the Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Processor in the sub $200 price range. Once this happens we will see if we can pick one up and bring you updated benchmarks to make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck!
With the price war no matter which processor you choose one can really go wrong, as the performance from either of them is amazing for the price they are selling these at. When Intel counters the AMD price drop it will only get that much better! This article didn't cover overclocking, which would be in Intel's favor as the 1.86GHz E6300 is an overclocking monster than can easily reach over 3.0GHz with the right components. The 2.8GHz AMD 5600+ can easily overclock to 3.1GHz, which will give it better performance, but not the same increase as the Intel processor. This is good information for overclockers, but since many people don't overclock it shouldn't impact which one you buy.
Update (4-22-2007 6am Central): An update will be published once Intel officially lowers desktop processor pricing as the Core 2 Duo 6420 will be the new sub $200 processor that will compete with the 5600+. It wasn't tested as it wasn't released when this article was published!
Legit Bottom Line: AMD has reduced the AMD A64 X2 5600+ price by 42%, which makes it a heck of a bargain. The 5600+ out performs the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Processor in price performance, thanks to its new lower price.