looking for gaming computer advice

[Ailos]

Originally Posted by SternLX

Actually, I live in PV also. I just post Prescott as most people are like "where's PV?"

Actually Goku my Mobo+CPU combo I got for $310, before the 4670K was in the Market. I never buy parts at full price. Newegg Promo codes ftw! Just have to keep my eye's peeled for the deals. But ya. Most definitely, if you find a i5+ASUS Mobo bundle on sale snatch that bad boy up.

As for your "not provide as good performance" comment. I disagree, plenty of Core i5-4670K vs FX-8350 shootouts out there show they run pretty much neck and neck stock clocking for stock clocking. The FX-8350 also has a more efficient Memory Bus controller and can handle faster RAM modules than the 4670. The only place the 4670 always wins is Single Threaded performance. Well guess what, the future is Multi-Threaded, and the future is here.

Not trying to start a Intel vs AMD war here but I do like the correct facts to be given. And honestly you can't go wrong with either CPU for a decent PC Gaming rig build. In the end it comes down to personal Preference and Price between the 2 being discussed here.

There's not a single thing about modern AMD silicon that's efficient. It takes more cores to do a kinda "eh" match of a job, faster memory clocks because each tick doesn't push through as much, and the thermal requirements on FX chips is anywhere from 2-3 times as high to do the same job.

I don't recommend Intel because I'm a fanboy of one side or the other, I recommend it from experience. There ARE situations where AMD will come out on top (mostly benchmarks), but no artificial test will ever capture your day-to-day experience quite like actually owning an AMD and an Intel rig will. If you want a more reliable, manageable system that won't feel like it needs upgrading for 3+ years, go Intel. AMD's GPUs are good, but for PS2, NVidia will simply have more eye candy to enjoy (and it's really good eye candy, mind you).

Bottom line is this: in my experience (4 years of AMD ownership) the overclock and driver instability combined with higher thermal requirements and the fact that you'll upgrade the rig sooner, owning an AMD PC is actually more expensive than buying the slighly pricier Intel stuff in the first place. That is why I recommend Intel.