AMD quad core?

[Enndo]

Hey guys, I'm thinking about building a second pc so I can hardware box 10 toons since I use my main pc for alot of different things while I play. My question is since I wanna go kinda cheap since I just spent like 1100 on my main pc, anyone have experience running 5 toons on an amd chip? I was thinking something like, AMD phenom 2 quad core 3ghz, 8 gigs corsair, gtx275, I know the ram and video card will be fine but I've never built a machine with an amd. Does anyone have any experience with their chips?

[Trick]

I can't comment directly on comparrisons with the new Intel i7 chips, but I can tell you what I learned from comparrisons between identical clock speed AMD and Intel CPUs prior to the i7 which I did for my work.

In short, the AMD performed computations between 5% and 10% slower than the Intel. But the AMD more than made up for this in memory performance, as the memory read/write performance was from 33% to 50% better than the Intel. Hypertransport and that on-chip memory controller of the AMD chip appeared to be the difference.

I understand that the Intel i7 chips now have the memory controller in the CPU as well, but the few things I've read on the matter indicate that it reduced the gap but hasn't yet closed it.

[Enndo]

Thanks alot, Ya I love my i7 its fast as hell lol. But I just wanted to see if anyone knew how an amd would do 5 boxing since I wanna go cheapo for my second machine lol.

[Clone]

When I go to my gf's I run 4 toons comfortablyish on a AMD Athlon dual core 5600+ 2.8ghz. I know thats not the question but going on this performance I can say you would be pretty safe on one of the new AMD quad cores

[Marious]

I run an AMD 9850 Quad and it works fine, I have 4 Gigs of ram since i am still running XP and not a 64 OS. Now after a few weeks of 3.1 coming out I am more stable with the 5, some lag in Dal and some of the more populated areas was having issues in IC but I have not gone there in a while, was also having issues when 2 toons where in Dal at one time it is not so bad any more, 1 the stability of 3.1 is way better and 2 I tweaked my wow set up was running off a single folder now running of 5 folders with Symlinks cut down on the lag and was able to spread my load around the 4 cores vs. only using 2. I set my affinity to 15 vs 3 and it uses all 4 cores so I am a happy camper, have not had a lot of time to get back to IC and check it out but I think I will be fine I will be doing some dailies there probably Friday or this weekend to see if I still have the lag issues.

Edit: 9850 not the 9750, but I am looking at upgrading to the newer AMD, perhaps build me a second machine, I have had AMD's for a while and I love them.

[wowphreak]

I can't comment directly on comparrisons with the new Intel i7 chips, but I can tell you what I learned from comparrisons between identical clock speed AMD and Intel CPUs prior to the i7 which I did for my work.

In short, the AMD performed computations between 5% and 10% slower than the Intel. But the AMD more than made up for this in memory performance, as the memory read/write performance was from 33% to 50% better than the Intel. Hypertransport and that on-chip memory controller of the AMD chip appeared to be the difference.

I understand that the Intel i7 chips now have the memory controller in the CPU as well, but the few things I've read on the matter indicate that it reduced the gap but hasn't yet closed it.

That interesting hmmm

What yeh use to test with?

[Cruelty]

I just upgraded to a new AMD Phenom2 x4 810(2.6GHz), 8gb ddr3 and a gtx280 vista 64bit and can run 5 wow no problem medium settings on all windows get 60fps in main and 15fps in other 4. This is running from one install folder, so I would say yes you could run on a AMD quad core even one of the older ones should still be OK.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I run 6 on AMD 3.2ghz X2 (6400). Asus premium vista m2n32 (gets you 3.5 G visible in windows XP). 4G ram.

Note that those X2 6400's arn't cheap. You might think that a quad core is better but if the clock rate is lower .....

[Jheusse]

From my research recently looking at upgrades myself, there are large performance improvements when going from original Phenom to Phenom II. Anandtech did at least one article on the topic, the architecture and on-chip cache design is apparently much much better with the Phenom II.

Clock rate is one variable and it doesn't necessarily correlate to real world performance, lots of variables can affect that, so no you don't want to just buy the biggest number.

Likely to be buying a quad core Phenom II 3.0 GHz later today.

[Crucial]

From my research recently looking at upgrades myself, there are large performance improvements when going from original Phenom to Phenom II. Anandtech did at least one article on the topic, the architecture and on-chip cache design is apparently much much better with the Phenom II.

Clock rate is one variable and it doesn't necessarily correlate to real world performance, lots of variables can affect that, so no you don't want to just buy the biggest number.

Likely to be buying a quad core Phenom II 3.0 GHz later today.

When people say 60fps no problem, I'd like to know what their fps is in Dalaran with 5 clones... otherwise the numbers are meaningless to me since I can get 150 fps in the old world (if I set maxfps to 999) but Dalaran is only 12-15 no mater what I do.

Can you can drop the Phenom IIs into a AM2+ motherboard? Is there that much of an improvement without also upgrading motherboard to AM3 socket/DDR3?

I've got an Phenom 9950 right now in a AM2+ mobo but don't care to invest any more money with AMD unless I can just replace the chip and get a nice boost that way. If I have to replace the motherboard and ram I might as well make the switch to Intel.