Thread: New PC: Intel Q9550 or AMD Phenom II 955 BE

I was leaning towards making the switch back to Intel from AMD but after reading some comments from your forum I may have dismissed AMD to early. Maybe the heat issues I've experienced from past processors are just that... in the past.

I did a bit of research this weekend to see how the Phenom II's stack up against Intel. They appear to consistently beat Core2 Quad lineup from Intel and although they don't stack up against i7 there were a couple categories where they were comparable.

Now I still find DDR3 a bit pricey but when I factored all of the major components of my potential upgrade I would be able to build an Intel Q9550 & AMD Phenom II 955 BE for roughly the same price.

Which system would you go with and why?

Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 2.83Ghz (~3.4 OC'd)
OCZ Vendetta 2
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R LGA775
G.SKILL F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK PC2-8500 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-1066 CL5-5-5-15

AMD Phenom II 955 BE 3.2Ghz (~3.6 OC'd)
OCZ Vendetta 2
Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P AM3 DDR3
Corsair XMS3 DHX TW3X4G1600C9DHX 4GB 2X2GB PC3-12800 DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9-24

Thanks.

955BE of course! It has a upgrade path, the Q9550 does not have ANY upgrade path, it will basically be a throwaway mobo, cpu and ram or a hand-me-down.

Both processors are very comparable and both overclock to around 3.8 GHz.

You really should go for DDR3-1333 unless the 1600 is close in price.

The worst CPU u can throw your money at this time is any 775 socket CPU should compare i5 vs. Phenom II. Anyway, I would stick with the 955. DDR3 isn't expensive anymore; its price went down quite a lot. if u add that 790XT beast of a board, u got yourself a rig to be proud off.

I would go with the AMD setup, simply because LGA 775 is dead, there really is nowhere to go if you have a Q9550, whereas with the AMD build there will be new CPU's coming out for the AM3 platform that you could upgrade to.