Who won, Who Lost Did we ever use the phrase you pay for what you get before? Intel just thrashes AMD at the top-end and the Phenom X4s have no answer to the QX 9770 and the QX 9650 when it comes to brute force processing. With 12megabyte L2 caches and clock speeds of up to 3.2 GHz these CPUs are the fastest desktop processors available on the planet.

The QX 9770 is clearly a super high-end part. It features an FSB speed of 1600 MHz and an unlocked multiplier overclockers rejoice. The bad at Rs 68,450, you can actually build an entire PC with a GTX 260 graphics card for the price. At Rs 48,750, the QX 9650 is cheaper, but not afford ably so; you could assemble a good gaming PC for the price. Ideally these CPUs will be sought after by only those who can afford to pay for them. Our Best Performance award goes to Intel's QX 9770, the fastest CPU across the board; albeit the costliest. Despite some brave and rather heroic efforts from the likes of the Phenom X4 9950 and the X4 9850 Black Edition, Intel's Q 8200 gets our Best Buy award. At Rs 10,785, it is fast enough to warrant you spending that much dough on it.

Name: Just Thrases AMD.jpg Views: 45 Size: 5.3 KB

For our Editors Pick we were something a little affordable. At the same time we wanted something reasonably fast and future proof. All this pointed towards a quad-
core, but which one? At just more than the Phenom X3 8750 (a tri-core),AMDs Phenom X4 9550 is a bargain; It will satisfy almost everyone but the demanding
gamer or 3D content creator. This is one processor that has bang for buck written all over it. In case you can spend no more than Rs 6,000 on a CPU we feel Intel's E7200 is your best bet. For those looking at a basic multimedia cum home PC on a shoestring, AMDs 5000+ is hard to beat - it'll even play HD content easily.