• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Gaming CPU, which one? AMD or Intel?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.
M

Mountain

Registered
​
Joined
Oct 16, 2014
I'm having rather a large debate over here on what CPU is the best for gaming. I'm not trying to start a war over this, but rather try to get a good understanding on which CPU should be used for each task. My question is: What would you use an AMD for, as well as an Intel? Each one has pro's and cons to certain tasks. Does anyone know what they are?

Does an AMD CPU out perform an Intel in some tasks? What are they?

AMD is the only one that makes an affordable Octa-core CPU. Yes Intel makes the Intel Core i7-5960X, however I do not classify this as "affordable". Not everyone has $1K laying around just for the CPU. However, AMD's $300 CPU is right there with the 4790K; just over the $300 mark.

I could do a Google search and find reviews comparing the two, which I will do. However I would like to hear from the OCF crew and get your opinions on which one is a better choice for gaming.

From what I've found; AMD is not a very efficient CPU. 220 watts? Really? Add a decent video card and you'll be needing a darn good PS to keep the system running for a long time.

What do you guys think?

- Tracy
 
For a gaming machine, either will do just fine. For a gaming machine with 2 or more cards, Intel.

Intel is a bit faster in gaming due to its instructions per clock advantage... that is unless you stream and game at the same time. AMD does well there.

For a gaming machnie, I would go Z97 and 4790K.
 
Thanks for that awesome response.

Someone is arguing that you can use the APU of an AMD cpu and use that to offset the load of the dedicated video card for games, is this true?
 
You can combine the iGPU of the APU and combine it with a some discrete AMD GPUs, yes. AMD has a compatibility chart at their website on this so you can see which cards will work.
 
Nope. But I wouldn't base my decision off of that either.

I assume you are gaming at 1080p?
 
Yes, 1080p. I see no need to do 4K yet. Does the APU teaming help with the FPS at all, or is that hype? Has anyone done that here?

- Tracy
 
AMD will game just fine and I personally wouldn't get the APU. If you do consider the FX , I see you mention $300 and 220W which leads me to believe you are considering the FX9590. Personally I feel they're a waste of money. You can get one of the lower numbered 8xxx CPUs and accomplish the same thing. You also need to be willing to get a "good" motherboard and some serious cooling if you want to run at 9590 speeds.
 
Mountain said:
Yes, 1080p. I see no need to do 4K yet. Does the APU teaming help with the FPS at all, or is that hype? Has anyone done that here?

- Tracy
Click to expand...
It helps, certainly. I haven't done it as I don't like using two 'cards' if at all possible. For 1080p, its just not needed. Grab a GTX 970 or a R9 290/290x and call it a day.

As Johan said, both will be fine for gaming, but the intel is a bit better in most tests.
 
APUs and generally AMD CPUs are a mistake on the current market. The only option worth considering are 4 thread Athlons 860 if you have really low budget. In every other case pick i5 4690K or i7 4790K or if you have more money then 5820K.

Reason:
AMD is slower in every case, heats up more, uses much more power, requires better/more expensive cooling, games manufacturers care less to optimize their products for AMD CPUs, most games still use 2-4 cores max where Intel has much higher performance ...

CF with discrete GPU and IGP is a bad idea. It's still slow and not as cheap as it supposed to be. Better is to buy good graphics card and even lower i3 CPU than play with APUs. Not to mention that every AMD graphics at the moment is 3 year old technology. Maybe they will add something good in 2-3 months but right now they can't even keep sales on reasonable level.
 
Johan45 said:
AMD will game just fine and I personally wouldn't get the APU. If you do consider the FX , I see you mention $300 and 220W which leads me to believe you are considering the FX9590. Personally I feel they're a waste of money. You can get one of the lower numbered 8xxx CPUs and accomplish the same thing. You also need to be willing to get a "good" motherboard and some serious cooling if you want to run at 9590 speeds.
Click to expand...

Yes, the 9590. I was considering it, but the 220 watt part of it is making me steer clear. I guess AMD needs to make an 8 core to compete with Intel's Quads. The 8350 seems to be just as good too. The Intel's seem to be more power conscious than AMD; so it would seem.
 
Yes AMDs are hot power hungry CPUs. The 220W TDP is relative really to the speed of the CPU. Take the FX 8300 for example. It's an 8 core, 95W TDP FX CPU clocked at 3.3G. If you take that CPU and overclock it to the 4.7 level like the 9590 you now have a 220W CPU that is 1/3 of the price of the 9590.
Woomack is right, for the most part you'd be further ahead getting an Intel set up if this is primarily for gaming.
My gamer is an FX and it works fine. For most games as long as you have a good GFX card you'll be fine. There are some that are very poorly written and run mostly on one or two cores and in those instances the AMD will suffer and so will game play. A good 4790K and Z97 motherboard will still run 8 threads, it's a quad core with hyperthreading and you'll be less likely to have any issue regardless of game title you are playing.
 
So, why would anyone go with AMD to begin with if they are slower in every way? Hardly any competition. I remember back when the Pentium 4 was losing badly against AMD. The P4 was considered to be a heat machine. Running at 31 stages, then the redesign of the CPU was born and they came back with the Core 2 Duo @ 13 stages. Does anyone know how many stages the Core i series CPU's are?
 
Because slower doesn't mean not usable. Its just a bit slower. Its cost difference generally makes up for it.

I don't know about stages in this pipeline, I just know the wattage.
 
Last edited:
So is the Intel Pentium G3258. I found this to be the budget Intel CPU that should win a price/performance award. Why would anyone go AMD when this puppy lives. Haha!

This is only $69 and I bet ( I have not searched yet ) that this would play games rather good for the cost.
 
Because a dual core is really only good for internet/email PC. There are games that simply will not work with only two cores. A quad core is the gaming CPU of choice these days.
 
If all your doing is gaming yes Intel is the way to go. Now on the other hand if you also do some serious video encoding for example with a program that can really use the 8 cores to its best advantage that is where cost wise the FX8XXX cpu will close the gap greatly. Yes Intel can do this quite well too and better in some cases.

The big drawback with the FX cpu at this point will be heat generated and depending on how much of an overclock you want to run you will probably want custom water cooling to cool it. Which then closes the gap when you are talking $ for $ performance. I have both an FX8370 and an Intel 4770K system. Cost wise both are very close money wise and equally cooled. For me when I need my big machine I generally pick my FX.
 
It would seem that AMD's would not like the summer time. You'll need great cooling.
 
Its temps would raise no more than an Intel...but yes, summer does warm things up due to the increase in ambient room temperatures that tends to happen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kenrou
  • Poll
The Intel Problem: CPU Efficiency & Power Consumption
2
Replies
23
Views
867
Woomack
W
Flamethrower1972
i7-14700k
Replies
3
Views
142
EarthDog
EarthDog
EarthDog
CPUz bad for benchmarking?? (cache and branch predicition)
Replies
7
Views
516
mackerel
mackerel
mackerel
Intel Foundry update - April 2024
Replies
14
Views
205
Railgun
Railgun
winetime
Upgrade the playstation 1 cpu or even recreate entire console motherboard
2 3 4 5
Replies
86
Views
2K
]-[itman
]-[itman
Back