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

C2D vs X2

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

BJB

Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2003
Location
Wisconsin
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately on whether or not I should upgrade to C2D. There is no doubt that the C2D is faster than the AMD processors clock for clock, and I am not trying to dispute that. What I want to address is how much does that matter with gaming.

I have seen plenty of benchmarks directly comparing processors with various games. The problem with these benchmarks is most use low resolutions to emphasize the CPU. Well does that really give a real world picture? My feeling is that it doesn't, because no one is going to game at such low resolutions if they have a current setup.

I decided to do some digging to help give me an accurate picture, and I came across two articles that I feel address this.

C2E X6800 Oblivion - http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_8800_preview/page19.asp

AMD X2 Oblivion - http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_amd_cpu_scaling/page11.asp

The AMD processors are actually very comparable to the C2E when using resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher. So for those people that primarily game and are considering an upgrade you may want to hold off, and put that money toward a new DX10 card instead.

Perhaps this has already been discussed and I am late to the game, so I apologize if I am being redundant. I thought I would mention this since I see some people recommending upgrades to C2D for people that mainly game.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that flight simulators are the exception. Flight simulators are much more cpu dependant than other games, so the C2D will be faster.
 
I am very happy with the performance I get with my AMD proc. Most of those benches show the C2D as having a lot more frames, however both procs post frames well above even medium frame playability on most games.

In all honesty you dont need much over 60FPS to play any game. Sure you may get 80 - 90 with the top of the line AMD and over 100 with a C2D, but you really dont need the extra FPS to play anything. So for me the AMD chips are just fine.

To me the C2D is just bling when you dont need the bling when it comes to gaming. As for other applications the C2D may do things a little faster, however not to much faster that it bothers me.
 
Too much is made of the difference betwen the X2 & C2D IMO. Both are fast, both can feed nearly any video card fast enough to make it the bottleneck at typical resolutions. I have both a Ultra-D 3800+ X2 system @ 2.7Ghz and a E6400 Allendale system @ 2.33 GHZ(570i SLI chipset :() and they're very close in overall performance. Of course when I pick out a real mobo for the Intel chip things will look somewhat different, but the difference isn't huge between these processors. I certainly wouldn't spend a boatload to upgrade from a quality X2 setup.
 
TimoneX said:
Too much is made of the difference betwen the X2 & C2D IMO. Both are fast, both can feed nearly any video card fast enough to make it the bottleneck at typical resolutions. I have both a Ultra-D 3800+ X2 system @ 2.7Ghz and a E6400 Allendale system @ 2.33 GHZ(570i SLI chipset :() and they're very close in overall performance. Of course when I pick out a real mobo for the Intel chip things will look somewhat different, but the difference isn't huge between these processors. I certainly wouldn't spend a boatload to upgrade from a quality X2 setup.

The AMD's are no slouch, but you are really not being fair here. A C2D is a very good chip, and mhz for mhz it is better then an X2..there is no arguing that. And you are comparing a C2D @ 2.3ghz to an X2 @ 2.7ghz...let us not forget that your C2D should be capable of running at 3.3ghz or so on average.

If you are saying that a 2.3ghz C2D=a 2.7ghz X2...fine, but don't generalize the chips on that because while the X2 is pretty much tapped out @ 2.7ghz the C2D has a lot more head room to work with.
 
Speciale said:
The AMD's are no slouch, but you are really not being fair here. A C2D is a very good chip, and mhz for mhz it is better then an X2..there is no arguing that. And you are comparing a C2D @ 2.3ghz to an X2 @ 2.7ghz...let us not forget that your C2D should be capable of running at 3.3ghz or so on average.

If you are saying that a 2.3ghz C2D=a 2.7ghz X2...fine, but don't generalize the chips on that because while the X2 is pretty much tapped out @ 2.7ghz the C2D has a lot more head room to work with.

agreed... my friends x2 4400 comes no where close to my e6600 even with his clocked above mine... But in all honesty if you have a good X2 chip you should be decently good... although the 8800's do get bottlenecked by x2's quite a bit more than a C2d.
 
As you have acknowledged already, in GPU bound games C2D is not much better (if at all) than an X2. However, to suggest CPU speed matters little would be an overgeneralisation. More on the topic in this article:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1996932,00.asp

As an avid gamer myself, I can say that while indeed the GPU is the most important part in a gaming system, a faster CPU has it's benefits as well. You tend to get a more consistent framerate at all times - for example, when playing online games with lots of enemies on screen such as BF2 and CS:S - you will appreciate a faster CPU as the minimum framerate won't dip as much. I can't stress the importance of minimum framerates enough. An average framerate of 100 will do you no good if you get bogged down to 30fps in a firefight.

Apart from flight sims, another genre which seems to favour a faster CPU are RTS games, especially ones where you can command an army in the thousands (such as Rome: Total War, from my experience). Not many websites benchmark gaming performance with RTS games (don't know why as it's one of the more popular genres) but Anandtech is an exception:

12593.png

That said, an X2 @ 2.5GHz+ should still handle pretty much any game on the market at the moment (Flight Simulator X being an exception) so upgrading to a C2D at this point in time will only bring minimal improvements to your gaming experience.
 
I used AMD since July 1993. Until now I never considered to get an Intel. But the C2D are far superior than the X2 right now. Yes when DX10 games start comming out will be less CPU demanding and more GPU but why pay the same and get something slower?

If you love a lot the AMD then stay there (it's difficult phsylogogicaly the switching over). If you want best value for money E6300/E6400 OEM with good cooler (Skythe Mine), good 965 mobo, 8800GTS and some good 800mhz RAM will not tax you more than £550+vat (depending where you live).

The funny thing is that Intel was always expensive. But an E6300/6400 with an Asus P5B (I don't care about RAID), are faster and a lot cheaper than an SLI 570+/RD580 with X2 4600+ combo. And way better overclockers.
 
Speciale said:
The AMD's are no slouch, but you are really not being fair here. A C2D is a very good chip, and mhz for mhz it is better then an X2..there is no arguing that. And you are comparing a C2D @ 2.3ghz to an X2 @ 2.7ghz...let us not forget that your C2D should be capable of running at 3.3ghz or so on average.

If you are saying that a 2.3ghz C2D=a 2.7ghz X2...fine, but don't generalize the chips on that because while the X2 is pretty much tapped out @ 2.7ghz the C2D has a lot more head room to work with.

Ummm...yeah. That's why I'm using a C2D. It is superior at the same clock speed and I am looking forward to getting a real motherboard and seeing what this chip is capable of, but I wouldn't spend a ton of $$$ to go from a solid X2 system to a C2D setup, the difference just isn't all that great.
 
Friendly note: Lets keep this civil, and I like how people are using benchmark results to back up their posts (good work Epsilon84 :) )
 
Hm, Id have to say if your on a TIGHT budget go X2, but if you have a bit more money you can get a C2D, either way the performance increase PROBABLY isnt too noticible in most things.. and like any other part of the system the board, RAM, PSU, and all the other goodies play major roles in performance.
 
Epsilon84 said:
Apart from flight sims, another genre which seems to favour a faster CPU are RTS games, especially ones where you can command an army in the thousands (such as Rome: Total War, from my experience). Not many websites benchmark gaming performance with RTS games (don't know why as it's one of the more popular genres) but Anandtech is an exception:

12593.png

That is an interesting benchmark, and you bring up some good points about minimum FPS. I suppose Comapny of Heroes performs much better because there isn't quite as much going on. The number of units on a map definitely tends to be less than some of the RTS games you mentioned. Either way it seems to do fairly well, and obviously it is gpu bound as you can see from the benchmarks below from the same Firingsquad reviews that I linked to previously.

C2E
coh1280.gif


AMD X2
coh1280.gif
 
SeasonalEclipse said:
Hm, Id have to say if your on a TIGHT budget go X2, but if you have a bit more money you can get a C2D, either way the performance increase PROBABLY isnt too noticible in most things.. and like any other part of the system the board, RAM, PSU, and all the other goodies play major roles in performance.

I think for most people it will depend on what they have already. In my case I have a good motherboard, and memory, so upgrading to a Opteron is the easy choice for me. The prices are actually not that far off from each other if you are comparing motherboard, processor, and memory.

I think an upgrade to C2D would be more attractive for more people if it didn't require really good memory to achieve the highest overclocks. The nice thing about AMD is that you can still achieve a great overclock with average memory. The fact that high-end memory is so expensive right now just compounds the issue. And of course it certainly wouldn't hurt if the boards were the same price. Spending $250+ for a 680i motherboard based on a reference design seems rediculously expensive. Fortunately the P965 boards are more reasonably priced although most of the cheaper models lack features and are still approximately the same price as AMD boards with more features.
 
BJB said:
I think for most people it will depend on what they have already. In my case I have a good motherboard, and memory, so upgrading to a Opteron is the easy choice for me. The prices are actually not that far off from each other if you are comparing motherboard, processor, and memory.

I think an upgrade to C2D would be more attractive for more people if it didn't require really good memory to achieve the highest overclocks. The nice thing about AMD is that you can still achieve a great overclock with average memory. The fact that high-end memory is so expensive right now just compounds the issue. And of course it certainly wouldn't hurt if the boards were the same price. Spending $250+ for a 680i motherboard based on a reference design seems rediculously expensive. Fortunately the P965 boards are more reasonably priced although most of the cheaper models lack features and are still approximately the same price as AMD boards with more features.

The only C2D that requires high end RAM to achieve good overclocks is the E6300. On an E6400, you can achieve 3.2GHz using DDR2-800 - not budget of course, but it's not exactly high end either, with the advent of DDR2-1000 or faster modules on the market. Besides, most DDR2-667 modules are capable of overclocking to DDR2-800 speeds.

Of course, the E4300 is coming out in January next year, and this should be the budget overclockers dream chip (as Ed loves to keep pointing out ;) ). With a 9x multiplier, you can attain 3GHz on DDR2-667.

On the subject of mobos, I am not a fan of nVidias 680i due to the high price.
P965 is a good choice if you don't require SLI, but you are correct that in the cheaper boards the feature set is not as good as a similarly priced AM2 board.
 
Epsilon84 said:
On the subject of mobos, I am not a fan of nVidias 680i due to the high price.
P965 is a good choice if you don't require SLI, but you are correct that in the cheaper boards the feature set is not as good as a similarly priced AM2 board.
i really dont think so on this my friend. lets just say in this instance that you want good ocing with features, so to keep it simply lets just say ABIT is your choice.

on the intel side you have
abit ab9
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127005
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?type=3&id=113&page=1&desc=abit_ab9_p965_conroe_motherboard

abit ab9-pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127004
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTIwMCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

on amd's side you have these
ABIT KN9
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127236
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/08/25/abit_kn9_sli_motherboard/1.html

ABIT AN9 32X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127003
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/12/08/abit_fatal1ty_an9_32x/8.html


the reviews say it all, i dont see how the am2 mobo's could be better. although i will give it up for being sli in that price range. you brought not requiring sli. i really dont see the am2 boards being better or more feature packed when looking a a non sli system. the price difference between them is not that big, you make it sound like it is something bigger. 680i is only $$ cause its nv top of the line chipset. p965 is not a highend part and can not be compared to 680i.
 
Evilsizer said:
i really dont think so on this my friend. lets just say in this instance that you want good ocing with features, so to keep it simply lets just say ABIT is your choice.

on the intel side you have
abit ab9
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127005
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?type=3&id=113&page=1&desc=abit_ab9_p965_conroe_motherboard

abit ab9-pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127004
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTIwMCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

on amd's side you have these
ABIT KN9
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127236
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/08/25/abit_kn9_sli_motherboard/1.html

ABIT AN9 32X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127003
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/12/08/abit_fatal1ty_an9_32x/8.html


the reviews say it all, i dont see how the am2 mobo's could be better. although i will give it up for being sli in that price range. you brought not requiring sli. i really dont see the am2 boards being better or more feature packed when looking a a non sli system. the price difference between them is not that big, you make it sound like it is something bigger. 680i is only $$ cause its nv top of the line chipset. p965 is not a highend part and can not be compared to 680i.

It's simple - at an equivalent price - an AM2 board will have more/better features than a P965 board. This is obvious to most people. It doesn't stop enthusiasts going C2D though, as for most performance is what matters most. For example, I myself have no use for extra 2 USB ports or an extra Firewire port - I just want performance and overclockability. C2D provides oodles of both, at a good price.

I was just going to get a cheap P965 board, but I was lucky enough to nab a P5B Deluxe on special ($50 off retail price) not long ago, I'm just waiting for RAM prices to come down a bit then I'm on the C2D bandwagon. :bday:
 
I ordered the P5B (not Deluxe). Still very good overclocker and cheaper than the P5B-Deluxe (double the money).

If you have a normal budget (not thousands) and going to get a new DX10 system today (as I did) you don't need SLI/Crossfire either way. The 8800 even the GTS model, is awesome graphic card. R600 will be on the same class too. So I don't see the point buying SLI/Crossfire motherboards exept you want to use 2 DX9 cards.
 
Epsilon84 said:
The only C2D that requires high end RAM to achieve good overclocks is the E6300. On an E6400, you can achieve 3.2GHz using DDR2-800 - not budget of course, but it's not exactly high end either, with the advent of DDR2-1000 or faster modules on the market.

You are right, cheaper stuff will do. In fact, you could use ddr2-800 with an e6300 as well it just depends on what your overclocking goal is.

The point of my statement was more related to achieving maximum overclock. Sure you could get to 3.2ghz with an e6400 and ddr2-800 at stock speeds, but if an overclocker wants to increase their chances of achieving a maximum overclock (such as those hitting 3.6ghz) they need some good overclocking memory or ddr2-1000+ memory both of which are fairly expensive. Crucial Ballistix ddr2-667 memory is $280 and ddr2-800 is $290 (Based on 2x1gb kits). From what I understand all of these sticks have Micron D9 memory which is widely accepted as being some of the best for overclocking. The cheapest ddr2-1000 memory at Newegg is $300 (once again based on a 2x1gb kit).
 
Speciale said:
The AMD's are no slouch, but you are really not being fair here. A C2D is a very good chip, and mhz for mhz it is better then an X2..there is no arguing that. And you are comparing a C2D @ 2.3ghz to an X2 @ 2.7ghz...let us not forget that your C2D should be capable of running at 3.3ghz or so on average.

If you are saying that a 2.3ghz C2D=a 2.7ghz X2...fine, but don't generalize the chips on that because while the X2 is pretty much tapped out @ 2.7ghz the C2D has a lot more head room to work with.

Actually the 2 setups that you listed there at the clock speeds are actually basically neck and neck for preformance, they should be very similar if not exactly the same speed wise. C2D has ~10-15% clock advantage over X2 line.
 
deathman20 said:
Actually the 2 setups that you listed there at the clock speeds are actually basically neck and neck for preformance, they should be very similar if not exactly the same speed wise. C2D has ~10-15% clock advantage over X2 line.

Yeah but that's my point...the fact that the C2D will have more overhead as far as its clockspeed is concerned.
 
Back