i5 quad core or an AMD Phenom II x6?

I'm looking to get an extreme gaming PC, I'm hoping to make the switch over from console gaming to PC gaming purely because the community is so much better, and the games are alot cheaper! I know for a fact at my age I can't afford an i7 extreme edition six core, or an i7 quad core for that matter. So my question is, would it be better to get an intel i5, with 8GB RAM and a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 GFX Card, or an AMD Phenom II x6 BLACK EDITION, 16GB RAM and two 2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 460? My PC wizard friend keeps telling me AMD's are terrible, I don't know whether I believe him though.
 

FacetiousPizza

Silver Level Poster
I'll try to help you out as best I can...

From the benchmarks I saw when looking into buying my PC, I found that most sites agreed that the Intel Sandy Bridge processors were better than anything AMD had to offer. Also, I don't know of any games that currently make use of all 6 cores, so the AMD chip may be a bit overkill. With regards to RAM, people tend to agree that 4GB is all that is needed for gaming since many games tend to use less than 2GB. However, many people opt for 8GB just for that little bit extra breathing room. For gaming, the graphics card is obviously going to be important, with the dual GTX460s being better than a single GTX460. You need to consider all these points when you decide, but for what its worth, I'd go for;
Intel i5-2500
8GB 1333MHz RAM
Nvidia GTX570

If you have a budget for the PC, we would be able to give a full spec and give better advice though :D
 
Well I've sort of come off the idea of having a 3D graphics card because of my budget :p Preferably it would have to be around £600 - £800, I'm 14 and haven't got much patience! But I could stretch further possibly.
 

Fear

Prolific Poster
Well I've sort of come off the idea of having a 3D graphics card because of my budget :p Preferably it would have to be around £600 - £800, I'm 14 and haven't got much patience! But I could stretch further possibly.

Is that including mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers or just the PC itself.
 

Teaz

Godlike
Then here is an intel build which you may want to look at:

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2400 Quad Core (3.10GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8H67-M LX SI (NEW REV 3.0): M-ATX, USB 2.0, SATA 6.0Gb/s, 2 x PCI

Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)

Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - DX® 11, 3D Vision Ready

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)

Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Monitor
19" Wide TFT Silver/Black 1440 x 900 5MS, D-Sub, DVI, 18.5" Panel (£89)

Total: 848

If you're able to stretch your budget abit then this will be a good option you could go for :)
 

danielw2599

Silver Level Poster
I'm confused. It another post you have listed a spec which comes to about £1450. Thats quite a difference from £800.
 

Fear

Prolific Poster
I'm confused. It another post you have listed a spec which comes to about £1450. Thats quite a difference from £800.

Your not the only 1 Defy has got about 3 or 4 different threads going now all conflicting with each other.
 

FacetiousPizza

Silver Level Poster
I've put a spec in each of his other threads, but the 'need' to have 16GB of RAM is quite constricting for the lower budget specs.....
 

Fear

Prolific Poster
Sorry but for gaming the only thing i can see worth boasting about is the my CPU and graphics card are better than yours boasts well at least thats all the arguments i hear not heard the one about ram before though.
 

FacetiousPizza

Silver Level Poster
I don't see it? There all related to the same thing, but different sub topics. I'm flooding forums or anything, is it a bad thing ?

They are all related to the same thing? True. I suspect what everyone is a bit annoyed about is:
A - you have given a different budget in each topic
B - you refuse to take the advice that 16GB RAM is waaay too much for your needs

Don't take this the wrong way, we want to help. You are just making it slightly more difficult than normal :p
 

Teaz

Godlike
I don't see it? There all related to the same thing, but different sub topics. I'm flooding forums or anything, is it a bad thing ?

Lol. complete misunderstanding here DefyTheFallen :) apologies now i've re-read but wasn't ment like that. What I ment was if could of helped you're finds alot easier than scruffling through thread by thread an could save you time :)

As for the multiple similar threads some of us thought it was really similar but with different budgets and got some of the members a tad puzzled so your budget and requirments are still abit unclear to some of us or all.

And the 16gb ram, we thought it was abit too extreme for gaming when you have said you just had pure intentions to gaming since im sure you're aware that 4gb of ram will have the power to handle games without a sweat and run the pc smoothly while 8gb is just about the max for gaming with general use. so going for 16gb ram, the members along with myself thought it was being wasted as the pc wont really fully use that amount of ram so it was pretty much wasted and thought dropping the ram down to 8gb was clearly fine while the saved money could been invested in another component like the HDD or CPU which would of been a wiser investment :)

So dont take it the wrong way as the members are just providing feedback and suggestions to help you get a good balanced build :)
 
Top