if a phenom II 940 uses a lot more electricity(as stated by yashbundini)it must not be worth it to save $1250 for the cpu in comparison to the i7 965 extreme edition,right?i know my answer,ive got the phenom right now at 3.8 ghz stable and fast and what does this gentleman consider using far more power?

the phenom II 940 uses $2.20 more "A YEAR"
I GUESS IN PAKISTAN THATS A YEARS INCOME SO MR YASHBUNDINI COULDNT AFFORD THE PHENOM,THE QUAD9400,THE QUAD 9550 OR EVEN A DAMN GOAT OR DONKEY FOR THAT MATTER.
why did he even comment on this review anyway?his reading ability isnt up to par,and his comments are ridiculous and WRONG WRONG WRONG,sorry there Mr.
AhKmad Abdula La Sika Kamala Mohammedan Yashbudini OR Joe for short.

stick to camels and you abacus my good camel jockey friend,see ya later dude,lol

Slightly better than a Q9400 but uses far more electricity than the gain in output. Less performance than a Q9550 but uses more power. Folders need not apply.

I going to buy the best bang for the buck, which I believe at this time is the AMD Phenom II.

I’m not much of a gamer. I use my computer more for video editing and application development. I have an old school AMD 2500 home built system; the normal clock of a 2500 is 1.8. This CPU has been clock at 2.2 for eight years and not one problem. Never over heated or slowed down.

I can build a complete system with a 22” monitor, Asus M3A79-T Deluxe motherboard, 8GB’s of Corsair Dominator dual channel DDR2 ram, Blue ray burner, Case with 1000 watt power supply, 1TB hard drive, and Radeon HD 4650 video card and an AMD Phenom II 940 for about $1500. The i7 intel cost over $1000. You do the math and decide which is the best performance for your dollar especially when the economy sucks.
I think that both company makes a excellent processor chip.

"In 2 years time, with more demanding software/games/os which CPU do you think will still have acceptable performance, the $300 Phenom II or the $1000 i7 965 ?"
In 2 years time the $700 you save now by buying the Phenom II will buy you something way faster than the i7 965. Buying expensive CPUs to "futureproof" is in my experience a false economy, never more so than with a CPU. Todays high end becomes tommorrows midrange very quickly. Lots of RAM and a fastish GPU is ALWAYS a better use of $.

If you want your computer to do the same tasks faster (and more reliably) the best upgrade you can do is throw away your broken os (vista) and xp and run ubuntu linux.

Save your memory, motherboard cpu upgrades, and remove the unecessary bloatware to get more speed by running a better os.

This is a bit like trying to get to the finish line which is one foot away from the start on an oval track: Vista and XP will take you the long way round the track to reach the finish line, Ubuntu will take one step in the other direction to achieve the same goal in a fraction of the time without going the long way.

This way you can get to the finish line on foot faster than a formula one car by simply being smarter.

However if you are going to buy a new CPU you had better make it an AMD one because the world really needs AMD right now so we don't go back to the dark old days of paying through the nose for mediocre sh*te from Intel.

I noticed your wet fart comment concerning Phenom and wouldn't have found a better way of putting it myself.

On the other hand the new version seems to be quite a bargain, please note that in certain situations the Phenom II does match the Penryn Quad Extreme.

At a bargain price.
So AMD seems to be over the fartage problem. Congrats.

This is a no brainer for me. I'd buy the Phenom II and O/C it big time. Why pay more and get nothing for your money?

This is a no brainer for me. I'd buy the Phenom II and O/C it big time. Why pay more and get nothing for your money?

History will show that whom ever has the best product out will charge a premium. Now are these huge price differences worth the lil bit of extra performance.. I would say no. These two chip companies battles have kept the prices fairly low... As a consumer I would like to see them both doing good and both putting out top tech. It just means lower prices for me!! We need them both, so all the fans boys get over it and enjoy seeing a little bit more competition in the cpu market! The i7 prices will drop sooner for the intel fan boys and for the amd fan boys the phenom 2 is already priced nicely.

Ollie, if you want to talk about "history" then why didn't you mention the $1200 AMD FX-62?

Hypocrites...........

Ill take the cruise and the phenom 2.. haha .. Great comments!!

Does anyone really care about a few more FPS these days? I mean you gotta have a pretty small penius to give a rats ass about a change of a few FPS in any game when all current desktop CPUs will provide excellent gaming performance.

Yeah I know Lameboyz might still think FPS are important but not power users or main stream consumers. Most people buy PCs and hardware based on value, i.e. what delivers the best bang for the buck. Only fools pay for bleeding edge, trick-of-the-week PC hardware. The fact that AMD has delivered a good product at a cost effective price should be the bottom line and of most importance to consumers.

If your life revolves around running benches and your wallet is stuffed full of excess money, then by all means by an over-priced system from Intel if that makes you happy. It will surly make Intel happy. They enjoy over charging people for CPUs. They have a history of this. In fact they will even violate anti-trust laws to price gouge consumers and try to illegally eliminate any competition. That is why they have been convicted on three continents for their criminal acts. If it makes you happy to pay thru the arse for a CPU and have no other CPU options, by all means, buy Intel products.

Me, I vote with my wallet and I will buy the best value from a reputable company, not a convicted criminal.

Joss21,

Personal Computing it's not all about games ! There's a world out there other than games...
Besides that not everyone can or want to upgrade their CPU everytime a new/faster one shows up... so people like myself buy the most powerfull CPU that they can afford at the time hoping that it gives good performance in a 2, 3 or 4 years life span.
In 2 years time, with more demanding software/games/os which CPU do you think will still have acceptable performance, the $300 Phenom II or the $1000 i7 965 ?

Great comparison isnt?
a $300 Phenom II with an extreme i7 965 at $1000+...
You forgot to mention you have the capability of buying the same performance (or almost) for half the price...
How smart do you look if you throw away double the money just for bragging rights? ahhaa mi rig is 10% faster than yours... ahhaa (while I can play the same games as you but also take a weekend Cruise to bahamas for the same money)

A simple drop in CPU upgrade to keep me happy for another year. I think AMD is playing thier cards right. Focus on the Price/Performance for the mainstream. At the $275 price point, Its a great value for existing socket AM2+ owners and offers decent performance for someone building a new system. We'll see if it pays off. I dont think we will see an enthusiast CPU to compete with Intel's high end from anyone for a while. But the margins are much lower there. How many PCs in Best Buy have a $1000 CPU?

Well... unfortunetely (because i like AMD, because i have a AMD cpu that have served me well) my next system will be an i7... but i hope that in 4 years time i will be buying an AMD cpu again... GO AMD !

I value benchies from techreport about 10 times higher. Phenom II wipes floor with Q9400 (and even Q9550) in Far Cry 2. I think it is overall a very good product but Inquirer rather haves glass half empty -analogy. Well go buy your Intel's now, shoo.

Given the cost of an i7 plus DDR3 RAM plus a socket 1366 mobo I have to consider there are two segments.

I can live without i7. Here's hoping this new AMD chip drives down the price of quad core 775 and AM2+ CPUs.

"AMD's Phenom II 940 guns for the Core 2 Quad Q9400"... and what exactly the author guns for? Showing to the public that Core 2 Quad is better in synthetic tests or has a higher maximum framerate in games? What good is that for the casual user/gamer? Yes, I'd love to know about how fast a 3D program will render and how fast this CPU will convert movies, but wait... I don't render and convert 24/7 so why should I care if one is 10% faster/slower?
In games it is curious what the maximum framerate is, but wait a minute - WHAT does that had to do with the ACTUAL gaming experience?!? Isn't it more important to know what average and minimum frame rates are? E.g. in several seconds if you have between 20 and 110 frames on one CPU then 35 and 95 on the other - which one gives the better gaming experience? And since AMD acquired ATI, some might ask - what is the difference between Phenom II and ATi, Phenom II and Nvidia, and Core 2 Quad and ATi/Nvidia combos??
I'm fed up with stereotype benchmarks that show all but the important aspects of the casual daily usage for those users that might actually buy them.
You test high end CPU's yet you test them as if they are intended for the office workstations...

@ssj4Gogeta - Anand lost me as a reader when he openly insulted AMD and their CPU line, the first time Core 2 appeared. I don't mind the fact that Intel made a better CPU. But back in time, when things were reversed, Anand never went against Intel in such manner. In fact, I can't recall a negative review of Pentium 3/4 in his site, when clearly AMD was the better choice for many years.

About the overclocking - maybe the author wanted to show a 1:1 clock comparison, since Phenom II comes with lower clock speeds...

And just for the record - I'm typing this comment on an Intel-based machine (not much of an AMD fanboy ;)

Having just read the anandtech review this one seems awful similar!

why haven't you overclocked the Intel CPU's???

for a complete picture you should go here:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3492

It is said that the AMD Phenom has double the amount of SSE units compared to the intel Core 2 Quad.

Are those extra units used in games (yet)?

How can we no?

Please investigate this