the Matbe link somehow is linked to the CSX tri-channel kit 3x1GB DDR3-1333 memory on review at Phoronix site.

That is one butt-ugly case. Only a masochistic would buy that thing.

In response to your Why compare when price ranges are not alligned... It is very simple, 95% of the people that buy this product range do so because they want the biggest/best/fastest available. These people are putting together new rigs, and the last thing they want to hear 1 week on is... its not the fastest because my cheaper rig is better than yours.

This is why Athlon did so well 2/3 years back and its why Intel rule right now. There is no real allegiance to either. Plain and simple its just a need for speed.

The most expensive Phenom II on Scan is £190, the cheapest Core i7 is £240. This isn't even looking at motherboard and memory cost differences.

03/02/09

I don't know why people are obsessed with comparing these two when they are not in the same price range.

"IF YOU STILL haven't figured it out, Anandticks dared judge the Phenom II X4 940 against the mighty Intel Core i7 in an extensive battery of gaming tests. Seems like AMD has a chance, after all." They don't, at least not against the i7. READ the article.

They need to list prices of the platform in these reveiws. Putting up a Phenom2 against an i7 is not a good comparison (at least right now). The fact of the matter is that the motherboards are 2x the price and the memory is 3x and that has to be taken into acount. I have been looking to upgrade to a quad core for a while now and I will need a motherboard. CPU, and memory (and possibly a power supply). Not only is the CPU $150 more (for the lower end of both), but the motherboard and memory is another $100 more each. I would need to spend $350 or so for a Phenom2 upgrade or $700 for an i7. Considering I will only see a difference in say 10% of the applications out there and the difference is say 10-20% in most of those applications, the extra $350 is just not an option.

He should compare the Phenom2 920 to the Core2 Quad 8300 and use a board with DDR2, not DDR3. AMD is not shooting for the top end... they can't right now, but they can still compete. In the budget market I think they are much stronger, but that is mostly because Intel's integrated graphics is sooooooo bad.

The link for the matbe case mods actually sends you to the Phoronix CSX tri-channel kit 3x1GB DDR3-1333 article.

Since I would like to drool over some lovely case mods, please fix the link :)

yes, I know I could just scroogle it ;)