Kizo

Hi,
I'm building a system for a cousin, and I was wondering if you guys would help me choose between these two systems which I can buy for the similar amount of cash: Intel i3 540/H55 and AMD Athlon X4 640/AMD 880G.

The components won't change considerably in the next 3-4 years, and the PC would be mostly used for gaming(while it can )/internet/multimedia purposes.

Thank you for any thoughts.

OldBuzzard

Flip a coin, or just go with the mfr. that you and/or your cousin feel more comfortable with.

The performance between the two is almost identical.

Here's a decent review comparing them to each other"

Athlon II X4 640 vs. Core i3 530 CPU Review | Hardware Secrets

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

CJLMTLCA

I agree with OB. Are you going to build it and just hand it over and he uses it? Will you do maintenance and troubleshooting for him? If the system is transparent to him, then YOU decide what chipset you're comfortable building/tweaking/overclocking.

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wtourist

Cheapskate that I am I'd look for the best combination deal price wise.
For me the 880 platform offers more cost effective cpu upgrade, but no one knows what future tech is going..
I expect video card choice will mean more than intel/ amd preference mb/cpu..

Kizo

Lol

Thanks a lot for the advice, I think this is the solution, the Mobo for the AMD is from MSI, and for Intel its Asus. I think that it's best that I go with Intel for that reason (not that MSI is bad or anything, but Asus is more well known for quality IMO).

Also, nice review, it was helpful, since its conclusion was that 4 cores is only making difference in professional apps (which my cousin won't use), and also the chip we're buying is slighly faster than the one used in the review. (i3 540)

The price is almost identical since the other parts are identical (around 620EUR).

And just for info here are the full system specs:

Veridian3

Should be a nice system and the fact the Intel/Asus board has USB3 is a bonus

Kizo

Thanks...
Now we have another dilemma about the GPU since we saw a Sapphire HD6850 for about 25 EUR more...
We know it's about 10% faster and more power efficient, but we'll see, we've kinda stretched too much from originally planned budget (500EUR)

OldBuzzard

I'd note that USB 3.0 are also available for the AMD side as well:

Newegg.com - ASRock 880GXH/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Newegg.com - ASRock 880G EXTREME3 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Newegg.com - ASRock 890GM PRO3 AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

ASRock are becoming more well known for their quality as well.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

blibbax

Personally, if it's a gaming PC, I'd go for the Intel solution. It tends to have the performance advantage in games that don't make decent use of 3 or more cores, which sadly is still many.

I think you'd also get a bit more of an overclock out of it, though I could be wrong.

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iPlayer

What's the to buy list looking like?

Tipstaff

The problem with the Athlon II X4 is in the amount of cache it has per core (512kb), and/or the lack of L3 cache. While the i3-530 only has 256kb of cache per core it has 4MB of shared L3 cache, which is why it suprisingly holds it's own so well.

Kizo, take a look at different sites "combo" or "bundle" deals. Sites like Newegg and NCIX will give great discounts when you buy their preset combos, be it complete systems, motherboard + CPU, motherboard + PSU, and so on. You could save yourself a lot of time and money this way.

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temeteus82

Well he is in eurozone so Newegg is out of the question same applies for NCIX..

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dltre

Well, I find AMD is cheap and lacks performance and I like Intel and I think their chips are great. The Problem is that the i3 is only dual core but it is newer and that the AMD Quad core is older and lacks cache as said above earlier.
I would definitely go with Intel for gaming.

Tipstaff

Other dealers have similar combo/bundle deals too. I just used Newegg and NCIX as 2 examples.

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Kizo

Hi guys,
sorry I haven't been able to respond in a while, I had a lot of work...
However I managed to buy most of the parts yesterday.

This is the final list:
Notice that I changed the regular GTX460 768MB with the Palit's 1GB GTX460 Sonic edition. I couldn't get my hands on a HD6850, hopefully the performance is similar (can someone please confirm this, or give an opinion?), but as I found in a techpowerup review, the power draw on the GTX460 is about 35-40W higher (hope the PSU can handle it).

@OldBuzzard: I know that AMD has mobos that support USB3 (more than Intel, in fact), I had one for my optional AMD build.

Will post pics as soon as I can.
Thank you for all the thoughts and help.

Edit: Guys can anyone tell me if a SATA3 HDD works on a SATA2 mobo? Have I made a big mistake with this?? Haven't checked the mobo before buying if it supports SATA3 and it doesn't.

Edit2: It will work, I found my answer at www.serialata.org .

blibbax

Yeah, SATA is backwards compatible.

Nice build you'll have there, and although I haven't heard of that specific PSU model, any decent 500W should be more than enough. You could get away with a 400W on an i3+single GPU system.

Edit: I forgot to say, please post pics when it's done :P

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Judas

fyi... with the intel i3 540.... your going to be CPU limiting your graphics card a fair bit....

Generally the highest GPU you'll want for that CPU will be a ATI 5770 at MOST... i found sticking something higher in just ... didn't see any real advantage until i moved to a intel i5 cpu...

And don't get anything less then a 500 watt psu with a minimum total amps across 2x 12v rails being 36-40amps... Coolermasters Extreme PSU 500watt is a good place to start.

And the P7H55-M Pro is a great motherboard....

Personally with the very little dollar difference among the hardrives...... grab yourself a 640gb WD Caviar Black 64mb sata drive.... they are lightning fast

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Kizo

Some pics... sorry about the quality (iPhone 3G)

Edit: @Judas Total amp on 2x12v is 40A Judas, and I thought the same about the bottleneck, if you see my previous post, you'll see that I initially planned a slower card, but since the monitor is 1080p and this CPU is very good at games (see links below) I thought the bottleneck would be minimal, of course more noticeable on CPU intensive games. Anyway, hope we didn't make a VERY bad choice. (maybe we can OC it in the future, I hear these go to 4GHz on air )

Links: Link1, Link2, Link3

blibbax

I think at 1080p with a tasty overclock the bottlekneck will be minimal in most modern games.

Gz on your new PC, and... buy some case fans and CPU coolage :P

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Kizo

Thanks mate, but it's really my cousins PC. I just had the fun of assembling it.

About the cooling, I plan to put some case fans, but it's winter still, so no need to hurry. The temps are acceptable, in about 18-19C room CPU: 33 idle, 44-46 load, GPU: 34 Idle, around 65-67 load.

Also some quick numbers. I installed Win7 and everything, and tried Crysis Warhead for bechmark purposes .

With all settings on Gamer, except Shaders:Enthusiast , 1080p, 2x AA, VSync On we get 32-42FPS depending on environment, with dips to 25-26FPS. Nothing was OCd.
Sorry I can't prove this with a screenshot, but I am no longer at my cousins, and we didn't use benchmark tools, just plain in game monitoring by ourselves.