AMD vs. Intel: What to Get? Which is Better?

AMD vs. Intel: What to Get? Which is Better?

There are countless companies in the computer industry but there is only one battle that counts... AMD vs. Intel. This is a favorite topic in the forums, yet instead of blindly pledging allegiance to one CPU or the other, let's take a look behind the scenes and find out which companies processor is the best bet.Now I should say that I'm a hardware enthusiast at heart, so for me CPU performance matters the most. I stick with gear only as long as it keeps my PC at the front of the performance curve. After that, I drop it like a rock and move onto greener pastures, regardless if it's the same brand or not. After all, what's the point of brand loyalty? AMD and Intel don't love you back, no matter how much you might sing their praises. Put another way, it's not like AMD only sells to you, or Intel has a smiling shot of your mug on every pay stub as a testament to your past processor purchases now is it?The nice thing about being computer enthusiast is that right now both AMD and Intel platforms support a lot of cross compatible hardware. Sure the CPU and motherboards are platform specific, but you can share DDR2 memory, videocards and other peripherals easily enough. If PC speed is what you crave, you can jump from one processor platform to the next ever couple months, taking your memory, videocards, hard drives and everything else along with you.Anyway, the point I'm trying make is this. As a hardware enthusiast you have the pick of some of the fastest computer hardware on the planet. Ignore the urge to stick with AMD or Intel out of tradition, go out there and find the best gear based on benchmarks!So, who offers the best performance - is it AMD or Intel? I'm glad you asked, the answer is.......Intel. For the moment anyway, Intel's dual and quad core processors are the king of the heap. In particular, the companies Core 2 Duo/Quad processor lineup is out-pacing AMDs current Athlon64 X2/FX processor families. That may indeed change by the end of Q4'07, or it may not.AMD is partly to blame for its current situation. Big green has not refreshed its CPU lineup since the last time PCSTATS dished the dirt on the AMD vs. Intel slugfest. AMD won the battle back then, but relying on the now somewhat dated K8 Athlon64 processor has left AMD without a good competing CPU for Intel's "Conroe". Intel published performance results on "Conroe" for quite some time before it was officially released, so it's not like AMD was blindsided by it either.