Hey, sometimes I don't understand it all either. My father's looking to buy a new laptop and he's constantly being pressured by the salespeople at the various electronic stores to buy the more powerful laptops for $300 to $500 more, and I keep trying to tell him that NOTHING he intends to run is going to need 4 GB RAM over 2 GB, or an extra 400 MHz of processor speed, or a high-end graphics core. He could buy the cheapest laptop on the market and he would have every feature he needs for the software he intends to run.

I think it's similar to owning a new car. If you want the most powerful rig presently available, you're gonna pay a significant premium. But, if you're content with a tiny drop in performance and don't care about prestige, you pay a much more sane price.

A lot of the time it comes down to money over loyalty to a brand for me, which I'm sure would upset the hardcore people.

As far as frame rates go, anything over 60fps is marginal at best since you really don't see that much more than 60fps anyways.

"Its just a processor" LOL yup its only the computing power of your computer!

It's alwas the same with people.
Intel vs. AMD
nVidia vs. ATI
Windows vs. OSX vs. Linux
PS3 vs. 360
etc.

You just need to into a forum about one of these topics and watch the flamewars. No matter what brand you use, there'll always be some jerks telling you how stupid you are for not choosing their favourite.

I don't know about being attached to a brand, but what I DO know is that the reason people are adamant about what processor is the one to go with is probably the same reason I would be. That reason is that I come from building my PC's from a gamers perspective. So when I go to build a PC I know I need to spend my money in key places. So I do a LOT of research to find out a few things. 1. What is the top of the pile? What is the end all be all right now, and by how much? 2. When compared to cheaper models, what am I loosing? 3. Based on current technology and prices, where should I put my money. I want to know when I bring home the newest title that I can turn the settings up to a suitably awesome level and not have any frame rate issues. I want to experience my games in the most immersive and visually stunning way possible on my budget.

So along that line of thinking, once people like myself have done said research and determined what the best is and what the best bang for your buck is, we are understandably passionate about it and about why we believe what we believe. I know I have had some great back and forth debates with a friend of mine who builds PC's for the same reasons I do about what GPU to get, what CPU, why that instead of this, telling what I found and why I came to my conclusion and listening to why he came to his and I have swayed and been swayed from opinions based on those conversations.

So when you ask why do people care, the answer is simple really, you are treading in an area some are quite passionate about, and any time people are passionate about something some of them won't be able to differentiate between a simple different opinion and an attack on their intelligence. For some people believe that if you don't share their opinion on said matter, especially a technical one, that you are in essence saying " I know better then you do, therefore I'm smarter then you." It's not the case but people tend to be touchy about anything they have passion about.

I don't think it matters what you get, if you're short on cash, go with AMD, if you have more money go with intel, it doesn't matter, as long as you don't get a Celeron. Anyway I've been using AMD for the past 4 or 5 years and i never had trouble with any of them, the most problem i have is with my motherboard, I'm sure my first AMD Athlon process works, my Athlon 64 still works, and i'm on a athlon 64 2x core right now and it does it's job, run WoW on good settings at 30FPS or so depending on area.

Of course the problem with computers now is that if your computer is 6 months to a year old, it's already out of date and finding stuff for it, is really hard to find. Yeah you can find ram and other stuff to go into it, but if the motherboard goes out, you're gonna be spending a pretty penny just to get a new motherboard, processor and ram to go with it. It's just sad that you have to spend that much money 200+ bucks or even more to get your computer back up and running because of intel and amd changing sockets and motherboards all the time.

Anyway enough with the rambling. I still just don't see why people fuss over amd and intel. maybe people think you get a better processor for more money when infact you're just getting ripped off.

Nerds arguing about hardware? Unthinkable!

It sounds like you're building yourself a nice rig for your needs. Sure, you can always lust after the latest and greatest stuff, but I think you've made some decent calls.

There's no point getting confused about the issue, Mr. Kat. It's the same dumb "my-pick-is-better-than-yours" argument I heard since I was in friggin' high school back in the 90s.

Think of the reviews you might've seen for Bayonetta, and you'll see a similarity into what you talked about in this vlog. The 360 version plays slightly more smooth and has less loading time compared to the PS3 version, but beyond that, each is the same exact game. They're both very functional, and a buddy of mine rented it for his PS3, and we both agree that it's a solid game that really couldn't get better (except the cutscene voice acting; it was hilariously bad on an almost RE1 level, lol).

Don't sweat the uber-geeks arguing about brand loyalty. Either ignore them, or pull a Harvey Keitel and tell 'em to "piss on this turd" and do what you feel is right for yourself and your professional needs. In this economy, we no longer have the luxury to spend money on stupid shit like slightly better processors or ultra light beer that tastes like flavored water.

Endurance, price, performance in order. I only buy a new computer when it's a massive jump. I went from single core to 8 core. I'm still saying, "holy crap this is fast!" months later. A lot of people that are complaining about which computer parts to get probably have money to burn. Thus Fanboys. You can't be a fanboy without a flaming disregard for money. Don't let it get to you.

"The 360 version plays slightly more smooth and has less loading time compared to the PS3 version, but beyond that, each is the same exact game."

No. The PS3 version has atrocious frame rate drops, loading times and the graphic is sub par compared to the 360 version. This has nothing to do with the 360-vs-PS3-vs-Wii redneck fanboy feud. Sega just did a bad job porting this game over from the 360 it was developed for to the PS3.

I'm an AMD consumer since I ditched my P2. Not because of some brand loyalty - it just so happens AMD always had either the best quality (especially when Intel nearly sunk their desktop line during the P4 debacle) or the best cost-performance-ratio. I'm also not a graphics freak.

If you are still enjoying 8bit graphics and even worse retro games you usually don't give a shit about AA or AF which means you can play even current games with a modest (and more importantly: cheap) rig without any trouble. I once bought a gpu for around 500€, had no conceivable increase in performance or eyecandy whatsoever, driver problems left and right and a year later the price for exactly the same performance dropped to about 100€. Since then I always bought midrange hardware every few years and never looked back once.

Bleeding edge and fanboyism is for either stupid or insanely rich people who need to compensate for something. When you do heavy graphics, number crunching or programming work, the seconds you shave off with that kind of hardware translates to increased efficency. But in the gaming world, we have reached a performance plateau. Better hardware doesn't equal more frags anymore. At best, you'll have shorter loading times.

People or humans in general always need to take a side of things I think. Something to defend and attack in some way and in many situations in modern society is about brands; the products are very samey but they have a different name and logo - and there's where the problem is and the quarrels begins :)
The list is long and all it really goes down to is your plans of use, wishes and wallet:
* Mac vs PC
* ATI vs Nvidia
* AMD vs Intel
* etc.

To me it not really important about brands and logos, just that the product is worth its price and functions correctly (This should, like you said, be researched a bit before buying) - but I'll admit that somewhere in the back of my head I want to go with a specific brand in many situations. Don't really know why. For example; I wanted to buy a Nvidia GTX 295 so bad for my rig, but why? Can't really answer that, just wanted it, though it was a bit pricey so I looked over a bunch of other cards for comparing. But when I started to buy the components, that same card was the product of the week at the store for a discount and like anyone else would - I went for it and saw it as a sign to buy it!

BTW, I'm guessing that the reason for switching to anything other OS then Ubuntu is obvious: No more kdenlive! :D

// Kuncoss

it all boils down to fallowing the herd. as for what cpu is better well there really is no difference. I say this cause the difference is happening so fast you won't notice it. and really a brand preference it is either some one who used the brand way back when there was a difference or they are just some idiot who picked one and never tried any other brands, the latter have no room to talk till they really try the other brands that are out there and be fair about it. as for your build it sounds great and if you think it will do the job you need everyone else some just shut up, I mean you know what you are doing and if you are happy with it then that is all that matters.I have ran all brands of cpus and video cards and all I can say is some work better together but it is a crap shoot from upgrade to upgrade and it is best with video cards to stick with the same brand that the motherboard has on board ( if there is one). what I would like to see is the case you picked out.

I prefer Nvidia, so I may be biased. I also don't know what ATI has in that department...
...but as a video editor, I think you should have gone Nvidia, since they have CUDA. CUDA would allow you to use your Graphics card to render videos on some editing software (Adobe's mostly). That would cut your rendering times 6 times, no joke. Then again, you need the right software.
ATI also has something like this, but I'm not sure how advanced this is, or how much developer support it has.
Besides that ATI has crappy drivers. Nvidia also doesn't have great drivers sometimes, but they're better.

As for AMD/Intel, I had an Pentium 200, then a Celeron 1.2 I think, then a 2.6 Athlon XP and now I'm on a 1.8 Core2Duo, so I've been all over the place, and Intel for me is better performance and stability wise to be worth the little extra money. I think you're blowing the money differences a bit our of proportion sometimes. (ignoring the people that would give you the most top of the line things)

Really, often it's a matter of using one product so long that you think it's the best in the world. If you did do the comparisons between the available options, and you picked what you picked because of that, then good for you. If I where to buy a computer now though, my comparisons might have had different results.
-Poki#3

Well, I don't really have any brand attachments as far as processors and...well anything really, it's more just. Which is better, by how much, and the price difference.

With Video cards, I used to prefer Nvidia, not only because of the constant updates, but because I could understand their card numbering system without having to even take a look at it, 9600 is better than 8500, okay great, less work for me. Now though, they've gone into what, GX and GTX or whatever? So yeah, no brand preference there anymore.

It's very simple. For normal people it doesn't matter but since you are rendering and encoding video the i7 is massively faster than any AMD.

Also who the hell is buying the thousand dollar i7 processor? The $230 i7 can be overclocked to almost the same power as the thousand dollar one.

Intel has about 70+% of the market. Intel has been sued several times for paying off manufacturer's for not using AMD parts. It's brand loyalty. With that said the intel is superior if you look at bench marks, but overall you will pay more for the parts (intel uses ddr3 better atm). ATI is part of AMD and Nvidia has been more popular and stronger in the past. However the 5850 you mentioned is much better than the gtx260. The ati part is much more power efficient, 27w at idle vs closer to 90w idle (not sure).

For you, not building a beast machine, just something with 4 cores, good at video editing, and staying on a budget.... well check out this site www.maximumpc.com and please look at this article using a simple amd athlon II x4 part. http://www.maximumpc.com/slide/build_647_gaming_pc $647 (probably cheaper to build already). Mainly look at the benchmarks for a better idea of performance to price. They give the resons they chose thier parts for a gaming machine with balance, however for you, you probably would like to shell out the $60 extra and get a 1.5TB drive of course, or hell an extra. Editors can't have enough data space.The site also has benchmarks for the core i7 parts and i5 vs the competition along with prices.

With that said I have many different machines, but one thing is always key. it is not what the machine can do, it is what you do with the machine. So for anyone who scoffs at your build, ask to see what the hell videos they have put out on their core i7 rigs, vs the videos I have seen from you using the simple laptop athlon.

Kudos to you LordKat
-JuanSolid

Correct pc build url

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/how_build_awesome_pc_647

quite interesting, I have only AMD and Asus hardware, but that happened firstly cause I blew up 3 Pentium 4 computers in a row cause I was pushing it to far, AMD was able to keep running, that system is still running like 6 years later.
Also I love to shop second handed and both my amd laptop and amd desctop where way cheaper for the top of the brand then the older pentiums.

In the case of my desctop I work alot on 3d cad programms and my asus motherboard has great featured for this type of work, specially with a fine videocard.

I guess I'll never buy a new pc and second hand market for amd is better around here:)

So I see why price matters!

Great vids here mate! :)

I'm an Intel guy, computers by AMD aren't reliable. I have this 6-year old Desktop computer made with Intel chip and it's fantastic. I'm still using a P4 2.4 GHZ and it's great.

I've had both AMD and Intel, they both work totally fine.

I have the AMD 940 X4, pretty much the same one you just got Jason, it's been working just fine, and I'm happy with it. I can max pretty much any game, along with my Nvidia 260.

I got both those GPU, and CPU, because they were on sale as well.

Though I'd take Nvidia over ATI, because of Nvidia's PHYSx.

Though I have no problems with ATI.

Damn blip must be paying decent, big spender.

I have to agree with that as far as Intel vs. AMD, NVidia vs. ATI ect. it's all just personal opinion. Now i will as far as the i7s and go you will see a big difference in say video editing speed not based on the actual core speed but the fact there is no FSB limiting it.

I am glad to hear your opinions on these matters Jason. In the summer I had purchased my computer components because I had wanted to get into PC gaming.

Price versus performance I could get the most by going with AMD and ATI. Really though, as far as I can see, Intel is the leader in making the jump to newer technologies, but AMD follows closely.

Intel seems to me the kind of brand like Mac's that are considered better with no particular reasons given. But yeah, I know very much what you are going through in that regard. Very often too, when I would pick out components such as RAM, etc. Newegg would end up selling out, or discontinuing it before I could get to it.

I hope that your computer works out well for you.

I like AMD because they give you, the consumer, the better bang for your buck.

When is the last time you saw a commercial for AMD? Never seen one?

That's why they are cheaper. When you buy an Intel chip, you pay for the commercials too.

So the most GHz per dollar is AMD. Also, a 3.0 GHz AMD chip should perform slightly better than a 3.2 Intel chip because of the chip architecture AMD uses. It's technical and complicated... I suppose you could think of it like "Intel has long conveyor belt, and has to spin it fast" and "AMD has a short conveyor belt, so they can spin it slower" and the boxes of information on the belts arrive at the same time. So just in the way the their chip components are arranged, Intel has to clock a little faster to achieve the same end result as AMD.

Case in point : My 2.4GHz AMD machine would actually load games slightly faster than my friends 2.8GHZ Intel machine. We'd put them side by side during LAN parties and watch the loading bars. They have the same RPM hard drive, and same speed RAM.

Jason, I totally agree. I felt the same way when I got my new Rig about a year ago. I got my AMD cpu and motherboard because they were on sale, and much cheaper then Intel [AMD phenom 2 X4 at 2.8ghz]. I also got my video card based on the same thoughts. It was on sale, and was pretty high end at the time [geforce 9800 GTX+ for about 140$]. The other thing I considered was RAM. DD2 was and still is really cheap right now. At the time it was like 150-200$ for like 3gb of DDR3 vs 4gb of DDR2 at like 40-60$

In the end I got a pretty high end machine that can run every game I play at decently high settings and smooth frame rate. And Im not even taking full advantage of my machine. Im running XP home sp3. Not only is it 32 bit, but it also cuts my 4gbs of RAM down to 3.

Congratz with your new Beast!

For me I go for parts which I can get the most bang for buck and will stay as future proofed as possible. I have boycotted Intel I chips as they are made in Israel.

I agree with you about paying stupid prices for hardware I would rather buy equipment which is 6 months old and half the price than double the price for marginal improvements.

Brand Loyalty, to me, seems almost entirely anecdotal, based on experiences.

I'm loyal to ATI because that's the kind of graphics card that was in the Nintendo Gamecube. So, if it's good enough for Metroid Prime, it's good enough for me.

I'm loyal to Koss stereophones because I get good sound for the price and they've got a really generous warranty policy. I sent away a pair of 'phones because there was a short in the wire that goes through the headband and not only did I get that fixed, but they also replaced the leather earpads and even the cord (which didn't have a kink in it), all for less than a third of what a new pair would have cost me. They've been good to me, so I'm good to them. Just that simple.

I'm loyal to Behringer because... they've got a cool name. At the Target I used to work at, I'd shoot the breeze with one of our security guys, who had some experience as a roadie. He let me in the secret of how everyone generally mispronounces Behringer's name, and just like Porsche (por-sha/porsh) it's how those in-the-know spot the phonies. That stuff just cracks me up. That's the most superficial reason I'd have for a brand loyalty.

The part where I raise my hand and ask, "what the hell?" is when people try to force their loyalty onto others. Whatever happened to waiting for it to fail and being able to revel in saying "I told you so?" To that end, the loyalty does seem stronger when someone switches from a brand that might have let them down as opposed to the "I've just always used it" crowd.

I really liked Force Unleashed, even on the Wii. It's got a decent story and I really like the art direction; it's like if George Lucas hired John Woo to direct the prequel trilogy and gave him free reign.

Keep up the good work

I am not a fan of Nvidia or Ati I am however a big fan of EVGA
I had both ATI cards and Nvidia the difference between the both is...
ATI does have better graphics I'm sorry but its true
Nvidia has better GPU processing and most games support it but your Ati card will only run into a problem if you play crysis
Now I have a low end Intel CPU that is set to 2.4ghz which I overclocked to 3.0Ghz running at 30C but I have a big ass honking Noctua double fan are cube which is just fricking amazing my Cpu runs cooler overclocked than it did at default with a normal fan I haven't bought an ATI Cpu so I could'nt tell you the difference.
Now the reason I am loyal to EVGA is
1. because they hold the world records in overclocking mainly they are an overclocking company if EVGA started putting out ATI cards I probably consider buying an ATI card again Hell if EVGA made I processor I'd buy it to.
2. Their customer service is unbelievably awesome thier products are lifetime warrantied and I can send them an email about a question I have and I'll get a response within the next day where as I would have to wait almost a month from Intel and ATI.

I have a GTX295 Red Edition not that crappy new one that doesn't have HDMI plug and its a sexy fricken monster. It eats everything I can play GTA4 at max of course changing the values so there is no memory restrictions in settings there are actually 2 games I can't play at max which is The Witcher (mainly the swamp area every else is fine) and Empire Total War (which is a crap game I love medieval Total war its one of my top 10 games but Empire God I hate Empire total war and its just weird I play the game and it works fine at max then 30 minutes in the game it slows down significantly I just hate Hate HATE EMPIRE total war and theres other things about the game)

Evga products are expensive but I do high end animations not just simple flash ones I have to use photoshop and run like three programs at the same time, and I can't have lag it totally destroys the pace of work basicly.
But if your someone who just looks up porn on the internet or wierd stuff on you tube or play solitare just buy a $500 computer from best buy
(which I don't recommmend best buy sucks but thats another story

I myself have brand loyalties, in high school me and my friends would have almost religious debates over ATI and nvidia. Now I'm more open, I was a big nvidia user for the last few years, but lately I'm jumping shift to ATI because of their 6+ monitor support, among some other gimmicks I like.

There is a couple of reasons why I'll choose a brand over another, preferably if a company is clearly out doing others, like Intel was when core 2s came out, and AMD was barely able to keep up, and I'll stay away from a company if multiple products of theirs fail on me. Reason I hated ATI was because they had horrible driver support for windows a couple years back, too the point where I sold my card and bought an Nvidia one.

Some information you may find helpful. Gigabyte has one of the worse customer support I've ever seen, I had a intel motherboard, with the 680i nvidia north bridge. This was Gigabytes answer to the Asus striker at the time, day one it did not work, I had to RMA it three times in order for them to finally send me a replacement. It works find now, but paying shipping, and being constantly told that "the motherboard isn't the problem" Really enraged me, because all the other parts were tested before I RMA'd it the first time. Stay far away from Gigabyte for your own good.

I do have my preferences (AMD and nVidia), but I'm not going to give someone any shit if they choose Intel over AMD or ATi over nVidia. I mean, it's just silicon. It's one step above console fanboyism to me. Good choice going with AMD and ATi as AMD/ATi is going for more of a "best bang for the buck" tactic.

As for SW: Unleashed, it's reptty much Devil May Cry with Lightsabers. It that sounds good to you, install it, man. Just don't expect it to be like the Jedi Knight games.

Yeah, 'cause getting more than 60fps is just useless anyway (other than the fact that it looks nicer) because your eyes can't see more than 60fps anyway.
(Onto the topic):
When I look for hardware components I look for the stuff that can run the programs and games that I use, and then I look at the prise. It’s a simple, easy and logical system to go by. But if I could get hardware with a little better performance for a fairly similar price I would buy it.

I'll tell you why I've been loyal to AMD over the years. Because they're the underdog! Without AMD, Intel would have a monopoly.

That said, I think Intel makes a better product right now. But not enough for it to matter much.

Product loyalty is usually about the human ego. Whatever we have at the time we will consider to be the best.

Hm.

I've claimed loyalty to AMD, because in very far past I had big problems with it. I've claimed against buying WD, because I had big problems with it.

I love having things that work, weither that be Intel, AMD, Cyrix or Via.

But seriously?

AMD and Intel are both more or less equal. I go with nVidia because I'm on Linux and that's about it.

Hi Jason. I've been an AMD fan for quite a long time. I've owned an AMD T-bird 900, an AMD Athlon 1800, 2000, 2400, 2600. That was back in the golden age. I also owned an Opteron at one point. I now a Core 2 Duo 8500 and an I7 920 with D0 stepping.

I do a lot of video editing and use a lot effects, meh I create AMVs as a hobby. So when I went looking for a processor I started with an AMD. I did a couple weeks worth of research and found that the I7 920 really did outpace the AMD processor I was looking at at the time. I'm not regretting it.

I am also an overclocker. My E8500 is OC'd to 3.8 GHz where as my i7 920 is OC'd to 4.2 GHz. Both overclocks are on air using a Thermaltake V1 and a Thor's Hammer for the 920. I have noticed a significant decrease of time it takes to render both effects heavy and effects minimal video over my friends AMD Phenom II 965.

The Intel i7 has a lot going for it. Once again Intel has brought back Hyper-threading. Its much more refined and gives a nice performace boost to multi-threaded applications such as Windows 7 and a majority of the high-end video editing software available today. I am personally a Vegas fan but I guess Adobe's software benefits a great deal from this as well.

Additionally, Intel did away with the FSB and decided to go with their quick path technology. It allows the processor to directly communicate with the rest of computer. This gets rid of a huge bottleneck.

Paired with a good board, good ram, good graphics card, and good PS the i7 really does shine. I went with Corsair XMS3 ram, a Corsair 750 TX PS, and the EVGA GTX 260 and 275. I love EVGA and ATI has compatiblity issues with certain applications and they seem to hate rendering in OpenGL.

For cooling, unless your going to by your watercooling parts individually and spend $300 or more you wont see an improvement over the Prolimatech Megahalems, which is the top air cooler out there. The Megahalems is only $60 and isn't on Newegg, you'll find it on frozencpu.com which is another website I've come to know and trust. I strongly recommend this cooler. The Corsair H20 is also a nice cooling setup if you want something quiet. Its a small close looped water cooling system with a 120mm radiator (available on Newegg). It forgoes the normal difficult setup and maintenance of a more traditional watercooling sytem but keeps noise to a minimum.

All in all, I would never say AMD is horrible or doesn't have decent products, I personally love AMD, but Intel has put a lot of effort into redesigning and streamlining their chips as well.

At any rate, I love building computers and I hope you enjoy building yours. Nothing like getting that big box from Newegg and feeling like a kid at Christmas again.

Cheers,

Schalazeal

I apologize for the crude post above, I'm in a rush so please excuse the bad spelling and grammar. Also I wanted to clarify my comment about EVGA, they only sell Nvidia graphics cards. That was one of the factors of going with the GTX 260. That company has top-notch support and lifetime warranties, which includes frying their products by overclocking.

Thank you,

Schalazeal

Hi Jason
I use the marks that I didn't have a problem with. Like Nvidia always been perfect for me and I had many bugs with avi cards like it was a pain to update it. Processors, intel or AMD,didn't have any problems but I do prefer Intel for his use. Windows obviously for the games! I do think like you, who cares so much about it? If I have to choose some trademarks instead of others it's because it's based on my personal experiences.
Sorry my english sucks <.<
Greetings from Geneva!
-Zunari

I like AMD. I've used them since the K6 processors. My last Intel was a Pentium 100 MHz. I switched from Intel to AMD because my PC kept getting the blue screen of death in windows 95. I've been very pleased with AMD processors. I'm just using an AMD Athlon 64x2 3800 right now and I'm looking at upgrading to a Phenom II myself. I'm just saving my money for that though. I'm also a fan of ATI cards. The only real grievance with ATI in the beginning was their drivers sucked. They have gotten better since then, still a little rough but better. Just look at it as a Ford vs Chevy dispute. If it works for you and you like it then stick with it. I will admit the drivers for Nvidia are better than ATI but I just don't like the way the cards perform. They don't run as fluid as I would like. Honestly I think it's more ethical to buy AMD because Intel engages in anti-competition practices. If you look on the web you will see that all of these countries are fining Intel for doing shady business stuff. Japan and most of Europe has fined them.

Personally most of my bias of one company over another is based on good or bad experiences. That being said, I really haven't had any meaningful interaction about processors.

In other things, I find myself drawn to really little things that make all the difference. AMC Theatres tickets where I am are about $0.50 to $1.00 more expensive. Yet I prefer to go there, because the arm rests go up. I don't feel confined, and I can cuddle or hug.

Computer wise I tend to go towards ASUS for things, just because I really like the warranties. Personally, since I have a really small budget (I once managed to fix my computer with a cost of 0$ and basically raiding old machines for parts that worked) I tend to buy the cheapest I trust for the power I need.

Personally I would love a top of the line machine, with bleeding edge everything, but it is going to be out of date in less than six months, so I'd save the money. Kudos to you for your 'cheap' machine.

I had a bad experience with an AMD card. From what I understand, the performance differences is not very wide, the biggest difference lies with durability and overheating. From what I was told, AMD cores tend to start overheating very easily after about 1 or 2 years depending on how much stress they get, while Intel cores usually last longer. I had an AMD core on my old computer and I recently had to get a new one, because it kept locking out of overheat during even the most mundane tasks. It finally completely expired last week. All of that comes only from my own experience and the opinions of a few people who I think know more than I do though, im not a first-hand expert in the matter.

A little bit about my background so you know where I'm coming from:

The first system I ever owned was a Pentium 100MHz with 16MB EDO RAM, some tiny HDD, a 1MB S3 Video card. It was OK at the time, once I added 48MB RAM, and I liked it quite a bit.

My first upgrade was to a "Super" Socket 7 with an AMD K6-2 300MHz. Now that thing had wheels, by comparinson. I think I ended up going to a 450MHz K6-2 before later getting my very own 600Mhz Slot A Athlon.

From then on out it was a few newer Athlon models to the rather ancient Athlon XP 2500+ I'm typing this on. Sad, I know, but I'm unemployed and have no money.

If I were buying at the moment, I'd probably get a Core i5 750 and get a lower end Radeon than you got (Radeon 5770 instead of 5850) for gaming and stuff. If I had slightly more cash I'd get the 1156 i7 chip that's like $80 more.

For a cheaper system with little/no gaming, I kind of like the Athlon II X2s. They're cheap and low power consumption. The AMD IGP works fine for Windows Aero and some very light old gaming.

As far as what you're specifically asking about, I kind of liked AMD more than Intel because for years they were offerring much lower prices and for quite a while better performance. I'd go with Intel for pure performance right now though, because I'm not madly in love with either soulless corporation.

I'll go with whichever company (AMD vs. Intel or AMD/ATI vs. Nvidia) offers the best product for my needs at my price points.

I agree about the price to performance increases. I wouldn't consider spending $800 for the top end CPU when a solid state disk will increase my user experience by a lot more than some tiny improvement elsewhere.

For video encoding and gaming with high details and what not turned out pretty much any midrange ($100-300) quadcore CPU and a good video card ($75-350) would serve you well. And that's what you got.

I don't think people should take computer hardware to the same stupid quasi-religious place they take sports teams, generic lager beers, and, well, religion/politics. We're people ostensibly interested to some degree in the very rational world of computing. Let's act like it.

I currently run a intel, just because it happened to be in the computer when i bought it, it doesnt make a difference one bit
Wjem i do finally decide to build a new one, its gonna be ATI and AMD, just for price difference.
I remember the huge fuss everyone made about the then new P2 400 and the super fast (6mb OMG!!)video cards . Did you need them? No, but you had to have them too run win95, right? Maybe not, but its just the same as today, just build to your needs and youre fine. Brand loyalty is retarded, it will all be out of date very fast anyway.

I have no brand loyalty at all, I go for the best price for the performance of the time. My current PC is nVidia and Intel, because thats what was the best thing to buy at the time (late 2007). Was the same case with my rig before this one, it was AMD and ATI because they were both kicking ass with prices at the time. You made a good choice, AMD is really pricing the Phenom II's competitively, and that phenom should be awesome for video editing, and gaming.

I have some cunsumer loyalty, but not that much that I can think of..
Perhaps the only thing I am quite loyal about is with my cell phone. I am Finnish so there obvious choise is a Nokia phone. More than 50% of people here have Nokia phones so it is also more convient. If my friend comes to visit, (s)he can recharge his/her phone in my place and vice versa. And I can recharge my new phone with my old recharger. Neat =). That could change when the universal rechargers come more available.
Also I have abviously come to sync with the Nokia button design and user interface so it makes it easier to me to have another phone of Nokia's..
And there is also another Finnish product that I am very loyal to and that is Fiskars. It is a company that makes scissors and knives. I don't have all my knives from Fiskars, but the best ones that I have are. That things is probably more of a feeling than any other reason. There isn't that much of a userinterface with knives. And I have one set of Japanese kitchen knives (it says Hasaki on them perhaps that is the product) that I also like to use.

But for anything else I also have this belief (and it is only a belief) that a poor person cannot afford to buy cheap stuff. And s a college student that would be me. You found your prosessor on sale so it doesn't really compare to your situation, but if I can find two products and one is cheaper than the other, I always buy the more expensive one. And only seldom I have had bad experiences with that. I know that it is likely that I might not have bad experiences with the cheaper products too, but who knows..

The human eye cannot distinguish between 60fps and 80fps. Anything over 60 all looks the same. Television in the U.S. runs at 30fps, and it's 25 in europe (if I'm not mistaken). Anything more than 60fps is just for bragging rights in benchmarks and is completely useless for gaming.

Most hardcore gamers and overclockers actually limit their framerates with Vertical Synch (when not benchmarking) and turn on triple-buffering so excess gpu cycles aren't wasted putting out 200fps when you CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE, and instead keep the framerate steadier during heavy load spots in the game by pre-rendering. No random choppiness when your 200fps drops to 20 for 2 seconds here and there.. it's all a smooth 30,45,or 60. (assuming your monitor has a 60hz refresh rate).

There comes a point when building PCs where things have diminishing returns. You can spend $165 on a HD4870 or double that if you crossfire.. or you can spend $500 on an extremely high end card from both nvidia or ati. Yeah the $500 card has more shaders and more this and that but at a certain point, numbers are just numbers and lose their meaning when there's no noticeable benefit except during artificial benchmarks. If your hardware is functional, if you can max graphics out and still play at a near constant 30fps it's good enough and anything more is just masturbation imo.