The CPU Poll

Intel - Stable, high-performance, durable.

Perfect summary, so why change it?

Yes, I realize that I've been recommending the Athlon XP/Athlon 64 chips for years, and that I've called Intel chips overpriced junk (though that only really applies to their top of the line chips and the bottom-end Celerons) a few times...but the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo chips are a ton better than the Pentium 4. The current Core Duo T2600 rivals the FX-60 and beats the nasty hot expensive Pentium Extreme Edition chips at stock speeds, has a lot of overclocking headroom, costs $350 less than the FX-60, and uses less power than the AMD chip even when it's overclocked. If the Yonah chips are any indication, Conroe is going to be amazing when it comes out. o_o

Intel motherboards are better than AMD ones, too. VIA chipsets are just not very good, SiS chipsets test well but never show up on good boards, and nVidia ate ULi not too long ago. nForce 4 and XPress 3200 are good chipsets, but even they are prone to annoying little glitches, which the Intel chipsets never seem to run into. The only letdown is that there aren't a lot of Core Duo desktop motherboards right now.

CyrixInstead 4 lyfe, tho.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Magic

I dunno, I was browsing Newegg and it seemed like all the AMD chips were pretty high up there, at least if you wanted anything over 1.8 Ghz. Is it Athlon64 or nothing now? I was hoping to snag a Barton so I wouldn't have to replace my motherboard in order to get a faster chip, but it seems like they're no longer on sale.

Well, you can still buy Socket A Sempron chips and (basic SiS748) motherboards. Of course, if you're looking for a speed boost, Semprons probably aren't going to do it for you.

Actually, the Socket A Semprons are kinda a rip. The Sempron 2800+ costs the same as my Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (a better processor in all ways) cost two years ago. o_o

There's nowhere I can't reach.