I used to use the hell out of AMD. It was priced right for a teenage PC gamer. From the Duron to the Athlon 64, AMD never did me wrong. But once the i7 came out I haven't touched any of their products since. So what I'm wondering is, how does AMD hold up in this day and age compared to the LG1155 series of Intel CPU's.

One of the main reasons I'm thinking about switching back is due to budget constraints and there are some pretty good bundle deals on newegg right now but they're all for AMD. I'm not giving a budget because I'm not sure what I'm willing to spend. What I'm really interested are the extra bells and whistles that come on newer mobo's but I'm a single GPU guy so SLI or Crossfire, I don't care for.

So what do you guru's think? AMD or Intel? What's going to be more stable and get me ready for Star Citizen? If I get an AMD would it be best to switch to an AMD GPU too?

I want AMD to succeed but can't say it's worth it getting one of their CPUs right now. The FX CPUs generally perform worse than current Intel CPUs for not much difference in price.

Gaming benchmarks for reference: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5

@jams: Get a new motherboard for about $50 maybe? That seems like the easiest, quickest and cheapest option, the 920 is still a pretty capable CPU by any standard, especially for most video games.

The 920 I have will still work with a newer motherboard? If so I'd be willing to splurge on a good mobo and wait to upgrade the processor another time.

Is there any news if they're moving from LGA 1155 anytime soon?

Yes; the codename Haswell CPUs (i7-4770K, etc.) will use a new socket called LGA 1150. Soft release date for Haswell is June.

http://www.techspot.com/news/51404-intel-to-launch-haswell-just-days-before-computex-on-june-2.html

@jams: Well, no, the 920 is a LGA1366 socket CPU, which means that you need a motherboard which is also a LGA1366 socket. Like these:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Motherboards-/1244/i.html?_sop=15&_from=R40&_nkw=lga1366+motherboard

I have no idea about buying motherboards from eBay, but these things ain't exactly the hot new shit in motherboard tech.

http://ark.intel.com/products/37147/Intel-Core-i7-920-Processor-8M-Cache-2_66-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

Okay, how's this? I already have 6 GB of 1333 RAM. Should I instead get something like 8GB of 1066?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157304

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

I was the same way. AMD was a great processor and I loved the Athlon series. I remember my Duron and old 400MHz K6 with 3D Now Technology. Once Intel busted out multi-core CPUs AMD just died. AMD needs to come out with another Athlon type CPU soon or I fear they are just going to die. They succeeded so well before because they were producing processors that performed just as good as Intel's, but were less powerful spec wise and a lot cheaper.

Come on AMD!

AMD is getting slammed by Intel in the desktop gaming space. Right now, the i5 3570k is just too good when it comes to price/performance.

However, AMD is still doing very well - they are the CPU supplier for both new consoles, after all.

AMD also remains a great option for non-gaming desktops.

@jams: Don't go anywhere near AMD on the CPU side. Bulldozer got its shit wrecked by Intel, and they've lost the price/performance fight that used to be their one true advantage over the blue monster. Any "deal" that Newegg is offering isn't worth it.

Sadly, Intel is swapping sockets again so I'd just ride it out until June and jump in on socket 1150. Shiny new Haswells and all that. I do wish AMD would get their shit together in the CPU market; competition is a good thing.

Finally, there is no synergy between AMD CPUs and GPUs, or at least no downside to staying with nVidia. With the majority of the market on Intel CPUs, it'd be crazy for AMD to not put their best foot forward on every front, let alone reserving something special for the small subset of people still rocking AMD CPUs.

I've had the opposite experience where both of the last two AMD systems I built have malfunctioned while the last three Intel systems are still kicking around. The main reason why I abandoned AMD and embraced Intel was this instability/stability.

Sounds Good, thanks. I'll definitely be waiting for the 1150 then. Yeah AMD has really screwed the pooch lately. I always liked the AMD Nvidia combo back before AMD bought ATI. I remember it being the combo that kind of worked the best. Or at least it was the same as SNES vs. Genesis.

@extomar: I am always surprised at how good AMD's video cards are about price/performance, compared to how bad they've gotten with high end desktop CPUs.

At this point in time, we don't know exactly how well PS4/Nextbox's PC ports will be. Since next-gen consoles will be running on 8-core cpu architecture, this could mean that having an AMD 8-core CPU may be of beneficial use. We have already seen PC ports like Crysis 3 perform very well on an AMD 8-core processor. Of course, this is all speculation. We simply don't know yet and it's too early to tell.

You boned your motherboard? Does that make you the cyberpunk equivalent of Oedipus?

And yeah, when I asked this question it was pretty much the same result as this thread. AMD CPU's will work, but they pale in comparison to Intel CPU's so there's no reason not to go Intel.