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http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...

Except that "You need a gaming beast PC" has been a myth for quite awhile now, hell you can play battlefield 4 on an AMD A10 7850k,which you can get in kit form for $345 after MIR, that is "Walmart PC" territory. Just slap on the free edition of Windows 10 and voila! $350 PC that will play most games at 30FPS, even comes with an SSD.

That is of course if your PC is truly ancient and you want a new PC, if its less than 7 years old or you don't mind going to Craigslist? You can get a gaming PC for just stupid cheap. The cheapest gaming PC was one I set up for a single mom down the hall as a favor, cost? $150! I just picked up a C2Q PC off of CL with 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 and a 500GB HDD (cost $75) and then $75 for an HD7750. He plays TF2 and other online shooters at 30FPS+ with no issue and since most games don't use quads to their full capability they can always pop in a $100 GPU in a year or two and keep right on gaming.

So the "beat PC for gaming" is just a myth, its for guys that care more about bench scores than game scores.

I think I used this one. Looks like just about the same thing. It's probably identical inside.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...

Just type "Cinebench rigs benchmarks" into the search engine of your choice friend, plenty of articles on the subject. You can also go to the channel of the first video I linked to, Tek Syndicate, as he has video up talking about it IIRC. You can trust the guys at Tek Syndicate as they buy their own gear and don't favor one manufacturer over the other.

You might also want to look up "Intel cripple compiler" as to this day their ICC still puts out code that will cripple any program compiled on it by using CPUID to detect AMD chips and turning off all SSE optimizations if AMD is detected. Considering that both chip makers have had SSE 1-3 for over a decade? Its a pretty big smoking gun. You can also look up "EU investigates Intel" for several articles with the charges laid out, it is shaping up to be as nasty as the OEM bribery scandal which netted AMD 1.2 billion in payoff from Intel.

I can't speak for the server market as I no longer do corporate but on the desktop? Its pretty dramatic, if you compare chips based on final unit cost then pretty much anything under $1K is gonna favor AMD by a fairly large amount as the money you save by going AMD can be used for more RAM, a bigger GPU, and often an SSD on top. I mean when you can pick up the FX8320 for $140 and if you shop around the FX8300 for less than $120? There really is no comparison, nothing Intel has at that price point even comes close.

BTW I put my money where my mouth is, as not only do I now sell AMD exclusively at the shop (nothing I hate more than bribery and dirty tricks) but my entire family is on AMD, with me and the oldest boy running Phenom II X6, the wife is happy with my hand me down Phenom II X4, the youngest rocking his games on the FX8300 and dad pulling up the rear with his Phenom I X4 he's had for nearly a decade because "Keep your mitts off my PC, it runs great so don't you dare touch it!" LOL. We couldn't be happier and despite the Phenom IIs being 6+ years old they play all the latest games without issue, hell the oldest is tearing into Shadows Of Mordor right now and its smooth as butter. This is why I have no trouble being an AMD only family, the bang for the buck is just nuts!

I hate to break the news to ya Sparky but yes you can and ALL of which will do 1080P across the board, which NEITHER console can do! Note that this is just showing the DIY route, I could also wallpaper this page with quad core PCs from places like Tiger in the $250-$300 range already built and ready to go, just slap an HD260X for $100 and YOU WILL CURBSTOMP both the XBone and PS4 when it comes to graphics AND frame per second.

And games cost the same? Okay now I KNOW you are nothing but a fanboy or you've been living under a rock as you've apparently never heard of these little things known as Steam sales not to mention that anybody not sticking their head in the sand while waving their little console flag was fast as their little arms will go KNOWS that PC prices drop MUCH faster than on the consoles, whose prices are practically glacial. Care for an example? Theif 4 is currently $20 on consoles, not bad eh? Well yeah if you don't want the entire series which I paid $6 less for WITH all the DLC. Oh and there is this little thing you may have heard of called Humble Bundles? If you were to buy all the games currently on the bundle? Well first of all you are gonna need TWO consoles as not all the games are on XBone and PS4 and of course the OEMs give you a big fat greasy finger when it comes to backwards compatibility, which just FYI but thanks to DOSBox we PC gamers can play games going back to the early 80s, can even buy them preset for DOSBox so no muss, but just to buy the games currently on the list? Over $120, cost to PC gamers? $20 if you wanna be nice and throw them a couple bucks over minimum.

So wave your little flag all you want, won't make black into white, and it won't make the BS you are trying sooo hard to convince yourself is real into reality. Reality is you can grab a quad core PC made within the past 5 years for $300, slap a $100 GPU in, and be kicking with some serious gaming with better FPS and higher res than the netbook based consoles can deliver. Don't mind a little DIY? Then you can spend $80 less than a PS4 and still get an impressive gameplay experience with again higher framerate. Don't mind spending a little more? Then grab yourself a fire breathing monster and pair it with a 250x or 260x and enjoy a PC that will run maybe $20 more than XBone with Kinect that will DEVASTATE both the PS4 and XBone on gaming! Those last 2? Yeah they both hit turbo speeds over 4GHz so it will be quite the long while before you see a game not be able to run on either system.

I should know as I play all the latest and greatest on a Phenom II X6, a chip that is now 6 years old, along with any game I want from the early 80s on up, every console from the Atari 2600- PS2,and I get to enjoy multiple vendors, insanely cheap prices and sales, free MP, streaming from any site in any format without needing a subscription, and oh yeah, literally thousands of 100% FTP games in every genre. Wanna play on a TV? Then DO IT as all the PCs come with HDMI now and you can choose from Steam or Kodi or Mediaportal for your 10 foot UI. Wanna play with a controller? Then DO IT as you can trivially hook up your choice of wireless controllers with nearly every game coming with X360 wireless support but if that don't float your boat and you don't mind wires? You can run anything from a 2600 or NES through PS3 and everything in between. Nothing like playing a classic fighter on

I hate to break the news to ya Sparky but yes you can and ALL of which will do 1080P across the board, which NEITHER console can do! Note that this is just showing the DIY route, I could also wallpaper this page with quad core PCs from places like Tiger in the $250-$300 range already built and ready to go, just slap an HD260X for $100 and YOU WILL CURBSTOMP both the XBone and PS4 when it comes to graphics AND frame per second.

And games cost the same? Okay now I KNOW you are nothing but a fanboy or you've been living under a rock as you've apparently never heard of these little things known as Steam sales not to mention that anybody not sticking their head in the sand while waving their little console flag was fast as their little arms will go KNOWS that PC prices drop MUCH faster than on the consoles, whose prices are practically glacial. Care for an example? Theif 4 is currently $20 on consoles, not bad eh? Well yeah if you don't want the entire series which I paid $6 less for WITH all the DLC. Oh and there is this little thing you may have heard of called Humble Bundles? If you were to buy all the games currently on the bundle? Well first of all you are gonna need TWO consoles as not all the games are on XBone and PS4 and of course the OEMs give you a big fat greasy finger when it comes to backwards compatibility, which just FYI but thanks to DOSBox we PC gamers can play games going back to the early 80s, can even buy them preset for DOSBox so no muss, but just to buy the games currently on the list? Over $120, cost to PC gamers? $20 if you wanna be nice and throw them a couple bucks over minimum.

So wave your little flag all you want, won't make black into white, and it won't make the BS you are trying sooo hard to convince yourself is real into reality. Reality is you can grab a quad core PC made within the past 5 years for $300, slap a $100 GPU in, and be kicking with some serious gaming with better FPS and higher res than the netbook based consoles can deliver. Don't mind a little DIY? Then you can spend $80 less than a PS4 and still get an impressive gameplay experience with again higher framerate. Don't mind spending a little more? Then grab yourself a fire breathing monster and pair it with a 250x or 260x and enjoy a PC that will run maybe $20 more than XBone with Kinect that will DEVASTATE both the PS4 and XBone on gaming! Those last 2? Yeah they both hit turbo speeds over 4GHz so it will be quite the long while before you see a game not be able to run on either system.

I should know as I play all the latest and greatest on a Phenom II X6, a chip that is now 6 years old, along with any game I want from the early 80s on up, every console from the Atari 2600- PS2,and I get to enjoy multiple vendors, insanely cheap prices and sales, free MP, streaming from any site in any format without needing a subscription, and oh yeah, literally thousands of 100% FTP games in every genre. Wanna play on a TV? Then DO IT as all the PCs come with HDMI now and you can choose from Steam or Kodi or Mediaportal for your 10 foot UI. Wanna play with a controller? Then DO IT as you can trivially hook up your choice of wireless controllers with nearly every game coming with X360 wireless support but if that don't float your boat and you don't mind wires? You can run anything from a 2600 or NES through PS3 and everything in between. Nothing like playing a classic fighter on

I hate to break the news to ya Sparky but yes you can and ALL of which will do 1080P across the board, which NEITHER console can do! Note that this is just showing the DIY route, I could also wallpaper this page with quad core PCs from places like Tiger in the $250-$300 range already built and ready to go, just slap an HD260X for $100 and YOU WILL CURBSTOMP both the XBone and PS4 when it comes to graphics AND frame per second.

And games cost the same? Okay now I KNOW you are nothing but a fanboy or you've been living under a rock as you've apparently never heard of these little things known as Steam sales not to mention that anybody not sticking their head in the sand while waving their little console flag was fast as their little arms will go KNOWS that PC prices drop MUCH faster than on the consoles, whose prices are practically glacial. Care for an example? Theif 4 is currently $20 on consoles, not bad eh? Well yeah if you don't want the entire series which I paid $6 less for WITH all the DLC. Oh and there is this little thing you may have heard of called Humble Bundles? If you were to buy all the games currently on the bundle? Well first of all you are gonna need TWO consoles as not all the games are on XBone and PS4 and of course the OEMs give you a big fat greasy finger when it comes to backwards compatibility, which just FYI but thanks to DOSBox we PC gamers can play games going back to the early 80s, can even buy them preset for DOSBox so no muss, but just to buy the games currently on the list? Over $120, cost to PC gamers? $20 if you wanna be nice and throw them a couple bucks over minimum.

So wave your little flag all you want, won't make black into white, and it won't make the BS you are trying sooo hard to convince yourself is real into reality. Reality is you can grab a quad core PC made within the past 5 years for $300, slap a $100 GPU in, and be kicking with some serious gaming with better FPS and higher res than the netbook based consoles can deliver. Don't mind a little DIY? Then you can spend $80 less than a PS4 and still get an impressive gameplay experience with again higher framerate. Don't mind spending a little more? Then grab yourself a fire breathing monster and pair it with a 250x or 260x and enjoy a PC that will run maybe $20 more than XBone with Kinect that will DEVASTATE both the PS4 and XBone on gaming! Those last 2? Yeah they both hit turbo speeds over 4GHz so it will be quite the long while before you see a game not be able to run on either system.

I should know as I play all the latest and greatest on a Phenom II X6, a chip that is now 6 years old, along with any game I want from the early 80s on up, every console from the Atari 2600- PS2,and I get to enjoy multiple vendors, insanely cheap prices and sales, free MP, streaming from any site in any format without needing a subscription, and oh yeah, literally thousands of 100% FTP games in every genre. Wanna play on a TV? Then DO IT as all the PCs come with HDMI now and you can choose from Steam or Kodi or Mediaportal for your 10 foot UI. Wanna play with a controller? Then DO IT as you can trivially hook up your choice of wireless controllers with nearly every game coming with X360 wireless support but if that don't float your boat and you don't mind wires? You can run anything from a 2600 or NES through PS3 and everything in between. Nothing like playing a classic fighter on

And have the RAM soldered to the board? No thanks, I don't like getting buttfucked so some corp can charge Compaq RAM profit margins for commodity parts.

I'd much rather buy a quad with SSD for $210 or an octocore with HDD for $290 and use the money I save to buy a more powerful GPU and as much RAM as I'd like without getting bent over to increase Apple's quarterly earnings report.

If you like Apple because you like the design or having a girly UI bolted onto BSD? That's cool, enjoy your purchase. But don't try to sell us that horseshit that Apple is a "good deal" because its not, never was, and never will be. Its a boutique brand with insane profit margins on the exact same parts you can get from anywhere...let me repeat that, they use THE EXACT SAME PARTS you can buy anywhere, its the same bog standard Foxxconn made boards, same Intel CPUs, same old same. If you want to pay a hipster tax to apple? Its your money, spend it how you wish, but don't try to sell us bullshit, we ain't buying crazy today.

And have the RAM soldered to the board? No thanks, I don't like getting buttfucked so some corp can charge Compaq RAM profit margins for commodity parts.

I'd much rather buy a quad with SSD for $210 or an octocore with HDD for $290 and use the money I save to buy a more powerful GPU and as much RAM as I'd like without getting bent over to increase Apple's quarterly earnings report.

If you like Apple because you like the design or having a girly UI bolted onto BSD? That's cool, enjoy your purchase. But don't try to sell us that horseshit that Apple is a "good deal" because its not, never was, and never will be. Its a boutique brand with insane profit margins on the exact same parts you can get from anywhere...let me repeat that, they use THE EXACT SAME PARTS you can buy anywhere, its the same bog standard Foxxconn made boards, same Intel CPUs, same old same. If you want to pay a hipster tax to apple? Its your money, spend it how you wish, but don't try to sell us bullshit, we ain't buying crazy today.

That is what I've been telling folks here for years, the bang for the buck is still in the AMD camp and with their new GCN arch you can use the GPU for the heavy FP math which beats the FP in any CPU by a country mile so there really ain't any point in putting a bunch of heavy FP in the CPU anymore.

As you can see the difference in number crunching between Intel and AMD in real world applications is crazy low, we are talking around 10%-15% max and that is if you go top o' the line Intel. Now I don't know about you but 15% boost isn't worth 300% markup in MY book. Oh and before anybody brings up benchmarks? As the guy in the video points out benchmarks have been rigged with Cinebench recently being caught putting "If CPU is AMD, tie boat anchor" code into their benchmark and this of course doesn't even mention the Intel Cripple Compiler which to this very day cripples any program compiled with it. At the shop I have done just like in the video and run real applications and compared, the result? Just as he found, the difference is so small you wouldn't be able to tell without breaking out a stopwatch...but your wallet knows, especially when you can get a hexacore for $105 and an octocore for $130.

So if you are wanting just a good office style box I'd go with good number crunching something like A8 6600K APU kit for $210 after MIR or if you want a good entry level that you'll add your own GPU the fx4200 quad kit for $190 after MIR is a great price, but personally? I really like the FX6300 hexacore kit for $270 after MIR. Its a great price, the chip has plenty of power and headroom to OC if you are into that, and with turbocore its like getting 2 chips, a 3.5GHz hexa and a 4.1Ghz triple, its just a really solid chip.

That is what I've been telling folks here for years, the bang for the buck is still in the AMD camp and with their new GCN arch you can use the GPU for the heavy FP math which beats the FP in any CPU by a country mile so there really ain't any point in putting a bunch of heavy FP in the CPU anymore.

As you can see the difference in number crunching between Intel and AMD in real world applications is crazy low, we are talking around 10%-15% max and that is if you go top o' the line Intel. Now I don't know about you but 15% boost isn't worth 300% markup in MY book. Oh and before anybody brings up benchmarks? As the guy in the video points out benchmarks have been rigged with Cinebench recently being caught putting "If CPU is AMD, tie boat anchor" code into their benchmark and this of course doesn't even mention the Intel Cripple Compiler which to this very day cripples any program compiled with it. At the shop I have done just like in the video and run real applications and compared, the result? Just as he found, the difference is so small you wouldn't be able to tell without breaking out a stopwatch...but your wallet knows, especially when you can get a hexacore for $105 and an octocore for $130.

So if you are wanting just a good office style box I'd go with good number crunching something like A8 6600K APU kit for $210 after MIR or if you want a good entry level that you'll add your own GPU the fx4200 quad kit for $190 after MIR is a great price, but personally? I really like the FX6300 hexacore kit for $270 after MIR. Its a great price, the chip has plenty of power and headroom to OC if you are into that, and with turbocore its like getting 2 chips, a 3.5GHz hexa and a 4.1Ghz triple, its just a really solid chip.

That is what I've been telling folks here for years, the bang for the buck is still in the AMD camp and with their new GCN arch you can use the GPU for the heavy FP math which beats the FP in any CPU by a country mile so there really ain't any point in putting a bunch of heavy FP in the CPU anymore.

As you can see the difference in number crunching between Intel and AMD in real world applications is crazy low, we are talking around 10%-15% max and that is if you go top o' the line Intel. Now I don't know about you but 15% boost isn't worth 300% markup in MY book. Oh and before anybody brings up benchmarks? As the guy in the video points out benchmarks have been rigged with Cinebench recently being caught putting "If CPU is AMD, tie boat anchor" code into their benchmark and this of course doesn't even mention the Intel Cripple Compiler which to this very day cripples any program compiled with it. At the shop I have done just like in the video and run real applications and compared, the result? Just as he found, the difference is so small you wouldn't be able to tell without breaking out a stopwatch...but your wallet knows, especially when you can get a hexacore for $105 and an octocore for $130.

So if you are wanting just a good office style box I'd go with good number crunching something like A8 6600K APU kit for $210 after MIR or if you want a good entry level that you'll add your own GPU the fx4200 quad kit for $190 after MIR is a great price, but personally? I really like the FX6300 hexacore kit for $270 after MIR. Its a great price, the chip has plenty of power and headroom to OC if you are into that, and with turbocore its like getting 2 chips, a 3.5GHz hexa and a 4.1Ghz triple, its just a really solid chip.

The question is what can you GET for them... Right now? Not much.

You really need to update your anti-Bitcoin propaganda. Between Bitcoinstore, Overstock.com, TigerDirect, Fancy, eGifter, and Gyft you can get quite a bit for a bitcoin these days, and that's not counting all these other merchants:

Trade page at the Bitcoin Wiki

You called? Its really not hard at all to build a sub $500 system that will game quite good, for example we can go AMD Hexacore for $224 after MIR, add $15 for a DVD burner, $55 for a 500GB-1TB drive (depending on what is on sale), and Win 7 Home 64bit for $100 that frankly nearly every build ignores when figuring price....final total? $394, $494 if you get the GPU I'd recommend, the HD7790.

We can go even cheaper if we went with one of the new APUs and many review sites show they do quite well with gaming up to 1080p and at the most common resolution (1600x900 last I checked) they do VERY well. We start with This quad core APU kit for $320 and simply add the Win 7 HP from above....final total? $424. This is of course taking the path of least resistance, if I were to price each part separately and go for the bargains, like for instance grab one of the Athlon X3s where I'm seeing better than 70% unlocks? I could probably shave another $30-$50 off the final total.

So anybody that says gaming can only be done on some $1200 monster is frankly full of bull. Hell my gaming system cost less than $600 and by watching the sales I got an AMD hexacore with 8GB of RAM, 3TB of HDD space, and an HD7750 that plays all the games I like on Win 7 HP smooth as butter.

You called? Its really not hard at all to build a sub $500 system that will game quite good, for example we can go AMD Hexacore for $224 after MIR, add $15 for a DVD burner, $55 for a 500GB-1TB drive (depending on what is on sale), and Win 7 Home 64bit for $100 that frankly nearly every build ignores when figuring price....final total? $394, $494 if you get the GPU I'd recommend, the HD7790.

We can go even cheaper if we went with one of the new APUs and many review sites show they do quite well with gaming up to 1080p and at the most common resolution (1600x900 last I checked) they do VERY well. We start with This quad core APU kit for $320 and simply add the Win 7 HP from above....final total? $424. This is of course taking the path of least resistance, if I were to price each part separately and go for the bargains, like for instance grab one of the Athlon X3s where I'm seeing better than 70% unlocks? I could probably shave another $30-$50 off the final total.

So anybody that says gaming can only be done on some $1200 monster is frankly full of bull. Hell my gaming system cost less than $600 and by watching the sales I got an AMD hexacore with 8GB of RAM, 3TB of HDD space, and an HD7750 that plays all the games I like on Win 7 HP smooth as butter.

You called? Its really not hard at all to build a sub $500 system that will game quite good, for example we can go AMD Hexacore for $224 after MIR, add $15 for a DVD burner, $55 for a 500GB-1TB drive (depending on what is on sale), and Win 7 Home 64bit for $100 that frankly nearly every build ignores when figuring price....final total? $394, $494 if you get the GPU I'd recommend, the HD7790.

We can go even cheaper if we went with one of the new APUs and many review sites show they do quite well with gaming up to 1080p and at the most common resolution (1600x900 last I checked) they do VERY well. We start with This quad core APU kit for $320 and simply add the Win 7 HP from above....final total? $424. This is of course taking the path of least resistance, if I were to price each part separately and go for the bargains, like for instance grab one of the Athlon X3s where I'm seeing better than 70% unlocks? I could probably shave another $30-$50 off the final total.

So anybody that says gaming can only be done on some $1200 monster is frankly full of bull. Hell my gaming system cost less than $600 and by watching the sales I got an AMD hexacore with 8GB of RAM, 3TB of HDD space, and an HD7750 that plays all the games I like on Win 7 HP smooth as butter.

Why is this lie perpetually getting repeated? Hell, some moron even modded it up. Overstock (and Tigerdirect, etc) do not accept bitcoins as payment. You might want to tell that to Overstock and Tiger Direct, then, who both proudly proclaim that they do accept BTC as payment.

They can proclaim whatever the hell they want to; they themselves state, on their website in multiple places, that bitcoin transactions are routed through coinbase or similar.

But no doubt, you know better than they do, so carry on with the Bitcoin hate.

When we go to the zoo and comment on the monkeys flinging poo at each other we don't call it "hate". We call it "scorn".

Why is this lie perpetually getting repeated? Hell, some moron even modded it up. Overstock (and Tigerdirect, etc) do not accept bitcoins as payment.

You might want to tell that to Overstock and Tiger Direct, then, who both proudly proclaim that they do accept BTC as payment.

But no doubt, you know better than they do, so carry on with the Bitcoin hate.

Considering that you've got to be running something larger than your average desktop PC to hold that much data, I'd consider looking at a tape library like this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/app... ($3750)

8 slots for Ultrium 6 tapes, non-compressed will hold 20TB, 50TB if you can get decent compression...which I'm guessing you might not. I think tapes can be found for just under $65 each, depending on how you shop them.

I guess it depends on how many tapes you want to back up to after that.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/bit...

Beat that, suckers.

TigerDirect does. And I hate them for it. (Example link to a TV.)

Chrome + AdBlockPlus + DoNotTrackMe = no outside advertisements.

Not sure what you're referring to...

Beat that, suckers.

TigerDirect does. And I hate them for it. (Example link to a TV.)

What games? Because I just built a kit using one of the APUs (this one if you want to check it out) and its playing World Of Warplanes just fine. Also Bioshock I & II, TF2,Burnout Paradise, and a half a dozen more I can't recall at 3AM.

So unless you are trying to go 4K which you shouldn't be doing with a "budget gaming rig" then I seriously doubt your friend will have a bit of trouble out of one of these APUs. And the nicest part? He can always go hybrid crossfire or add a discrete later and with a price THAT low? he can add more RAM, maybe a SSD to go with the HDD and still come in under budget. Give them another look, go type the name of the APU into YouTube and see what games real users are playing and what the framerates are, you'll probably be surprised.

One word of advice though, from someone that has an APU in his laptop...buy the fastest RAM that the board will take, as unlike a regular system where it doesn't matter as much with an APU it DOES matter. I went from 1066 to 1333 and it gave me a good 20% framerate increase, so get the fast RAM, its only a couple bucks diff anyway.

Oh bull, if little old me could build a decent gaming system for less than that then surely these corps with the economies of scale could do better, but I have a feling their heard the word "game console" and just like "gaming PC" is a codeword for "We'll fuck you hard and raw on price" so too are they trying to make mad money on these units which is royally fucking valve's chances of competing. Now watch how easy it is..

We'll do this the fast and easy way, note that I could probably shave a good $60+ by picking parts individually instead of going kit. Start with AMD hexacore kit which gives you 8Gb of RAM, a 500GB HDD, burner, and a nice case, throw in this HD7750 which is what I game on and it plays quite nicely without sounding like an F15 taking off, and finally add Windows 7 HP 64bit which if we were building a Steambox wouldn't even be a cost.

So final total? Less than $500 building it with Windows, less than $400 building it as a Steambox. Now if little old me can do it there ain't no reason why one of these other companies couldn't make something just as affordable. if Steambox is to have a prayer it needs to have something in the $350-$440 range to make it appealing compared to PS4 and Xbone but at $500? For an i3? Sorry but I fail to see who the thing is gonna sell to. PC gamers are gonna look at the specs and do what I just did and pass, console gamers will compare to PS4 and thanks to Playstation Now their library is gonna curbstomp Steambox, and finally everybody else is gonna look and find out "big name game X" runs on the Windows Steam but does NOT run on the Steambox which will just make Steambox look crippled and sucky. Like it or not the vast majority of PC AAA games? They run on DirectX and very few of them have OpenGL support. Most of the companies simply won't bother with the extra expense of porting it to OpenGL proper over the custom OpenGL ES, especially when the majority of the PC gamers are on Windows, it just won't make good financial sense.

Steambox is stuck with the classic catch 22 in that it needs enough users to get AAA devs porting but they can't get the users until they have the AAA games and unlike Nintendo they just don't make enough first party titles to be compelling on their own enough to sell Steamboxes. So while i was really pumped when i first heard about this now? big meh. the price is too high, not enough big name titles, it looks like a product in search of an audience i just don't see being there.

Oh bull, if little old me could build a decent gaming system for less than that then surely these corps with the economies of scale could do better, but I have a feling their heard the word "game console" and just like "gaming PC" is a codeword for "We'll fuck you hard and raw on price" so too are they trying to make mad money on these units which is royally fucking valve's chances of competing. Now watch how easy it is..

We'll do this the fast and easy way, note that I could probably shave a good $60+ by picking parts individually instead of going kit. Start with AMD hexacore kit which gives you 8Gb of RAM, a 500GB HDD, burner, and a nice case, throw in this HD7750 which is what I game on and it plays quite nicely without sounding like an F15 taking off, and finally add Windows 7 HP 64bit which if we were building a Steambox wouldn't even be a cost.

So final total? Less than $500 building it with Windows, less than $400 building it as a Steambox. Now if little old me can do it there ain't no reason why one of these other companies couldn't make something just as affordable. if Steambox is to have a prayer it needs to have something in the $350-$440 range to make it appealing compared to PS4 and Xbone but at $500? For an i3? Sorry but I fail to see who the thing is gonna sell to. PC gamers are gonna look at the specs and do what I just did and pass, console gamers will compare to PS4 and thanks to Playstation Now their library is gonna curbstomp Steambox, and finally everybody else is gonna look and find out "big name game X" runs on the Windows Steam but does NOT run on the Steambox which will just make Steambox look crippled and sucky. Like it or not the vast majority of PC AAA games? They run on DirectX and very few of them have OpenGL support. Most of the companies simply won't bother with the extra expense of porting it to OpenGL proper over the custom OpenGL ES, especially when the majority of the PC gamers are on Windows, it just won't make good financial sense.

Steambox is stuck with the classic catch 22 in that it needs enough users to get AAA devs porting but they can't get the users until they have the AAA games and unlike Nintendo they just don't make enough first party titles to be compelling on their own enough to sell Steamboxes. So while i was really pumped when i first heard about this now? big meh. the price is too high, not enough big name titles, it looks like a product in search of an audience i just don't see being there.

Oh bull, if little old me could build a decent gaming system for less than that then surely these corps with the economies of scale could do better, but I have a feling their heard the word "game console" and just like "gaming PC" is a codeword for "We'll fuck you hard and raw on price" so too are they trying to make mad money on these units which is royally fucking valve's chances of competing. Now watch how easy it is..

We'll do this the fast and easy way, note that I could probably shave a good $60+ by picking parts individually instead of going kit. Start with AMD hexacore kit which gives you 8Gb of RAM, a 500GB HDD, burner, and a nice case, throw in this HD7750 which is what I game on and it plays quite nicely without sounding like an F15 taking off, and finally add Windows 7 HP 64bit which if we were building a Steambox wouldn't even be a cost.

So final total? Less than $500 building it with Windows, less than $400 building it as a Steambox. Now if little old me can do it there ain't no reason why one of these other companies couldn't make something just as affordable. if Steambox is to have a prayer it needs to have something in the $350-$440 range to make it appealing compared to PS4 and Xbone but at $500? For an i3? Sorry but I fail to see who the thing is gonna sell to. PC gamers are gonna look at the specs and do what I just did and pass, console gamers will compare to PS4 and thanks to Playstation Now their library is gonna curbstomp Steambox, and finally everybody else is gonna look and find out "big name game X" runs on the Windows Steam but does NOT run on the Steambox which will just make Steambox look crippled and sucky. Like it or not the vast majority of PC AAA games? They run on DirectX and very few of them have OpenGL support. Most of the companies simply won't bother with the extra expense of porting it to OpenGL proper over the custom OpenGL ES, especially when the majority of the PC gamers are on Windows, it just won't make good financial sense.

Steambox is stuck with the classic catch 22 in that it needs enough users to get AAA devs porting but they can't get the users until they have the AAA games and unlike Nintendo they just don't make enough first party titles to be compelling on their own enough to sell Steamboxes. So while i was really pumped when i first heard about this now? big meh. the price is too high, not enough big name titles, it looks like a product in search of an audience i just don't see being there.

But in many places the law was, and quite possibly still is, that the handing over of such documents indicated the time of payment.

Indicated the time/date of payment, sure, not the fact of payment.

Anyways, major retailers provide specific terms consumers have to accept to complete an order. Orders are always subject to cancellation at the retailer's discretion.

EXAMPLE Amazon.com Conditions of Use:
With respect to items sold by Amazon, we cannot confirm the price of an item until you order. Despite our best efforts, a small number of the items in our catalog may be mispriced. If the correct price of an item sold by Amazon is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation. Other merchants may follow different policies in the event of a mispriced item.

EXAMPLE: TigerDirect: As all prices are subject to change, your order may not be accepted or we may have to communicate price changes or availability issues to you after you place your order.

EXAMPLE: NewEgg: Product Listings ... In the event a product listed on our Web site is labeled with an incorrect price due to some typographical, informational, technical or other error, Newegg.com shall at its sole discretion have the right to refuse and/or cancel any order for said product and immediately amend, correct and/or remove the inaccurate information.

you can get an octocore for $450 after MIR

What? My octo cpu was $200!

Checks link... Oh that's a complete system :P

I know I'm shopping from a lower standpoint, but I use my system for work when at home too. I splurged for upgradability (1x8gb ram so I can max 32 without replacing anything, 3 pcie slots with one 7870 initially but a power supply ready for more, etc...) and came in under $1k, and that was shopping locally in Australia... I've never looked at a benchmark, but it seems to handle the 7 odd VMs in my usual load balancer / failover / cluster scenarios with ease, better than the i7 on my workstation (slightly slower clock speed but over double the price) from my subjective PoV.

I'm not saying there isn't a market for the mac, and my previous laptop was a unibody core2duo macbook I loved (lasted years, was cheaper to replace with a new i3 system than repair).

Uhhhh...you DO know there are these things called "PC Shops", that pretty much every town has one, and the vast majority are more than happy to do the work FOR you,yes? You don't even need to know anything about parts as you can just walk in and say "I want a PC that does X, here is what I want to spend" and we'll be happy to sit down and go through the options and help you pick what is best for YOU, and what YOUR needs are,yes?

I just love how so many try to make it a false choice between some POS Dell and doing everything by hand. Frankly even figuring the cost of paying a shop guy like me to put one together you can get a monster for a LOT cheaper than anything from Apple inc. For example look at this Core i7 monster. You figure in the cost of an HD7790 or HD7850, Win 7 X64 and having somebody like me put it together? You'd still end up cheaper than some gimped imac or Macbook.

Yeah but all these bullshit articles misses the point and why the PC is frankly better for most of us and that is the fact that YOU get to decide what you need and YOU get to decide what is most important to YOUR way of doing things instead of being told by Apple Inc what you should and shouldn't have!

Take the system I'm typing this on...I wanted a system that would start out easy on the wallet, but could ramp up with me, that had plenty of upgrade room down the line, and because of their frankly antitrust worthy compiler rigging and OEM bribing I didn't want to go Intel. So I ended up with an AMD dual and later upgraded to a hexacore. Plenty of power for my A/V editing and plenty of horse for my gaming, the ability to go Crossfire down the line, It does everything I need and more, plenty of space at 3TB, and 8Gb of RAM means Win 7 has al my most used cached into memory.

What would have been my "choice" if I had went to Apple with those requirements? A fricking iPad, which would have been completely worthless for what I wanted to do. Sure a $10K Mac pro could do the same job, but it would be a waste of money and would spend most of its time idling. this way i have the amount of power I need and that $9300 is better off in my pocket than in Apple Inc's coffers. The simple fact is most of us aren't processing raw RED camera footage so the Mac pro would be total overkill and if you don't mind a little DIY (or you can just ask your friendly neighborhood PC shop to do it, most of us are happy to throw kits together) you can get an octocore for $450 after MIR, just slap in a copy of Win 7 and there ya go, a nice system for under $600. For most even this would be overkill so for those folks I usually recommend something like this triple core for $250 although I usually pick an Asrock board (as I've been seeing better than 70% unlocks on the Athlon triples so they get a Phenom II quad for the price of an Athlon triple) but this will do most folks for the rest of the decade easy.

The problem with Apple is their "Our way or the highway" where you are SOL if your need doesn't fit into one of only a couple use cases and thanks to everything being locked down its not like you can pick up a system and then just add what you need. My system started as an Athlon X2 with 2Gb of RAM and an HD3450 GPU, now its an X6 with 8Gb and an HD7750, no need to replace the system, no need to reinstall the OS and programs, it "just fits".

Yeah but all these bullshit articles misses the point and why the PC is frankly better for most of us and that is the fact that YOU get to decide what you need and YOU get to decide what is most important to YOUR way of doing things instead of being told by Apple Inc what you should and shouldn't have!

Take the system I'm typing this on...I wanted a system that would start out easy on the wallet, but could ramp up with me, that had plenty of upgrade room down the line, and because of their frankly antitrust worthy compiler rigging and OEM bribing I didn't want to go Intel. So I ended up with an AMD dual and later upgraded to a hexacore. Plenty of power for my A/V editing and plenty of horse for my gaming, the ability to go Crossfire down the line, It does everything I need and more, plenty of space at 3TB, and 8Gb of RAM means Win 7 has al my most used cached into memory.

What would have been my "choice" if I had went to Apple with those requirements? A fricking iPad, which would have been completely worthless for what I wanted to do. Sure a $10K Mac pro could do the same job, but it would be a waste of money and would spend most of its time idling. this way i have the amount of power I need and that $9300 is better off in my pocket than in Apple Inc's coffers. The simple fact is most of us aren't processing raw RED camera footage so the Mac pro would be total overkill and if you don't mind a little DIY (or you can just ask your friendly neighborhood PC shop to do it, most of us are happy to throw kits together) you can get an octocore for $450 after MIR, just slap in a copy of Win 7 and there ya go, a nice system for under $600. For most even this would be overkill so for those folks I usually recommend something like this triple core for $250 although I usually pick an Asrock board (as I've been seeing better than 70% unlocks on the Athlon triples so they get a Phenom II quad for the price of an Athlon triple) but this will do most folks for the rest of the decade easy.

The problem with Apple is their "Our way or the highway" where you are SOL if your need doesn't fit into one of only a couple use cases and thanks to everything being locked down its not like you can pick up a system and then just add what you need. My system started as an Athlon X2 with 2Gb of RAM and an HD3450 GPU, now its an X6 with 8Gb and an HD7750, no need to replace the system, no need to reinstall the OS and programs, it "just fits".

Look at the AMD quads and hexas, if you want the biggest bang for the buck ATM they are an incredible value. Go look on Tiger and you can get a barebones starting at just $189 and I've built a few of those and I can tell ya....its a monster. You pair that with a nice HD77xx or HD78xx? You got a system that games like mad, does transcoding, editing, hell anything you want. you really can't beat the price either.

As far as FB? make you a bullshit FB account, pretty much all you can do anymore if you want to actually use forums. Sites are getting so fucking LAZY they'd rather just let FB do the work and sadly I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty asking for this, as I have met several customers that live on garbage like FB and tweeting twits for shits. So make up an account, not like there aren't a bazillion browsers out there, use one for your forum usage and fake FB only. If you need a suggestion? Comodo Icedragon or Dragon, Pale Moon, Waterfox. Then if a forum asks for FB? Fire up your forum browser and give them your FB that says you are Leeroy Hungfarlow and keep on trucking.

Uuuuhhh...why? These are ULV embedded chips, they wouldn't even be able to keep up with the 2008 HD4650 I have in my nettop, hell they would probably get stomped by my early 00s X1650 PRO AGP that I have in the closet, so why would you care about this supposed "duopoly" when it does what the market is supposed to do and lower prices through competition?

If all you care about is video you can go with Intel (although the way they slit Nvidia's throat to get them out of the chipset biz really should have gotten them busted for antitrust) and if you want more both AMD and Nvidia have just about every price point you can imagine,hell Tiger has an HD5450 for $15 after MIR and that is more than powerful enough to give you 1080p over HDMI (I should know as i put one in the HTPC I built my dad) and will even do some light gaming.

So I really don't know what there is to complain about, if you want better graphics in a laptop? Go AMD and in a desktop you can get AMD or Nvidia and there is enough competition to keep prices low, so what's the prob?

Even simpler just buy AMD as last i checked AMD doesn't have TPM, one of the reasons they are adding an ARM core to some of their newer chips as it can be used for TPM. Considering you can get a hexacore for $310 after MIR or if he wants mobility a quad core laptop for $420 I'd say its a no brainer, the bang for the buck is still firmly in the AMD camp.

That said I don't know WTF he is babbling about because AFAIK there isn't a TPM made ATM where the user isn't in control so he can use it, not use it, its not like some magical spy chip for the NSA so all he has to do is just not use the thing if he doesn't want to. That said batshit or not I'm a firm believer in giving the customer what they want so if he doesn't want TPM? There ya go, just gave him a desktop and a laptop both without TPM.

Even simpler just buy AMD as last i checked AMD doesn't have TPM, one of the reasons they are adding an ARM core to some of their newer chips as it can be used for TPM. Considering you can get a hexacore for $310 after MIR or if he wants mobility a quad core laptop for $420 I'd say its a no brainer, the bang for the buck is still firmly in the AMD camp.

That said I don't know WTF he is babbling about because AFAIK there isn't a TPM made ATM where the user isn't in control so he can use it, not use it, its not like some magical spy chip for the NSA so all he has to do is just not use the thing if he doesn't want to. That said batshit or not I'm a firm believer in giving the customer what they want so if he doesn't want TPM? There ya go, just gave him a desktop and a laptop both without TPM.

Glad to see somebody else put their money where their mouth is and support market competition over market rigging. I was a big Intel chip user until the bribery and ICC scandals came out and since then I've not bought a single Intel chip at the shop and even my family and I are 100% AMD, 4 desktops, a laptop, and a notebook and they ALL run great.

The thing most folks just don't seem to realize is how much better the bang for the buck is on AMD, you can pick up a 1035T or 1045T for around $100, quads for less than $80 and I've been picking up Athlon triples for less than $55 a pop and I'm seeing more than 70% unlock rates, you just can't beat that. Even when you can't unlock the BFTB you get out of these chips is just nuts, my youngest is blasting through Borderlands II as i type this on a 3.3GHz Athlon triple and it just flies, the whole system with Win 7 HP, 4GB of RAM, 640GB HDD and an HD4850? $350 after rebates.

So be sure to do as I do and point out when anybody brings up benchmarks that Intel is rigging them and point them to places like Tigerdirect and show them how truly insanely cheap they can get a system just by going AMD. Oh and FYI but if you know somebody that just surfs, does office work, or needs a REAL cheap HTPC? Look at the AMD E350 boards at Amazon and Tiger, you can get 'em as low as $75 and with a PCI to IDE card and a 4GB RAM stick you can have a REALLY cheap upgrade for an older system or a great start for an HTPC, although I use the version with a PCI-E X16 slot on the HTPC builds. I have been using these to replace the aging P4s in SMBs and it gives you a pretty nice upgrade, dual cores and a GPU that does 1080P and for the icing on the cake the whole system uses less power under load than the P4 does at idle, just 19w for the whole board.

I was impressed enough with the performance i sold my full size laptop for an E350 EEE netbook and after 3 years it still gets over 4 hours on the battery, does 1080P over HDMI so when I'm not using it as a portable it can do double duty as an HTPC, oh and unlike those Atom and Celeron based netbooks my baby has a full 8GB of RAM which not only gives me a full GB on the graphics but thanks to superfetch once I boot up ALL my applications are preloaded into memory thus allowing the HDD to stay parked and save power. So if you haven't looked at 'em give one a spin, they are pretty damned sweet.

Exactly, you can slap an ULV Phenom or Athlon X4 together with some ECC RAM and a RAID and tada! Instant SMB server, does all the jobs we used to get the mini boxes for and its a hell of a lot cheaper and less power hungry.

What amazes me is there is soooo much money lying on the table for the PC OEMs to just pick up, but they aren't picking it up. What am I talking about? what's making me damned good money right now,HTPCs and home media applications. Folks are getting sick of the ARM based one trick ponies that they find some of their sites won't play on,the browser becomes out of date or the thing stops getting supported and it quickly becomes a hunk of useless plastic to them. Thanks to the blessing that is HDMI its beyond butt simple to plug a PC into a TV, they can have a full size wireless keyboard mouse or one of those Lenovo excellent one hand PC remotes and tada! A one stop shop that can stream, be a media tank for the whole house, hell slap a $70 card (I recommend the HD7750, nearly the same speed as the HD6850 at less than half the power and heat) and you'll be rocking your games in glorious 1080P in no time, with your choice of controller. Hell with Steam having Big Picture mode and a few tweaks to WMC and its the easiest to use system you've ever seen, I've got customers with little kids that can just grab the remote and be rocking their Plants Vs Zombies or watch their favorite Disney movies at the click of a button.

But most folks don't know how easy it is now,they think its like the bad old days with S-Video and the PITA setups and having to have some insanely huge fan blasting box sitting there just to have an HTPC when nothing can be farther from the truth. If all they want is the casual game and surfing they can get a slick mini that looks great under the set or if they want to game i can take something like this quad core which by itself frankly looks good next to the set (I've had several that looked at the case and decided to just keep it instead of having me go for the HTPC box) and just have me slap it into one of the mini cases or for some reason this one seems to be REAL popular, probably because it looks great on its side and gives them plenty of USB ports.

So if they want to sell more PCs and laptops frankly they need to be putting out some ads showing folks just how easy it is to integrate a PC or laptop into an entertainment center. Once folks see how easy it is to add a living room PC they tell their friends, who tell their friends, next thing you know your moving 10 HTPCs for every office or gamer box. Folks just love having everything at their fingertips and an HTPC with a couple of TB of space lets them have that, VERY cool and an easy sell IMHO.

Exactly, you can slap an ULV Phenom or Athlon X4 together with some ECC RAM and a RAID and tada! Instant SMB server, does all the jobs we used to get the mini boxes for and its a hell of a lot cheaper and less power hungry.

What amazes me is there is soooo much money lying on the table for the PC OEMs to just pick up, but they aren't picking it up. What am I talking about? what's making me damned good money right now,HTPCs and home media applications. Folks are getting sick of the ARM based one trick ponies that they find some of their sites won't play on,the browser becomes out of date or the thing stops getting supported and it quickly becomes a hunk of useless plastic to them. Thanks to the blessing that is HDMI its beyond butt simple to plug a PC into a TV, they can have a full size wireless keyboard mouse or one of those Lenovo excellent one hand PC remotes and tada! A one stop shop that can stream, be a media tank for the whole house, hell slap a $70 card (I recommend the HD7750, nearly the same speed as the HD6850 at less than half the power and heat) and you'll be rocking your games in glorious 1080P in no time, with your choice of controller. Hell with Steam having Big Picture mode and a few tweaks to WMC and its the easiest to use system you've ever seen, I've got customers with little kids that can just grab the remote and be rocking their Plants Vs Zombies or watch their favorite Disney movies at the click of a button.

But most folks don't know how easy it is now,they think its like the bad old days with S-Video and the PITA setups and having to have some insanely huge fan blasting box sitting there just to have an HTPC when nothing can be farther from the truth. If all they want is the casual game and surfing they can get a slick mini that looks great under the set or if they want to game i can take something like this quad core which by itself frankly looks good next to the set (I've had several that looked at the case and decided to just keep it instead of having me go for the HTPC box) and just have me slap it into one of the mini cases or for some reason this one seems to be REAL popular, probably because it looks great on its side and gives them plenty of USB ports.

So if they want to sell more PCs and laptops frankly they need to be putting out some ads showing folks just how easy it is to integrate a PC or laptop into an entertainment center. Once folks see how easy it is to add a living room PC they tell their friends, who tell their friends, next thing you know your moving 10 HTPCs for every office or gamer box. Folks just love having everything at their fingertips and an HTPC with a couple of TB of space lets them have that, VERY cool and an easy sell IMHO.

Its not wasteful if you use the right tool for the job Drinkypoo and for those that want a ULV HTPC with the ability to do just about anything a standard desktop can do as well i recommend the AMD Bobcat builds which can be as flexible as you want while still pulling only 17w under full load and less than 8w most of the time.

I personally prefer the ones with a PCI-E slot so they can add a midrange card and get hybrid crossfire if they need more graphical power down the line but the nice thing about these is how flexible they are, its not like these little ARM boxes where it can only do the job the OEM intended. I have used these to replace P4s in office boxes, used them for kid's PCs, used them for HTPCs,media servers, hell i have a friend that uses them as his go to system for carputers, that is what is so great about these Bobcats, they are cheap, flexible, low power, just great little units for all kinds of jobs.

And you left out the best part which is you can get double, sometimes triple the performance for the same price!

I mean just look at the prices, you can get an Athlon triple that I am seeing better than 70% unlock rates with for just $60, if you don't want to bother with unlocking (or don't have a board that supports it) for just $75 you can have the Phenom II quad and if you want an unlocked 6 core its just $99 for the FX6100 and the chip I currently use (which I fricking love BTW, great chip), which is not only fast but if you are into OCing has some serious headroom is just $106! What do you get in the same price range from Intel? Either the crippled Pentium dual or for $99 you can get the OEM i3, also only a dual core.

So the difference in bang for the buck is pretty huge, we are talking double or even triple the cores which once you start multitasking you can feel the difference pretty damned quickly. I have sat with my 1035T and played a game like Torchlight II MP while I burned a DVD and I transcoded a video and thanks to having 6 cores there was nary a slowdown in my game. As a bonus the cheaper prices means you can not only spend what you save on a better GPU or more memory to have an overall faster system but you can have a nicer board MUCH cheaper than with Intel, I got a board that has crossfire support and holds up to 16GB of RAM (I could have had one that supported 32GB but I wanted to use the memory i already had and figured 32GB was overkill) with all the bells and whistles for just $55!

Anybody who says "AMD doesn't have the bang for the buck" simply hasn't bothered to look because for the same price as a Pentium dual system you can have a quad or hexacore that will run rings around the dual, gives you plenty of upgrade options down the road and will save you money to boot. Since the compiler and bribery scandals I've been building and selling AMD units exclusively and I can say that NOTHING Intel sells in the same price range even comes close, hell you can get a 6 core kit for $270 or the dual core APU kit for $170, just crazy cheap prices.

And you left out the best part which is you can get double, sometimes triple the performance for the same price!

I mean just look at the prices, you can get an Athlon triple that I am seeing better than 70% unlock rates with for just $60, if you don't want to bother with unlocking (or don't have a board that supports it) for just $75 you can have the Phenom II quad and if you want an unlocked 6 core its just $99 for the FX6100 and the chip I currently use (which I fricking love BTW, great chip), which is not only fast but if you are into OCing has some serious headroom is just $106! What do you get in the same price range from Intel? Either the crippled Pentium dual or for $99 you can get the OEM i3, also only a dual core.

So the difference in bang for the buck is pretty huge, we are talking double or even triple the cores which once you start multitasking you can feel the difference pretty damned quickly. I have sat with my 1035T and played a game like Torchlight II MP while I burned a DVD and I transcoded a video and thanks to having 6 cores there was nary a slowdown in my game. As a bonus the cheaper prices means you can not only spend what you save on a better GPU or more memory to have an overall faster system but you can have a nicer board MUCH cheaper than with Intel, I got a board that has crossfire support and holds up to 16GB of RAM (I could have had one that supported 32GB but I wanted to use the memory i already had and figured 32GB was overkill) with all the bells and whistles for just $55!

Anybody who says "AMD doesn't have the bang for the buck" simply hasn't bothered to look because for the same price as a Pentium dual system you can have a quad or hexacore that will run rings around the dual, gives you plenty of upgrade options down the road and will save you money to boot. Since the compiler and bribery scandals I've been building and selling AMD units exclusively and I can say that NOTHING Intel sells in the same price range even comes close, hell you can get a 6 core kit for $270 or the dual core APU kit for $170, just crazy cheap prices.

And you left out the best part which is you can get double, sometimes triple the performance for the same price!

I mean just look at the prices, you can get an Athlon triple that I am seeing better than 70% unlock rates with for just $60, if you don't want to bother with unlocking (or don't have a board that supports it) for just $75 you can have the Phenom II quad and if you want an unlocked 6 core its just $99 for the FX6100 and the chip I currently use (which I fricking love BTW, great chip), which is not only fast but if you are into OCing has some serious headroom is just $106! What do you get in the same price range from Intel? Either the crippled Pentium dual or for $99 you can get the OEM i3, also only a dual core.

So the difference in bang for the buck is pretty huge, we are talking double or even triple the cores which once you start multitasking you can feel the difference pretty damned quickly. I have sat with my 1035T and played a game like Torchlight II MP while I burned a DVD and I transcoded a video and thanks to having 6 cores there was nary a slowdown in my game. As a bonus the cheaper prices means you can not only spend what you save on a better GPU or more memory to have an overall faster system but you can have a nicer board MUCH cheaper than with Intel, I got a board that has crossfire support and holds up to 16GB of RAM (I could have had one that supported 32GB but I wanted to use the memory i already had and figured 32GB was overkill) with all the bells and whistles for just $55!

Anybody who says "AMD doesn't have the bang for the buck" simply hasn't bothered to look because for the same price as a Pentium dual system you can have a quad or hexacore that will run rings around the dual, gives you plenty of upgrade options down the road and will save you money to boot. Since the compiler and bribery scandals I've been building and selling AMD units exclusively and I can say that NOTHING Intel sells in the same price range even comes close, hell you can get a 6 core kit for $270 or the dual core APU kit for $170, just crazy cheap prices.

And you left out the best part which is you can get double, sometimes triple the performance for the same price!

I mean just look at the prices, you can get an Athlon triple that I am seeing better than 70% unlock rates with for just $60, if you don't want to bother with unlocking (or don't have a board that supports it) for just $75 you can have the Phenom II quad and if you want an unlocked 6 core its just $99 for the FX6100 and the chip I currently use (which I fricking love BTW, great chip), which is not only fast but if you are into OCing has some serious headroom is just $106! What do you get in the same price range from Intel? Either the crippled Pentium dual or for $99 you can get the OEM i3, also only a dual core.

So the difference in bang for the buck is pretty huge, we are talking double or even triple the cores which once you start multitasking you can feel the difference pretty damned quickly. I have sat with my 1035T and played a game like Torchlight II MP while I burned a DVD and I transcoded a video and thanks to having 6 cores there was nary a slowdown in my game. As a bonus the cheaper prices means you can not only spend what you save on a better GPU or more memory to have an overall faster system but you can have a nicer board MUCH cheaper than with Intel, I got a board that has crossfire support and holds up to 16GB of RAM (I could have had one that supported 32GB but I wanted to use the memory i already had and figured 32GB was overkill) with all the bells and whistles for just $55!

Anybody who says "AMD doesn't have the bang for the buck" simply hasn't bothered to look because for the same price as a Pentium dual system you can have a quad or hexacore that will run rings around the dual, gives you plenty of upgrade options down the road and will save you money to boot. Since the compiler and bribery scandals I've been building and selling AMD units exclusively and I can say that NOTHING Intel sells in the same price range even comes close, hell you can get a 6 core kit for $270 or the dual core APU kit for $170, just crazy cheap prices.

And you left out the best part which is you can get double, sometimes triple the performance for the same price!

I mean just look at the prices, you can get an Athlon triple that I am seeing better than 70% unlock rates with for just $60, if you don't want to bother with unlocking (or don't have a board that supports it) for just $75 you can have the Phenom II quad and if you want an unlocked 6 core its just $99 for the FX6100 and the chip I currently use (which I fricking love BTW, great chip), which is not only fast but if you are into OCing has some serious headroom is just $106! What do you get in the same price range from Intel? Either the crippled Pentium dual or for $99 you can get the OEM i3, also only a dual core.

So the difference in bang for the buck is pretty huge, we are talking double or even triple the cores which once you start multitasking you can feel the difference pretty damned quickly. I have sat with my 1035T and played a game like Torchlight II MP while I burned a DVD and I transcoded a video and thanks to having 6 cores there was nary a slowdown in my game. As a bonus the cheaper prices means you can not only spend what you save on a better GPU or more memory to have an overall faster system but you can have a nicer board MUCH cheaper than with Intel, I got a board that has crossfire support and holds up to 16GB of RAM (I could have had one that supported 32GB but I wanted to use the memory i already had and figured 32GB was overkill) with all the bells and whistles for just $55!

Anybody who says "AMD doesn't have the bang for the buck" simply hasn't bothered to look because for the same price as a Pentium dual system you can have a quad or hexacore that will run rings around the dual, gives you plenty of upgrade options down the road and will save you money to boot. Since the compiler and bribery scandals I've been building and selling AMD units exclusively and I can say that NOTHING Intel sells in the same price range even comes close, hell you can get a 6 core kit for $270 or the dual core APU kit for $170, just crazy cheap prices.

Uhhh...who is having to buy new PSUs and coolers? I bought a bigger PSU not because of the CPU, but because I wanted the option to run dual GPUs down the road and its pretty damned hard to find a PSU under 600w that supports dual PCI-E connectors.

As for the CPU cooler it worked fine, I sold it with an Athlon X4 OEM that I picked up to build a box with, the only reason i went with the Hyper N520 is I LIKE the N520, it is very compact, small enough to fit into a mATX case, yet its quiet enough and cools well enough that I can toss having an exhaust fan and just use the N520. again i didn't HAVE to, the default cooler that comes with the chip works great, i just prefer having heatpipes on my system.

The simple fact is for less than the cost of a gimped Pentium Dual you can get an X4 that WILL beat it in most tests, will only set you back $67 and makes a great basis for a multimedia or even gaming box which you can have for less than the cost of an i3 and board. hell spend just $7 more and you can have 6Mb of cache which isn't a great help in gaming but is nice if you are transcoding, or if you really feel like splurging spend a whole $89 and get an unlocked 6 core which is great for multitasking. Hell just $250 after MIR will get you a whole 6 core system, just slap on the OS and go to town.

I can't do the math for you since i don't know how much electricity costs there but before i bought my 1035T I did the math for mine and the difference in price between the X6 system and the lowest Intel X4 with equal specs would have taken at least 7 years for the difference in electricity to come out in favor of Intel. Over the life of the system you MIGHT save enough to go out for pizza, MAYBE. I'm sorry but unless you are one of those rare people that push a machine to the bleeding limit the math just doesn't work in Intel's favor, sorry.

Uhhh...who is having to buy new PSUs and coolers? I bought a bigger PSU not because of the CPU, but because I wanted the option to run dual GPUs down the road and its pretty damned hard to find a PSU under 600w that supports dual PCI-E connectors.

As for the CPU cooler it worked fine, I sold it with an Athlon X4 OEM that I picked up to build a box with, the only reason i went with the Hyper N520 is I LIKE the N520, it is very compact, small enough to fit into a mATX case, yet its quiet enough and cools well enough that I can toss having an exhaust fan and just use the N520. again i didn't HAVE to, the default cooler that comes with the chip works great, i just prefer having heatpipes on my system.

The simple fact is for less than the cost of a gimped Pentium Dual you can get an X4 that WILL beat it in most tests, will only set you back $67 and makes a great basis for a multimedia or even gaming box which you can have for less than the cost of an i3 and board. hell spend just $7 more and you can have 6Mb of cache which isn't a great help in gaming but is nice if you are transcoding, or if you really feel like splurging spend a whole $89 and get an unlocked 6 core which is great for multitasking. Hell just $250 after MIR will get you a whole 6 core system, just slap on the OS and go to town.

I can't do the math for you since i don't know how much electricity costs there but before i bought my 1035T I did the math for mine and the difference in price between the X6 system and the lowest Intel X4 with equal specs would have taken at least 7 years for the difference in electricity to come out in favor of Intel. Over the life of the system you MIGHT save enough to go out for pizza, MAYBE. I'm sorry but unless you are one of those rare people that push a machine to the bleeding limit the math just doesn't work in Intel's favor, sorry.

Uhhh...who is having to buy new PSUs and coolers? I bought a bigger PSU not because of the CPU, but because I wanted the option to run dual GPUs down the road and its pretty damned hard to find a PSU under 600w that supports dual PCI-E connectors.

As for the CPU cooler it worked fine, I sold it with an Athlon X4 OEM that I picked up to build a box with, the only reason i went with the Hyper N520 is I LIKE the N520, it is very compact, small enough to fit into a mATX case, yet its quiet enough and cools well enough that I can toss having an exhaust fan and just use the N520. again i didn't HAVE to, the default cooler that comes with the chip works great, i just prefer having heatpipes on my system.

The simple fact is for less than the cost of a gimped Pentium Dual you can get an X4 that WILL beat it in most tests, will only set you back $67 and makes a great basis for a multimedia or even gaming box which you can have for less than the cost of an i3 and board. hell spend just $7 more and you can have 6Mb of cache which isn't a great help in gaming but is nice if you are transcoding, or if you really feel like splurging spend a whole $89 and get an unlocked 6 core which is great for multitasking. Hell just $250 after MIR will get you a whole 6 core system, just slap on the OS and go to town.

I can't do the math for you since i don't know how much electricity costs there but before i bought my 1035T I did the math for mine and the difference in price between the X6 system and the lowest Intel X4 with equal specs would have taken at least 7 years for the difference in electricity to come out in favor of Intel. Over the life of the system you MIGHT save enough to go out for pizza, MAYBE. I'm sorry but unless you are one of those rare people that push a machine to the bleeding limit the math just doesn't work in Intel's favor, sorry.

Uhhh...who is having to buy new PSUs and coolers? I bought a bigger PSU not because of the CPU, but because I wanted the option to run dual GPUs down the road and its pretty damned hard to find a PSU under 600w that supports dual PCI-E connectors.

As for the CPU cooler it worked fine, I sold it with an Athlon X4 OEM that I picked up to build a box with, the only reason i went with the Hyper N520 is I LIKE the N520, it is very compact, small enough to fit into a mATX case, yet its quiet enough and cools well enough that I can toss having an exhaust fan and just use the N520. again i didn't HAVE to, the default cooler that comes with the chip works great, i just prefer having heatpipes on my system.

The simple fact is for less than the cost of a gimped Pentium Dual you can get an X4 that WILL beat it in most tests, will only set you back $67 and makes a great basis for a multimedia or even gaming box which you can have for less than the cost of an i3 and board. hell spend just $7 more and you can have 6Mb of cache which isn't a great help in gaming but is nice if you are transcoding, or if you really feel like splurging spend a whole $89 and get an unlocked 6 core which is great for multitasking. Hell just $250 after MIR will get you a whole 6 core system, just slap on the OS and go to town.

I can't do the math for you since i don't know how much electricity costs there but before i bought my 1035T I did the math for mine and the difference in price between the X6 system and the lowest Intel X4 with equal specs would have taken at least 7 years for the difference in electricity to come out in favor of Intel. Over the life of the system you MIGHT save enough to go out for pizza, MAYBE. I'm sorry but unless you are one of those rare people that push a machine to the bleeding limit the math just doesn't work in Intel's favor, sorry.

Yeah but how much was the 4 core Intel? And you can probably buy that 8 core for $150 or less now if you watch the sales. I'm running the Thuban X6 and what did 6 cores cost me? $105 shipped, if you compare like to like the only chip I could get from Intel at $105 was the Pentium Dual core which the X6 outperforms so in that case the bang for the buck squarely landed in the AMD camp.

The problem with the X8s (well other than the arch, see my previous post with a link on why the BD/PD/EX platform is AMD's netburst) is they simply cost too much to make, for every X8 that comes out with all functioning core they probably get 2 dozen X4s or X6s thanks to bad cores so THAT is where the bang for the buck is, although if given a choice I'd take a Deneb or Thuban over Bulldozer any day of the week.

But if you are strictly wanting the most bang for your bucks and like most of us don't have unlimited budgets the best bets would probably be the Athlon X4 for $67 although for an extra $8 I'd probably go for the Phenom II X4 for $75 and for more than 4 cores the best bang is probably the FX6100 for $99 or the Phenom II 1035T X6 for $106. I think in the benches the Thuban beats the FX6100 but both are good deals. Nice thing about the 1035T is I have one and have sold several and with a low end gaming board like the Asrock boards they have a hell of a lot of OCing room, before deciding I didn't want to deal with the temps I had mine up to nearly 3GHz with a turbocore of nearly 3.5GHz. I probably could have gone higher with a better cooler but my apt gets hot enough as it is without adding a major OC to my system.

As you can see though you can still get crazy cheap deals on the AMD side if you just know where to look. These chips have more than enough power to do anything your average person is gonna want to do with a PC, heck my youngest is gaming on a 3.4Ghz Athlon X3 and is quite happy with the performance and with my 1035T I can game AND do a transcode AND burn a DVD at the same time with no slow downs so I would say I'm getting my $105 out of it.

Yeah but how much was the 4 core Intel? And you can probably buy that 8 core for $150 or less now if you watch the sales. I'm running the Thuban X6 and what did 6 cores cost me? $105 shipped, if you compare like to like the only chip I could get from Intel at $105 was the Pentium Dual core which the X6 outperforms so in that case the bang for the buck squarely landed in the AMD camp.

The problem with the X8s (well other than the arch, see my previous post with a link on why the BD/PD/EX platform is AMD's netburst) is they simply cost too much to make, for every X8 that comes out with all functioning core they probably get 2 dozen X4s or X6s thanks to bad cores so THAT is where the bang for the buck is, although if given a choice I'd take a Deneb or Thuban over Bulldozer any day of the week.

But if you are strictly wanting the most bang for your bucks and like most of us don't have unlimited budgets the best bets would probably be the Athlon X4 for $67 although for an extra $8 I'd probably go for the Phenom II X4 for $75 and for more than 4 cores the best bang is probably the FX6100 for $99 or the Phenom II 1035T X6 for $106. I think in the benches the Thuban beats the FX6100 but both are good deals. Nice thing about the 1035T is I have one and have sold several and with a low end gaming board like the Asrock boards they have a hell of a lot of OCing room, before deciding I didn't want to deal with the temps I had mine up to nearly 3GHz with a turbocore of nearly 3.5GHz. I probably could have gone higher with a better cooler but my apt gets hot enough as it is without adding a major OC to my system.

As you can see though you can still get crazy cheap deals on the AMD side if you just know where to look. These chips have more than enough power to do anything your average person is gonna want to do with a PC, heck my youngest is gaming on a 3.4Ghz Athlon X3 and is quite happy with the performance and with my 1035T I can game AND do a transcode AND burn a DVD at the same time with no slow downs so I would say I'm getting my $105 out of it.