2014 was a good year for Intel with 56 Billion USD Revenue

Price is the only factor in amd favor, I had many more amd cpus than intel but 0 since socket 939. Been with intel since socket 775. You could also argue what I stated earlier, the intel cpus have a much longer shelf like than amd negating the lower amd cpu price as it needs to be updated more often. The only viable option for amd is if you can not afford intel.

 

Intel CPUs do have a longer shelf life (at least i7 does anyway), but if you consider shelf life important, AMD motherboards have a longer shelf life. There are a handful of AMD motherboards that can support CPUs from a 6-year span.

Almost any overclocked quad core CPU made within the past 7 years is good enough to play most games at 1080p, 60FPS, and nearly max detail (assuming you have a decent GPU). This is also assuming you cut down on background processes and aren't using physx.

Intel does undoubtedly have a better product, but all I'm saying is for the average person, intel isn't BETTER for gaming (unless you're lazy with system optimizations).

 

I5s have the exact same shelf life as an i7 just no hyperthreading. Being able to use the same mb over a 6 year span is a big part of the problem regarding amd. Theres little innovation going on. No pcie lanes on the cpu is a major hurdle in multi gpu, still no pcie 3.0 support as well.Not being strong enough grunt wise to handle more that 1 gpu effectively. I'm most likely going with a 4790k mb and reusing my ram and I can run multiple gpu configs as easy I have done so on this rig. I paid $180 for the cpu and $230 for the mb. Add 100 for the ram. Thats a 510 dollar investment in 4 years.

 

blimey. can i have some.

 

What? I'm not saying that i5s are slow, because they're not, but i5 has a shorter shelf life than i7 because of the lack of HT. It will be bottlenecked much sooner. Still several years worth of use, but it will happen sooner.

I'm really not trying to sound like a biased AMD fan here because I'm not, but you continue to bring up points that aren't related to the topic at hand, which is decent gaming systems, not high-end or enthusiast. For example, PCIe 3.0 - as far as I'm aware, the only GPU that takes advantage of that is the GTX 980. Nearly every other GPU in existence can work at their full potential on PCIe 2.0, even at 8x. But regardless of PCIe having enough bandwidth, the GTX 980 is still out of the realm of a "decent" gaming system, let alone multiple in SLi.

My CPU so far has not been a bottleneck for games I play and most of it I've had since 2010. With SATA III, USB 3.0, and tri-fire support at 16x16x8x, the motherboard is still relevant for today's standards.

Anyway just to clarify - I'm aware that AMD CPUs are blatantly insufficient for high-end gaming systems. If you don't have a high-end gaming system, they can still be insufficient if you expect to do things like record the games, run virus scans during games, or if the games are poorly optimized (or if your system is poorly optimized).

 

I find it disturbing, to see a 52.7 Billion revenue & 9.6 Billion Net Income/year company, with all it's resources and manpower that doesn't care to fix a driver issue.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/53305

 

Apps and games have to support hyperthreading. It is not used in everything like you may think. There is no scenerio where an i5 k cpu will be useless after a time where a same gen i7 will not be bottlenecked. In fact most of the time I have HT disabled these past 4 years. HT is overrated imo.