AMD processors

yes, at that budget. It's better to get an AMD processor

Rule of thumb is, if you don't care about the price, choose Intel; when low on money, AMD is more worth it.

The FX series are good and worth buying.

No AMD chip, right now, can stand up to the i5-3570k or the i5-2500k. With that said, you would have trouble getting them in that price range, unless you hit a sale. Still, they would offer up much better performance and future upgrading. AMD chips just do not do well in games. Still though, the less money you have to spend, the less of a difference it makes. Eventually your CPU won't make any real difference, in that price range. The more you spend, the better the CPU required to get the best out of graphics and memory.

Here are a couple of posts from Tom's, since you mentioned you were looking at them.

This is a nice start

This might be the post you were referring to.

One final thought. Pay no attention to clock speeds. The AMD chips really are nowhere near close, unless you are folding or something like that. For gaming, Intel wins and it usually isn't as close as some sites/people might claim. Once again, at that price range, it makes less of a difference.

with that 500/600 £ you will probably be able to get an intel i3 3rd generation which is still better than AMD...

There is no difference between the 8350 and the i5 3570k for gaming. If you do other stuff besides gaming - is where the differences start appearing.

FX 6300 is also capable of an easy 5 ghz on air and in some cases does better.

Intel beats AMD at every price range except for AMD FX-4100 vs Intel Core i3-3220, AMD ties Intel; However the FX-4100 vs i3-3220 price range is irrelavent because its better to buy an Intel Pentium or Intel quad. Also Intel's Haswell processors are comming in Q2 2013 and are based on new architecture, not a die strink like ivy bridge was.

For AMD's FX 8 core cpu vs Intel's core i5 or core i7 4 core cpu, AMD's 8 core, high end FX processors are rubbish, the low end FX-4100 is okay for the price. First, most of the new games only fully utilize 3 cores, except GTA IV and Borderlands 2, to a lesser extent. Second, the FX processors are not energy efficient. Third, Intel's core i5 and core i7 are better in games, the FX bottlenecks in Metro 2033 and Skyrim.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-core-i7-3770k-gaming-bottleneck,3407-3.html

However in the future, about the year 2020, games will fully utilize 8 core and FX may be better. Also Playstation 4 and Xbox 720 are rumored to have 8 core AMD cpus so console port games may become better optimized for AMD.

http://kotaku.com/5977849/the-playstation-4-has-a-new-controller-fancy-user-accounts-and-impressive-specs-so-far

For graphics AMD or Nvidia doesn't matter. However if you get an AMD cpu you should get an AMD gpu.

For that price range id get an intel core i5-3570k no exceptions. And at least an AMD HD 7850

Hi there,
here is just an example config for you.
I've built it on aria.co.uk as I'm not living in UK, but to give you a reference:

1 x INTEL Core I5-3570K 172.20

1 x GIGABYTE GA-Z77-DS3H 71.72

1 x 8GB (2x4GB) Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 41.99

1 x VTX3D X-Edition Radeon HD 7870 OC 168.74

1 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 70.74

1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Midi Tower 49.98

1 x Thermalright TRUE Spirit 90 21.57

1 x Pioneer DVR-S20LBK 17.09

Summary 614.03

optional Boot SSD Crucial m4 64GB +58.20 = 672.23

you could also save some more money, but it depends on needing OC capability or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4et7kDGSRfc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIS6zyBkoKY. AMD 8350 really beats i5-3750, AMD are fast but intel generally work better, but I suggest you get an i7 2600k or i7-3770

AMD processors are very good value, and you can always overclock them. You won't regret buying one if you do. Intel chips are better performance wise though.

INTEL INTEL INTEL

Intel and AMD are both junk, we should be at 48 GHz processors by now. When you compare Pentium generations every, 4 years performance increased by 4x or 300 percent. So we should have a 48 GHz single core, 24 GHz dual core, or 12 GHz quad core by now. When I browse the internet only 1 core is used and after 7 years intel only went from 3.2 GHz to 3.6 GHz. What??? that's only a 13 percent increase.

Edit: YES I know clockspeed doesn't always equal better performance. My point is intel has slowed their research and developement in making better processors by 50 percent compared to the rate processors have been advancing between Pentium 1, 2, 3, and 4. The main reason is because Intel has 80 percent market share. 20 years ago, Intel had way less market share and had stiff competition between IBM and AMD. Now that Intel has 80 percent of the market share they have been a lot less innovative. Intel has become a bigger bully and monopoly than microsoft. They also feel a 5 percent increase in performance, which is difference between sandy and ivy bridge, is an improvement. Where is my 4x or 300 percent improvement after every 4 years, 20 to 100 percent improvents over 4 years is unacceptable. Also a speed limit of 5 GHz doesn't make sense and i'm pretty sure there is a work around as AMD is nearing 5 GHz, even einstin's theory of there being nothing faster speed of light was disproven when scientist advanced a particle 1.6 times the speed of light.

Intels are faster and more expensive. AMD's are better for the money. Neither are bad.

I'll chime in with the Intel crowd (and for the record I've been using only AMD CPU's for about 10 years now). AMD wins for specific applications, so if you have a particular 3D rendering software you use a lot where AMD wins then they might make sense. As a general rule, Intel beats AMD, and in the rare cases when it's a shave Intel beats AMD hands down in terms of power use.

I suggest that you check the benchmarks and make your own mind (here's a link to the Anandtech one).

Still, if you're leaning towards the low end, the AMD FX-6300 is considered a sweet spot, far as I've seen. It will beat Core i3 in multithreaded apps and is "only" 95W.

IBM is the best way

I have a 6-core AMD and I love it.

Go for AMD. They are cheaper and they'll do what you want them to do.

As a plus: You'll be fighting against a big bad monopoly, that's always a plus if you're trying to get to sleep at night.

Go for AMD if you're low on cash, they are not that terrible.

I choose AMD

I have a AMD Phenom II X2 550 processor (weak processor) but it play's all my games fine, but i need an upgrade soon :P

If you're only going to game, AMD is perfectly fine and you won't really see any difference. If you're going to encode video or run PS2/Wii emulators, or almost anything incredibly CPU intensive, Intel is the way to go bar-none. If you use any professional software it wouldn't hurt to check benchmarks for it since AMD processors occasionally best Intel at pro apps but usually only marginally, at best.

Don't bother saving on a CPU just to get a better graphics card, either. If you have an overpowered graphics card and a weak cpu you won't be getting the most out of your graphics card. It's a semi-rare situation to put yourself into when building from scratch, but it is something to be mindful of. And of course it depends on whether the games you're playing are CPU intensive or not.

I love my Phenom II x4 :3

Is AMD A10 5800K 3.8GHZ Black Edition good if I want to play Black Ops 2 or Battlefield 3 or games similar to these? I'm asking for the CPU only. Thanks.

I got a amd fx-8150 as a freebie and i think it seems ok, it performed well in the benchmarks.

im a gold farmer that uses vmware to handle some mouse movements/bots. my i7 3930k handles much better then my amd fx 8150.