Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperChief
Thanks for the excellent advice everyone. This is something I'm pretty pumped about - not only having a sweet new desktop for gaming but also learning about some of the inner workings of a computer. A few more questions I have:
Is there a clear difference between Intel and AMD in terms of performance?
Can someone explain overclocking in a little bit more detail?
Thank you all again. You guys rock.
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Yes. The top of the line Intel chips blow the top of the line AMD stuff away. However, if you don't need absolute top of the line, AMD gives much more bang for the buck. The Intel chipsets also have a bit more memory bandwith (info moves faster from RAM to the CPU). If you can afford a top of the line Intel, go for it. If you don't want to pay that much, go with the AMD.
Overclocking just means turning up the speed and sometimes voltage to make a chip run faster than it is designed to. You can overclock your CPU, GPU, Ram, and system bus. At this stage of your computer development you probably shouldn't worry about that. In all actuality, even a large overclock doesn't increase performance all that much. It's a fun thing and us nerds like to brag about how high of an OC we can get.