Where they made their mark and money was selling beefy little monsters for significantly less than the cost of the Intel equivalent, you do have to wonder how in the world they've ended up getting this backwards now. Sadly, I don't think they will recover this former glory. Intel now are far bigger and have far too much lead in development for them to dream of making the same impact they used to, unless they come up with something truly evolutionary (which this clearly should have been).

I do love the people who have no idea in terms of the laptop.
People go on about the macbook air and how intel and PC manufacturers always play catchup with Apple. I have had a few other forum drops and insults (because they are the idiot people who can only revert to name calling, lol) when I point out Apple uses intel chips. Intel chips/boards etc are what are small. No reason other manufacturers can not make a macbook air.
Thing with PC is they compete against each other and people want cheap, they have to set low margins, reduce costs etc to produce things. Apple do not care about what the price ends up being. As long as it still looks awesome the apple bullcrap spin will sell them.

Same with their mobile devices. Apple A5 - Yeah. Well its just an ARM chip with your chosen Graphics and settings made by someone else for you. They build things into clever designed products - no doubt. These days they no different inside as anyone else. Their closed environment method though allows them to make sure from A to Z it all works smoothly.

Quote from: neXus on October 17, 2011, 23:12:20 PM
Walrusbonzo(Will) insisted to me to wait on this as it will be awesome and I said it will be trash. He gave me some stick but I linked this thread to him on facebook rather then doing 
But everyone is right, AMD CAN make awesome chips, they have the skills and the team and the ability. They just miss the mark, I have no clue why bt they do.

It was worth while waiting, the anticipation was for another Athlon 64.  Unfortunately, we've got no where near that.  Real shame as Intel need the competition.  This isn't a loss for AMD, it's a loss for consumers.

I've now reached a cross-roads.  I'm in need of a GPU upgrade at the very least, BF3 is out soon and I'm still using the onboard ATi 4290 on this AMD 890 board.  But while I had planned to get a Bulldozer I'm now not at all sure.  Obviously switching to Intel(I5-2500k?) would require a mobo change too.

So do I :-

1. Spend £145 and get a Phenom II X6 1100T
2. Spend £90 and get a Phenom II X4 965 and with any luck unlock two of the locked cores to get a hex.
3. Just get a GPU for now and see how my Athlon II X2 clocked at 3.7GHz copes.

Decisions decisions.......  Bear in mind this lowly CPU is more than enough for everything else I use my PC for these days.  How things change

Cross to the darkside and get a 2500K you may feel a little dirty to start with but will learn to like it! 

But seriously you do need to get up to a quad from what I have seen of BF3, even if AMD where the same speed clock for clock as Intel (which they aren't) I'm guessing your going to OC? ...if you are then Intel are just streets ahead at the minute. 

I'm expecting to already spend £200~£220 on a GFX card and I'm not sure I want to spend another £300+ on a CPU and mobo.  I think for now I'll just get a Phenom II x6 and clock it as much as possible.  Besides, at 1920x1080 with all the fancies on I'm guessing the game is going to be almost completely GFX card limited.

If I was to go dark side, which mobo should I get?  I'd guess at least Z68 chipset?  But when I see some boards for as much as £250 I'm wondering what the hell they offer over a £100 one with the same chipset.

I would go for a P67 mobo if in your position: http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Intel+1155+P67+%28B3%29/ASUS+P8P67+Pro+Intel+P67+%28REV+B3%29+Socket+1155+DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+%28Rev+3.1%29+?productId=43854
It is cheaper and has the performance of H68 and the key features you're looking for in this chipset SATA 6GB/s, Crossfire/SLI, USB3 and EFI BIOS, but not the bell and whistles you get in H68 which it doesn't sound like you have much use for tbh.

One thing to take into account is Ram, I'm guessing your thinking about reusing your current Ram? - It needs to run under 1.65v for SB if you are.

Well i went for the Asus P8z68-v pro , more features than what i need but could be useful .
Mated this with a 2500k.
Results so far are looking ok.
Testing @ 4.5ghz 1.325 v.Prime fails @ 1.3v so probably a so so cpu.
Used the software to overclock & whilst the mild overclock(4.2ghz) was stable anything more wasn't.
The bios has masses of features & quite bewildering to start with but got my head around it know.
Picked the Asus because loads of positive reviews , must say seems pretty good.No BSOD so far ,
has booted up fine even with my hamfisted overclock attempts.

A note on ram for SB.
I bought 8 gig kit (2 x 4 gig) for £42 a few months agohttp://www.tekheads.co.uk/product/Kingston-HyperX-4GB-2x2048MB-KHX1600C9D3X2K24GX-1600MHz-C9-DDR3-Dual-Channel-Memory-Kit_40656.html.It is rated @ 1.5v for 1333 operation & 1.65v for 1600.
I have it running @ XMP settings(1600) @ 1.525v just adjusted command rate to 2 , makes little difference in performance but should be more stable
@ the lower voltage.

As it turns out, no CPU upgrade required.

BF3 is very very smooth at Full HD, Ultra settings on my 2GB 6950 unlocked to 6970 @ 960/5500MHz.

Quote from: Walrusbonzo on November 10, 2011, 18:57:10 PM
As it turns out, no CPU upgrade required.

BF3 is very very smooth at Full HD, Ultra settings on my 2GB 6950 unlocked to 6970 @ 960/5500MHz.

While Ultra, there is a difference, Mate here has all on Ultra and was over his in the week and mine looks significantly better. From what we googled it seems "Ultra" Is still system spec setup to a degree.
You can go in the config file in your documents folder and bump up sound and other options further.

Interesting, I'll have to look into that one more.