Cheapness and ideal for what I need, I doubt id even notice the difference anyway esp since im gonna be running my build with ssd and a powerful graphics card anyway. ive also seen some benchmarks that suggest the amd chips fare not as badly as you think esp with gaming which will be the main use for my desktop, indeed in the benchmarks ive seen the amd chips beat the i5 framerate wise on a variety of games and the 8150 of the bulldozer variety even beat the i7 on a test running dirt 3.
I'm going to echo the opinion that since you're spending what, $1500? The idea of cheapness is wayyyyy behind you. AMD CPU's aren't terrible, but if you want the best performance for you money, Intel seems to be the way to go until we get a good look at Piledriver.
As for
Gaming Performance, Intel CPU's tend to edge AMD out due to the fact that most Game's only run on 1-4 Threads, so having 8 "Cores" is of minimal benefit, and Intel's per-thread performance is hugely better. Dirt 3 tends to be a game that AMD tests and recommends testing a lot with, they even ship copies of it with their GPU's, so I'm pretty certain it's very much AMD-optimized.
They also have to potential to overclock higher then anything you could achieve with an i5 which attracted me as thats something I want to get into(may upgrade my cooler to a water cooling block if I decide to run with it)
Higher != Better. Yes, Bulldozer can run at a higher frequency than SB\IB, it can also eat substantially more power than those two and require freakishly high clocks to reach an equivalent level of performance.
Im wary of any advice on processers, not to offend anyone but I know the intel/amd rivalry is almost like android/apple in terms of fanboyism so I try not to pay much attention to either side, ive had grief before when talking about builds with an amd base, seems some intel heads dont like compeition heh heh
For me it comes down to objectively picking the highest performing parts, which at this point tend to be Intel. I wanted Bulldozer to be on par for SB, but it just wasn't, and plugging your ears and screaming isn't going to change that fact. You can either spend more money in the long run on power and extra parts and overclock the crap out of a BD CPU, wait for PD which looks to be viable competition for Intel, or go Intel and just enjoy the high level of performance they currently offer.
It has nothing to do with Intel getting competition, if anything they are experiencing a lack of it from AMD. It took AMD what, like 3-5 years to get BD out after Phenom II launched? And it was met with really harsh criticism. When it comes to APU's and to a degree Server CPU's AMD is on the right course. I hope PD is better so Intel actually does have some competition, but BD is far from it.
