Brand Wars

Some regard AMD's purchase of ATI as the biggest mistake the chip company has ever made. Before the acquisition, ATI was really in the doldrums, and the outlook for AMD was hardly rosy either. While the sun is hardly shining on AMD, it's not all bad news.

Everyone loves an underdog, and AMD is certainly that. Although it may have been first to market with a true dual-core chip (without any of this Hyper Threading nonsense), Intel beat AMD at its own game by being first to market with a quad-core chip. Okay, so Intel may have cheated by gluing two dual core dies together, but it's marketing that counts and won the day. AMD is, of course, somewhat belatedly fighting back with venom, but performance is disappointing, when compared to Intel's mighty Core 2 Duo chips. Still, if you're on a budget then AMD usually offers more performance for your pound.

On the graphics front, AMD has had a tricky time lately, but the latest cards are a definite improvement, at least at the more affordable end of the market. The 3870 has a loyal fan base, while those on a tighter budget have been having fun with the cheaper 3850. NVIDIA's been keeping things interesting, of course, but at least these cards appeal to more than just the fan boys.

Above NVIDIA has had AMD in a graphics card headlock for quite a while now...
So how do the chip manufacturers compare when it comes to building budget systems? AMD certainly has some cheap chips and on the whole they will do as well as, if not better than, their Intel counterparts. AMD is the original dual-core master and having the memory controller on the chip, means you’ll get far more bang for you buck, at least, when dealing with under the $100 mark.

NVIDIA and ATI both have similar specced cards in the budget range, although it has to be said that on the whole, the NVIDIA cards tend to offer better performance.