Present Day, even in the budget sector, Intel is driving the market. It's hard not to choose Intel right now unless you're very limited with your budget.

I like both of them.Intel may seem good & i like it but intel is too expensive so i prefer AMD because the price is cheap.

I´ve used both AMD and Intel Processors, and the problem is you can´t make a real comparison.
Microsoft and Intel are partners and whenever a new windows version appears you know they are going to test it and work on it with an Intel processor in mind.

I used to own a 64bit AMD Athlon processor prior to my current computer and I was never able to really see it´s potencial, sure, there was Windows XP 64, but it was just a joke with little to no support and no software to speak of (PCSX2 was one of the few things I ever saw that tryied to take advantage of a 64 bit eviroment...)

FireFlower: x86 processors are RISC/CISC combinatios since the pentium days. (Not sure about older processors). There is a RISC core with CISC hardcoded around it (Pentium/PentiumII?) or by microcode - at least for P4 and all Athlon-Systems.

But I am amazed about some of the posts here... A 2.8GHz Intel outperforming a 3200+ Athlon? Wwww, come on... do some serious comparison.

Intel being better for games - especcially on the budget market? Stop daydreaming please... especcially there and especcially for games, the Athlon/64 systems always were the better choice. It was that way with P3, P4 and on the budget market it is that way even today.

Intel has the higher performing CPUs because they managed the 45nm process already. Do you remember the issues they have had with 65nm? AMD brought processors in 90nm that were faster and consumed less power (not all of them, thorugh) while still being cheaper.
Intel's high performance processors are good, but expensive. Many of them do not perform that good any more when it comes to overclocking (see the new 6600ers) so that argument isn't generally useable anymore.

But to come back to topic: It would be interesting to see a sort of "competition", which CPU performs better on PCSX2. Too bad the SSE3-Extensions can't be used for the X4, which has SSE3.
I still think that the AMD could give you a bigger bang for the same buck.

Regards, Bigfoot29

Edit: About the older AMD processors and long time usage:
I am still having a K6-II-500 up and running, I know of several Duron 800 that still do their job. One of them ran for a while (weeks?) without _any_ working fan - we noticed that because the system crashed from time to time while being on heavy load. The system was and still is running 24/7. So either you did something wrong with your CPUs, which seems to be rather common when so many processors die in a short time, or you really have had bad luck. Being on the same scale I can say "hey, we are throwing away far more INTEL systems then AMD systems!" - The reason is simple - in a business environment you do have more INTEL systems running - most of the time because of "decision makers branding". How often do I have to make offers Intel only because Intels explicitly requested for low power and low consumption office computers. - Oh, and they want to have them cheap, of course. Intel, good work on that.

bigfoot29:
What CPU's are you comparing now?
A "2.8Ghz Intel" is way faster than a "3200+ Athlon" when you mean a core2duo and an Athlon x2 for example.
Otoh, if you compare the Pentium4 2.8Ghz with an Athlon x2, then the P4 is lots slower

For current generation chips and pcsx2 the rule is simple though.
If it's an AMD it won't be fast enough, overclocked or not.
If it's an Intel, then with some overclocking it will be enough for pcsx2.

I hope the next Phenoms will finally be good enough for pcsx2, but untill then AMD is just a bad choice for pcsx2..

My decision's based on local prices in my country. AMD processors and chipsets are as expensive as Intel, if not even more pricey <o_0> so Intel becomes the natural choice for me.

I will be happy to see if someone who has phenomII already try it with pcsx2 since that CPU was very good compatitor to compare with penryn especcially in games bencmark, iam in AMD side.

Any Intels CPU have more cashe. Just wondering how cashe impact on in game fps.

For gaming, not so much. I think most tests showed a bigger cache gave a single digit percent increase, around 3% last I checked.

But for professional work like rendering and d/encoding, quite a bit of performance difference.

And yes, I'd like to see some Phenom II benches with the emulator myself

My vote here goes for AMD.
For no obvious reason... .