Intel and AMD equivalents?

[falconwind]

Anyone else agree or can help?

I'm really annoyed that I have an AMD processor, but so many games only list Intel processors for their minimum and recommended specs... drives me nuts.

Is there any place I can find a chart or program that gives you a rough idea which CPUs are on par with each other?

Or, you can simply tell me what an Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.91 ghz is equivalent to in the Intel world. Additionally, you can tell me what the AMD equivalent of a "Intel Core 2 Quad or higher" would be.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm buying BFBC2 and trying to decide if its upgrade time (my graphics card is fine) so I can get max settings.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Your processor is a dual core. You should be fine, although upgrades are always nice.

 

[ktimekiller]

I always stick to my piece until new games are virtually unplayable due to built in software incompatibility with GFX.

Should be a few years now!

 

[Dinnesch]

Athlon 64's are slower than Core 2 Duo's, especially with newer games. Bad Company 2 requires a good quadcore with a decent videocard for high settings with 4xAA.
Look here for upgrade plans.
If your motherboard supports AM3 processors(some do) I'd get something like a Phenom II 965BE with a Scythe Mugen 2 and overclock it a bit.

 

[Asus]

What GPU do you have?

The X2 5600+ is similar to an E6400/E6600 Intel Core 2 Duo.
The current numbering scheme for Intel and AMD is a little different so it would be hard to compare to a new CPU unless you find a benchmark (like Tom's or Anand's charts of all CPUs). Like Core 2 Duo E8200 is faster than the 2 CPUs above. For new CPUs I see a lot of recommendations for Intel's i5 750 or AMD's 6 core Phenom 2 CPU. Both can shut off cores and boost the others clock speed for apps that only use 1 or 2 threads.

And for "Intel Core 2 Quad or higher" there are old Intel quads and new Intel quads...
My new Intel dual core i3-530 (2.9Ghz) is better or very similar to the old Intel quad core Q6600 (2.4Ghz) in even multi-threaded stuff. And the new Intel/AMD with 4 cores are even better. So the range is bigger than you might think. I'm betting they are referring to the first quads though since it is a blanket statement without models listed.

Here is an in-depth review of BF BC2.
The last paragraph in that link shows the CPU usage of a dual core chip and they say any decent dual core can feed your GPU. On previous pages they show GPU performance at different resolutions (look at the one closest to your LCD res).

 

[kdub70]

i know that the amd athlon 3500+ is equivalent to a Pentium III running a 5.0Ghz