The chaps over at Legit Reviews tested AMD's answer to Intel's Conroe offensive. With the latest price cuts of AMD CPUs, it was interesting to see whether an X2 5600+, a sub-$200 CPU fare with Intel's own E6300, which fits nicely into the same category. When testing in real world games, a surprise happened in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., where Intel took a beating - the 2.8GHz 5600+ AM2 processor led by nearly 18 frames per second. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 was able to keep the frame rates well above 30fps, but offered 25% less frames per second. AMD took the lead in Doom 3 as well, while Quake 4 returned point for Intel.

It's obvious from our real-world game testing that when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled at normal resolutions that both the AMD and the Intel test systems performed too close to call a clear winner. In games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl that use deferred shading since it can't support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled we can notice some performance differences between AMD and Intel. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl it was clear that the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor was able to play the game with a higher frame rate

As for which $185 Intel or AMD processor is better for desktop gaming rig it's a close call, but AMD pulled off more victories than Intel on the games that we benchmarked. Thanks to the huge price cut that AMD recently set in motion consumers get a ton for their money and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor is a heck of a bargain for those looking to build a gaming rig.