Quote - I'm looking to get the best bang for my buck with a rendergarden. At the moment, the sweet spot looks like a core i5. (based on Cinebench) From the reviews, Bulldozer does not seem to have come up to expectations. Or am  I missing something ?

 

There are lots of sweet spots. I tend to stay about a generation behind the cutting edge; I got the newest garden's X2's when the X4's came out, and the price went way south. I'm only planning to get motherboards that can -use- the dozer; if past trends hold, what will go in them is Phenom II X4's that are being discontinued (and hence are likely to be bloody cheap). I just prefer the AMD chip.

 

Intel does have better performance, mostly due to intel specific optimizations that are done in a lot of apps, but you also pay a somewhat steeper price.