That the fastest processors are currently made by Intel is not really a secret, but what is the best choice when you want to spend up to £ 50, £100 or £150? To answer that question we conducted a megatest of 57 current AMD and Intel CPUs.

From two to eight cores, 2 Ghz through to 5 GHz and a price range from less than £ 30 to over £ 900. If you are looking for a new processor the choice at the moment is ample. In the high end range the only manufacturer of choice is Intel, as is clear by the performance levels of the new i7 processors. If you do not want to spend an arm and a leg on a new CPU however you will find there is a lot of competition in the lower end of the market between AMD and Intel. Intel's biggest advantage is obviously the raw power per CPU core and power consumption, but AMD processors have a very good price/performance ratio and their biggest advantage is the integration of their Radeon graphics. If you are looking for a processor in the lower range the choice can become quite difficult, and to help making the choice a bit clearer we have tested 57 processors in all price ranges, from the Celeron to the Core i7 and the A4 to the FX processors.