X4 Ray Tracing - Optimal CPU

[rongobong]

I wouldn't go with AMD over Intel when it comes to CPU's. I recently built my rig for raytracing, and all my research pointed to Core i7 CPU's (that was about a year ago). AMD are generally less expensive, but they do not benchmark as well as Intel CPU's when it comes to raytracing. Check out www microcenter com for great deals on Intel CPU's if you are building your computer yourself - they sell them under cost.
I have an old Dell with a Pentium dual core processor (around 2Ghz or so). The Pentium i7 processors have 4 cores and hyper-threading, so the PC thinks it has 8 processors. Renders that take 5 minutes on my old computer are done in the 47 second range on the i7 rig.