AMD or Intel?

JustHalf

I'm wondering, which company makes better chips - AMD or Intel? I'd like everyone to give what *they* think is a good reason for their answers.

Pugsley

amd ATHLON OVER p4 YA MEAN ??
in that case athlon, cheaper and faster.

Chaos-Engine

Athalon is the better.... I got a Athalon 800MHz... it out preforms even some Pentium 1GHz

AMD are by far better at making chips now... Intel however might be bringing a 64 bit chip out before AMD... That could shake things up... hehe...
Heres to choice

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phaxx

I have a Duron 700, no problems, nice and cheap. Hell, they're only £56 sterling now! Not sure what a 700mhz pIII is but it's not that low.

_CreeD_

I switched to the Athlon when it was first released, so my last experience of Intel was a P-III 450. I remember immediately noticing a big increase in stability, and haven't had any reason to change that view in the 3 AMD processor upgrades since.
Also their bang-per-buck is unmatched.

The only thing I can't stand is microsoft's repeated screw ups with the platform drivers.

Gerry

This is a flame bait question, but anyway.
AMD at the moment have better processor designs. However intel are better able to persuade their chips to run faster. Since athlon is much cheaper, many people will go for it, there isn't really an overall faster chip anymore. The p4 is faster at some things,(media encoding, most games) the athlon at other stuff (fpu intensive programs, like 3d studio etc). The intel platform is still much more stable, (yes I know an athlon system CAN be at least as stable as an intel system, but this doesn't happen very consistently. I have a p3 600 coppermine myself. The only stability problems I have had are as a result of overclocking it to 960mhz. I also didn't get ripped off for this, since I bought it 18 months ago. All niggling stability problems are solved now, and the machine is on 24/7 without crashing. It runs nice and cool, and is fast for what I want it to do. If I was doing 3d rendering, I'd get an athlon. But I'm not, so I see no reason to get one.

Does anyone here actually use athlons for the applications in which they are faster? I'm sure a few do, but I'd like to hear what the majority say. Also, justhalf asked who makes the better chips, not who makes the cheapest chips. We all know the amd chips are cheaper.

Pugsley

Jesus,whoopi u overclocked it by 360mhz,4 the same price u could buy an AMD at a higher speed and save money on all the cooling.
U can also overclock AMDs MUCH more.An athlon 1333mhz has been overclocked to 1800mhz!!!!

Gerry

I bought it and overclocked it 18 months ago you retard. Also, it puts out half the heat of an equivalent athlon, so think before you post in future.

[This message has been edited by Gerry (edited 28-08-2001).]

Gerry

Astrofool, just a small point but we are both wrong on the games front. More games than quake3 (some of the new sse2 optimized games like dronez and aquanox)run better on the p4 than on the athlon, bear in mind I am talking about the 2ghz p4. Also I know that stability is a function of the chipset, and not the processor, if you are directing that at me.

Intel are fairly tied in to rdram. They are trying to get out of their contract, and hopefully before christmas the i845 + ddr should be on the market. Its release date has continually been brought forward.

I myself lament the fact that intel haven't got a dual channel ddr chipset in the works. They were very quick to implement dual channel rdram chipsets (first i840 for the p3, then i850 for the p4) to hide some of rdram's latency. It would be nice if they made a dual channel ddr solution to boost the bandwidth for the p4, this would make their refusal to give nvidia the bus licence a little easier to swallow, even if it did not have the performance of nvidias crossbar memory controller.

Also, the big wait and see is northwood. If they have the sense to use some die space to fix some of the compromises they made with the original design of the p4, it will be a nice chip. (i.e increase trace and l1 cache size, and fix the fpu) The l2 cache will more than likely be upgraded to 512k anyway. If the l2 cache is the only improvement, amd will still have the performance edge in a lot of applications unless the p4 can get to 3ghz before the athlon gets to 2ghz.

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gerry:
I bought it and overclocked it 18 months ago you retard. Also, it puts out half the heat of an equivalent athlon, so think before you post in future.</font>

I thought Intel rigged thier chips to stop people overclocking them? Or did they stop that.

Overclocking aside, I tend to find the AMD better then the intel... He's not kidding about the heat though!

JustHalf

Intel lock the multipliers... what Phil has done is raised his FSB to 160MHz (160MHz FSB x 6 Multiplier)

b20uvkft6m5xwg

If you're building a PC the choice between AMD & Intel exists but most standard Gateways, Dells etc are now standard P4's as far as I can see.

I bought my Gateway last year-750mhz AMD Athlon after hearing the AMD was better than a P3 but...
My Uncle just bought a new Gateway and he didn't get the option. It was p4 or nada.

Does anyone know if AMD have a new chip coming out bcos I'm thinking of buying a new PC or laptop. I definitely plum for an AMD again If I could.

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80p.
SAVE CHIP !!

LURCH

AMD are releasing a new chip called the Jackhammer (i think thats the name) and afaik it will be release at the end of this / start of next year

astrofool

sledgehammer and clawhammer are released next year, and will be 8th generation (expect delays) if they get it right, and move the market over to them, intel could be in right trouble, with only the server only itanium as the other chip, and no 8th generation chip ready as such.

Thoroughbred will be the next athlon core, .13 micron, SOI and should be able to match the p4's clock rate when released, and will hopefully have sse2 built in.

I'd like to get some benches of a 1.4 Palomino on an Nforce, palomino should scale to 2ghz hopefully, when the p4 is on about 2.8 maybe 3.0, palomino should be ahead of it though, esp. if they move to a 333 bus and use DDR2700.

Unfortunately the p4 is only worth getting if u're willing to pay for a 1.8 and above and get an 850 chipset, the athlon 1.4 is slightly behind the 2ghz p4, the 1.5 palomino tho will beat it, and be released next month probs (when they ramp up production)

Gateway and Dell are under incentive schemes to not sell AMD chips, they get more money by just selling intel stuff, not "officially" allowed, but it goes on.

The p4 actually creates more heat than the athlon, it does however use a different and better, if more expenisive way of installing heat sinks, and if they overheat they throttle the clock down, meaning huge performance loss. Not for enthusiasts really.

Gerry

Apparently the p4 2 ghz is rated for 65 watts of heat, now that may be slightly low, but all sites I have read reckon the p4 puts out slightly less heat. If you read carefully, you will also see that clock throttling has only kicked in where chip temperature has gone beyond specs, i.e. people running it without a heatsink or whatever. Otherwise, it does NOT throttle. Read a bit of www.hardocp.com and some www.anandtech.com . Even Thomas Pabst, editor of www.tomshardware.com , and not exactly a big intel fan, does not reckon the p4 throttles. Kyle at hardocp left a p4 on full load for a few months and it did not throttle.

Bottom line, it is a safety feature, designed so that you don't ruin your expensive chip if you aren't an expert with putting together computers, or if the cooling fails. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, the whole thermal protection thing.

You say "if they overheat". Well its better than the chip dying, isn't it?

Also, the new sis chipset for the p4 has pc2700 support built right in, in fact they talk about ddr 333 for most of the press release.

astrofool

AMD all the way till intel release northwood (early next year) and looking at performance, the palomino could give it quite a run for it's money, and also be alot cheaper.

Remember Intel always push what they think you want, and force the industry that way, p4 high end, but not high end performance, compared to athlon which is alot cheaper, celeron low end, which is a laughable processor. PIII now obselete, (buying new wise).

The athlon is actually a "better" chip than the p4, in pure processing terms, the p4 instead relying on it's sse2 instructions to make up for a slow fpu, and stupidly long pipeline (marketing for mhz).

The hammer series of AMD will have sse2 in them, palomino has SSE, so by the time applications are actually available to use the instructions, there will be alot cheaper alternative to the p4.

The ONLY game the p4 runs better is quake3, because of it's large bandwidth, every other game runs better on the athlon, and the stupid thing is that the high frame rates the p4 gets, are only at min detail and 640x480, hands up the pleb who buys a brand new system to play a two year old game at min detail settings??

a gef3 will give u better frame rates with an athlon + DDR and still be alot cheaper then a p4 + RDRAM + gef2 gts.

Athlon 760MP has been rock stable, no crashes at all in most tests, and are being used for servers, but really stability depends on the motherboard, not the chip, get an asus or an abit for stable systems in general (MSI also can be good, Aopen, gigabyte even, but not as tweakable by far).

Last time I used a pIII was at 650mhz on a bx, got the athlon 1 gig and never regretted going the AMD route.

And when for £200 ex vat u can get chip mobo + case from AMD at a gigahertz, upgrading an old rig has never been easier or cheaper

astrofool

and to think I used to love the celerons back in the pII days, pity they're still the same chip basically

nothing against Intel, just that of recent they are king of mess ups, and that they do something as blatant as market the p4 on mghz, it really is sad to watch as gullible punters go ooh, 2ghz and buy a p4 on an 845 chipset + SDRAM and an MX and performs around the same level as the pIII 1ghz

and for Intel to still persist with rdram, VIA reverse engineered the p4 bus and got within 5% on DDR, imagine if Intel did a DDR chipset, but then they don't want that, only the consumer, the Nforce will pee all over the 850 rambus, but won't be allowed to be p4 till Intel is losing market share.

it really is a monopoly situation, Intel doing whatever it pleases and forcing others on the same route. Before it used to be zealots that bought AMD, now AMD are the only rational choice, and it's the Intel zealots pushing the p4 - Megahertz means more marketing, pff

Stonemason

Personaly i prefer AMD for starters there more likely to hold onto there sockets better than Intel who feel the need to change them every 5 mins which can be a real pain if you just want to upgrade your processor secondly AMD are cheaper which means when a shinny new chip comes out five seconds after you buy your latest pride and joy its less painful and thirdly call me parnoid but the thought of a company that forces you to not only upgrade your motherboard/memory and finaly your case just so you can use there latest creation bugs me.
Lastly i have never realy had any probs running AMD chips though they do run hotter as long as you keep them down to 55c underload ive found them to be rock solid my system seldom go,s above 50c underload and idles at 24c in windows and the only crashes i get is from dodgy programing .
A last thought Gerry says he,s happy with his system i have to agree computers are here to do our bidding and if your machine lets you do what you want why worry about whats the fastest chip.Enjoy what you have dont let Intel or AMD convince you that your machine is some how inadiquate.

Stone

jaarius

AMD (athalon) seem to be better for games and such while also being cheaper but intel (p4) seem to be better for 'actual' number crunching. the line does appear to be getting thinner.

personal choice AMD Athalon


j

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Yurmasyurda

I have a nice AMD tbird running @ 1540 and it's great but I would like to test p4 because of the phenominal bus speeds and overclock that mutha, BTW I am talking about 2GHz @ 2.4 or thereabouts.

JustHalf

If you can get the bus speed up to 133MHz (from 100MHz) [ yeah, I know it's "400MHz", but it's not really, it's 100MHz quad-pumped ] you'll get:

1.8GHz => 2.4GHz
1.9GHZ => 2.533GHz
2.0GHz => 2.666GHz

Balfa

I can't see why anybody would possibly want to buy an Intel chip right now. Regardless of which is faster, AMD's flagship T'bird 1.4GHz can be bought for under 100 sterling (www.overclockers.co.uk **). that's something amazing, when intel are still charging over 500 sterling for their flagship P4 2GHz (www.microdirect.co.uk **).

If you had of told me even last year that either of these guys would drop their FASTEST CPU below 100 sterling, i would have laughed in your face. Maybe a P4 is faster than a T'bird. Maybe it's not. But i do know that a P4's not 5 times faster, not even 1.5 times faster. So why would anyone in their right mind pay more than 5 times as much for one??

** - yeah, two different reference sites, but that's cos OCUK don't seem to sell P4s (not that i saw, anyway), and they're both the cheapest prices i found, browsing quickly.

[This message has been edited by Balfa (edited 30-08-2001).]

b20uvkft6m5xwg

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Balfa:
Maybe a P4 is faster than a T'bird. Maybe it's not. But i do know that a P4's not 5 times faster, not even 1.5 times faster. So why would anyone in their right mind pay more than 5 times as much for one??

</font>

Maybe its a bit of guilty conscience given the possible closure of Intel. I dont know. It doesn't make sense to me either from what I've heard on this thread here-to-fore.

Just another quickie, will any of the PC manufacturers put in an AMD chip if you ask them. This T-Bird sounds good & I'd like to get it but I'd probaly be buying through DELL ot Gateway(?)

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80p.
SAVE CHIP !!

amp

I doubt it unless they are specificaly selling an AMD based system, which Gateway (used to?) do. Dell are pretty much Intel only (but might be using the Athlon mobile chipset for laptops).

The various smaller clone builders will build you whatever you like.

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JustHalf

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by 80project.com:
Maybe its a bit of guilty conscience given the possible closure of Intel.</font>

What?

Gerry

Ah yeah, did ye not hear? It was on the news last week, or was it the paper? Can't remember. Anyway, word on the street is they are gonna shut down the plant, for good, because they aren't hip enough any more.

JustHalf

What? I thought with all that Michael Jackson Multithreading in the new Xeons they were sorted. And they even renamed their implimentations of SMP to "Smack My Pentium". And those blue guys with their brains removed ... everyone loves a dumbass!