Poll: AMD or INTEL

[JeffB]

Ok, thanks guys,

Any comments on the cooling?

 

[burningrave101]

Originally posted by JeffB
Ok, thanks guys,

Any comments on the cooling?

Well that all depends on the processor you choose .

Thermalright and Swiftech make the best heatsinks while Zalman's 7000 Al-Cu is hard to beat for a quiet heatsink/fan combo.

 

[JeffB]

I was looking at this one for awhile... AMD or Intel

Thermaltake Subzero 4G Thermo-Electric Cooling

Subzero Thermo-Electric

 

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by burningrave101
AMD can't even put out their own Chipset for their top end processors.

Last I heard Opteron was the AMD top Dog
AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X Tunnel PDF
AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O Hub PDF
AMD-8151 HyperTransport AGP3.0 Graphics Tunnel PDF


and I wanted to point out one other advantage that you typically get with a SMP rig,
provided it has a 64bit 66MHz PCI bus (or better) which is common

PCI Comparison, 32 Vs. 64-Bit and 33Mhz Vs. 66 MHz

"Memory addressing is not what constrains the PCI bus or system performance. 32-bit addressing allows access to 4 GB of memory--systems such as SMP systems need to address more than this range of memory (see the illustration below). More memory can be addressed with 64-bit addressing in one PCI cycle or two 32-bit cycles using DAC, with the first cycle sending the low address and the second cycle sending the high address.

In the illustration to the right, notice the number of PCI cycles it takes to send the same 128 bytes of data over a 32-bit PCI bus versus a 64-bit bus, assuming the PCI bus is not interrupted. 64-bit PCI bus transactions are more efficient, both for addressing and data, because the number of PCI cycles is reduced to half."

equally applicable to the Xeon or Opteron platform


there are no AMD single processor compatible mobos Im aware of
that have a 64bit PCI bus, but there might be a few P4?

 

[burningrave101]

Originally posted by Ice Czar
Last I heard Opteron was the AMD top Dog
AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X Tunnel PDF
AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O Hub PDF
AMD-8151 HyperTransport AGP3.0 Graphics Tunnel PDF

When i say flagship processor i was referring to the FX-51 and A64's as they are AMD's main desktop processors currently. Opterons and Xeons are in a clase of their own in the server market .

And even for the Opterons i dont even see an AMD chipset 940 socket board on newegg. Their all VIA and Nvidia chipsets.

 

[Ice Czar]

hense the >

I have a strange sense of humor

I figured thats what you meant
was more for the spectators than you

Originally posted by burningrave101

And even for the Opterons i dont even see an AMD chipset 940 socket board on newegg. Their all VIA and Nvidia chipsets.

Tyan Tiger & Thunder K8W's

the Thunder is sittin on my desktop right now

 

[kronchev]

Originally posted by burningrave101
And even for the Opterons i dont even see an AMD chipset 940 socket board on newegg. Their all VIA and Nvidia chipsets.

besides that youre wrong, so what? Intel chipsets have only ever been good for stability, they are not what us enthusiests dig. Theyre getting a little more OC friendly but not much.

AMD is a much smaller company than Intel, yet they manage to have a good portion of the PC market, a lot of pull in the industry, and be able to produce cooler-running (AMD procs in my experiance have always run cooler than Intel, even with huge noisy cooling solutions on the P4) and faster per clock cycle processors. the 51-FX is the same as the P4EE in that its just a rich boys toy, in that 99.9% of enthusiests will never see one, much less own one. Theyre just there so they can say, they did it. Theyre not real processors. If you compare the A64, which is out NOW, to P4, the A64 clearly wins, even with the crappy mobo support. If you compare opterons to Xeons, only the high-end Xeons have an advantage. Never mind the future, all you hear about is Intel coming out with new processors that take more than twice the power of the old ones, Intel coming out with a new core, etc etc. AMD is hard at work coming out wtih even faster, better processors, and in fact, has already come out with new stuff before Intel. Intel is losing ground in the 64 bit market, especially since AMD was the FIRST to release a 64 bit x86 processor for the DESKTOP market. When XP64 for AMD comes out, and it will be coming out soon, Intel is going to freak. They already are. Do they even have a serious 64 bit desktop processor close to being released? Do they have the motherboards built and ready, do they have their chipset done, do they have the tech industry watching them and waiting for this? There are people who will swear always by Intel, there are people who will always swear by AMD, but in the MODERN, RIGHT NOW world, AMD is thrashing Intel. It may change in the future, for all purposes, it will, since they see-saw back and forth as time goes on, but this only encourages each side to produce better products quicker. You can say that Intel doesnt see AMD as a threat, but if it wasnt for AMD and the A64, 64 bit computing would still be 10, 15 years off, instead of a year, maybe two.

 

[NightWolfe]

If your so sure that XP64 is comming out for AMD where is the info to back it up ? I really don't see Intel scambling to keep up with AMD .. I see AMD trying there hardest to try and put out something to best Intel .. and the way I see it they haven't .. because they don't have the majority of the market share .. and I thought AMD was all about making their chips affordable .. then they sticker there FX-51 at ~$850 doesn't seem that affordable to me ..

 

[homIcIde]

Originally posted by NightWolfe
If your so sure that XP64 is comming out for AMD where is the info to back it up ? I really don't see Intel scambling to keep up with AMD .. I see AMD trying there hardest to try and put out something to best Intel .. and the way I see it they haven't .. because they don't have the majority of the market share .. and I thought AMD was all about making their chips affordable .. then they sticker there FX-51 at ~$850 doesn't seem that affordable to me ..

1. Taking a majority of the desktop market will be a very long and slow process (that is if it ever happens)

2. The fx-51, while being rediculously priced, is a few hundred bucks cheaper than the p4EE, and is also faster

 

[burningrave101]

Originally posted by kronchev
besides that youre wrong, so what? Intel chipsets have only ever been good for stability, they are not what us enthusiests dig. Theyre getting a little more OC friendly but not much.

I was looking under the AMD motherboards instead of Server motherboards on Newegg so the Opteron boards they listed for the 940 socket were only VIA and Nvidia . I never said AMD didn't have a chipset for the opterons but that i just didn't see one on newegg when i looked. Needless to say i should of looked under server instead of AMD even though AMD lists several 940 socket Opteron boards. And i dont know where you been living but the Pentium 4 "c" series is currently the best overclocking processor for the overclocking enthusiast. The 865/875 chipsets with dual channel memory are very feature rich and rock solid. People getting over 1GHz overclocks on the 2.4c is a statement in and of itself. And there isn't an Athlon XP that can outperform a Pentium 4 running over 3GHz. The Pentium 4's have been out for quite some time now and the A64's were just released. I would sure hope something just released could perform better then something older in at least a few areas which in gaming yes the A64's do. Even without a 64bit OS, 64bit architecture performs better then a 32bit does in 32bit.

AMD is a much smaller company than Intel, yet they manage to have a good portion of the PC market, a lot of pull in the industry.

Intel finished the 2003 year off shipping over 80 percent of the desktop, notebook, and server processors based on the x86 instruction set. As long as major OEM's like Dell, Gateway, and HP use Intel processors, AMD will always be on the downhill spectrum. Only a very VERY small percentage of users have custom built pc's and only about 1% of computer users even know how to overclock or even know anything about computers.

If you compare the A64, which is out NOW, to P4, the A64 clearly wins, even with the crappy mobo support.

If your comparing all gaming benchmarks then yes. Once again only a small portion of computer users are gamers. Intel processors with Hyperthreading are a better choice for all round users who work with applications and do video editing and encodeing with a little gaming involved. AMD processors are mainly all about gamers and thats where their main sales come from.

Never mind the future, all you hear about is Intel coming out with new processors that take more than twice the power of the old ones, Intel coming out with a new core, etc etc. AMD is hard at work coming out wtih even faster, better processors, and in fact, has already come out with new stuff before Intel. Intel is losing ground in the 64 bit market, especially since AMD was the FIRST to release a 64 bit x86 processor for the DESKTOP market. When XP64 for AMD comes out, and it will be coming out soon, Intel is going to freak. They already are. Do they even have a serious 64 bit desktop processor close to being released? Do they have the motherboards built and ready, do they have their chipset done, do they have the tech industry watching them and waiting for this? There are people who will swear always by Intel, there are people who will always swear by AMD, but in the MODERN, RIGHT NOW world, AMD is thrashing Intel. It may change in the future, for all purposes, it will, since they see-saw back and forth as time goes on, but this only encourages each side to produce better products quicker. You can say that Intel doesnt see AMD as a threat, but if it wasnt for AMD and the A64, 64 bit computing would still be 10, 15 years off, instead of a year, maybe two.

Intel cannot lose ground in a market that hasn't even started and wont start until there is a 64bit OS. You might as well just look at the A64's as 32bit processors with improved instruction sets. The inclusion of INTEL's SSE2 has helped out alot for them in benchmakrs because most things nowadys are SSE2 optimized.

There is no basis of any kind to say there will be a Windows XP 64bit for AMD processors and definately not real soon. Microsoft has commented on this already and dont plan to release two seperate versions. Microsoft has not stated any plan other then this at all. Service Pack 2 is the big thing they've been working on. Intel and Microsoft both know it will be at least another year or two before 64bit computing will even matter. Thats the reason Intel isn't make a big push for it this moment. Intel and AMD have signed agreements to share technology so if Intel really thought they were getting left behind with 64bit they would just copy what AMD has done with the A64's and put one out on the market. Being the huge majority of Intel users to AMD users i think Microsofts last worry is to work on getting out an OS just for the incredible smaller portion of people that have A64's. It takes time for these things to revolutionize and i think AMD would of been better off waiting till mid-summer to of released their A64's so that they could of spent more time preparing the motherboards with VIA and Nvidia and Intel 's Teja is due out around then and will almost assuradly have full or some kind of 64bit support. Microsoft would then of released a Windows XP 64bit to the public a short time after both of their releases.

 

[kronchev]

Originally posted by burningrave101
I was looking under the AMD motherboards instead of Server motherboards on Newegg so the Opteron boards they listed for the 940 socket were only VIA and Nvidia . I never said AMD didn't have a chipset for the opterons but that i just didn't see one on newegg when i looked. Needless to say i should of looked under server instead of AMD even though AMD lists several 940 socket Opteron boards.

It happens.

And i dont know where you been living but the Pentium 4 "c" series is currently the best overclocking processor for the overclocking enthusiast. The 865/875 chipsets with dual channel memory are very feature rich and rock solid. People getting over 1GHz overclocks on the 2.4c is a statement in and of itself.

It gets the highest clockrates, again I'll give you that.

And there isn't an Athlon XP that can outperform a Pentium 4 running over 3GHz.

Except for a 3200+, which is gainable by a 2500+ on air.

Intel finished the 2003 year off shipping over 80 percent of the desktop, notebook, and server processors based on the x86 instruction set. As long as major OEM's like Dell, Gateway, and HP use Intel processors, AMD will always be on the downhill spectrum. Only a very VERY small percentage of users have custom built pc's and only about 1% of computer users even know how to overclock or even know anything about computers.

Major OEMs DO build AMD systems. 20% market share is still huge and can still pull a lot of weight.

If your comparing all gaming benchmarks then yes. Once again only a small portion of computer users are gamers. Intel processors with Hyperthreading are a better choice for all round users who work with applications and do video editing and encodeing with a little gaming involved. AMD processors are mainly all about gamers and thats where their main sales come from.

Are you kidding me? Barring business applications, gaming is the biggest market for PCs. Video editing is a very small market share that is gaining, but unless its professional editing with deadlines, there is no advantage of an Intel over an AMD. In benchmarks, the Intel with hyperthreading may win, but a comparable dual AMD system at the same rating would match that, if not beat it.

Intel cannot lose ground in a market that hasn't even started and wont start until there is a 64bit OS. You might as well just look at the A64's as 32bit processors with improved instruction sets. The inclusion of INTEL's SSE2 has helped out alot for them in benchmakrs because most things nowadys are SSE2 optimized.

Intel can and will be losing ground since people are already buying the A64's. Granted its only a few handfulls, but when someone goes to their "computer friend" and asks "build me the best desktop PC that is reasonably priced," you can be an A64 is going in it (although Opterons are coming down in price, they use server boards and most cases dont play nicely with them).

There is no basis of any kind to say there will be a Windows XP 64bit for AMD processors and definately not real soon.
Microsoft has commented on this already and dont plan to release two seperate versions. Microsoft has not stated any plan other then this at all. Service Pack 2 is the big thing they've been working on.

...but there already is one. Theres a beta out. Theres reviews on hardware sites. There is one, its just not ready for a launch yet.

Intel and Microsoft both know it will be at least another year or two before 64bit computing will even matter. Thats the reason Intel isn't make a big push for it this moment.

The big reason is that there are no 64 bit apps yet. The speed increase is of course a good thing, but since theres hardly anything that would take advantage of the 64 bit, theyre developing it but its not the #1 priority.

Intel and AMD have signed agreements to share technology so if Intel really thought they were getting left behind with 64bit they would just copy what AMD has done with the A64's and put one out on the market.

No, they wouldnt. AMD does things a lot differently than Intel. Also remember, Intel already has a 64 bit proc, but its ONLY 64 bit. Intel is making their own desktop 32/64 that is coming out, but its not here yet and there is no immediate launch date.

Being the huge majority of Intel users to AMD users i think Microsofts last worry is to work on getting out an OS just for the incredible smaller portion of people that have A64's. It takes time for these things to revolutionize and i think AMD would of been better off waiting till mid-summer to of released their A64's so that they could of spent more time preparing the motherboards with VIA and Nvidia and Intel 's Teja is due out around then and will almost assuradly have full or some kind of 64bit support. Microsoft would then of released a Windows XP 64bit to the public a short time after both of their releases.

Well, you do help my point here. Microsoft is making a 64 bit OS NOT just for the A64 crowd, but for the 64 bit desktop crowd. The big feature of it is that it runs the same 32 bit apps as previous versions, and faster at that. It will work with the Intel 64 bit proc, and it works with the A64. There will be no "two versions", that wouldnt make sense for anyone in the industry. Intel isnt holding back the OS, as you say, Microsoft has other things to worry about, like releasing a final patch for the OS they intentionally left incomplete so that we are forced to get service packs that reverify serial numbers.

 

[CommanderFrank]

OK, this happens all too often, you can't put Intel and AMD together in a sentence without it generating page after page of argument. Let's not hijack this thread any further. Please refer to the original question or this is a dead thread. Recommendations, gentlemen....

Originally posted by JeffB
I'm building my new comp and am looking for some processor opinions

Here are the canidates.

1. Intel P4 3.2Ghz Extreme Edition
2. Intel P4 3.2Ghz
3. Dual Intel 3.2Ghz Xeons
4. AMD 64
5. AMD 64 FX-51

What do you think?

 

[Ice Czar]

and JeffB regarding your question about cooling
it does relate to your CPU choice

are you interested in just air cooling?

 

[joormotha]

If you do video editing or 3d for a living, you may be better of going Intel. Reason being, if you ever run into hardware conflicts, you will probably have a lot easier time finding solutions for Intel based rigs since they are most popular in the industry. From what I have noticed a lot of professionals (video, audio, 3D) are zealots in terms of hardware, and they dent to stick with wintel setups. It's kind of like getting a MAC if you plan on doing graphic design. My reasoning is completly from a support level perspective. I'm not saying that AMD is inferior, otherwise my last 3 CPU's wouldn't be AMD. It's just that majority of the professional crowd runs intel and most likely software developers test on Intel more heavily because of that. When you do this stuff for a living, taking risks is not something you can afford. Otherwise, go for the bleeding edge or the bang for the buck.

 

[retardedchicken]

tack a vote for the FX-51, its ready for the future and its just about the best out now

 

[JeffB]

Originally posted by Ice Czar
and JeffB regarding your question about cooling
it does relate to your CPU choice

are you interested in just air cooling?

Coldness, I've been looking at the Peltier things, found 226W one thanks to the Cooling forum...

Might use water

 

[burningrave101]

Originally posted by JeffB
Coldness, I've been looking at the Peltier things, found 226W one thanks to the Cooling forum...

Might use water

Extreme cooling eh? It can be a real pain at times but i guess its worth it if you want extreme overclocks. If your not planning on pushing your CPU way past its normal potential though i wouldn't bother buying ither of those. And watercooling usually doesn't do ALOT better then top notch aircooling but its definately quieter. Watercooling is sometimes tricky for a noob watercooler to setup though so take that into consideration. And you'll have to do maintenence on it regularly. Aircooling is pretty much slap it on and your done is why i prefer it sense i dont like overclocking to the point of possibly burning up a $400 processor .

 

[Burning Phoenix]

Originally posted by burningrave101
If your comparing all gaming benchmarks then yes. Once again only a small portion of computer users are gamers. Intel processors with Hyperthreading are a better choice for all round users who work with applications and do video editing and encodeing with a little gaming involved. AMD processors are mainly all about gamers and thats where their main sales come from.

I thought i was the only one who thinks like that. I mean the only benchmarks i look at are video and audio compression, 3drendering and other apps. I could care less how fast my systems play games. I could buy a Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube for the price of a top of the line chip. And then buy tons of games for the same price the rest of the system would cost.

My answer to the original question if it were my choice would be dual Xeons.

 

[JeffB]

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[KrUnK]

Good points, kronchev...