Was I right or was I wrong?

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ReubenRosa

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
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For a living currently I sell pcs in retail. So yesterday I had the dream customer for a Doom3 fan. A guy walks up brings over the doom3 box and says I Want a system that can run this great! But then his wife steps up and says.. I am only spending.. 1500 dollars. So I look around.. WE had bfgs 6800s 0cs. So I knew without a shadow of a doubt that was going to be part of whatever system I Sold them. Then I started looking.. We had Hps, compaqs, Sonys.. Emachines. I settled on an Athlon 64 system from hp. Next to it for about.. 50 dollars less was a HP system p4 3.0g. The 64 was a 3400+ running on a 1200mhz bus. 512 megs ddr . 200gig 7200 rpm ata drive with 8 meg cache. 8x Dvd Burner from Lite-on. 5.1 surround sound support. the only real weakness that I saw in it was it was running 512 pc2700 dram.
The customer did upgrade the ram.

Now this is where my dilemma occurred unfortunately 2 co-workers interrupted me and stated that the p4 system was far better. Thereby nearly wrecking my credibiltiy in front of the customer. Now the p4-ht was running a sata hardrive and 512 3200. ram. Problem was it was a pci-e system..and we didn't have yet any pci-e 6800s available. But I got hit by 3 different co-workers and my manager.. who all said the intel is better blah blah.


Now here is my question...Was I wrong.. Based on my customers budget the performance they were shooting for , the fact I thought for the long run the athlon 64 was better.. and based on reading the doom3 recommended bang for budget systems from this site.

I kept hearing about heat problems with amd64s.. From these "experts. I heard talk about dual memory controllers on the..p4s.

Any links to good information that I could print out that could end this "disagreement."

Oh and if I Am wrong I want to know it and this way I could better serve my customers. I pride myself on working with pcs for 15 years and for someone to question my knowledge it does irk me. But if I Am wrong I am man enough to admit it. :(
 
ReubenRosa said:
For a living currently I sell pcs in retail. So yesterday I had the dream customer for a Doom3 fan. A guy walks up brings over the doom3 box and says I Want a system that can run this great! But then his wife steps up and says.. I am only spending.. 1500 dollars. So I look around.. WE had bfgs 6800s 0cs. So I knew without a shadow of a doubt that was going to be part of whatever system I Sold them. Then I started looking.. We had Hps, compaqs, Sonys.. Emachines. I settled on an Athlon 64 system from hp. Next to it for about.. 50 dollars less was a HP system p4 3.0g. The 64 was a 3400+ running on a 1200mhz bus. 512 megs ddr . 200gig 7200 rpm ata drive with 8 meg cache. 8x Dvd Burner from Lite-on. 5.1 surround sound support. the only real weakness that I saw in it was it was running 512 pc2700 dram.
The customer did upgrade the ram.

Now this is where my dilemma occurred unfortunately 2 co-workers interrupted me and stated that the p4 system was far better. Thereby nearly wrecking my credibiltiy in front of the customer. Now the p4-ht was running a sata hardrive and 512 3200. ram. Problem was it was a pci-e system..and we didn't have yet any pci-e 6800s available. But I got hit by 3 different co-workers and my manager.. who all said the intel is better blah blah.


Now here is my question...Was I wrong.. Based on my customers budget the performance they were shooting for , the fact I thought for the long run the athlon 64 was better.. and based on reading the doom3 recommended bang for budget systems from this site.

I kept hearing about heat problems with amd64s.. From these "experts. I heard talk about dual memory controllers on the..p4s.

Any links to good information that I could print out that could end this "disagreement."

Oh and if I Am wrong I want to know it and this way I could better serve my customers. I pride myself on working with pcs for 15 years and for someone to question my knowledge it does irk me. But if I Am wrong I am man enough to admit it. :(
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I don't think there is really a right or wrong in this case, but if I had to choose I would say you were right, and here's why.

You listened to the customer and what they wanted. I've been a waiter for the last 5 years, and listening to what the customer wants is the #1. You heard what he wanted, heard what she wanted, and then customized to that. Neither AMD or Intel are bad chip-makers. Intel is just more popular.
 
Bob002 said:
I don't think there is really a right or wrong in this case, but if I had to choose I would say you were right, and here's why.

You listened to the customer and what they wanted. I've been a waiter for the last 5 years, and listening to what the customer wants is the #1. You heard what he wanted, heard what she wanted, and then customized to that. Neither AMD or Intel are bad chip-makers. Intel is just more popular.
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The Athlon64's are ripping all Intel's the threads in the benchmarks and gaming. The P4 still has the upper hand in media encoding though. But if you don't do a lot of that then really who cares.
 
For gaming, the Athlon 64 is the far superior chip. It also runs a good deal COOLER than the P4, not hotter. The memory controller on the Athlon 64 is also much better, as it is integrated into the processor itself instrad of seperate on a northbridge chip. Last but not least, the Athlon 64 will be ready to run a 64 bit version of windows when it comes out, giving another performance boost in some applications, including high end games.

You were right. No doubt about it. The only real advantage the P4 had was hyperthreading, which would have made the machine a bit smoother when multiple apps were running. Hyperthreading is a nice feature, but for only 50 bucks more you got a much faster gaming machine.

It sounds like these "experts" don't know what they are talking about. They think that Intel has superior quality and believe some very odd myths about AMD processors. Both comanies make very high quality processors. At the moment though, Intel has quite a weak processor lineup, especially in the high end market.

As for proof, check out this very good article at Anandtech. Page 7 shows the A64 3400+ absolutely wrecking the P4 3.0 in DOOM III performance.

One last time, your 3 co-workers and your boss don't know what they are talking about.

It really annoys me when people who work in positions where they give hardware advice talk like they know what they are talking about when they don't have a clue. When I was at EB picking up my copy of DOOM III, one employee there was explaining to a customer that ATI graphic cards are much better then NVidia parts at running DOOM III, while NVidia is better for many other games. Of course he had it completely backwards, but he was talking like he knew it all. I tried to correct him politely, but he wouldn't listen to me. I ended up just asking him to check his facts online as I left.

Sorry for the rant but that just really pisses me off.
 
your right to listen to your customers, you should also talk with your co-workers and manager and tell them that jumping into your sale looks bad for the whole business.
 
Thanks guys. I did some further research. The 2 systems in question were the A642n and the a630n. The a642n after reading its motherboards specs.. I feel ten times better that I Was correct. Its an asus board. Nice board nforce3 150 chipset that can support 512 3200 if the customer wanted to get speedier ram. The Intel chip had intergrated graphics.. Yuck. So pci-e was the only way to go and of course nothing is available in retail yet on that front. And you hit the nail on the head I was listening to the customer and recommending based on their needs. I was trained that way...and I learned this 10 years ago when I was Network Administrator for UPS in their northeast region. You always cator to the needs of the user/client. It does 2 things.. makes them happy first off because you hit what they wanted..and 2 it ends up leading to less returns cause they will be that much happier. I will just print out the specs of both systems and let my co-workers know. I hope no one will question me again. :) :D
 
you need to give your coworkers an asskicking, most importantly. Undermining your sales pitch hurts the entire company, so they need to feel some pain.
 
Dapperdan said:
your right to listen to your customers, you should also talk with your co-workers and manager and tell them that jumping into your sale looks bad for the whole business.
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Well said. Have a little conference with the rude people.
 
just to clarify one point My manager didn't jump into the sale he just believes the intel chip is better. he would never do that to me because he is a smart guy and he has full confidence in me. Now the younger techs.. they are 19-21 and they have this mindset it seems that they know it all. I look very young for my age (31) so alot of times they forget they are talking to someoen who has been in the pc industry for well over a decade. But don't be dismayed.. I will be adressing the issue but doing it in a mature way cause I want to gain folks respect not
make myself hated. But I do know this.. Thats a damn nice system.. and I myself would enjoy having a pc speced out that way. :) I might just buy it for myself. And get of course the 6800. currently my rig is an athlon 2600+ 1gig 3200 ram. I am for sure getting the bfg 6800 gt oc. Just not sure if I can spare the scratch to get both. I do know that the 6800 gt with that athlon xp should be able to get 1024x768 high quality 60 frames. Does that sound reasonable to you guys? Cause for myself at this time.. thats all I Am looking for. :)
 
I have a 9800pro on a P4 2.4 running at 3.1. I can run Doom3 on 1280x1024 at high settings and I get 60fps AT TIMES. Usually it's 30fps (vsync is on). You should have NO problems getting it to run at 60fps at 1024x768 with that card. You'd probably get 60fps at 1280x1024.
 
AMD owns Intel in the gaming market, period. There is no comparison. It's called ON CHIP MEMORY CONTROLLER. People tend to forget this. :rolleyes:
Here is a chart from Anandtech's Doom 3 CPU shootout.

3452.png


Original article here
 
Whatsisname said:
you need to give your coworkers an asskicking, most importantly. Undermining your sales pitch hurts the entire company, so they need to feel some pain.
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hell yes.

"dont you ever jump into my sale again and make me look bad in front of a customer.
oh, BTW youre all wrong because AMD is better in games, which is what this customer wanted. next time get your facts right before making *yourselves* look like chumps."

"oh yeah, if you do it again, youre gonna get hit by the pain train WOO WOO"
 
S1nF1xx said:
AMD owns Intel in the gaming market, period. There is no comparison. It's called ON CHIP MEMORY CONTROLLER. People tend to forget this. :rolleyes:
Here is a chart from Anandtech's Doom 3 CPU shootout.


Original article here
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Print that shit out and go hit your manager and that other doofus in the head with it
 
S1nF1xx said:
AMD owns Intel in the gaming market, period. There is no comparison. It's called ON CHIP MEMORY CONTROLLER. People tend to forget this. :rolleyes:
Here is a chart from Anandtech's Doom 3 CPU shootout.

:snip:

Original article here
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Don't post pictures on other people's bandwidth man. I already linked to that article, but if you want to post the pic host a copy on your own webspace. As it is now every person that views this thread takes bandwidth from anandtech.
 
Was this a particular case of SystemI is better than SystemA or was it really just Intel is better than AMD. I've heard of anti AMD behavior at Retail many times and seen it personally at CompUSSR. That really pisses me off and the only thing I can't figure is how Intel has managed to create this attitude with Salepeople. Any 'knowledgeable' salesperson knows that a comparable AMD system is a good as or better than an Intel and usually cheaper. Hmm, you sales guys get commissions at BB and CUSA?!?! If so then of course you'll push the comparable and more expensive Intel system, you make more money. Are there some financial kickbacks to managers/employees for selling Intel based systems? Any other PC salespeople want to comment on this?!!?

I'm gonna piss some people off here but so be it. I don't like Intel, they aren't any different from Micro$oft when it comes to business practices. Let's not forget the RAMBUS fiasco that Intel tried to force down our throats but could not because of the Athlon and DDR. AMD singlehandedly rescued the CPU market from an Intel monopoly. Let's pretend that the original Athlon was a bust, as most Intel fans were sure it was gonna be. If this happened then AMD would have most likely exited the the CPU market. So right now for argument sakes we're at around 3.4Ghz performance wise and that will cost you about $300 for the Athlon64 and $400 for the P4. Just what speed CPU would be available right now and how much would it cost if the Athlon had been a bust?!?! If you think 3.4Ghz @ $400 you are sadly misinformed. Intel fans you may hate AMD but you better be glad they're around cause if not you'd be paying a lot more money for a lot less CPU right now if they weren't!!

This exact same scenario is playing out with vid cards as well. Remember the dog of a card the original Nvidia FX?!?! How did we know it was a POS?!?! The ATI Radeon! I'll admit I'm a fan of Nvidia, BUT, I'm very glad that ATI finally stepped up to the plate. Nvidia was becoming complacent and ATI forced them to get back on the ball!

Regardless of your affiliation: AMD/Intel, ATI/Nvidia, Corsair/Crucial/OCZ/Mushkin, Asus/ABIT/Gigabyte/MSI COMPETITION is a good thing! It means we as users get better products and cheaper prices!
 
im not an AMD f4nboi by any means. my point is this...if youre not currently updated on whats going on in the industry, and which company *currently* gives the most bang per buck for your particular application, you should shut the hell up. Intel does give better peformance for some media apps...right now, AMD is better for games. Didnot always used to be that way.

no one should say so and so company is better than another, just because. they should back it up, or shutup.

people talk too much when they don't really know shit, and thats what pisses me off.

too much coffee turns me into cranky chicken!!!
 
take your 2 other techs outside and explain to them not to jump in on shit. I would have them gone. That know it all attitude in front of customers is one thing that I dont tolerate and gets people fired. Its a team effort, unless you are selling steaming piles of shit labeled as chocolate mousse then they are absolutely wrong.
 
Print off that Benchmark for Doom III (which is the main reason why your customer wanted an upgrade) and then slam it in the face of your two co workers that did that.
 
Yogi said:
Don't post pictures on other people's bandwidth man. I already linked to that article, but if you want to post the pic host a copy on your own webspace. As it is now every person that views this thread takes bandwidth from anandtech.
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So sorry to generate more traffic to their website Mr.Admin. :rolleyes:
 
In a nutshell... either would work great. If the customer was on a budget then your plan was a better route.

The problem here is that your co-workers and/or manager(s) destroyed your credability in front of the customer which shouldn't have happened. Your choice would have been my choice.. I say (IMO) you were correct.

Keep it up.
 
S1nF1xx said:
So sorry to generate more traffic to their website Mr.Admin. :rolleyes:
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You are not generating more page views for them, just eating up bandwidth. It's really rude to post images from other people's webspace directly on a forum. Post a link or host the pic yourself.
 
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