Whats more reliable AMD or INTEL from past experience. Be honest no bashing.

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ellover009

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Whats more reliable AMD or INTEL from past experience. Be honest no bashing. '
I am considering building a system I had luck with intel but have no experience with AMD. I am considering AMD but I want something reliable. Be honest don't cap on another brand just share your experiences with each.

To make it fair i will also post in AMD's forum
 
If you a) know what the hell you're doing and b) pick the right parts, there is no difference, not these days. I can name a few exceptions concerning certain chipset/video card combinations, but that's different (AMD Irongate + Geforce or Intel Granite Bay + Radeon 9700)

/systems integrator with YEARS of experience and hundreds of configurations under his belt and thousands of builds
 
ellover009 said:
Whats more reliable AMD or INTEL from past experience. Be honest no bashing. '
I am considering building a system I had luck with intel but have no experience with AMD. I am considering AMD but I want something reliable. Be honest don't cap on another brand just share your experiences with each.

To make it fair i will also post in AMD's forum

Dont double post in two different forums. Read the Rules Please.

And it doesnt matter what you choose- If the parts arent defective and your not retarded, it should work fine.
 
Neither is more / less reliable than the other. Things like reliability and stability depend on so many factors, you can't narrow them down to just the processor. You have to consider what chipsets are available (these can vary in quality quite a bit), the quality of the implementation on the motherboard (you often get what you pay for), the quality of the drivers, and the reliability / stability of the operating system the system is running on, not to mention the quality of the other components in the system (omg i got this 1337W MEGAPOWER power supply for so cheap!11) and the quality of the installation (e.g., putting the entire tube of thermal paste in between the processor and heatsink).

The bottom line is this: do research and don't settle for crappy components. If you do, and have problems, don't blame it on the company that made just one of the components, since it's probably a combination of factors.

To make it fair I will also post in the other thread you made.
 
my old P4 1.5 ghz has been running rock-solid for 4 years, I had a tv tuner and a 9600 in it and last week was suprised to see that it had a 200W power supply :). Right now i'm using an Athlon SFF i built for college that's been stable all summer.
 
I think Intel's chipsets are little more FOOL proof. And considering 95% of the populations are fools when it comes to computers, that can be important. (most problems are user ignorance/error)

For people in these forums they could mostly build an Intel or AMD rig, and trouble shoot any problems, get the right drivers, etc.

I think its more of a chipset question.... which your choices would be:

Intel, Nivida, ATI, VIA, SIS, or AMD(very low volume of actual AMD chipsets)
(not Intel vs AMD)

Now on to that.

Intel I think has the best most stable chipsets.
With Nvidia close on the heals of them (great).
I have no experience with ATI chipsets (dont know). Though I've heard they're ok.
VIA, OMG, don't even get me started!! They've gotten better but I'd still stay clear of them.
SIS (good) I've had some experience for the most part stable and fast. My board was a little finicky about which AGP drivers it liked.
And AMD doesn't really make enough chipsets to be considered a player.
 
Well if you take out the fucking dfi sli-dr board that i just ditched for a asus premium, they are the same. However my old p4c800e deluxe with 3 vmods on it was bar none the best performing, stable board I have ever had. The intel chipsets just dont have problems. Whle Nvidia does a great job with the nforce chipsets, the board manufacturers have HORRIBLE implementation with major problems and flaws for every single board except the asus. MSI, dfi included.
 
The Company of which processor you use has no reflect on stability. But the Motherboard / Chipset does.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
The Company of which processor you use has no reflect on stability. But the Motherboard / Chipset does.


I'm not so sure about that. Last I checked, AMD doesn't manufacture boards. Intel is pretty notorious about licensing out their chipsets...remember them laying the smackdown on VIA a couple years ago? As the prior owner of a i820/P3/Rambus board, I can testify that Intel has only made 1 bad chipset, as far as I know. Yes, the VIA fiasco with AMD wasn't AMD's fault, but they did grant VIA the license...

Bottom line, in my opinion, Intel makes sure that Asus/Abit/MSI/DFI etc.doesn't produce crap with their name on it. Since Nvidia started helping AMD, AMD chipsets have become more reliable, going by forums. AMD seems to get help from everyone...Nvidia with chipsets, IBM with SOI and shrinkage (not like AMD did 90 nm on their own). AMD makes a great CPU.....and not much else.
 
ellover009 said:
Whats more reliable AMD or INTEL from past experience. Be honest no bashing. '
I am considering building a system I had luck with intel but have no experience with AMD. I am considering AMD but I want something reliable. Be honest don't cap on another brand just share your experiences with each.

To make it fair i will also post in AMD's forum

If you are leaning toward AMD, you won't have a problem with stability nowadays. The AMD=unstable had alot to do with VIA, back in the day.
 
chrisf6969 said:
I think Intel's chipsets are little more FOOL proof. And considering 95% of the populations are fools when it comes to computers, that can be important. (most problems are user ignorance/error)

For people in these forums they could mostly build an Intel or AMD rig, and trouble shoot any problems, get the right drivers, etc.

I think its more of a chipset question.... which your choices would be:

Intel, Nivida, ATI, VIA, SIS, or AMD(very low volume of actual AMD chipsets)
(not Intel vs AMD)

Now on to that.

Intel I think has the best most stable chipsets.
With Nvidia close on the heals of them (great).
I have no experience with ATI chipsets (dont know). Though I've heard they're ok.
VIA, OMG, don't even get me started!! They've gotten better but I'd still stay clear of them.
SIS (good) I've had some experience for the most part stable and fast. My board was a little finicky about which AGP drivers it liked.
And AMD doesn't really make enough chipsets to be considered a player.
The Pentium D machine I built a couple of weeks ago needed the BIOS updated in order to enable DMA on the hard drives. That was a big deal to me. It was an Intel board with an Intel chipset. There are no fool proof chipsets from either side...
 
Morley said:
The Pentium D machine I built a couple of weeks ago needed the BIOS updated in order to enable DMA on the hard drives. That was a big deal to me. It was an Intel board with an Intel chipset. There are no fool proof chipsets from either side...

But thats b/c its a fairly new processor/chipset. Its always best to get the lastest BIOS when setting up a new machine, especially if its a new chip/chipset. Now if you're were building an 865/875 or 915/925 it shouldn't need a new BIOS, unless they release a new stepping chip which requires new microcode. Just like most 939pin mobo's needed a new BIOS to support X2's or E stepping A64's.

And I did say "more fool proof".

Nothing is completely 100% fool proof.

Trust me as a manager, I try every day to make people's jobs/task completely fool proof but no matter what some freakin idiot figures out how to F)@*$ stuff up!! :)
 
Most people have said it, its NOT the CPU so much as it is the chipset. VIA is the mother of all problems.

AMD use to make their own chipsets, why they quit I will never know.

The INTEL stability that is/was perceived by most came from its solid chipsets, higher quality cpu/chipset fabs (then), and solid support from Microsoft hence the term "Wintel".

Back in the P3 days Microsoft and Intel were in bed, out of the box most Intel hardware was supported. What was not, required the Intel "chipset inf" drivers....which only had to be installed once and then never again. At the same time you had poor quality AMD fabs, horrible chipset driver support from Microsoft and companies like VIA, pumping out new drivers every month to fix bugs. I remember my first and last VIA motherboard....running my AGP port at 2X because at 4X games would hang my PC....because of crappy chipset drivers.

Another thing to consider is that Intel creates alot of standards that all vendors use, such as PCI, AGP, PCIE, USB and more. NVIDIA, VIA, SIS all have to licence those things from Intel. Intel sets the default configuration....but in some cases VIA for one changed the PCI design on their motherboards for a while. One pin of the PCI configuration was not "there" if you will, missing a required voltage. Well 98% of things did not use it, so not many problems at first. However the Creative SBLIVE cards did NEED that voltage on that particular pin. At the time VIA blamed Creative but about 8 months later VIA came clean...but by then the creative reputation had been damaged, and people started dumping the SBLIVE card. Intel has also always made high quality motherboards.....not high end geek motherboards but solid quality boards that Dell and others used for years. ASUS is great but more because they have good overclocking ability and many many features. For the longest time only Intel would give you a 3 year mobo warrenty....now lots of them do.

Today AMD fab quality is higher probably as good as Intel maybe slightly less. NVIDIA makes much better chipsets than VIA or SIS, but that said people with AMD/NIVIDIA rigs seem to need to install more chipset drivers than people with Intel chipsets. NFORCE drivers come out regularly. For all of my intel systems I have only ever had to install the chipset drivers once per OS build. After that it is a BIOS update to support newer CPU's that have different voltages or things like that.
 
Recently - VIA i have not seen many problems, nor have i ever had issues with VIA and intel

if you want out of the box stability i think it also depends the motherboard maker.

Intel boards are porobably still the most reliable because they dont incluide all the extra O/C stuff abit / asus / dfi include in their boards.

One example is alot of people seem to have issues with DFI boards on the nforce shipset - but other abit / asus boards with the same chipsets seem to suffer from the asme issues.

The stability is , personally, stricly chipset based / mobo - not the CPU.
 
From past experince, I've never had an issue with Intel boards, and I've had horrible luck with Via boards. AMD picked up a bad reputation because of bad Via chipsets, not because of their cpus.

However, on the current chipset lineup, there's a Joker in the deck: SLI. If you want SLI, you're getting an nForce. End of problem. Intel's fabled reliability is meaningless if they don't support the features you need. If SLI wasn't an issue, I'd probably be more comfortable setting up an Intel, but we must have our framerate fix! :)
 
Without question, they are exactly the same, although Sockets 754 and 939 are a bit more resilient than LGA775. However, as long as you know what you are doing, you should be able to get 100% stability with either setup. It's not like one company or the other is known for releasing large batches of defective chips.
 
Had both, love both, hate VIA :)

I will let you know about the ATI chipset / Intel CPu combo later this week, they are on the way :)
 
I'm in agreement with alot of the other posts on this one.

Both companies make reliable procs when run stock or within their limits.

I've never had an intel die on me throughout the lifecycle of 6 systems ranging from pentium to P4. Many years with them and no problems.

I've run 3 AMD machines: a K6-2 500mhz, 900 mhz Duron (still use it), and a 2500 barton that my sister is now using. The K6-2 went to hell on me, but It was my fault. :cool:

Just go with what suits your computing needs better, neither one will let you down unless you burn it up oc style.
 
I've owned a bunch of OEM PCs, all Intel, and built my first AMD system last year.

The AMD is the most reliable of the systems I've owned. But everything around the CPU is better than my past PCs: stronger power supply, better cooling, and so forth. If I built an Intel system like my current AMD system, I'd expect the same reliability.

I think the CPU has very little role in reliability, unless it is outright broken, which is rare for both AMD and Intel. Things like the quality of the motherboard, good RAM (not necessarily "premium"/expensive, just good/stable), cooling, power supply stability, and so forth are much more important.
 
as just about everyone has mentioned normal reliability with normal operating temperatures and voltage is comparible, but longterm reliability is really unknown. The time required simply hasnt elapsed. (For a modern chip)

Overclocking is a form of accelerated testing for electromigration and what kind of abuse a CPU can sustain is really a function of the level of that abuse (heat and voltage) its inheirent state (some are nearly pristine the ellusive "golden chip" while others have a hidden latent defect that went undetected in testing) the stability of its power (the mobo's own voltage regulation as well as the power supply) the design or the processor itself (which core).

so asking which is more reliable at simply a brand level is nearly pointless
even asking which overclocks better is as well, because there are no statistic for how long an overclock remains stable and the number of CPUs able to do that.

If you want reliability, lower the temperature

Electromigration is the mechanisim that typically first degrades and then kills IC Chips (Integrated Circuits)

Semiconductor Electromigration In-Depth @ DWPG.com < the totally understandable link (if somewhat dated these days in particulars)

What is electromigration?

Harris Semiconductor Lexicon of technical terms puts it this way:

"Motion of ions of a metal conductor (such as aluminum) in response to the passage of high current through it. Such motion can lead to the formation of "voids" in the conductor, which can grow to a size where the conductor is unable to pass current. Electromigration is aggravated at high temperature and high current density and therefore is a reliability "wear-out" process. Electromigration is minimized by limiting current densities and by adding metal impurities such as copper or titanium to the aluminum."

Electromigration is an effect that occurs when an extremely dense electron flow knocks off atoms within the wire and moves them, leaving a gap at one end and high stress at the other. In a chip, the formation of such a void will cause an open circuit and result in a failure. At the other end, the increase of stresses can cause fracture of the insulator around the wire and shorting.

Electromigration and Voids @ Cornell
Electromigration Simulator @ MIT
processing temperature -- increasing the processing temperature will increase the initial tensile stress present in the line due to thermal mismatch, thereby leading to earlier failures. To neglect the thermal stress, set the process temperature the same as the test temperature.
test temperature -- increasing the test temperature will dramatically reduce the calculation time since diffusivity is follows the temperature by an Arrhenius relationship.

the Arrhenius equation

roughly translating to this rule of thumb
Each 10°C (18°F) temperature rise reduces component life by 50%
Conversely, each 10°C (18°F) temperature reduction increases component life by 100%.


however there is more to it
http://www.triquint.com/company/quality/faqs/faq_07.cfm (caution heavy wading)
"Electromigration mechanisms are accelerated by current density as well as temperature. The general relationship is sometimes referred to as Black's Equation. Just as with the Arrhenius equation, we can observe the electromigration effects on lifetimes using a graphical approach."

so, both elevated temperature, and voltage, can cause voids to form in the circuits of any chip, a problem that becomes more and more important as the number of atoms that comprise the width of that circuit decrease, (that first link was written when the manufacturing scale was at 0.18 microns we are now at .09 microns (90nm) with some chips) in addition the clock rates that the power is cycled through is all that much higher as well, making the chips all that more suceptible to ESD, voltage irregularities and temperature.

In short, Im very serious about my ESD precautions, power conditioning, power supplies and my thermal solution (under 40C CPU at full load w\ 30C SYS minimum) , and considering the price Ive paid for my workstation I want to squeeze every last hour out of it that I can, unlike a gaming rig, that may or maynot find another role in life once its yesterdays news, mine will be retired to a nice animation cluster to live out its full lifespan, but these cautions are just as important for anyone aspiring to a record overclock, or killer benchmark ;)

that said some cores have been more suceptible to electromigration
the areas to watch are whenever a new nanometer fab shows up, and a brand new core for either make, sometimes there are a few early bugs, generally speaking they get weeded out in testing but not always especially when it comes to the chips falling into the hands of known sadists like populate these boards :p
 
and a PDF addendum ( worth a quick perusal ;) )
http://www.odyseus.nildram.co.uk/Systems_And_Devices_Files/Component Reliability Tutorial.pdf

and an illustrative example


electromigration aint so easy, even if your intel
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5199327.html?tag=nefd.top

Factory flaws yield headaches for chipmakers

April 24, 2004 Reuters

For chipmakers, problems on the factory floor are increasingly turning into big headaches in the executive suite.

Some of the world's biggest chipmakers have lost both money and time straightening out the extraordinarily complex process of turning microchip designs and discs of silicon into working electronics.

The difficulties have only worsened as the industry adopts new design features smaller than the wavelength of light, while moving to larger silicon wafers that can produce more than twice as many chips as previous wafers.

While those new technologies greatly increase the potential for churning out stacks of more powerful chips at lower costs, they have also thrown up hurdles that even the largest chipmakers have occasionally stumbled over.

The most recent slip-up comes from IBM's $3 billion fabrication plant, or fab, in East Fishkill, N.Y. IBM executives have acknowledged that manufacturing problems at the plant contributed to a $150 million loss that the company's chip business had last quarter.

The fab, which produces chips with features as small as 90 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, is one of the world's most advanced.

"It does seem that there has definitely been a bit of a bigger hurdle in the transition to 90-nanometer for the industry at large," said IBM spokesman Chris Andrews.

IBM's troubles have also drawn complaints from customers who pay Big Blue to build their chips. Apple Computer earlier this month said IBM failed to provide it enough chips for its Xserve G5 computer.

"Obviously, we were not happy with the delivery that we got," Timothy Cook, Apple's executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations, said on a conference call.

Manufacturing problems are also believed to have affected memory chipmakers. Analysts say memory companies have had troubles shrinking the design features on their chips to the 110-nanometer level, leading to shortages and price jumps that are rippling through the computing supply chain.

An analyst in Taiwan, Shawn Wang of KGI Securities, has noted that one memory chipmaker there, Nanya Technology, has been delayed in moving to high-volume production for its most advanced memory chips.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, has not been done in by problems in the factory. But even the world's biggest spender on chipmaking gear faced trouble around the beginning of the year when a design problem popped up in an unreleased notebook computer chip named Dothan.

The design flaw, which affected the chip's ability to be manufactured, pushed back by three months the launch date for the chip, and found its way into comments made by Intel's president during its fourth-quarter earnings conference call.

"We were disappointed that we did not begin shipping Dothan as planned," Intel President Paul Otellini told investors and analysts in January.

Adopting both smaller feature sizes and larger silicon wafers presents an especially large challenge to chipmakers, and occurs only about once a decade, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Fabricating chips from larger wafers can yield significant cost benefits for manufacturers.

Intel, he said, managed that risk by mastering one advance at a time. "Any process generation shift is fraught with risk, unless you really focus on it," Mulloy said.

Attention to "yield"--the industry term for how successful a fab is in making defect-free microchips--has become a growing concern, if not an obsession, for chipmakers around the world.

"Yields get to be a bigger and bigger issue every time we go to a new technology node," said Mark FitzGerald, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment analyst at Banc of America Securities. "It gets to be more rocket science."

As much as manufacturing problems hurt the chipmakers, FitzGerald pointed to one company that stands to benefit from such problems. KLA-Tencor, the largest maker of equipment for inspecting silicon wafers for defects, remains one of the analyst's top stock picks

ATi has been plagued recently as well with the R250
http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/company/ati/r520/index.html
 
Morley said:
The Pentium D machine I built a couple of weeks ago needed the BIOS updated in order to enable DMA on the hard drives. That was a big deal to me. It was an Intel board with an Intel chipset. There are no fool proof chipsets from either side...

Precisely.

Boards are the main issue, and they ALL have problems. Just when you think you've found the perfect board... surprise, that new video card draws too much current, or is just different enough from previous boards to require a BIOS update on both the card and board. (Both real experiences with Intel and AMD machines!)

Enjoy your new rig, be it AMD or Intel.
 
So technically they are both equal. AMD did well signing up with IBM processor technology till 2011. This means IBM has influenced the AMD chip design. Thats why they are slighly thermal effecient.
 
ellover009 said:
Whats more reliable AMD or INTEL from past experience. Be honest no bashing. '
I am considering building a system I had luck with intel but have no experience with AMD. I am considering AMD but I want something reliable. Be honest don't cap on another brand just share your experiences with each.

To make it fair i will also post in AMD's forum
I've been building hundreds of systems for at least 10 years, both AMD and Intel, and I found more luck with Intel than AMD.
 
SirKenin said:
I've been building hundreds of systems for at least 10 years, both AMD and Intel, and I found more luck with Intel than AMD.

I can't say I've had the same experience... My experience has been that the chipset and board are more important than your CPU of choice. Choose good supporting parts to surround your CPU.
 
Josh_B said:
I can't say I've had the same experience... My experience has been that the chipset and board are more important than your CPU of choice. Choose good supporting parts to surround your CPU.


Thats what hes saying :rolleyes: Putting an intel chip in an amd mobo doesnt fit does it? Therefore the AMD PLATFORM is less stable than the intel PLATFORM and I dont think many would argue that. And I have a phase changed amd running at 3.2ghz. Nothing comes close to the reliability of something like the p4c800-e deluxe and the i875p for ease of use.
 
that last post makes little sense. Must be too late at night there...

As has been said more times than I can count this late, depends on components. Its kinda like asking whether a small block Chevy is better or a small block Ford. Quality parts make a quality engine, running cheap parts will bite you in the ass every time.
 
Back when before nforce 2 I had alot of stability problems with my athlons. I haven't owned an intel based cpu since my 566 celeron (I had several slot 1 p3's and celerons previously though) but back then it was definetly more stable than the equivalent amd platform. Since the advent of the nforce 2 chipset however I have found a happy place of solid stability , hampered only by my occasional overzealous overclocking attempts. Personally if i was in the market for a cpu at this particular moment I might go with a 820 pentium d , its price is pretty nice, and I'd like to have some more multitasking capability. But if i had the money I would much rather have the X2, but its awefully expensive now, even for a 3800+. I am of the opinion that prices need to come down on chips that are out now, not more crippled cpu's fitting into lower price points.

So to sum it up I guess I mean Intels used to be more stable previously , but now I think AMD's cpus (more like their chipset manufactures) are much more capable and sturdy than they ever were before.
 
Well AMD and Intel are both equally stable and reliable, it really depends on what component that you buy, say if you get a bad pair of ram and a jacked up PSU and ofcourse your computer will crash. And personally i ave 3 intel system, and all of them are as reliable and stable as the others.
 
I have never had problems with AMD or Intel till now. I just built a 4400+ X2 system and all I had was problems. I tried for a few weeks, two diffrent motherboards and two diffrent types of ram. Still not stable like my Intel 550 @ 4.0GHz. I really wanted the X2 system to workout. I cant wait till my new Intel items get here. :)
 
Truthfully in the past the Intel CPU / Intel Chipset combos faired better then the AMD CPU / ??? Chipset crapshoot. If AMD made their own chipsets in force it might be a different story but I usually choose to go Intel myself.

I still have my working uron 700Mhz / Via combo going strong though, so no bashing AMD from me :D
 
You will get a better answer by asking your magic 8 ball. Ask it "is amd or intel more reliable". Shake the hell of of it, and wait for it to answer.

Or, just flip a coin. Heads, amd, tails, intel. Either way it lands, pick it.

Then come back here and post five pages of made-up BS about how you have 20 high-dollar intel servers, that dont have any big problems. Then say, you had 10 dirt-cheap desktop systems using an AMD cpu, that kept crashing and falling apart.

No one will know the difference.

Edit:

I just flipped a coin seven times. It came out to be 6-1.

Ok here goes nothing. I just made this up:

Blah blah blah... I had a bunch of servers here. six were super duper nuclear bomb proof amd servers made with the best components. Only one of them died.

I bought cheap-o refurbished and used parts off the egg and build me a celeryon server, with an bunch of old 150W power supplys I found in the garbage. Six of those intel computers died, and I have no idea why.


See what im getting at? Every damn time one of these discussions come up. Either about cars, or about computers, people will always bring up something stupid and obvious like that. You can not compare a high dollar well built server, to a cheap ass desktop email/internetting machine.

Its like comparing apples to onions. They are both round, and juicy. But any idiot should know the difference, and wouldnt bother arguing over which to use in a pie. Nor should anyone argue which to cut up and use on a hamburgur or meat loaf.

If you want to put apple shavings on your hamburguer, good for you. If you want to make a pie out of onions, what-ever. Do what you like, and shut the hell up about it.

Am I the only crazy one here? Dammit... Quit comparing these two damn things and LET IT REST. They both have their own uses. Intel has their own mobos, and I assume they can have a lot better reliability, just like mac, because they can build the mobos and CPUs to work with eachother the best possible way.
 
Josh_B said:
I can't say I've had the same experience... My experience has been that the chipset and board are more important than your CPU of choice. Choose good supporting parts to surround your CPU.
I must agree with this... I equate it thus: It's like dropping a 351W into a stock 1976 Pinto and expecting it to beat everybody else on the quarter mile. It just doesn't happen. So when you get your uber CPU, don't put it on a crappy motherboard with a polished-turd PSU and Bob's Bargain Basement RAM then cry about how crappy the CPU is.

FYI, the system in my sig is the fifth AMD system that's resided in my home (counting three current ones) and my brother and his wife own an Athlon laptop and an A64 HP desktop. I stopped building Intel systems in 1998. Not because they're not reliable and stable (God, yes, they are!), but becasue the Athlon's performance-to-dollar ratio can't be beat. :)
 
Dillusion said:
Dont double post in two different forums. Read the Rules Please.

And it doesnt matter what you choose- If the parts arent defective and your not retarded, it should work fine.
...boo, hiss...cross posting the same thread across Intel / AMD forums looks like you're trying to pour gas on the fire....:rolleyes:

Here's a link to your identical thread in the AMD forums....

Starting flame wars won't win you any points. Read the rules, please - B.B.S.
 
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