AMD or Intel??....

[hardwareguy]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

We have this computer store back in Abilene, TX where my parents live and they used to be serious NVIDIA supporters, now they are all over ATI for some dumb reason. They were always AMD fans but they used to complain about heat and cost to performance ratio..... legit concerns when Intel was using Netburst. Now, they are just spreading misinformation...... some horse manure about 80 million Core2Duo CPUs what wont run Vista due to a bug. LOL!

Oh and of course they downplay the TLB bug in the early release Phenom (which is still in warehouses ready to be sold!). The BIOS patch cuts general computing performance by 10%!

I'm almost certain that they are being PAID to spread crap and are not merely spreading it to sell cheap ECS combos. If 80 MILLION CPUs were defective, it would have made national news and I'm a tech guy, I would have heard of this before CBS/ABC/NBC/Fox, etc got hold of this alleged story!

Another problem with AMD isnt entirely AMD's fault..... a lack of new chipsets with all the bells and whistles me and my customers want.

I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 OC'd to 2.6GHz with a GeForce 8800 Ultra I managed to get for $250 (gotta love rich friends that change their mind, the 7800GT was getting old!)..... my laptop is running a Core2Duo T5500 (1.67GHz) with a 7600 Go. I'm not a fanboy..... I buy what's best for the money. The next desktop game rig will have the same NVIDIA GPU and a 45nm Core2 Quad.

Our old BIG laptop has a Pentium 4 Northwood 2.6GHz, 800MHz FSB and an i865 chipset tied to an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo so I'm not loyal to anyone. At the time, AMD had slow as hell laptop chips and the 9600 Pro Turbo beat the living crap out of NVIDIA's FX chips they had for mobile platforms.

I still dislike ATI for their piss poor drivers though...... and RV600 has been a big joke. But NVIDIA has had some major screw ups..... the GeForce FX got STOMPED by the Radeon 9700 and 9800 in much the same fashion that NVIDIA is stomping ATI currently and NVIDIA used to have some serious driver bugs under Windows 2000....bugs that would lock your machine!

Oh there was one short time Intel held the speed crown with Netburst..... the 3.0GHz Northwood on i865/875 vs an Athlon XP 3200 on nForce2..... the Intel chip was slightly quicker and over twice the cost. I bought the XP.... better price to performance ratio. When the 64 came out, Intel freaked and got busy on a NICE CPU that is worthy of my money. This battle between these two as been going on since the dawn of personal computing and they take turns making the best CPU. Neither company has always had a better product than the other.

In short, I'd buy the Intel CPU and an NVIDIA GPU right now. We'll see what happens when AMD brings the 45nm Phenom and they get a new chipset.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

>>> 80 million Core2Duo CPUs what wont run Vista due to a bug. <<<

There is a bug. It's called "Vista".

[acstech]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

I've been getting a bug with P35 boards lately. Everything works well, until I load the Intel chipset drivers (their "INF update"). Then it all goes to hell. The audio stops working, and I experience inexplicable slowdowns when doing about anything. If I load the OS and then load everything BUT the Intel drivers, then everything works great. This is in XP x64.

All the AMD systems I've built have gone off without a hitch, but I only use Nvidia chipsets. Load the OS, drivers, everything works great. With that said, the latest boards I've used have 7025/7050 or 5xx chipsets. I don't know how the newer ones do. I can say that the 7025 / 7050 has been one of the most stable chipsets I've ever seen, and certainly the most overclockable chipset with integrated graphics I've ever seen.

One thing I've noticed is that AMD and Intel chips overclock differently. AMD's seem to have a harder frequency ceiling WRT voltage. They get to a point where no matter how much voltage you throw at 'em they wont go any faster. Usually they overclock quite well and require not a lot of voltage increase to do it, but that's it. Intel's on the other hand, have more of a soft ceiling, where you can go faster, but it's going to need an exponential voltage increase to do it. Usually I'll go up to the VID value and call it good. Doing it that way, they don't overclock much if any better than the AMD's I've used. If you're willing to turn up the voltage and keep it cooled properly, an Intel will clock like mad though, although I'm not sure for how long.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Just checking.
You know the 64-bit and 32-bit XP's use different chipset drivers?
No??

[acstech]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Uh...

Actually they use the same one. It only installs different stuff.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=13499
See the list of supported operating systems.

I tried that and the one off the disk.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Maybe, maybe not.
Usually Intel doesn't create two chipset driver packages just to match options.
The installer will just install the ones you need and skip the others.
-
If they made two there is probably some fundamental difference.
File names may be the same because that's what Vists expects but the content of the files is different from 32 to 64 bit.

Just speculation.

I got off the Microsoft Bandwagon back when XP came out.
If I ever own Vista it will be because it comes with some used equipment I buy like 5+ years from now.
- And then I'll probably wipe the drive clean as SOON as I can!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

I've you've tried both that's all you can do.
I'd still use the one Intel points you to for whatever you are doing.

.

[acstech]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Well, I'm dual booting XP x64 and Fedora 8 64-bit, and I spend 99% of my time in Fedora, if that says anything. I refuse to use Vista, even though I have a copy sitting right here I got in the Action Pack. Tried it once... buggy, bloated, slow POS. As John Dvorak described it, "a pig with lipstick."

[PCBONEZ]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

"a pig with lipstick"





LOVE IT!!!!!!!

[acstech]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Oops, it was "...lipstick on a pig." Close though.

[gdement]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

I'd be far more likely to buy Vista if it was packaged with an XP disc, and freely allowed you to use either OS (but only 1 at a time). Too bad that isn't going to happen.

[grss1982]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

All the AMD systems I've built have gone off without a hitch, but I only use Nvidia chipsets. Load the OS, drivers, everything works great. With that said, the latest boards I've used have 7025/7050 or 5xx chipsets. I don't know how the newer ones do. I can say that the 7025 / 7050 has been one of the most stable chipsets I've ever seen, and certainly the most overclockable chipset with integrated graphics I've ever seen.

Speaking of the Nvidia 7050, I'm curiuos about its performance when paired with an INTEL processor. You see I've seen this: http://www.emaxxtech.com/products.php?id=5 and I went like WTF!!?? A chipset that could be used in either the LGA775 or AM2 Socket formats???

[zandrax]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

A chipset that could be used in either the LGA775 or AM2 Socket formats???

Don't worry, they only share the name: remember, the 7050 for Intels at least differs for a memory controller (Amds have their one inside the cpu, while Intels not).
nForce 70xx series seems designed for Intel cpus: the Amd line has fewer models and, according to MCP's chart, only one of them can decode movies in hardware and features an hdmi port. Pity.

Zandrax

[bgavin]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

My friend at State of Calif. says they are buying new machines and removing Vista to install XP. He found out that Microsoft cancels/invalidates those Vista licenses that are not activated within a certain amount of time.

Great.

We (taxpayers) pay $$ for these licenses, and MS invalidates them.

I figure XP will get a re-release as "Coke Classic" did, when New Coke was a complete flop.

The more I work on Vista, the harder it sucks. Big fat oaf... 3 GHz processor, 1330 FSB, 3gb DDR3 in two-channel mode, SATA, and the machine cannot get out of its own way. 0.98GB memory consumption at idle. Total piece of shit.

[zandrax]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

My friend at State of Calif. says they are buying new machines and removing Vista to install XP. He found out that Microsoft cancels/invalidates those Vista licenses that are not activated within a certain amount of time.

What the ...
Is a joke, isn't it?

I figure XP will get a re-release as "Coke Classic" did, when New Coke was a complete flop.

I feel the same: Vista may be a little more secure than XP (inside the kernel, not only the mere UAC), but it's bulkier and a lot less responsive.
And I don't think Vista will overcome XP in the near future (in the long run it should do), as 98 did the same on 95 and XP on 2000, for two reasons: MS sold XP for a real long time for Microsoft's previous standards (since late 2001: over 6 years against 2 or 3 years of its ancestors) and during this time it grow a huge installed base, more than its predecessors. IMHO Vista is mainly victim of XP's success and, in a smaller part, of its bugs and misfeatures.

Zandrax

[grss1982]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

OK. I'm finally about to buy a processor-mobo combo, but I stumbled on to something........

Uhmmmm.... Is there any performance penalties when you use DDR2 533Mhz on an AMD X2 setup?

The reason I ask is because, I had planned on getting an E2xxx series processor (E2200 + Intel based Mobo + 7300GT DDR3 VC + 1GB DDR2 533), but the stock performance of an AMD X2 4200+ (Nvidia-based Mobo + 7300GT VC + 1GB DDR2 800) setup in one of the gaming centers here in my locality, gave me quite a surprise. It run Counter Strike: Source, the heaviest game I play really fine.

NOTE: I have 2 Corsair Value Select (1GB each & DDR2 533Mhz) sticks that I got from a previous build of a friend mine, I plan to use them in the new setup I'm planning.

[acstech]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

DDR2-800 is pretty cheap right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134117

And yes, there will be a performance penalty with DDR2-533.

[grss1982]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

DDR2-800 is pretty cheap right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134117

And yes, there will be a performance penalty with DDR2-533.

Yeah, I noticed, problem is I already bought RAM.

I just wanted to know if someone with an a64 x2 system ever tried using ddr2 533Mhz on their system.

Googling gave me nothing. Well there was one article that I read a long time ago, which stated that there is a 10% to 12% performance penalty on using DDR2 533 Mhz on an AMD a64 x2 setup.

[davmax]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

If DDR2 800 is going to do a lot better at low cost it may be best to buy and sell off the 553 sticks, get something for them.
I can clock my 800 up to 960 without problem. Guess that depends on the memory quality.

[Mootsfox]

Re: AMD or Intel??....

Yeah, I noticed, problem is I already bought RAM.

I just wanted to know if someone with an a64 x2 system ever tried using ddr2 533Mhz on their system.

Googling gave me nothing. Well there was one article that I read a long time ago, which stated that there is a 10% to 12% performance penalty on using DDR2 533 Mhz on an AMD a64 x2 setup.

I would guess it's less than that even. I remember back when AMD went from S939 to AM2, and the increase in performance was nothing. RAM speed helps mostly in benchmarking, and moreso with Intel CPUs.