IT Forums - Intel chipsets are the most stable?

rstlne

10-15-2004, 03:11 AM

"Franklin" <no_thanks@mail.com> wrote in message
news:958373E88898971F3M4@130.133.1.4... I came across this. Is the guy right? <QUOTE> Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say that Intel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is because Intel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than other companies, or that software manufacturers test their software more thoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular .. more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or a combination of these factors. Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you with the most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in the community. Everyone knows it. <END QUOTE> http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

He only owns p4 systems, so I do hope they are the most stable fo rhim..

Look at the dates he quoted on some of his "proof"

Why are you posting this to an AMD group.. You should be posting to a
chipset group (via, nv, sis, others)

He also goes to say on that to help stability you should have like 5
installs of windows.

He also goes on to say that you should buy asus.

If your amd box is unstable then chances are it's down to something you have
done..

Are intel chipsets more stable.. Yea maybee, Lets not forget that just last
month they had to recall a shitload of boards, and that their first
PCI-Express boards out the door have this little warning that says dont use
your pci-express slots yet.

/Slaps on hand for Feeding Trolls

Grumble

10-15-2004, 03:18 AM

Franklin wrote:
I came across this. Is the guy right?

Posted:
02dec2001

Sigh... Trolls these days...

George Macdonald

10-15-2004, 04:27 AM

10-15-2004, 05:32 AM

I found the article to be very amusing. I guess it was first written when Intel
fell behind AMD in performance a few years ago. Now that AMD has an even
greater performance lead than ever before, we see all this FUD and excuses
why performance doesn't matter so much. This paragraph in particular made
me laugh.

"Now that CPUs contain over 50 million transistors and are capable of processing
information at
clockrates exceeding 3,000 Megahertz [3 GigaHertz], raw performance no longer carries the
importance
it once did. Certainly, speed will always have its place. But it's no longer the primary
focus. Rather,
today's PC enthusiast is shifting a critical eye toward system stability."

Why is it that people who claim Intel chipsets are more stable, never provide statistical
proof to back up their statements? Perhaps it might be that they can't find any.

Franklin wrote:
I came across this. Is the guy right? <QUOTE> Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say that Intel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is because Intel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than other companies, or that software manufacturers test their software more thoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular .. more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or a combination of these factors. Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you with the most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in the community. Everyone knows it. <END QUOTE> http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

Tony Hill

10-15-2004, 06:04 AM

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:23:39 +0100, Franklin <no_thanks@mail.com>
wrote:I came across this. Is the guy right?<QUOTE>Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say thatIntel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is becauseIntel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than othercompanies, or that software manufacturers test their software morethoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular ..more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or acombination of these factors.Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you withthe most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in thecommunity. Everyone knows it.<END QUOTE>http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

Three years ago (when this article was first written) I would have
agreed hands-down. Now, I'm not so sure because nVidia has really
raised the bar.

Until fairly recently the only companies making chipsets for PCs (ie
not the high-end stuff from Serverworks, Unisys and the like) were
Intel, SiS, ALi and VIA. SiS chips were decent but pretty much only
used on super-low-end stuff, VIA and ALi meanwhile both had very buggy
drivers and occasionally even buggy hardware (though it was always
more a driver issue than hardware). At that time, Intel was far and
away the best bet for stability.

However when nVidia entered the game, the rules changed somewhat.
nVidia right out of the gate had VIA and ALi beat cold in terms of
driver quality and their chipsets were used on higher-end products
that SiS (if you use low-end crap components on a motherboard with a
shitty design, it really doesn't matter how good the chipset is, your
board will still suck). The result of this was two-fold: first off it
gave a real, viable competitor to Intel for the most stable chipsets,
and secondly it really forced VIA to pick up their socks. While I'm
still no big fan of VIA chipsets, my understanding is that their
latest couple versions have been rather significantly better than
where they were two years ago.

Also, Intel is hardly without their own faults as well. While some of
their chipsets have been good, they have had their own sets of
problems, ranging from the extremely problematic memory interface of
the i820 chipset to the very poor quality of the early i810 drivers,
and pretty much all of us who were dealing with PCs back in the late
'96/early '97 time frame remember incredibly problematic ATA drivers
for the PIIX4 southbridge (this caused many people to have to format
and re-install their entire OS just because they installed patches and
drivers in a different order than was required).

Personally, if I were to build a system using an Intel processor, I
would probably stick to an Intel chipset simply because the only
advantage of non-Intel chipsets is about a $5 price savings (ie
nothing). On the other hand, my last 4 motherboard + CPU combos have
been using AMD processors, obviously all of which used non-Intel
chipsets (2 x SiS, 1 VIA and 1 nVidia). If I were to buy a new system
today, it would have an AMD processor in the thing and an nVidia
chipset on the motherboard, because IMO they are now the leaders in
terms of chipset driver quality, not Intel.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

rstlne

10-15-2004, 06:45 AM

However when nVidia entered the game, the rules changed somewhat. nVidia right out of the gate had VIA and ALi beat cold in terms of driver quality and their chipsets were used on higher-end products that SiS (if you use low-end crap components on a motherboard with a shitty design, it really doesn't matter how good the chipset is, your board will still suck). The result of this was two-fold: first off it gave a real, viable competitor to Intel for the most stable chipsets, and secondly it really forced VIA to pick up their socks. While I'm still no big fan of VIA chipsets, my understanding is that their latest couple versions have been rather significantly better than where they were two years ago.

Ya know.. I have a SiS A/AXP motherboard and there is only 1 fault with it
Windows will "pause" during startup for up to 2 mins.. Microsoft
acknowledges that it's their problem and that's all.. I guess there isnt
enough complaints for them to make a fix BUT they can send yoa a small
hotfix for it if you want to try it..

But that's the ONLY problem I have ever had with that board/setup..
I have 2 intel laptops too that Fedora will not install to, but it installs
fine to the amd boards I have.

10-15-2004, 10:21 AM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:416FD15E.564A7187@netscape.net... Why is it that people who claim Intel chipsets are more stable, never
provide statistical proof to back up their statements? Perhaps it might be that they can't
find any.

Maybe so. I don't feel a need to find statistics, but I don't claim Intel
is more stable either-I just feel like they are. I build my personal
systems with Intel chipsets and processors because in my experience, they
are more stable. I had stability issues with AMD and even further back,
Cyrix. I was turned off to the alternative chips years ago and now I just
refuse to even waste time with them. I could be wrong, I am sure times have
changes and AMD wouldn't be around if they were really that flaky.

Who cares really, if a guy likes alternative chips and thinks they are a
better deal, so be it.

--Dan

10-15-2004, 10:38 AM

dg wrote:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message news:416FD15E.564A7187@netscape.net... Why is it that people who claim Intel chipsets are more stable, never provide statistical proof to back up their statements? Perhaps it might be that they can't find any. Maybe so. I don't feel a need to find statistics, but I don't claim Intel is more stable either-I just feel like they are. I build my personal systems with Intel chipsets and processors because in my experience, they are more stable. I had stability issues with AMD and even further back, Cyrix. I was turned off to the alternative chips

Alternative chips?

AMD is now the performance leader. As for you bad experience years ago,
one has to choose their system components carefully. There are low quality
motherboards for both AMD and Intel processors, as well as high quality ones.
One must choose carefully.
years ago and now I just refuse to even waste time with them. I could be wrong, I am sure times have changes and AMD wouldn't be around if they were really that flaky.

Unfortunately there are still some low quality motherboards being made
for AMD processors, however there are many high quality ones. One
must choose system components carefully.
Who cares really, if a guy likes alternative chips and thinks they are a better deal, so be it.

Again the term alternative chips?
Do you call a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari an alternative car?
--Dan

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 11:06 AM

> Alternative chips? AMD is now the performance leader.

Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster
Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it
Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three
TENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel.
So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and
one tie.
GAMING OVERALL: TIED

Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in the
towel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both
*CPU* and memory benchmarks

Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper to
build, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there are
better bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likely
be cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8,
it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html

The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting
is,
the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz
P4
processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors
are
pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD
being faster on others.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1

Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about
the
3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great
comparison
of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be
careful,
as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And
on
some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,
you
will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD
faster
on some and Intel faster on others.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1

Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that
would be to drop their prices by 30% or better. -Dave, updated 10/2/04

10-15-2004, 11:34 AM

We went through this already several times.

"Dave C." wrote:
Skip the Athlon64 and go with your original plan. According to www.pricewatch.com, same price range at the moment would be: P4 3.2 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3200+ or P4 3.4 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3400+ Beyond that range, you can pay up to several hundred dollars for either an Intel or AMD chip, but hardly anybody gives a damn about those chips, as hardly anybody spends as much on a processor as they do on the entire rest of their system combined. So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators of who has the best bang for buck, at the moment. Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster

Not quite.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=10

Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three TENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel. So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and one tie. GAMING OVERALL: TIED Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away

Not quite. Even an Athlon XP3000+($95) beats a Pentium 4 3.2 ghz in Business Winstone
2004.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away

Not quite. See the Content Creation Winstone 2004 results.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

Even an Athlon XP3000+($95) beats a Pentium 4 3.2 ghz in Business Winstone 2004.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in the towel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide. Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both *CPU* and memory benchmarks Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper to build, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there are better bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likely be cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8, it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment. http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting is, the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz P4 processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors are pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD being faster on others. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1 Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about the 3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great comparison of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be careful, as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And on some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks, you will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD faster on some and Intel faster on others. http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1 Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that would be to drop their prices by 30% or better. -Dave, updated 10/2/04

Very funny. A $150 Athlon 64 3000+ (socket 754 )beats an $815 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz
in Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

A $95 Athlon XP3000+ beats a $210 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz in Business Winstone 2004.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

http://techny.com/articles.cfm?getarticle=606&go=0.53769656

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 12:20 PM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:41702660.6D26B541@netscape.net... We went through this already several times.

Yeah, you keep posting the same old tired lies, so I have to keep correcting
you. -Dave

chrisv

10-15-2004, 12:21 PM

JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:
We went through this already several times.

Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It
was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

10-15-2004, 12:22 PM

LOL! You are the one with the distorted viewpoint. It is annoying to
have to keep correcting you.

"Dave C." wrote:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message news:41702660.6D26B541@netscape.net... We went through this already several times. Yeah, you keep posting the same old tired lies, so I have to keep correcting you. -Dave

10-15-2004, 12:24 PM

chrisv wrote:
JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop
performance by such a large margin.

Never anonymous Bud

10-15-2004, 12:58 PM

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> on Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:20:20 -0400 spoke:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in messagenews:41702660.6D26B541@netscape.net... We went through this already several times.Yeah, you keep posting the same old tired lies, so I have to keep correctingyou. -Dave

Sounds WAY too much like John 'Dave' Corse for me...

--

The truth is out there,

but it's not interesting enough for most people.

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 01:04 PM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:41703173.DBDE5436@netscape.net... LOL! You are the one with the distorted viewpoint. It is annoying to have to keep correcting you.

It's odd that all the experts agree with me. I guess everybody but you is
wrong, eh? -Dave

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 01:06 PM

>>We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

Not really a flame war. Just a well-deserved smackdown of an obvious AMD
shill. I'm a huge AMD fan myself, but it's insane the way someone keeps
bashing Intel. Just seeking a little balance is all. -Dave

10-15-2004, 01:29 PM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:4170193E.37E8522B@netscape.net... Alternative chips?
Yep. They are the alternative to Intel.

Who cares really, if a guy likes alternative chips and thinks they are a better deal, so be it. Again the term alternative chips? Do you call a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari an alternative car?

No, but if somebody referred to the vegetable oil fueled cars as
"alternative fuel cars" I wouldn't object.

--Dan

10-15-2004, 01:54 PM

Experts? How do you know they are experts? Do they work for Intel?

"Dave C." wrote:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message news:41703173.DBDE5436@netscape.net... LOL! You are the one with the distorted viewpoint. It is annoying to have to keep correcting you. It's odd that all the experts agree with me. I guess everybody but you is wrong, eh? -Dave

Ruel Smith

10-15-2004, 01:54 PM

JK wrote:

Why is it that people who claim Intel chipsets are more stable, never provide statistical proof to back up their statements? Perhaps it might be that they can't find any.

I don't have any statistical data to back it up, but I can believe it. Many
technologies on the motherboard are Intel technologies, like the PCI bus.
It stands to reason that since they invented it and have honed it over the
years that they have a rock solid implementation of it. Their reputation
over such technolgies depends on it.

10-15-2004, 01:56 PM

"Dave C." wrote:
We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... Not really a flame war. Just a well-deserved smackdown of an obvious AMD shill. I'm a huge AMD fan myself, but it's insane the way someone keeps bashing Intel. Just seeking a little balance is all. -Dave

A little balance? What will balance the huge number of Intel ads that people
are bombarded with?

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 01:58 PM

> A little balance? What will balance the huge number of Intel ads that people are bombarded with?

What's stopping AMD from advertising like Intel does? -Dave

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 01:59 PM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:41704710.17A931C8@netscape.net... Experts? How do you know they are experts? Do they work for Intel?

Well YOU think they are experts, so it's odd that you'd ask me for
roof. -Dave

Ruel Smith

10-15-2004, 02:01 PM

Dave C. wrote:
Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that would be to drop their prices by 30% or better.

Yeah, those nuclear reactor Prescotts with the flip-flop socket design that
screws up the pins really is just light years ahead of the Athlon FX CPUs
with their on-die memory controllers and unlocked multipliers... I'm just
dying to get one... NOT!

My next system will be AMD Athlon 64/FX and hopefully dual-core. I recently
built my first AMD Athlon XP system and it went smooth. Pretty fast and
stable system for about $400.

BTW... We have yet to see where Athlon 64 stands as we've yet to be able to
test it in a real 64 bit environment with 64 bit software. Expect AMD to
smoke the current P4's...

10-15-2004, 02:02 PM

When AMD gets over 50% cpu market share, AMD might or might not
advertise the way Intel did in the 1990s. Until then, Intel's ad budget will
be very many times that of AMD.

"Dave C." wrote:
A little balance? What will balance the huge number of Intel ads that people are bombarded with? What's stopping AMD from advertising like Intel does? -Dave

Conor

10-15-2004, 02:35 PM

In article <958373E88898971F3M4@130.133.1.4>, Franklin says... I came across this. Is the guy right?
WAS right...

Intel chipsets did enjoy a very good level of stability on WINDOWS due
to what was pretty much a marriage between Intel and Microsoft however
things have moved on.

--
Conor

Opinions personal, facts suspect.

Dave C.

10-15-2004, 02:52 PM

> It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin.

Geez, it's gonna be a long century. -Dave

Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster
Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it
Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three
TENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel.
So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and
one tie.
GAMING OVERALL: TIED

Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in the
towel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both
*CPU* and memory benchmarks

Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper to
build, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there are
better bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likely
be cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8,
it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html

The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting
is,
the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz
P4
processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors
are
pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD
being faster on others.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1

Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about
the
3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great
comparison
of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be
careful,
as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And
on
some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,
you
will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD
faster
on some and Intel faster on others.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1

Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that
would be to drop their prices by 30% or better. -Dave, updated 10/2/04

DaveW

10-15-2004, 03:28 PM

Yes, it's true in my experience. SIS chipsets are among the LEAST stable.

--
DaveW

"Franklin" <no_thanks@mail.com> wrote in message
news:958373E88898971F3M4@130.133.1.4...I came across this. Is the guy right? <QUOTE> Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say that Intel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is because Intel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than other companies, or that software manufacturers test their software more thoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular .. more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or a combination of these factors. Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you with the most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in the community. Everyone knows it. <END QUOTE> http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

Frank

10-15-2004, 04:44 PM

"chrisv" <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:t6c0n094psrmudei0bc85pr2uap0e30or8@4ax.com... JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

The 3DFX, NVIDEA days were a real hoot.

Frank

10-15-2004, 04:50 PM

"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:4170320C.25788896@netscape.net... chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin.

A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brand
chipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....
Intel based IBM........

Never anonymous Bud

10-15-2004, 05:07 PM

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> on Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:52:15 -0400 spoke:
Geez, it's gonna be a long century. -Dave

As long as you keep posting bullshit, it will be.

--

The truth is out there,

but it's not interesting enough for most people.

JAD

10-15-2004, 08:58 PM

AND it was JEROME (JK) that started them back then also

"chrisv" <chrisv@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:t6c0n094psrmudei0bc85pr2uap0e30or8@4ax.com... JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8)
It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

Tony Hill

10-15-2004, 10:05 PM

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 15:06:50 -0400, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote:
Alternative chips? AMD is now the performance leader.Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much fasterGaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about itGaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to threeTENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel.So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD andone tie.GAMING OVERALL: TIEDBusiness Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD awayBusiness Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD awayBusiness Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

All of these tests vary HUGELY depending on exactly which applications
you test (and often even what settings are used within any one
application).
Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in thetowel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide.

Actually usually it's within 10% one way or the other, again depending
on what application and what settings you use.
Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

This one is pretty much a dead tie, though one application could
easily show either chip being up to 50% faster than the other.
Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both*CPU* and memory benchmarks

PC Mark CPU benchmarks are just as useless as every other synthetic
CPU benchmark I've ever seen, it tells you absolutely zero about
performance. For memory bandwidth, Socket 754 Athlon64 chips are
slower than Intel chips, Socket 939 Athlon64 chips are faster. For
memory latency, AMD chips are ALWAYS much faster (the built-in memory
controller ensure that much).
Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper tobuild, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there arebetter bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likelybe cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8,it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment.http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html

Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here
if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like
quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill

10-15-2004, 10:05 PM

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 00:50:35 GMT, "Frank" <bbunny@bqik.net> wrote:"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in messagenews:4170320C.25788896@netscape.net... chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote: >We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin.A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brandchipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....Intel based IBM........

<shudder> "no fault tolerances" and they are using x86?! Surely you
jest!

There are plenty of banks and other organizations that do require very
high levels of reliability, and they do NOT use x86 for these
applications, not AMD, not Intel! IBM Power-based servers yes. Sun
SPARC systems, sure. Maybe even the odd HP PA-RISC systems or for the
very high-end something like an HPaq Non-Stop system, but DEFINITELY
not x86!

Either way though, if you want high reliability on x86, AMD's Opteron
should be your #1 choice, it has every reliability feature that Intel
has ever had and then some. Now that Intel has cut off Serverworks
(the makers of the most reliable server chipsets for Intel processors)
from making any future designs, this difference in reliability is
likely to become more pronounced (Intel's own chipsets have never
really matched up, which is why almost nobody uses their chipsets for
servers). Still, even with the Opteron I wouldn't consider the system
to be in the "very high reliability" category, *especially* not if it
were running Windows!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill

10-15-2004, 10:05 PM

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:28:10 GMT, "DaveW" <none@zero.org> wrote:Yes, it's true in my experience. SIS chipsets are among the LEAST stable.

Actually myself and a number of others have had pretty good luck with
SiS chipsets. The real problem is that they are used on total shit
low-end piece of crap motherboards. If you take the very best chipset
in the world and put it on a POS motherboard built using bargain bin
components, it will result in an unstable system. SiS chipsets are
the cheapest and therefore the cheapest motherboards use them.
However every once in a while you get a bit of a gem. The ECS K7S5A
was probably the best example of this, dirt-cheap board that was every
bit as stable as boards costing $50 or $100 more. The real problem is
that they are very hit-and-miss.

FWIW my current board is an ASRock K7S41GX, an SiS based board that
was super-cheap which I bought after my previous board died at about
the worst possible time (financially speaking). I've been pleasantly
surprised, it really hasn't caused me many headaches at all in either
Linux or WinXP. The biggest problem I had was that, even though this
board has the 4 holes to bolt a heatsink onto the motherboard (quite
rare these days), there were a couple of capacitor that got in the way
of my heatsink. However even with a bit of man-handling (and filling
down my heatsink so it would fit), the board has worked just fine. I
just wish I could say as much for the low-end Sapphire/ATI video card
I got with it! (note to self: back to an nVidia video cards next time)

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

rstlne

10-16-2004, 03:12 AM

> A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brand chipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances.... Intel based IBM........

My wife works for a bank..
They use Dells..
Not cause of low faults..
They use dells cause they cost half of what the same spec pc cost elsewhere.

Roman Werpachowski

10-16-2004, 04:18 AM

On the Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:05:05 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:
Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!

No flame intended: what's wrong with Tom's Hardware?

--
Roman Werpachowski
/--------==============--------\
| http://www.cft.edu.pl/~roman |
\--------==============--------/

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 11:31 AM

Dave C. wrote: "JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message news:41704710.17A931C8@netscape.net...Experts? How do you know they are experts? Do they work for Intel? Well YOU think they are experts, so it's odd that you'd ask me for roof. -Dave
What experts? Tomshardware might as well change name to intelslapdog.com

Franc Zabkar

10-16-2004, 11:39 AM

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 00:50:35 GMT, "Frank" <bbunny@bqik.net> put finger
to keyboard and composed:
A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brandchipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....Intel based IBM........

IME, large corporations with big budgets nearly always go with the
most prominent vendor, whether or not he has the best product, the
rationale being that, if the product fails to perform as expected,
then the person who authorised its purchase cannot be seen to have
gambled.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.

Dave C.

10-16-2004, 11:45 AM

>> Well YOU think they are experts, so it's odd that you'd ask me for oof. -Dave What experts? Tomshardware might as well change name to intelslapdog.com

Funny that anandtech and sharky extreme and many other hardware sites agree
with tomshardware. Are they all intelslapdog.com? -Dave

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 11:53 AM

Dave C. wrote:
We went through this already several times.Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) Itwas more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... Not really a flame war. Just a well-deserved smackdown of an obvious AMD shill. I'm a huge AMD fan myself, but it's insane the way someone keeps bashing Intel. Just seeking a little balance is all. -Dave
That was your biggest lie. You are NOT an AMD fan if you claim Intel is
faster than AMD64 in games when all evidence says different. Just read a
WHOLE test next time. AMD wins no mater what API is used. P4 wins in
Comanche 4 thats it. P4 EE doesn't cost as no regualar mortal can afford
one. An Athlon64 FX-53 costs a fraction of what a P4 EE costs and it is
very close behind (or in front of) P4 EE. Besides a lot of the tests are
very GPU bound ( especially in DX9 games like GunMetal) so you really
shouldn't count those tests. If you had run them again a lot of
positions would switch.

If you discount P4 EE AMD wins ALL game tests at anandtech.com

Dave C.

10-16-2004, 12:15 PM

>> That was your biggest lie. You are NOT an AMD fan if you claim Intel is faster than AMD64 in games when all evidence says different.

Huh?!? I'm just repeating what the experts, including anandtech, report.
Are all the experts liars, also? If you want to call me a liar, you'd
better be able to prove that tomshardware, anandtech and sharky extreme are
liars, also. Good luck on that. -Dave

According to www.pricewatch.com, same price range at the moment would be:

P4 3.2 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3200+ or

P4 3.4 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3400+

Beyond that range, you can pay up to several hundred dollars for either an
Intel or AMD chip, but hardly anybody gives a damn about those chips, as
hardly anybody spends as much on a processor as they do on the entire rest
of their system combined.

So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators of who
has the best bang for buck, at the moment.

Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster
Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it
Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three
TENTHS of a percentage point faster than Intel.
So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and
one tie.
GAMING OVERALL: TIED

Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away

Video Encoding: This one is so lopsided, AMD should have thrown in the
towel before entering the ring. Intel wins by a landslide.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Synthetic Benchmarks: (PC Mark 2004): Here, Intel blows AMD away on both
*CPU* and memory benchmarks

Even at the same price for CPU, an Intel system can be cheaper to
build, as the P4 boards are more mature at this point, and thus there are
better bargains to be found. Considering that an Intel system will likely
be cheaper to build and WILL perform better on all benchmarks except DX8,
it's kind of a no-brainer as to which chip to build with, at the moment.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/index.html

The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting
is,
the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz
P4
processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors
are
pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD
being faster on others.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1

Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about
the
3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great
comparison
of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be
careful,
as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And
on
some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,
you
will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD
faster
on some and Intel faster on others.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1

Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. The only way AMD could change that
would be to drop their prices by 30% or better. -Dave, updated 10/2/04

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 01:19 PM

Dave C. wrote:
Well YOU think they are experts, so it's odd that you'd ask me foroof. -DaveWhat experts? Tomshardware might as well change name to intelslapdog.com Funny that anandtech and sharky extreme and many other hardware sites agree with tomshardware. Are they all intelslapdog.com? -Dave
Disregarding P4 Extremely Expensive Edition they do NOT agree.

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 01:21 PM

Dave C. wrote:
That was your biggest lie. You are NOT an AMD fan if you claim Intel isfaster than AMD64 in games when all evidence says different. Huh?!? I'm just repeating what the experts, including anandtech, report. Are all the experts liars, also? If you want to call me a liar, you'd better be able to prove that tomshardware, anandtech and sharky extreme are liars, also. Good luck on that. -Dave According to www.pricewatch.com, same price range at the moment would be: P4 3.2 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3200+ or P4 3.4 Prescott vs. Athlon64 3400+

Thing is I have READ those reviews and they do NOT say what you claim
they say. P4 Extremely Expensive Edition at the top or right after FX-53
and when a lot of AMD64's and FAAR down the list a P4 that is NOT an EE.
Do yourself a favor and READ the reviews you link to.

Dave C.

10-16-2004, 02:28 PM

> Thing is I have READ those reviews and they do NOT say what you claim they say.

Oh man, maybe you should look into night school. Really. What is UP with
all these morons claiming that what is published is not published? -Dave

Never anonymous Bud

10-16-2004, 03:13 PM

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> on Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:15:44 -0400 spoke:
So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators of whohas the best bang for buck, at the moment.Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster

Hmmm, at tomshardware.com, in a recent review,
using Quake at 1024x768, the P4 3.4gnz hit 234fps, an A64-3400 hit 229.

NOT 'much faster', barely 1% difference. Statistically a tie.
(I consider 2% difference to be a tie,
5% to be a marginal win, 10% or more is a clear win).
Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it

Wolf, A64 hit 156.1, P4 hit 156.4, NO difference.
Comanche, A64 did 70.38, P4 did 66.33. Slight win, AMD
Unreal, A64 did 147.11, P4 did 127.01, clear win, AMD.
Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three

3DMark graphics, A64 at 6607, P4 at 6611, tie.
3DMark CPU, A64 at 747, P4 at 735, tie.
Aquamark 3, A64 at 105.69, P4 at 107.6, tie.
FarCry, A64 at 220.8, P4 at 207, slight edge, AMD.

Well, I have NO idea where you're getting YOUR info,
but many here claim Toms Hardware is an Intel shill,
yet the numbers CLEARLY show AMD at least keeping pace
with Intel, and often beating them.

But I DO remember John Corse,
and the clearly FALSE benchmarks he posted quite often.

Even when he DID post the right numbers,
he'd almost always mis-interpret them.

--

The truth is out there,

but it's not interesting enough for most people.

Roman Werpachowski

10-16-2004, 04:00 PM

On the Sun, 17 Oct 2004 05:39:23 +1000, Franc Zabkar wrote: On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 00:50:35 GMT, "Frank" <bbunny@bqik.net> put finger to keyboard and composed:A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brandchipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....Intel based IBM........ IME, large corporations with big budgets nearly always go with the most prominent vendor, whether or not he has the best product, the rationale being that, if the product fails to perform as expected, then the person who authorised its purchase cannot be seen to have gambled.

"Noone has ever been fired for going IBM", eh?

--
Roman Werpachowski
/--------==============--------\
| http://www.cft.edu.pl/~roman |
\--------==============--------/

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 04:08 PM

Dave C. wrote:
Thing is I have READ those reviews and they do NOT say what you claim theysay. Oh man, maybe you should look into night school. Really. What is UP with all these morons claiming that what is published is not published? -Dave

And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.
PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=3
Business Winstone 2004

1. AMD Athlon64 FX53
2. AMD Athlon64 FX51
3. AMD Athlon64 3400+
4. AMD Athlon64 3200+
5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as
Extremely Expensive)
This is followed by A64 3000+ and another Extremely Expensive P4. After
that both the slowest A64 and even the old XP3200+ is ahead of all
"normal" P4's. This is clearly NOT a landslide win for Intel as you said.

Content Creation just minor shifts AMD still WAY ahead mostly.

Sysmark with the exception of AMD64 FX53 and Extremely Expensive this is
a clear win for P4. But that is because the tests are optimised for SSE3
and Hyper Threading which AMD64 lacks at the moment.

DX9

Aquamark fps

1. A64 FX53
2. P4 EE 3,4 GHz
3. P4 EE 3,2 GHz
4. A64 3400+
5. A64 FX51

But lets call this a tie since it is really only a difference of 2,8 fps
(disregarding the XP3200+) between the fastest and the slowest.

Aquamark CPU score goes to Intel clearly.

Halo landslide win for AMD if you just look at the positions but again
only a difference of about 1 fps between the slowest and fastest so lets
call it a tie.

Same with GunMetal just too close to call really = tie.
But my guess is that if they had used a 6800 Ultra instead of a 9800 PRO
AMD would have a huge win in nearly all dx9 tests.

DX8

Unreal Tournament 2003

No contest AMD wins both flyby and botmatch. Intel not even close

Warcraft 3 Same as with UT2k3

OpenGL (which you claim Intel wins)

Quake 3 I call for AMD (discounting the Extremely Expensive edition P4)

Jedi Knight AMD wins again

Wolfenstein Once again AMD

Where is the test that shows Intel performs better in OpenGL than AMD?

DivX Encoding goes to Intel

3D Rendering

3DStudio = Intel by quite a big margin
Lightwave Intel again but closer this time.

Development

Q3 Source compile = landslide win for AMD

All in all AMD won almost all game tests and quite a lot of the other tests.

Ykalon

10-16-2004, 04:09 PM

Dave C. wrote:
Thing is I have READ those reviews and they do NOT say what you claim theysay. Oh man, maybe you should look into night school. Really. What is UP with all these morons claiming that what is published is not published? -Dave

I wonder what is up with all these morons that claims that what is NOT
published is published.....

10-16-2004, 04:12 PM

Frank wrote:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in message news:4170320C.25788896@netscape.net... chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote: >We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin. A few _cheap_ corporations

This is from the AMD website.

"Twenty-five percent of the Fortune Global 100 companies now use AMD Opteron™
processor-based systems to run critical enterprise applications. These organizations
include industry leaders in banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, energy and
telecommunications. "

or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brand chipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....
Intel based IBM........

Not all of them. Some use Sun Opteron based systems.

Guest

10-16-2004, 06:45 PM

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:04:50 -0400, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:

....snip...However when nVidia entered the game, the rules changed somewhat.nVidia right out of the gate had VIA and ALi beat cold in terms ofdriver quality and their chipsets were used on higher-end productsthat SiS (if you use low-end crap components on a motherboard with ashitty design, it really doesn't matter how good the chipset is, yourboard will still suck). The result of this was two-fold: first off itgave a real, viable competitor to Intel for the most stable chipsets,and secondly it really forced VIA to pick up their socks. While I'mstill no big fan of VIA chipsets, my understanding is that theirlatest couple versions have been rather significantly better thanwhere they were two years ago.Also, Intel is hardly without their own faults as well. While some oftheir chipsets have been good, they have had their own sets ofproblems, ranging from the extremely problematic memory interface ofthe i820 chipset to the very poor quality of the early i810 drivers,and pretty much all of us who were dealing with PCs back in the late'96/early '97 time frame remember incredibly problematic ATA driversfor the PIIX4 southbridge (this caused many people to have to formatand re-install their entire OS just because they installed patches anddrivers in a different order than was required).Personally, if I were to build a system using an Intel processor, Iwould probably stick to an Intel chipset simply because the onlyadvantage of non-Intel chipsets is about a $5 price savings (ienothing). On the other hand, my last 4 motherboard + CPU combos havebeen using AMD processors, obviously all of which used non-Intelchipsets (2 x SiS, 1 VIA and 1 nVidia). If I were to buy a new systemtoday, it would have an AMD processor in the thing and an nVidiachipset on the motherboard, because IMO they are now the leaders interms of chipset driver quality, not Intel.-------------Tony Hillhilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

I could agree that early VIA chipsets were not flawless in terms of
stability, performance, features, whatever else you look at. However,
these chipsets were found in mostly low-end boards, and the makers
thereof cut every corner to bring the price point down. With $hitty
design and $hitty components, these boards could be nothing better
than $hit. Moreover, these boards were mostly used together with the
lowest of the lowest priced components that had their own stability
issues and $hitty drivers, whereas Intel boards tended to be used with
higher-end components. Yet, even then there were some boards that,
when set up correctly and with at least marginally good PSU, video,
and NIC, were quite decent and stable performers. Case in point - my
1998-ish FIC VA503+ board that is still alive in my second system with
k6-2+ overclocked to 600MHZ - I use it to browse some iffy sites when
I would not want to risk infecting my main system with some crap. By
the way, that one - dual Opteron on MSI board with VIA KT800 chipset -
has yet to show a blue screen. Yes, a few times I had app crashes -
when I debugged .NET apps that make calls to unmanaged functions ;-).
When I do same things at work, the all-Intel IBM NetVista PC usually
shows BSOD.

Dave C.

10-17-2004, 03:59 AM

> And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked. PROOF you have not read the tests you link to. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=3 Business Winstone 2004 1. AMD Athlon64 FX53 2. AMD Athlon64 FX51 3. AMD Athlon64 3400+ 4. AMD Athlon64 3200+ 5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as Extremely Expensive)

OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the fuck
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for
the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point
of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better
deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for
buck". That is still true. -Dave

10-17-2004, 04:09 AM

While those who spend over $500 for a cpu may not be a large percentage
of pc buyers, there are many gamers who will spend around $300 to get an
an Athlon 64 3500+.

"Dave C." wrote:
And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked. PROOF you have not read the tests you link to. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=3 Business Winstone 2004 1. AMD Athlon64 FX53 2. AMD Athlon64 FX51 3. AMD Athlon64 3400+ 4. AMD Athlon64 3200+ 5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as Extremely Expensive) OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the fuck cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for buck". That is still true. -Dave

Ruel Smith

10-17-2004, 05:05 AM

Never anonymous Bud wrote:
Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> on Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:15:44 -0400 spoke:So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators ofwho has the best bang for buck, at the moment.Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster Hmmm, at tomshardware.com, in a recent review, using Quake at 1024x768, the P4 3.4gnz hit 234fps, an A64-3400 hit 229. NOT 'much faster', barely 1% difference. Statistically a tie. (I consider 2% difference to be a tie, 5% to be a marginal win, 10% or more is a clear win).Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it Wolf, A64 hit 156.1, P4 hit 156.4, NO difference. Comanche, A64 did 70.38, P4 did 66.33. Slight win, AMD Unreal, A64 did 147.11, P4 did 127.01, clear win, AMD.Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three 3DMark graphics, A64 at 6607, P4 at 6611, tie. 3DMark CPU, A64 at 747, P4 at 735, tie. Aquamark 3, A64 at 105.69, P4 at 107.6, tie. FarCry, A64 at 220.8, P4 at 207, slight edge, AMD. Well, I have NO idea where you're getting YOUR info, but many here claim Toms Hardware is an Intel shill, yet the numbers CLEARLY show AMD at least keeping pace with Intel, and often beating them.

One thing stands out, though. With a 64 bit OS, it's expected that the
Athlon 64/FX/Opterons will get roughly a 20% speed increase. And, Microsoft
is considering making the upgrade to Windows XP-64 free to those that have
a valid XP license and a 64 bit processor. They expect the OS to be
available 1st or 2nd quarter in '05. You can download and run the beta,
now.

Ykalon

10-17-2004, 08:11 AM

Dave C. wrote:And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=3Business Winstone 20041. AMD Athlon64 FX532. AMD Athlon64 FX513. AMD Athlon64 3400+4. AMD Athlon64 3200+5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known asExtremely Expensive) OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the fuck cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for buck". That is still true. -Dave
Ok lets just use A64 3200 and P4 3,2 Prescott.

Business Winstone = Clear win for A64 3200+
Content Creation = AMD again.
All Sysmark 2004 tests goes to P4.

Aquamark = tied
Aquamark CPU = P4
Halo = tied
GunMetal = tied

Both UT2k3 tests goes clearly to A64 3200+
Warcraft 3 slight edge to A64 3200 but I think it should be considered a
tie.

Q3 = A64 3200+
Jedi Knight = A64 3200+
Wolfenstein = A64 3200+

ALL 3 are OpenGL tests which you claim P4 is superior in. Sorry but you
have NO evidence that shows that.

Franklin

10-17-2004, 08:33 AM

On 17 Oct 2004, nobody@nowhere.net wrote:
I could agree that early VIA chipsets were not flawless in terms of stability, performance, features, whatever else you look at. However, these chipsets were found in mostly low-end boards, and the makers thereof cut every corner to bring the price point down. With $hitty design and $hitty components, these boards could be nothing better than $hit. Moreover, these boards were mostly used together with the lowest of the lowest priced components that had their own stability issues and $hitty drivers, whereas Intel boards tended to be used with higher-end components. Yet, even then there were some boards that, when set up correctly and with at least marginally good PSU, video, and NIC, were quite decent and stable performers. Case in point - my 1998-ish FIC VA503+ board that is still alive in my second system with k6-2+ overclocked to 600MHZ - I use it to browse some iffy sites when I would not want to risk infecting my main system with some crap. By the way, that one - dual Opteron on MSI board with VIA KT800 chipset - has yet to show a blue screen. Yes, a few times I had app crashes - when I debugged .NET apps that make calls to unmanaged functions ;-). When I do same things at work, the all-Intel IBM NetVista PC usually shows BSOD.

Ironically, I once had an MSI board with Via 133 chips. You know,
the ones with the buggy firmware in the Via chips which they replaced
by the 133A.

It put me off MSI after that because their website and tech forums
were so poor.

Johannes H Andersen

10-17-2004, 01:24 PM

JK wrote: chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin.

Your AMD bias is so obvious that it's easily disregarded.

10-17-2004, 01:54 PM

LOL! Look at the benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Johannes H Andersen wrote:
JK wrote: chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote: >We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin. Your AMD bias is so obvious that it's easily disregarded.

George Macdonald

10-17-2004, 03:57 PM

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 00:50:35 GMT, "Frank" <bbunny@bqik.net> wrote:
"JK" <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote in messagenews:4170320C.25788896@netscape.net... chrisv wrote: JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote: >We went through this already several times. Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though... It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin.A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brandchipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....Intel based IBM........

If the banks have any sense at all, and I believe they do, they will most
certainly not be running mission critical servers on distributed
x86/Windows platforms. That's a role which is still best filled by an IBM
mainframe.

As for branch servers and desktops, Dell is probably the choice and of
course that means Intel x86, for the moment but not for any reasons of
technical excellence or superiority. If I were a bank IT decision maker
though, I'd be wary of placing such faith in an organization with such a
fragile business model.

As for fault tolerance I dunno where you got that from - Intel doesn't have
it in any form, in house - they get that from 3rd parties and specialist
OEMs... just like AMD does.

I don't follow why you'd think "cheap" would be associated with the use of
AMD CPUs - a throwaway comment that.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

George Macdonald

10-17-2004, 03:57 PM

Tony Hill

10-17-2004, 04:46 PM

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:18:05 +0000 (UTC), Roman Werpachowski <"r o m a
nNOSPAM"@student.ifpan.edu.pl> wrote:On the Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:05:05 -0400, Tony Hill wrote: Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!No flame intended: what's wrong with Tom's Hardware?

Ohh where to begin? To start with they seem VERY fickle about who
they like and very often draw ridiculous conclusions from their
results just so that they support whatever company they want to look
best (which varies strongly from one week to the next.. my
understanding is that this isn't so much a question of 'bias' as that
Tom has a HUGE ego and he will only promote companies that give him
the full red-carpet treatment). Their benchmarking methodology often
leaves something to be desired, they will usually pick and chose which
benchmark to run depending on which product they want to come out
looking the best (to be fair, pretty much all hardware review sites do
this).

On the more technical side they really just don't have a technical
side. They take a VERY superficial view of running their review but
pretend that they are all super-technical, often drawing conclusions
from extraordinarily limited information (ie something along the lines
of: "If we look at the results of this Quake benchmark we can see that
the P4's memory bandwidth gives it a huge advantage in all OpenGL
gaming", when really all there are hundreds of possible factors
involved). They also tend to make MANY technical errors. This page
from a recent article is classic:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040927/opteron_vs_xeon-02.html

They manage to get virtually every fact on this page completely wrong.
All Opterons have 3 hypertransport connections, all running at 16-bits
in either direction (usually called a 32-bit hypertransport link,
though it's really 2 x 16-bits), running at 800MHz DDR for an
effective speed of 1600MHz. The 1xx series of Opterons have no
cache-coherent Hypertransport connections (ie they can only use the
three HT connections for I/O, not for processor-to-processor
connections), the 2xx series Opterons have 1 cache-coherent HT links
(each chip can connect to up to 1 other processor) and the 8xx series
Opterons have 3 cc-HT links. The one thing they managed to get right
on the entire page were the diagrams at the bottom that were done by
AMD and have been shown many times in AMD publicity info for the
Opteron. Careful observers will even note that those diagrams
contradict what the author of the article said about this chip.

Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be TOO hard on Tom's Hardware, after
all, the vast majority of other technical websites are total crap as
well, not to mention the mainstream print mags. Tom's has also
improved a fair bit in the past two or three years since Tom himself
pretty much just sites back and waits for the checks to role in, other
employees do all the work. Really this site just gets under my skin
more because people quote this site so regularly when the info listed
on the page is often wrong or at least misleading.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill

10-17-2004, 04:46 PM

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:15:44 -0400, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote:The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interestingis,the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHzP4processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processorsarepretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMDbeing faster on others.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=1

So here they tested 6 games, of which the Athlon64 3400+ was faster
than the P4 3.4E on 5 of them and they were tied in the (video-card
limited) 6th game.
Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article aboutthe3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a greatcomparisonof the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to becareful,as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. Andonsome charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,youwill again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMDfasteron some and Intel faster on others.http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_3329681__1

Did you even bother reading this articles before making your post?!
In this article they test 5 games, of which 1 is video card limited
(CPUs all score basically the same) and in the other 4 the Athlon64
was faster! When comparing the P4 3.4E vs. Athlon64 3400+, the latter
is faster by 6%, 3%, 22% and 13%. Even if the video-limited test the
Athlon64 came out 1% faster, though I'm sure that's within the margin
of error for the test.

In this same test the Athlon64 was also faster in their Office
application test and Content Creation test. The only tests in which
the P4 was faster were their synthetic benchmarks (which simply showed
that the Athlon64 they tested did indeed just have a single memory
channel while the P4 had a dual channel memory) and the 2 media
encoding tests.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill

10-17-2004, 04:46 PM

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 07:59:13 -0400, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote: And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked. PROOF you have not read the tests you link to. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2038&p=3 Business Winstone 2004 1. AMD Athlon64 FX53 2. AMD Athlon64 FX51 3. AMD Athlon64 3400+ 4. AMD Athlon64 3200+ 5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as Extremely Expensive)OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the fuckcares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did forthe last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your pointof view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a betterdeal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang forbuck". That is still true. -Dave

Uhhh.. Dave?! Are you hitting the crack-pipe here?! The Athlon64
3200+ mentioned above costs $204 at Newegg.com. The slightly slower
P4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition costs $999.

How in the hell can you claim that the slower $999 processor gives you
better bang for your buck than the faster $204 process?!?! Ok, to be
fair there ARE tests in which the P4EE is a faster chip, but it
basically NEVER offers a very good "bang for buck"!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

keith

10-17-2004, 06:49 PM

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:46:57 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:18:05 +0000 (UTC), Roman Werpachowski <"r o m a nNOSPAM"@student.ifpan.edu.pl> wrote:On the Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:05:05 -0400, Tony Hill wrote: Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!No flame intended: what's wrong with Tom's Hardware?

<snip> On the more technical side they really just don't have a technical side. They take a VERY superficial view of running their review but pretend that they are all super-technical, often drawing conclusions from extraordinarily limited information (ie something along the lines of: "If we look at the results of this Quake benchmark we can see that the P4's memory bandwidth gives it a huge advantage in all OpenGL gaming", when really all there are hundreds of possible factors involved).

....or what about the infamous (but floor-rolling/gut-bustingly funny)
count-the-capacitors escapade?

<snip>
Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be TOO hard on Tom's Hardware, after all, the vast majority of other technical websites are total crap as well, not to mention the mainstream print mags. Tom's has also improved a fair bit in the past two or three years since Tom himself pretty much just sites back and waits for the checks to role in, other employees do all the work. Really this site just gets under my skin more because people quote this site so regularly when the info listed on the page is often wrong or at least misleading.

Why not, hey *is* the worst of 'em. Remember his rants because he was
stiffed by Via (I think it was, anyway). Dean Kent had some
interesting insights into Tom here a couple of years ago (a few times,
IIRC). Tom should have been a dentist. Oh, wait...

--
Keith

assaarpa

10-17-2004, 11:36 PM

> cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point

You must have a pretty shitty car.

Michael Brown

10-18-2004, 02:45 AM

nobody@nowhere.net wrote:
[...] Yet, even then there were some boards that, when set up correctly and with at least marginally good PSU, video, and NIC, were quite decent and stable performers. Case in point - my 1998-ish FIC VA503+ board that is still alive in my second system with k6-2+ overclocked to 600MHZ - I use it to browse some iffy sites when I would not want to risk infecting my main system with some crap.

I've got a K6/2 doing that's been doing server (web server, SSH, VNC, print
server, a few other things) duties for the past 1 1/2 years. It's about the
most "generic" machine I have around at the moment:
1) Motherboard is a a Jetway 530BF (512KB L2 cache)
2) CPU is a K6/2-400, running at stock (not worth overclocking :) ).
3) One 256MB PC133 stick (picked up as 128MB), two 64MB PC100 sticks, all
three generic. Yeah, I know, it can't cache all this, but it's better than
hitting the disk :)
4) El-cheapo AT case with 250W PSU
5) Some 10 gig HDD, cdwriter
6) Windows 2000 Profesional
7) A NIC, an ADSL card, a USB 2.0 card, various other bits

Now, you'd think that with a config like this, it'd be falling over every
few days (though the SiS 530 wasn't too bad of a chipset stability wise).
Not so ... it's been taken out of service perhaps 6 or 7 times in the past
year and a half, all due to power problems or house rewiring (and in one
case to install the cd writer). Up until the power cut two days ago, it had
been up for slightly over 4 months. So even with dirt cheap, generic,
bottom-of-the line components you can have great stability. Sure, the
performance won't blow your socks off, but price (free, as I already had all
the bits) vs performance it comes out quite well :)

[...]

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more :)
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz - My inbox is always open

Johannes H Andersen

10-18-2004, 03:55 AM

JK wrote: LOL! Look at the benchmarks. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

And where is this "large margin"?????? Then I have seen other discussions
on the net about AMD64's fussiness with memory and problems with new
motherboards. Also reported in Tom's hardware guide.

10-18-2004, 04:19 AM

"fussiness" ?

Just choose the proper memory.

"problems with new motherboards."

Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand
that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault
of AMD.

Johannes H Andersen wrote:
JK wrote: LOL! Look at the benchmarks. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6 And where is this "large margin"?????? Then I have seen other discussions on the net about AMD64's fussiness with memory and problems with new motherboards. Also reported in Tom's hardware guide.

Roman Werpachowski

10-18-2004, 06:52 AM

On the Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:57:05 -0400, George Macdonald wrote: On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:18:05 +0000 (UTC), Roman Werpachowski <"r o m a nNOSPAM"@student.ifpan.edu.pl> wrote:On the Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:05:05 -0400, Tony Hill wrote: Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!No flame intended: what's wrong with Tom's Hardware?
[...] The bottom line is that Tom's hardware is now no more credible or technically competent than PCWorld or PCMag - same old stuff.

I gave up on Tom's Hardware some time ago because of the way they organize
their content (I like to read "Review of GA-K8NS Pro motherboard", not "14
new motherboards roundup and comparison with a digital cuckoo clock"),
however I still thought them as competent. What other sites would you
recommend?

--
Roman Werpachowski
/--------==============--------\
| http://www.cft.edu.pl/~roman |
\--------==============--------/

Trent Worthington

10-18-2004, 07:56 AM

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:23:39 +0100 Franklin <no_thanks@mail.com> wrote in
Message id: <958373E88898971F3M4@130.133.1.4>:
I came across this. Is the guy right?<QUOTE>Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say thatIntel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is becauseIntel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than othercompanies, or that software manufacturers test their software morethoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular ..more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or acombination of these factors.Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you withthe most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in thecommunity. Everyone knows it.<END QUOTE>http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

Fact: This has always been true, and most likely always will be. In
addition, Video encoding, which I use my computer for most often, is much
faster on P4 platforms.

Johannes H Andersen

10-18-2004, 08:41 AM

JK wrote: "fussiness" ? Just choose the proper memory. "problems with new motherboards." Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault of AMD.

I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a well
performing P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reported
for boards for the AMD64, see e.g.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50

"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."

As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. Intel
Northwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win other
important benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

10-18-2004, 09:51 AM

Johannes H Andersen wrote:
JK wrote: "fussiness" ? Just choose the proper memory. "problems with new motherboards." Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault of AMD. I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a well performing P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reported for boards for the AMD64, see e.g. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50

That is a Microsoft issue, not a hardware issue. If they don't already have a patch for this, they will probably have one soon.
"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin." As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6

Where on that page do you not see a clear win for AMD when comparably priced
processors are compared?
Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. Intel Northwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win other important benchmarks hands down.

Like what? 32 bit video editing benchmarks? Very soon 32 bit video editing
benchmarks on the Athlon 64 won't mean much, as there will be great performing
64 bit software for that.
Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

The applications where the Athlon 64 doesn't outperform a comparably
priced P4 running 32 bit software will benefit tremendously from a move
to 64 bit software.

Tony Hill

10-18-2004, 10:04 AM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:26 GMT, Johannes H Andersen
<johs@sizefitter.com> wrote:JK wrote: "fussiness" ? Just choose the proper memory. "problems with new motherboards." Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault of AMD.I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a wellperforming P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reportedfor boards for the AMD64, see e.g.http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50

Huh?! Your link points to a message discussing two very specific
problem. The first is strictly a software issue and doesn't even
mention a hardware platform, the second is a very specific issue with
Intel's C0 stepping of Prescott P4's and Celeron-D chips!
"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. IntelNorthwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win otherimportant benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

Fine, let's do a direct comparison of which chip is faster and by what
percentage (anything less than 1% I'll consider a tie as that's well
within the margin of error)

AMD Athlon64 3200+ wins:
Business Winstone 2004 (11.5%)
Content Creation Winstone 2004 (7.7%)
Unreal Tournament Flyby (8.0%)
Unreal Tournament Botmatch (18.0%)
Warcraft 3 (2.4%)
Quake 3 (4.2%)
Wolfenstein (1.8%)
Jedi Knight (2.8%)
Quake 3 Source Compile (14.5%)

Intel "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz wins:
DivX encoding (21.2%)
Aquamark CPU (9.1%)
3DStudio (23.2%)
Lightwave (17.6%)

Tied:
Aquamark FPS
Gunmetal

So the Athlon64 wins more tests, while when the P4 wins it tends to do
so by a larger margin. If we average all the tests out we get that
the P4 is faster by 0.013% (ie they're tied).

Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64
3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back
$244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards
used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket
754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other
components in this test were identical.

Soooo... long story short, if you want to do lots of media encoding or
3D rendering, according to this test at least, you should stick with
the P4. If you want to play games, do general office tasks or compile
code, you should go for an Athlon64. You should also stick with the
Athlon64 if 64-bit code is important to you, or if you want the extra
security offered by non-executable data pages. And finally, sticking
with an Athlon64 will also shave a small amount off the price of your
system.

So where is the better value in the Intel system?

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

JAD

10-18-2004, 10:13 AM

next use unreal microsecond comparisons benchmarks on the wearing of
tire tread.

10-18-2004, 10:14 AM

Tony Hill wrote:
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:26 GMT, Johannes H Andersen <johs@sizefitter.com> wrote:JK wrote: "fussiness" ? Just choose the proper memory. "problems with new motherboards." Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault of AMD.I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a wellperforming P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reportedfor boards for the AMD64, see e.g.http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50 Huh?! Your link points to a message discussing two very specific problem. The first is strictly a software issue and doesn't even mention a hardware platform, the second is a very specific issue with Intel's C0 stepping of Prescott P4's and Celeron-D chips!"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. IntelNorthwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win otherimportant benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site... Fine, let's do a direct comparison of which chip is faster and by what percentage (anything less than 1% I'll consider a tie as that's well within the margin of error) AMD Athlon64 3200+ wins: Business Winstone 2004 (11.5%) Content Creation Winstone 2004 (7.7%) Unreal Tournament Flyby (8.0%) Unreal Tournament Botmatch (18.0%) Warcraft 3 (2.4%) Quake 3 (4.2%) Wolfenstein (1.8%) Jedi Knight (2.8%) Quake 3 Source Compile (14.5%) Intel "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz wins: DivX encoding (21.2%) Aquamark CPU (9.1%) 3DStudio (23.2%) Lightwave (17.6%) Tied: Aquamark FPS Gunmetal So the Athlon64 wins more tests, while when the P4 wins it tends to do so by a larger margin. If we average all the tests out

That is not reasonable to do, as a business for example that only runs
business software doesn't care how fast Divx encoding, 3D Studio,
or Lightwave runs. I don't care how fast those applications would run
on my pc, since I don't use them, and don't plan to use then.
we get that the P4 is faster by 0.013% (ie they're tied). Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64 3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back $244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket 754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other components in this test were identical. Soooo... long story short, if you want to do lots of media encoding or 3D rendering, according to this test at least, you should stick with the P4.

Only if you must use 32 bit software. When using 64 bit software, I
expect the Athlon 64 to be a great performer for those applications.
If you want to play games, do general office tasks or compile code, you should go for an Athlon64. You should also stick with the Athlon64 if 64-bit code is important to you, or if you want the extra security offered by non-executable data pages. And finally, sticking with an Athlon64 will also shave a small amount off the price of your system. So where is the better value in the Intel system? ------------- Tony Hill hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Dave C.

10-18-2004, 10:23 AM

> Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64 3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back $244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket 754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other components in this test were identical.

So you're going to choose a el-cheapo Athlon 64 board to go against a very
high-end P4 board and conclude that it's cheaper to build AMD? Ummmmm, no,
but we can conclude you are biased against Intel, and that is the ONLY
conclusion that can be reached. -Dave

Johannes H Andersen

10-18-2004, 11:14 AM

JK wrote: Tony Hill wrote: On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:26 GMT, Johannes H Andersen <johs@sizefitter.com> wrote:JK wrote:>> "fussiness" ?>> Just choose the proper memory.>> "problems with new motherboards.">> Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand> that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault> of AMD.I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a wellperforming P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reportedfor boards for the AMD64, see e.g.http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50 Huh?! Your link points to a message discussing two very specific problem. The first is strictly a software issue and doesn't even mention a hardware platform, the second is a very specific issue with Intel's C0 stepping of Prescott P4's and Celeron-D chips!"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. IntelNorthwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win otherimportant benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site... Fine, let's do a direct comparison of which chip is faster and by what percentage (anything less than 1% I'll consider a tie as that's well within the margin of error) AMD Athlon64 3200+ wins: Business Winstone 2004 (11.5%) Content Creation Winstone 2004 (7.7%) Unreal Tournament Flyby (8.0%) Unreal Tournament Botmatch (18.0%) Warcraft 3 (2.4%) Quake 3 (4.2%) Wolfenstein (1.8%) Jedi Knight (2.8%) Quake 3 Source Compile (14.5%) Intel "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz wins: DivX encoding (21.2%) Aquamark CPU (9.1%) 3DStudio (23.2%) Lightwave (17.6%) Tied: Aquamark FPS Gunmetal So the Athlon64 wins more tests, while when the P4 wins it tends to do so by a larger margin. If we average all the tests out That is not reasonable to do, as a business for example that only runs business software doesn't care how fast Divx encoding, 3D Studio, or Lightwave runs. I don't care how fast those applications would run on my pc, since I don't use them, and don't plan to use then.

OK, pick your special application, but then your statement:

"Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."

is unduly generalizing from the specifics. The whole point in increasing
processor performance is to venture into new application arenas such as
photo processing and video. Office computing such as word processing etc.
is a problem that is already satisfactory solved with yesterdays processors.

Ykalon

10-18-2004, 02:47 PM

Dave C. wrote:Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon643200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back$244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boardsused in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all othercomponents in this test were identical. So you're going to choose a el-cheapo Athlon 64 board to go against a very high-end P4 board and conclude that it's cheaper to build AMD? Ummmmm, no, but we can conclude you are biased against Intel, and that is the ONLY conclusion that can be reached. -Dave
Even if you pick a fairly good nForce3 250-board you STILL get it
cheaper than a P4 system and if you are a gamer nothing beats an Athlon64.

LuvrSmel

10-18-2004, 03:58 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:47:44 GMT, Ykalon <ykalon@softhome.net> wrote:
Even if you pick a fairly good nForce3 250-board you STILL get itcheaper than a P4 system and if you are a gamer nothing beats an Athlon64.

It's in the Marketing, once you start advertising on TV/radio as much as
Intel has done it's no longer just commercials, it's brainwashing, so
just feel sorry for those people where it fits! ;p

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_38/b3900048_mz011.htm
Intel is almost seven times as large, with expected revenues of $34
billion this year. Its projected 2004 profits of $7.35 billion mean that
Intel earns in 11 days what AMD will make all year. And Intel is sitting
on $14 billion in cash, compared with $1.1 billion for AMD, giving Intel
a vast edge in funding research and development and in constructing
cutting-edge manufacturing facilities.

....giving Intel a vast edge in funding research and development and in
constructing cutting-edge manufacturing facilities.

With a statement like that, I'd expect Intel to be light years ahead of
AMD in architecture and performance, what' up with that!?!?

Ed

Tony Hill

10-18-2004, 04:08 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:14:13 GMT, Johannes H Andersen
<johs@sizefitter.com> wrote:OK, pick your special application, but then your statement:"Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."is unduly generalizing from the specifics. The whole point in increasingprocessor performance is to venture into new application arenas such asphoto processing and video. Office computing such as word processing etc.is a problem that is already satisfactory solved with yesterdays processors.

Be that as it may, I can probably count on one hand the number of
times I've done photo editing (and have few plans on ever doing so
again), while I use "office"-ish applications on pretty much a daily
basis. I'll take a small improvement on something I do every day over
a large improvement on something I do, at most, once a year.

So, is Office computing "satisfactory solved" with yesterday's
processors? That is a tougher question to answer, but I remember
about 10 years ago that people said a 486 was plenty for any office
computing user. Back that it Office computing was solved plenty well
on a 486, and yet now a 1GHz PC seems rather slow while doing typical
Office tasks (yes I do use 1GHz PCs at work, and yes they do seem slow
on such tasks when compared to my home PC). Sure, part of it is just
software bloat, but a lot of it is increased features.

An application that is "solved" today using yesterdays processors will
require today's processors in order to be solved tomorrow.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill

10-18-2004, 04:08 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 14:23:14 -0400, "Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote: Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64 3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back $244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket 754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other components in this test were identical.So you're going to choose a el-cheapo Athlon 64 board to go against a veryhigh-end P4 board and conclude that it's cheaper to build AMD? Ummmmm, no,but we can conclude you are biased against Intel, and that is the ONLYconclusion that can be reached. -Dave

*I* did not chose the boards, please clean off your eyeballs before
making such comments. To quote what I JUST wrote above

"The motherboard cost for THE BOARDS USED IN THIS TEST should slightly
favor AMD" (emphasis added).

Sure, you could get a MUCH cheaper board for the P4, but the
performance would also drop, invalidating all the comparative results.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

keith

10-18-2004, 06:57 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 14:23:14 -0400, Dave C. wrote:
Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64 3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back $244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket 754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other components in this test were identical. So you're going to choose a el-cheapo Athlon 64 board to go against a very high-end P4 board and conclude that it's cheaper to build AMD? Ummmmm, no, but we can conclude you are biased against Intel, and that is the ONLY conclusion that can be reached. -Dave

Ah, so an "el-cheapo" Athlon board kicks the crap outta a "high-end" P4
board. Hmm, I think there is a message in here somewhere.

--
Keith

keith

10-18-2004, 07:00 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:36:41 +0300, assaarpa wrote:
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point You must have a pretty shitty car.

I would guess so! I had a '70 AMC Gremlin, and *it* cost $2500 (in 1970
dollars). ;-)

--
Keith

JAD

10-18-2004, 07:29 PM

Dave forget it....these are AMD toadies...they no nothing of reality,
they live in a make believe world, held together with bits of bytes
that never stays up very long. The only reason why AMD exists is that
there can be no monopoly, so the token competition must be maintained.
Much like the AMD NG's , they need to be around for the sake of
laughter.

"Dave C." <mdupre@sff.net> wrote in message
news:2tig0jF202pljU1@uni-berlin.de... Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64 3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you
back $244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for
boards used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based
socket 754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other components in this test were identical. So you're going to choose a el-cheapo Athlon 64 board to go against
a very high-end P4 board and conclude that it's cheaper to build AMD?
Ummmmm, no, but we can conclude you are biased against Intel, and that is the
ONLY conclusion that can be reached. -Dave

David Maynard

10-18-2004, 08:05 PM

JK wrote:
Tony Hill wrote:On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:26 GMT, Johannes H Andersen<johs@sizefitter.com> wrote:JK wrote:> "fussiness" ?>>Just choose the proper memory.>>"problems with new motherboards.">>Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand>that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault>of AMD.I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a wellperforming P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reportedfor boards for the AMD64, see e.g.http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=owzqyOSPyBbBFwxZ%40jaj22.demon.co.uk&prev=/groups%3Fnum%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26group%3Duk.comp.homebuilt%26start%3D50Huh?! Your link points to a message discussing two very specificproblem. The first is strictly a software issue and doesn't evenmention a hardware platform, the second is a very specific issue withIntel's C0 stepping of Prescott P4's and Celeron-D chips!"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2065&p=6Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. IntelNorthwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win otherimportant benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...Fine, let's do a direct comparison of which chip is faster and by whatpercentage (anything less than 1% I'll consider a tie as that's wellwithin the margin of error)AMD Athlon64 3200+ wins:Business Winstone 2004 (11.5%)Content Creation Winstone 2004 (7.7%)Unreal Tournament Flyby (8.0%)Unreal Tournament Botmatch (18.0%)Warcraft 3 (2.4%)Quake 3 (4.2%)Wolfenstein (1.8%)Jedi Knight (2.8%)Quake 3 Source Compile (14.5%)Intel "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz wins:DivX encoding (21.2%)Aquamark CPU (9.1%)3DStudio (23.2%)Lightwave (17.6%)Tied:Aquamark FPSGunmetalSo the Athlon64 wins more tests, while when the P4 wins it tends to doso by a larger margin. If we average all the tests out That is not reasonable to do, as a business for example that only runs business software doesn't care how fast Divx encoding, 3D Studio, or Lightwave runs. I don't care how fast those applications would run on my pc, since I don't use them, and don't plan to use then.we get thatthe P4 is faster by 0.013% (ie they're tied).Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon643200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back$244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boardsused in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all othercomponents in this test were identical.Soooo... long story short, if you want to do lots of media encoding or3D rendering, according to this test at least, you should stick withthe P4. Only if you must use 32 bit software. When using 64 bit software, I expect the Athlon 64 to be a great performer for those applications.

Out of curiosity, what do you base that 'expectation' on?

George Macdonald

10-18-2004, 10:45 PM

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 14:52:39 +0000 (UTC), Roman Werpachowski <"r o m a
nNOSPAM"@student.ifpan.edu.pl> wrote:
On the Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:57:05 -0400, George Macdonald wrote: On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:18:05 +0000 (UTC), Roman Werpachowski <"r o m a nNOSPAM"@student.ifpan.edu.pl> wrote:On the Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:05:05 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:> Whoa! You really don't want to be quoting Tom's Hardware around here> if you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously! That's like> quoting the National Enquirer for a "news" story!No flame intended: what's wrong with Tom's Hardware?[...] The bottom line is that Tom's hardware is now no more credible or technically competent than PCWorld or PCMag - same old stuff.I gave up on Tom's Hardware some time ago because of the way they organizetheir content (I like to read "Review of GA-K8NS Pro motherboard", not "14new motherboards roundup and comparison with a digital cuckoo clock"),however I still thought them as competent. What other sites would yourecommend?

Yes I know what you mean on the "comparison" style. To tell the truth, I
don't visit any of them regularly unless I'm buying something and need to
catch up on the SOTA in some given technology. E.g. in the past week I had
to buy a new monitor and being tempted by the LCDs, decided to check out
all the sites/reviews I could find on 17" LCDs.

None of the reviews told me everything I needed to know about image quality
and response speed characteristics, some of them were contradictory and
some were obviously lying... knowingly or not. It took a fair bit of
sorting out but www.xbitlabs.com had some fairly good objective info with
no raving or ranting; www.anandtech.com added something useful but not much
(how the hell can he pretend to review LCDs without some consistent
measurement of off-axis viewing angles ?) and Google/Usenet fleshed it out
a bit. Tom's was a waste of time for me - maybe a gamer who craves the
ultimate in response would see it differently. I wish the mfr sites were
more informative on the panel technology they use but apparently some of
them change panel suppliers while keeping the same model numbers.<shrug>

At any rate I ended up paying a lot more than I'd orginally planned for a
Samsung 173P - color gamut/rendition, viewing angle and general image
quality are my top criteria though good response is still important; the
distortions of TN+film common in the game-oriented panels is one of my pet
hates. When I was balking at the extra cost, I looked in my wallet and
found more in cash than the difference in price.:-) The 173P arrived today
and so far I'm happy with the choice... apart from maybe that inevitable
feeling of impending obsolescence.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Ykalon

10-18-2004, 11:10 PM

JAD wrote: Dave forget it....these are AMD toadies...they no nothing of reality, they live in a make believe world, held together with bits of bytes that never stays up very long. The only reason why AMD exists is that there can be no monopoly, so the token competition must be maintained. Much like the AMD NG's , they need to be around for the sake of laughter.
People forget it, these are Intel toadies. they know nothing of reality,
they live in a make believe world, held together with bits of bytes that
never stays up very long. ETC.

Works both ways......

Besides it is you Intel fans that needs to prove something. We from the
AMD base just need to link to tests. You need to lie and say a test
shows something it does NOT show. Just like Dave have tried and failed with.