AMD versus Intel

[Daniel Prince]

Which would give the most performance per dollar, an AMD CPU and
motherboard or an Intel CPU and motherboard? Which would be the
most reliable and last the longest? Which would use the least
power? Thank you in advance for all replies.

 

[John Doe]

Which would give the most performance per dollar, an AMD CPU and
motherboard or an Intel CPU and motherboard? Which would be the
most reliable and last the longest? Which would use the least
power?

That depends on the CPU choice. If you really want to conserve
energy and know how much power your system actually uses, by a $20
US electricity meter like a Kill-A-Watt (or whatever brand/model
anyone else wants to mention). My Intel Q9550 system uses between
110 and 195 watts. Beware of Intel stock heatsink/fan
combinations, with no backplate, they crater your motherboard.

 

[RayLopez99]

BTW, why didn't you Google this? You'd find that this particular
question has been asked so many times by so many people that it's a dead
horse. It's as lame as the old "Ford vs Chevy" wars on the car groups.

Well it was news to me, I enjoyed the thread.

And who is better, Ford vs Chevy? I say Ford. And I say Intel.
Seems AMD and Chevy are fading fast.

RL

 

[LSMFT]

Well it was news to me, I enjoyed the thread.

And who is better, Ford vs Chevy? I say Ford. And I say Intel.
Seems AMD and Chevy are fading fast.

RL

American cars suck on gas mileage. A foreign processor would probably
give you better mileage and reliability.

 

[Flasherly]

Which would give the most performance per dollar, an AMD CPU and
motherboard or an Intel CPU and motherboard? Which would be the
most reliable and last the longest? Which would use the least
power? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Doing some wav>mp3 in the background. Got a big drum Gigabyte squirrel-
cage fan ontop an old Athlon XP 3.2Ghz that was hitting 140F halfway
through, so pulled the side to get out the CPU fan control know, and
bumped it from 2000 to 3500rpm. 124F after finishing half a dozen
more. First time I've seen it hit 140F - surprised it didn't crash
into a reboot.

Intel Duron across the room does the stereo and tv. No temp monitors,
much in fans, I only keep the HD count down so it's not stuffed, and
let it go by itself at that. Probably 4 bays since I know I've got 3
HDs in there. Built that for maybe $200, not counting HDs or "spare
stuff" -- a TB Santa Cruz sound out & an ATI Radeon 96xx AGP (besides,
it's going to have onboard sound/vid, like I guess most all do now).
So get out the calculator and input -- Mem, stock cpu/fan, asus mb, 2-
bay case, DVD.

Hell, just for you, knock off another $50, and say I built it for
$150. Pretend it's the cheapest ATX case that's good on sale for
under $30, and forget included Power Supplies -- they're are always
crap, and get replaced with something decent.

Last thing to do is plug it in to some large panels and never look
back (you don't even want to know what I've got in this Athlon64 after
5 years use). Guess I'll turn that CPU fan back down near silent at
110F. See ya.

 

[Bug Dout]

I am scoping a cheap system, and the information I have come across
suggests that AMD can't compete with Intel at the high end of the CPU
market, so they are relegated to the low end and have to sell their CPUs at
a discount.

Well, this is such a generic assertion it's meaningless. All CPUs have
topped out at around 3 GHz clock speed. So what does "high end" mean
anymore? I've seen people say that AMD cpus return better interactive
performance while Intel return better program running speed. It really
depends on your usage of the computer. My guess is peripherals have far
greater affect on performance than brand of CPU. For instance a RAID 0
setup instead of a single drive, or a SSD instead of a HDD...A dedicated
vector processor (e.g. Tesla) instead of using the cpu for
numerics...&etc.

 

[Tim Mastrogiacomo]

Daniel Prince wrote:

I believe that AMD is still having problems with heat so Intel would
currently be the best choice.  I have always used AMD processors but, I
would go with the Intel brand today.

--

Rick
Fargo, ND
N 46 53'251"
W 096 48'279"

If you are using a desktop and have a decent cooling fan, overheating
shouldn't be a problem. That said, I agree that AMD is a bit more
prone to overheating.


Tim Mastrogiacomo

 

[Flasherly]

To me high-end means any CPU that costs more than $200. Mainly I want
something that can play blu ray smoothly and can rip and transcode video
reasonably fast. Almost any new CPU can do all that, but I don't have to
get the cheapest of everything. Someone steered me toward the AMD 955, a
quad-core CPU costing $160. According to some benchmarking tests, it
renders video as fast as an Intel CPU costing around $200. I can't see that
Intel has anything for less than $200 that offers comparable value. If I'm
missing something, clue me in. That is why I'm here.

Intel traditionally held the software developer's and business market
-- what went into their CPUs was the original blueprint or yardstick,
as serious measure of computing in the most pragmatic sense. What
happened, though, is Intel held that premier standing - be around an
Intel 386/16 - at a very costly premium for a couple years. Intel
made you pay through the nose, and very dearly at that, in order to
use their EMS (expanded memory) implementation (best thing going,
again). It wasn't until AMD and Cyrix (for a relatively short while)
got into the EMS action, that computers dropped into easily-affordable
hobbyist pricing. Well, here we are and AMD is hanging on to the job
of keeping Intel's prices honest. AMD's heyday is probably going to
be their Dresden plant and the AMD XP series Socket A implementation;-
I'm not quite sure of their business modeling since 2008 and an
overall economic demise since the real estate debacles. Personally, I
held a grudge for the longest time against Intel, because of that very
first 386/16, which worked indiscriminately through the 640-1meg
address, virtually paging simultaneous applications. But, around
Intel's Duron (an updated Celeron), I said screw it and bought my
first Intel (in a really, really long time). Though most of my
computers have been AMD, to be honest -- I do expect more (better
integrity and reliability) from Intel. In other words, if somebody
said to me -- money's no object, just don't screw up, and build me the
best you're capable -- I'd drop their load into Intel. Comes time for
me to update, though, dunno...I could go either way. What others are
saying about the heat and AMD, I'll go along -- well-reviewed OEM CPU
coolers and case designs for an AMD setup is nowhere near an arm-&-leg
on money well spent. Better said is both deserve at least that -- I'd
just give a little extra care in ensuring AMD measures up to a build
done right in the cooling dept.