Approx price difference between Intel & AMD systems

[Franklin]

Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo.
(I don't think memory depends on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?










'

 

[JAD]

Come on, man............ google that

 

[Arno Wagner]

Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo.
(I don't think memory depends on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?

Last time I did this, AMD was about 100 Euro cheaper than Intel for the
same power. That was Athlon XPs 2800+ end of last year.

The figures depend strongly on what CPU you want, what mainboard _and_
what kind of memory.

Arno

 

[Dave C.]

Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference
between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo.
(I don't think memory depends on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?

Considering JUST mainboard and processor: At the high end, there is no
difference. In the mid-range (say about 3 - 3.2G or 3000 - 3200+), there is
no significant difference.

HOWEVER, as recently as last month, Athlon 64 mainboards were (on average)
starting around thirty bucks more for name-brand boards with the same
features as similar name-brand boards for Intel P4 chips.

As all other components (RAM, power supply, video card, hard drives, optical
drives, etc.) is identical, you are looking at really NO cost difference to
build either way. And you are looking at really NO performance difference,
either. There are a few gaming benchmarks where the Athlon 64 chips are a
little faster than similarly priced P4 chips. But overall, the majority of
benchmarks slightly favor the P4 chips. But even that's misleading, as the
difference is trivial.

You will get the same "power" either way, for about the same TOTAL PRICE TO
BUILD. However, if you are a bargain hunter, there are some really nice P4
motherboards out right now that are high quality, name-brand and CHEAP. So
if you shop smartly, you might get slightly better bang for buck building P4
at the moment. -Dave

 

[Ruel Smith]

Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo.
(I don't think memory depends on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?

Depends on what you look at. Socket 939 Athlon 64 and FX CPU's are
pretty expensive. Socket 754 chips are not so pricey. Athlon XP chips
are a serious bargain compared to Prescotts.

 

[Phisherman]

You get a better value with AMD which is good for budget systems.
Intel is the better choice for intense video editing. Given the two
with the same overall processing power, I believe Intel will run
cooler (is that right?).

 

[Ruel Smith]

You get a better value with AMD which is good for budget systems.
Intel is the better choice for intense video editing. Given the two
with the same overall processing power, I believe Intel will run
cooler (is that right?).

Until Prescott, yes. Prescott is an oven.

 

[Harry]

Considering JUST mainboard and processor: At the high end, there is no
difference. In the mid-range (say about 3 - 3.2G or 3000 - 3200+), there is
no significant difference.

HOWEVER, as recently as last month, Athlon 64 mainboards were (on average)
starting around thirty bucks more for name-brand boards with the same
features as similar name-brand boards for Intel P4 chips.

As all other components (RAM, power supply, video card, hard drives, optical
drives, etc.) is identical, you are looking at really NO cost difference to
build either way. And you are looking at really NO performance difference,
either. There are a few gaming benchmarks where the Athlon 64 chips are a
little faster than similarly priced P4 chips. But overall, the majority of
benchmarks slightly favor the P4 chips. But even that's misleading, as the
difference is trivial.

You will get the same "power" either way, for about the same TOTAL PRICE TO
BUILD. However, if you are a bargain hunter, there are some really nice P4
motherboards out right now that are high quality, name-brand and CHEAP. So
if you shop smartly, you might get slightly better bang for buck building P4
at the moment. -Dave

XP2700 £65
AMD64 2800 £82
Intel 2.8 £97


XP3000 £90
AMD64 3000 £93
Intel 3.0 £104


XP3200 £105
AMD64 3200 £120
Intel 3.2 £130



AMD are always cheaper

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon64-3000.html

AMD has my vote

Harry

 

[JK]

Considering JUST mainboard and processor: At the high end, there is no
difference. In the mid-range (say about 3 - 3.2G or 3000 - 3200+), there is
no significant difference.

Not quite. When chips that benchmark similarly are considered, there might be
huge differences. For example, for Doom 3, an Athlon 64 3500+($330)
outperforms an Intel Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE at $990 by a large margin.

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

For Business Winstone 2004, an Athlon 64 3200+($183) beats a
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE($990). an Athlon XP3000+($95) also beats
a Pentium 4 3.2 ghz($220).

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

HOWEVER, as recently as last month, Athlon 64 mainboards were (on average)
starting around thirty bucks more for name-brand boards with the same
features as similar name-brand boards for Intel P4 chips.

Socket 939 motherboards will get less expensive as the demand increases.
The new 90 nm Athlon 64 chips need a socket 939 motherboard.

As all other components (RAM, power supply, video card, hard drives, optical
drives, etc.) is identical, you are looking at really NO cost difference to
build either way. And you are looking at really NO performance difference,
either.

Not quite.

There are a few gaming benchmarks where the Athlon 64 chips are a
little faster

A little faster?

than similarly priced P4 chips.

For some games it takes a Pentium 4 at triple the price to come close in
performance.

But overall, the majority of
benchmarks slightly favor the P4 chips.

LOL! The majority of pc usage is for business applications, not video
editing.

But even that's misleading, as the
difference is trivial.

Trivial? If you compare the performance of a $95 Athlon XP3000+ running
business applications and a Celeron 2.7 ghz which is close in price, the
performance diferrence will not be trivial. If you compare the performance
difference of an Athlon 64 3000+($145) to a $151 Pentium 4 2.6 C
running business software, you will see a very large difference.

You will get the same "power" either way, for about the same TOTAL PRICE TO
BUILD.

Not quite. Of course if you average in video editing benchmarks and Dragon
Naturally Speaking benchmarks into the mix, then it will help the P4 look
better, however for the huge number of people who never run those applications,
it doesn't make much sense.

However, if you are a bargain hunter, there are some really nice P4
motherboards out right now that are high quality, name-brand and CHEAP.

Motherboards for an Athlon XP are probably even cheaper. The vast majority
of computer usage is for running business applications.

So
if you shop smartly, you might get slightly better bang for buck building P4
at the moment.

LOL! It doesn't make sense to spend so much more on a Pentium 4 just to
save $25-30 on the motherboard. A Pentium 4 that benchmarks similarly
to an Athlon 64 for a person's important business applications or the games
they want to play might be double or triple the cost of the Athlon 64. Spending
so much extra for the processor just to save $30 or less on a motherboard is
silly.

 

[Dave C.]

"> LOL! It doesn't make sense to spend so much more on a Pentium 4 just to

save $25-30 on the motherboard. A Pentium 4 that benchmarks similarly
to an Athlon 64 for a person's important business applications or the
games
they want to play might be double or triple the cost of the Athlon 64.
Spending
so much extra for the processor just to save $30 or less on a motherboard
is
silly.

I've repeatedly proven you wrong in the past, but it looks like you need to
be spanked again. Again, for the umpteenth time, I will use your favorite
web site to prove you wrong. If you look at one or two specific benchmarks,
you can state with absolute certainty that an Athlon64 chip of equal cost
will be slightly faster than an P4 chip for that specific benchmark. But if
you look at ALL the benchmarks, and have half a brain, you will conclude
that AMD and Intel are evenly matched.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=18

Now go dream up some more lies to slander Intel with, as nobody's buying
your old ones. -Dave

 

[kony]

"> LOL! It doesn't make sense to spend so much more on a Pentium 4 just to

I've repeatedly proven you wrong in the past, but it looks like you need to
be spanked again. Again, for the umpteenth time, I will use your favorite
web site to prove you wrong. If you look at one or two specific benchmarks,
you can state with absolute certainty that an Athlon64 chip of equal cost
will be slightly faster than an P4 chip for that specific benchmark. But if
you look at ALL the benchmarks, and have half a brain, you will conclude
that AMD and Intel are evenly matched.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=17
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1956&p=18

Now go dream up some more lies to slander Intel with, as nobody's buying
your old ones. -Dave

Nope, the P4 depends on the most current versions of
applications for it's performance points, while practically
nothing has been optimized for A64 yet. Indeed, an XP3000
handily beats a P4 3.2GHz at most software running today.

In other words, to get the performance from a P4, you're not
buying just a P4, you're buying hundreds of $$$ worth of
software too.

 

[JK]

"> LOL! It doesn't make sense to spend so much more on a Pentium 4 just to

I've repeatedly proven you wrong in the past, but it looks like you need to
be spanked again. Again, for the umpteenth time, I will use your favorite
web site to prove you wrong. If you look at one or two specific benchmarks,
you can state with absolute certainty that an Athlon64 chip of equal cost
will be slightly faster

More than slightly. It might take a Pentium 4 at double or triple the price
to equal it.

than an P4 chip for that specific benchmark. But if
you look at ALL the benchmarks,

Why should someone do that? Who runs all types of software? A business
user who runs only business software doesn't care how fast a processor
is at video editing.

 

[J Case]

Don't be an automoton and just "think" that intel is on par with amd
when it comes to a gaming machine. I will use the site you just
quoted that compares intels best (that cost 100's of dollars more)
with amds best and mid levels running Doom 3. If you have half a
brain (which you probably don't since you'll obviously spend 100's
more for a brand with inferior performance) you'll see that amd athlon
64 3400+ has better performance than intel's p4 3.4 extreme edition.
By the way the athlon 64 3400+ can be bought for around $275 on
pricewatch the intel p4 3.4 ee for $989.00 on pricewatch. Also you'll
be able to run 64 bit programs when they come out, instead having to
upgrade like you will with intel. I'm all about performance compared
to cost and right now intel is getting their ass handed to them by
amd.

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

 

[Dave C.]

Don't be an automoton and just "think" that intel is on par with amd
when it comes to a gaming machine.

Who said that? Athlon 64 chips are slightly better for gaming. Intel is
hardly getting their ass handed to them by AMD, though. That is, unless all
you care about is gaming. -Dave

 

[JK]

Who said that? Athlon 64 chips are slightly better for gaming. Intel is
hardly getting their ass handed to them by AMD, though. That is, unless all
you care about is gaming. -Dave

Stop the nonsense. Compare chips similar in price and look at the benchmarks.
AMD processors outperform comparably priced Intel processors for gaming,
business applications, mathematical calculations, and many other types of
applications. The Pentium 4 chips excell at running some 32 bit multimedia
software. So what. Those who need to run that type of software will probably
soon be interested in running 64 bit software. Have you seen benchmarks
on how Intel's X86 64 bit processors perform running 64 bit software?

http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163&p=1

 

[Dave C.]

Stop the nonsense. Compare chips similar in price and look at the
benchmarks.
AMD processors outperform comparably priced Intel processors for gaming,
business applications, mathematical calculations, and many other types of
applications.

OK, according to pricewatch, 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 anyobody 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.
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

Actually, I'm glad you called me out on this issue. I was previously under
the impression that AMD and Intel were pretty well matched. But on
reviewing the benchmarks again, I'd have to conclude that AMD is only a good
idea if you plan to do nothing but DX8 gaming with your computer.
Otherwise, you are wasting your money buying an AMD chip.

Again, 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.

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 9/20/04

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

Yeah, I know you are going to blast Tom's Hardware. It's funny that their
benchmarks agree with tests run by all the other hardware guide web sites,
though . . . including anandtech.

 

[JAD]

AND when THEY (whomever THEY are) are interested, will about the time
the 64bit software market will be ripe. Please test all the unknowns
now, so when I am ready, I'll pick up an Intel 64....

 

[kony]

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.
So on the gaming benchmarks, that's one win for Intel, one win for AMD and
one tie.
GAMING OVERALL: TIED

LOL!
If only it were that easy.

Business Applications: Office Applications: Intel blows AMD away
No


Business Applications: Internet Content Creation: Intel blows AMD away
Business Applications: Overall: Intel blows AMD away
No


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

Actually, this is the only place Intel ever makes any
significant ground against AMD.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Nope, unless you only count new apps, which raise price of
the P4.

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

Actually, I'm glad you called me out on this issue. I was previously under
the impression that AMD and Intel were pretty well matched. But on
reviewing the benchmarks again, I'd have to conclude that AMD is only a good
idea if you plan to do nothing but DX8 gaming with your computer.
Otherwise, you are wasting your money buying an AMD chip.

You must be a shill.
Only someone using applications proven to be P4 optimized,
that is, spending MORE money for these apps, can expect a P4
to even be competitive with an Athlon, let alone be faster
at anything save a few particular situations like video
editing, and even then, if ignoring older codecs, if
recompression is not done or new codecs purchased or bundled
with editing suite.

Again, 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.

Sadly, you are biased in favor of Intel.
There ARE good reasons to buy intel, IF you have specific
apps proven to benefit. ASSUMING that performance of a P4
on those specific benchmarked apps will translate into a
performance benefit on DIFFERENT or OLDER apps, is foolish.

Someone who's pocketbook is fattened by ultimate
productivity may easily be able to justify buying newest
applications, but it must be factored into the cost of a P4,
if you expect the performance seen in the benchmark.

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 9/20/04

Funny that, most everyone else knows that Intel is
scrambling to keep up. They can take the market back quite
easily, that is, the share they formerly held, by simply
dropping prices and relying on the perception of their
name-brand "quality", until they have more competitive
products that don't double as space-heaters.

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

Yeah, I know you are going to blast Tom's Hardware. It's funny that their
benchmarks agree with tests run by all the other hardware guide web sites,
though . . . including anandtech.

Actually there is a disturbing trend where reviews simply
assume companies and private users will buy newest versions
of all their software over and over again, even when it
costs hundreds of $$$ (for single user) or many thousands
for a company, even in support alone.

So add up the total cost of the software being benchmarked
in those reviews.. probably over $1000, perhaps much higher,
then what's the total cost for that P4?

 

[Dave C.]

You must be a shill.
Only someone using applications proven to be P4 optimized,
that is, spending MORE money for these apps, can expect a P4
to even be competitive with an Athlon, let alone be faster

Sadly, you are biased in favor of Intel.

That is really funny, considering THIS is what you responded to:

(I wrote earlier)

"I am a HUGE AMD fan. So it's
incredibly ironic that I should feel compelled to defend Intel against
repetitive, undeserved LIES posted on this ng and others about how AMD chips
are both faster AND cheaper than Intel chips. At any particular point in
time, that might be true, but it hasn't been true for quite a while, and it
isn't true NOW. For anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass, or an
axe to grind . . ."

Get thee your head out of your ass and learn to read. Benchmarks don't lie.
Pricewatch doesn't lie. I'm not biased in favor of Intel. I'm INCLINED to
be biased in favor of AMD. I can't read the unbiased numbers that ALL the
hardware-oriented web sites agree with and then conclude that AMD is a good
buy, at the moment. That is, unless I just wanted to bash Intel and truth
be damned. Intel is better than AMD, at the moment. That's from the mouth
of a huge AMD fan. I hope AMD does something to change this soon, and I'm
optimistic that they will, but at the moment, Intel chips are clearly a
better deal. -Dave

 

[Willi & Sue]

"kony" <[email protected]> wrote in message

"Paul Otellini, Intel's president, admitted to reporters at the Intel
Developers Forum, that the company has had "some fumbles" recently and
acknowledged rival Advanced Micro Devices may be slightly ahead in some
technologies. But he also suggested the company is ready to grab key
market opportunities as the next half-billion PC users come online. "


tinyurl.com/6l7w2


Willi