Intel chipsets are the most stable?

[Tony Hill]

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.

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]

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

*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.

 

[keith]

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]

You must have a pretty shitty car.

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

 

[JAD]

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.

 

[David Maynard]

Tony Hill wrote:




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.




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]

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?

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]

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.

 

[Roman Werpachowski]

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;

I had a good impression of them as well. And reading all reviews done by
guys with Russian names is kinda cool ;-)

 

[Dave C.]

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.

Yeah, it's that someone hasn't read the benchmarks OR shopped for
motherboard recently. -Dave

 

[Dave C.]

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.

Not that this will help ykalon, but for those who can read and don't have
their head up their ass . . .

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

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

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.

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]

Not that this will help ykalon, but for those who can read and don't have
their head up their ass . . .

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

Sorry not true as your OWN link to anandtech.com proves. And YES I ONLY
mean P4 3,2 vs A64 3200+. Go ahead READ it. A64 3200+ wins Quake 3 AND
Jedi Knight with a HUGE margin. This is your biggest lie. Intel is
closer to AMD in BOTH DX8 and DX9. But OpenGL is OWNED by A64.

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.

That is because most dx9 games are GPU bound, had they used an GeForce
6800GT or better AMD would win this too easily.

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

Sorry, 2 to AMD and one tied. Gaming overall = AMD wins. Had they used a
better videocard it would be 3 vs 0 for AMD.

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

ONLY if you use Sysmark. In REAL life they are about even.

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

Until 64 bit encoding comes yes.

Audio Encoding: Again, Intel wins by a landslide

Not that big a win. AMD is getting closer.

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

Actually in memory benchmarks AMD wins some since it has lower latencies
due to its CPU-integrated memorycontroller. If you DON'T use
Hyperthreading on the P4 the AMD wins both tests.

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

I don't trust sites sponsored by Intel (or AMD) to do a FAIR test
between Intel and AMD.

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.

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

READ it. What you say it shows is NOT what it shows. ESPECIALLY read the
2 OpenGL tests....

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

Most tests show that overall the CPU's are equal but yet you still claim
Intel is better value? Sorry but that is not true. The cheaper CPU is
ALWAYS the better value if they perform about the same. I am a gamer so
in that area AMD is even better value since AMD wins in 9 out of 10
games no matter what API is used.

 

[nobody]

(e-mail address removed) 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

[...]

This kinda proves the point - you don't have to have
all-(INTC|AMD|NVDA|insert your favorite vendor here) system to have a
certain level of stability.
Yet I would not rely on the server you described for any
mission-critical (or simply important enough) application. And again,
the workload you describe is not exactly stressful. Ever tried that
system for something that is both CPU and IO - intence? But then,
again, a compact car has no towing capability to speak of, but for
pizza delivery it's just the right thing, be it Honda Civic, or Toyota
Corolla, or even (gulp!) Chevy Metro.

 

[chrisv]

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

That's what the K6 lovers said, too. 8)

 

[chrisv]

You must have a pretty shitty car.

He meant "cart". It's what he pushes all his belongings around in.

8)

 

[chrisv]

The 3DFX, NVIDEA days were a real hoot.

Indeed. I still enjoy bashing nVidiots once in a while. 8)

 

[Never anonymous Bud]

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.

That's right.

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

But your conclusions are WAY wrong, as has already been pointed out multiple times.

I AGAIN I say, this is EXACTLY what John Corse did, completely mis-stating
benchmarks, in spite of ALL the other people here knowing exactly what they showed.

 

[Ykalon]

OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the ****
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

Your pals over at anandtech actually did a comparison test between two
$200 CPU's The Athlon64 3200+ (on socket 939 therefor dual channel
capable) and the P4 530.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2249&p=14

Oh especially interesting is the game tests. AMD won 10 out of 10.....

 

[keith]

Yeah, it's that someone hasn't read the benchmarks OR shopped for
motherboard recently. -Dave

You're the one using the argument. I simply turned the table around. If
you can't see how asinine your position is...

 

[keith]

That's what the K6 lovers said, too. 8)

....and it was true then too. ;-)