Intel or AMD?

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The P4 Northwood/Prescott beats Athlon XP, but Athlon 64 beats all consumer X86 procs especially in gaming. Just take a look at any article over at anand or firingsquad and you'll see what I mean.

Since it is very easy to find performance numbers I'm not going to go into that any more than I have but I will go into slightly more technical aspects of the processors, mainly comparing LGA775/late end 478 against K8 based cpu, since K7 is a good deal slower than either. With the K8 AMD brought 64bit extensions and on die memory controllers to consumer level processors and workstations. The on die memory controller is where the K8 really works it's magic, it was also designed for dual core CPUs so the hypertransport doesn't have to split bandwith between the two cores as the FSB based Intel chips will have to. Both the newcastle and clawhammer are a little over 100 million transistors, but still significantly lower than either Prescott or Gelation cores, while still being about twice the transistor count of Northwood. Heat output on the Newcastle/Clawhammer cores is significantly less than a Prescott but still slightly hotter than a northwood. One of the biggest problem with Intel's Prescott core is that Intel's 90nm process isn't perfectected resulting in leaky transistors. Intel is also having problems fabbing and scaling there chips while AMD is plowing on ahead. Intel's flagship P4 (3.6GHZ prescott) infact has not shipped yet despite being slated for a late June release because yields are so low on proccessors that can hit that frequency while idling below 70C (I kid you not, these chips were idling this hot when they were sent out to reviewers, infact one reviewer couldn't keep it from going into heat induced shutdown using the stock heatsink). THey are also having problems getting ships to scale past 3.6 GHZ. Something that you should also think about is the MHZ increase each new iteration of the core recieves, both recieve a 200MZ boost currently however a 200MHZ boost to a prescott has much less efect than a 200MHZ boost to a newcastle or clawhammer. It is never good to be playing catch up in terms of performance and that is exactly what Intel is doing, Intel was hoping that LGA775 would give them a boost by having DDR2 and PCIE but if anything it's slower and hotter than S478 which means slower and hotter than Athlon 64, meanwhile Nvidia and Via are about to release PCIE SLI chipsets for Athlon 64 which would put them ways ahead of a competing P4 rig.

In short there is basically no reason to go Intel at the moment and most knowledgable people will corroborate this. BTW Athlon 64 is the fastest 32bit processor line. It's amazing how much BS there is about how Athlon 64 procs don't do 32bit when infact they are the fastest 32bit procs and they just happen to support 64bit extesions also. Btw don't try to dispute the fact that they are 32/64 because I'm using a Athlon 64 right now in 32bit windows.
 

floppybootstomp

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Hi Cantankerous, welcome to PC Review.

All very informative and thanks for your input.

Might have been a little easier to understand if you weren't allergic to paragraphs ;)

And what, exactly, is 'fabbing'?
 

muckshifter

I'm not weird, I'm a limited edition.
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Cantankerous, when "quoting" other peoples work, Please supply a link to the article ... we don't want to be accused of theft. ;)

:cool:
 
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bodhi said:
Spooky Mouse, why do you put a capital letter at the start of every word?! Dont know why, but its really buggin!! :)


Sorry Bodhi..... Is this any better?..... Just dont blame me if i slip back into my old ways..:)
 
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AMD all the way till the end of time...................

AMD are better value for money, Intel CPU's are overpriced.


Lookafter the pennies and the pounds will lookafter themselves!!!
 

Reefsmoka

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From my personal experience a P4 2.8 GHz will outperform an AMD 2800XP in everyday tasks, like web browsing, copying music and genral task like that. Though an AMD 2800XP seems to be better for games :s .

This is my own personal experience as a friend of mine has virtually the same spec PC except he has an AMD chip.
 
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Spooky Mouse said:
Sorry Bodhi..... Is this any better?..... Just dont blame me if i slip back into my old ways..:)

Yes Mr Mouse, that is much better. Was it not a bit of a pain in the ass having to do a capital at the start of everything anyway? Is that standard "mouse english"?
 
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Bodhi, you just questioned his mouse code! Wow! Even better, he gave up on one of his beliefs at your request- THAT`s influence!

*tongue is in cheek*

Kenny :)
 
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Damn right, he knows who's boss! Plus i have a cat that eats approx. 129 mice a day!!!!
 
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bodhi said:
Plus i have a cat that eats approx. 129 mice a day!!!!
You should really get some effective form of pest control.. And dont leave things out of the fridge overnight!!

It can attract mice... :)
 
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I think intel is much better

Hay, Mucks, have you noticed that the pic under all your posts is not working?

Cya guys

KGB
 
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floppybootstomp said:
AMD. I've never owned an Intel CPU, have built a few though.

Until recently, I'd only ever fitted AMD coolers, but I must admit I was surprised when I fitted my first cooler to a Pentium 4 3Ghz, twas a cinch.

And talking of 3Ghz, Ghz isn't everything, there are other factors to consider. AMD 3200 is actually performing faster than a Pentium 3Ghz.
i own a 3200 and compared to my friends 2.5, mine whopps his, mines sposed to run at 2.2 all our specs are the same and we tried installing games and mine took over his, leaving him in my fans dust, dude i'd think about amd alot although they are harder to fit, it only takes me about 10 mins (getting faster) compared to intel which is easier i must admit. but i have a mother board i cant get the processor out however hard i try! screwdrivers, blades, the lot! so good old AMD wins for me
 
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dude - you know you cant compare a 2.5 intel to a 2.2 AMD right? AMD use a much more efficient architechture so a Athlon3000XP can ONLY be compared to a 3.0GHz Intel P4 Northwood.
 
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im comparing it using ghz, and what i think is better, no rules or any of that but yes thankyou, and i did know that, you go through enough trouble of that kind looking for one to buy. :)
 
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the amount of GHz in a processor does not mean anything at all nowadays when comparing across the different types - you cant even compare Intel chips - the 3.0GHz 800FSB P4 is faster than the 3.06GHz 533FSB P4 and the Centrino 1.7GHz is similar to a P4 at 2. something GHz

the only real way i guess to see is a table of comparisons - using a test rig and only changing the CPU and Mobo to test.

Confusing!
 
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the speed of CPU's is generally based on 3 things:

(1) Clock Speed (Ghz)
(2) FSB (Front Side Bus) speed (Mhz)
(3) L1 & L2 Cache (KB/MB)

The L1 & L2 cache is basically where data is tempory stored, this data can then be fed to CPU much faster than if it's stored in RAM, the L1 caches is generally found on the CPU chip itself and the L2 can be either on the CPU chip or on the motherboard, newer chips have an L2 cache on the CPU which increases performance.

You will notice a cache when for example you cold boot your machine then access the control panel, it may take a second or two to load all icons, if you then close the control panel and reopen it straight away it will open a lot quicker. this isn't the L1/L2 cache alone, this is where your HDD cache and others come in aswell.

the above is a pretty shoddy explanation, google it and you'll find more info.

now to the point, the reason a CPU's clock speed doesn't seem as relevent and the reason an intel pentium m 1.5Ghz is equalling the performance of an intel pentium 4 3Ghz is that the pentium m chips have more L1 and L2 memory, especially the pentium m. and this memory increases performance more than clock speeds.

errors and omissions excluded (haven't read it through)
 
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christopherpostill said:
the amount of GHz in a processor does not mean anything at all nowadays when comparing across the different types - you cant even compare Intel chips - the 3.0GHz 800FSB P4 is faster than the 3.06GHz 533FSB P4 and the Centrino 1.7GHz is similar to a P4 at 2. something GHz

the only real way i guess to see is a table of comparisons - using a test rig and only changing the CPU and Mobo to test.

Confusing!
centrino 1.7 - i thou would be more like a 1.5 P or 1.6P - are centrino not cheaper and slower then the petium's ?

i've always has a intel - first computer was 333mhz - gave that 1 my bro when the PS2 came out - then i got a P4 2.2 ghz - i'm now goto get a cpu upgrade and have been lookin at the P4 3.0 !

this time i might go the amd way - still not sure !

any more view's on this subject ?
 
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Centrinos are actually faster - comparing Centrino to P4 is like comparing AMD to Intel.

Different architectures and all that but a smaller operating frequency gives more raw power :p
 

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