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AMD or Intel?

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RWild

Programmer
Nov 14, 2003
53
US
Hello everyone. I'm back with a question. Sometime in the near future I am planning on building my own PC. I trust you guys a lot so I figured I would come here first and ask for your opinions.

What would you fellow Techie's suggest/prefer AMD or Intel motherboard.

Any input is welcome. This is going to be my first PC I am attempting to build. So any step into the right direction would be great!

I have a bunch of sites with Cases/Boards/Cards/Monitors and all.

Anyway the point of this topic, is not more of a "What's Better" but more of a way for me to learn more about AMD and Intel.

Oh and I'm sure this topic has been discussed on many occassions, so if it had...you could just point me towards a link of information if youd don't feel like repeating yourselves.

Thanks in advance guys.
 
The bottom line is both AMD & intel cpu's perform their jobs with perfection. You can build machines for both AMD & intel cpu's with the same performance, and the AMD machine will come out cheaper; that's why you will see more people here recommending AMD systems. For more in depth information, check out or
 
[blue]AMD or Intel?[/blue]

Ah, that's the million dollar question.

Truthfully, either type of system is going to give you solid all-around performance. Each has its own distinguished advantages.

If you supply a price range and what parts you need to purchase, perhaps someone might be kind enough to research a few options for you.

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
 
I would suggest Intel, many non gaming programms are optimised for Intel chips. However if you like to play games AMD might be a better choice. Intel chips have build in overheat protection, Amd chips do not have this protection and run much hotter. The choice is yours. For my private machine I am using the Intel P4 HT EE 3.2 chip, however this might be going overbord for most systems. The over 400 machines we are using on campus all use Intel P4 2.6 processors. But they are not optimised for gaming. Regards Jurgen

Jurgen
 
Sorry forgot something. Originally we used AMD chips in about 30 systems, however we had to scrap all of them within 3 month. The reason was; that during the rainy season we have room temperatures in excess of 45 degrees C. No air conditioning and the processors simply overheated and passed to the never never land. But this will not normally apply in other countries. Greetings

Jurgen
 
jurgen36
Interesting comments about AMD/heat related problems and I would agree to a certain extent but when you consider that many equivelant P4's CPU's produce just as much heat as their AMD countaparts, I have to say, the blame often lies with bad cooling choices and solutions.
Intel P4's do have thermal power throttling but then most AMD platforms have thermal protection as well (maybe not in the same way)
Obviously in your case more thought was needed in providing the AMD systems you had with a adequate cooling, I suspect all 30 units came with just standard retail fans and no extra case cooling but as you say 45C is pretty extreme for any setup and Intel are probably better equipt to deal with it overall.
Going back to the original post, either or would be fine but the often used quote: "bang for buck the AMD XP has it"
for your money AMD are able to offer a quicker PC at a lower price point.
Best buy on an average budget: AMD XP2.5+/2.6+ with a motherboard that has an Nforce2 400 chipset or slightly cheaper a motherboard with a Via KT600 chipset.
Choose one of the following makes: MSI, Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, Soyo, Soltek, DFI possibly Leadtek.
Try to buy just recognised branded components especially memory.
Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.
 
I'm running an Athlon xp3000+ - the fan is a bit noisy, but I don't care if it keeps things cool.

This is simply the fastest thing i've ever used - if you like gaming/audio/video you wont be dissappointed. I'm running with ATI Radeon 9800se with 512mb DDR333 RAM, 7200rpm hdd, and it flies - 3D rendering is totally seamless even under the most demanding conditions.

rates it as better than the P4 3.06GHz - it's certainly on a par - here's the review


Hope this helps

Ahhhhh, I see you have a machine that goes Bing!
 
Murgle,
There are so many types of configurations out there. The P4 setup in your review is running on the outdated 533MHz FSB (133MHz x 4) paired with PC1066 RDRAM. It has since been proven that P4 systems running on an 800MHz FSB (200MHz x 4) with Dual-DDR 400 are much faster in every benchmark. When compared to such a setup, the Athlon XP 3000+ actually performs a lot slower in just about every benchmark that doesn't have intensive floating-point calculations. Here's a review for you:


You can see that even the 3200+ struggles to match the 3GHz P4. It's also worth noting that the Athlon XP 3000+ is about the same price as the P4 2.8GHZ (800MHz FSB), and the 2.8GHz outperforms it as well.

If you are looking to spend less than $150 on the CPU, then the Athlon XP's start to pick up an advantage. This is why we need a price range from RWild before making any suggestions.

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
 
Well I'd be looking to the future on this and the Athlon 64's are the way to go.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator
 
Paparazi
Yes you are quite correct. The Intel chips just slow down at extended temperatures and continue working. This normally does not affect the operations. We still had an AMD machine and I did run some tests. Outside Temp 42 degrees C, bord temp 47 C, Chip temp 85 C. This was done with termocuples stuck to the processor or mainbord. At 85 C the processor did not fail. I elevated the bord temp by disconnecting the 6 input/output fans and run the sytem again. CPU and power supply fans remained connected. After 20 mins bord temp went to 51 C, CPU temp went up to 93 C and the Athlon chip actually started smoking and went to the big scrap heap in the sky. It didnt matter as we did not use this system anyway. May be this tests could be interresting for somebody.
Greetings

Jurgen
 
Sorry for my absence. The PC I plan on building isn't really going to be used for gaming much. It will probably just have Half-Life 2 on it.

As for a budget, I'm not to sure. So I will just give a number, and see where that takes me. 3500 should be good.
 
for 3500 you could build the fastest computer on the planet. You could build a soild machince for 800

Sontat Case
2 80gig ATA Seagates
ASus p4c800
p4 2.6 fsb 800
Dual DDR400
and a 9600 pro or xt

if you want to spend less than 800 then the amd builds are the best bet for your money, barton 2800 and nForce 2 mother board, and your done at just around 650.00



SLC: Greatest snow on earth!!!
 
AMD will always yield the most bang for the buck. If folks were honest with themselves (not trying to compensate for small PPs or TTs), most could be quite happy with a Duron 1600 system. See anandtech.com's recent comparo of budget processors. And for those that really need more, the XP 2200 or so should cover it. Put it on your favorite KT600, SiS748 or nV single channel DDR mobo - hard to beat. Look for P4 12V connector for powering CPU and you won't need an overly hefty PSU- I won't buy a mobo without it.
Extreme gamers are irrational by definition, so I'm not even considering them in this answer. But I think the Intel P4 has been shaded by the new AMD 64 bit chips...
.bh.


He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine.
 
Not going to be used for gaming, yet will have Half-Life 2, probably the most demanding game so far for hardware requirements...

With your specified price range, you have enough to just get the best out there, in that case don't worry about intel or AMD too much, because at the top they are roughly the same (XP3200+ is ~$200, P4 3.0GHz is ~$230). It's in the lower cpu's where AMD is the clear winner (XP2500+ is ~$80, P4 2.4GHz is ~$155).

Just make sure you get a very good video card for Half-Life 2.

As for the Duron cpu's, they're not really any magically cost effective cpu's either; the 1.6GHz Duron is ~$40 while the 1.6GHz AthlonXP is ~$50. The Duron just fits into the AthlonXP range where it should price-wise.
 
RWild
I was just wondering From which decade did you last check out PC prices, maybe the 80's because 3500 dollars??? if that is what we are talking/ will buy you 3 excellent machines or two absolutely outrageous ones.
For $1750 you will be able to buy a very decent machine indeed.
Now in this price bracket we can truely move on from the current crop of CPU's, AMD's Athlon XP and Pentium P4's, to the brand new AMD 64's or even Intels P4 Extreme.
With that sort of money I would be looking at:

Athlon 64 3.0+
MSI K8T Neo (Toms Hardware clear winner)
2x 512 CMX512-3200LL Corsair or similar
Thermalright SLK9000 cooler
Thermaltake XaserV Aluminium gaming case
ATI Radeon 9800 XT All in wonder graphics card
Creative Audigy 2 Platinum ZS sound card
Nice 18inch TFT monitor
Logitech wireless keyboard amd mouse
Pioneer AO7 DVDRW multiformat DVD writer
2 Hitachi 7K250 SATA 160gig HDD's Raided
Slot Pioneer DVD player
Creative Inspire TD7700 speakers
This lot would bring a smile to your face but then again I'm sure there will by 20 variations on this list at least.
Martin





Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.
 
Ah, the ol' slot Pioneer drives. I would never buy one of those ever again... They're pretty darn cool at first, but break down much quicker over time than the tray counter-parts. My 16x speed after 2 1/2 years it still reads normal dvd's fast and everything, but I try and read a cd or dvd that's even lightly scratched, can't do it; while my Panasonic drive reads them perfectly. I also had a 32x cdrom scsi slot Pioneer once, after like a year it gave so many read errors it was just plain unusable.
 
dakota81
Hmmmm? thats not our experience, we sell them and don't get any back, sorry thats not quite right (think we had 1 back last year) so don't know?
I've had mine for nearly 2 years now and the other 3 technicians all have one in their rigs with no probs that they have mentioned.
I remember one of them saying the disk mechanism had changed and he prefered the way the older units took the disk but anyways, I think they have evolved and are on their 2nd or third generation now.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.
 
Well in regard to Pioner drives it is interresting to know that they now seem to be used in a variety of different company logos. As example the Asus DRW-0402P,I-O Data DVR-ABP 4, Logitech LDR-42AK, Melco DVR-42FB, ST Trade DWR-ATS and the Teak DV-W50E are all Pioneer DVR-105 drives. The Pioneer firmware can be used to upgrade them etc. So they seem to be doing ok now. Greetings

Jurgen
 
paparazi, I just put 3500 for the sake of it. Showing that I really have no limit to a price. I know you can build a great PC for under 2000. I just used that as "safe point" a VERY safe point...
 
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