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AMD vs. Intel - Another view...

C

cheuyungphat

Member
Hey everyone,

I'm getting ready to hop on the "treadmill-to-upgrade-land". I currently have a dual PII 300 rig clocked to 450. I know this is rather outdated by what most people here have, but I have not upgraded my trusty old BX chipset because I was not convinced about the stability/compatibility of chipsets offerered by other vendors. The AMD XP's are great from a cost/performance standpoint, however, I hear and read so many horror stories about problems that people have with the new chipsets. This is not to suggest that Intel isn't without their share of woes as I am sure many people have issues here as well. I must admit that I laugh when I think about 2,200 MHz Intel's vs. 1,667 MHz AMD's - kinda like a six-pack of "pounders" vs. six 2 ounce shots of whiskey. Intel "strong arms" in the MHz department while AMD is Brutal at a lower clock speed.

As a musician I use my computer as the main tool in my production studio, so yes, I need stability. One area of concern that I have is the ability to use devices on the PCI bus. What I find interesting is that most testing here seems oriented towards GAMING and the AGP bus, and concern is placed on whether the mother board has the proper PCI divider to keep PCI devices/cards "in step".

At another forum I attend - audioforums.com - there was a very interesting topic regarding the implementation of the PCI bus between both platforms. As one forum member "subhuman" says:



<< The CPU is only part of the system. AMD has a few advantages over Intel with their CPU designs for current applications, and has the lowest price, but Intel has superior platform and chipset choices, and if your audio is related to how well the PCI bus is implemented then there is no other choice but to go with the best in this respect, an Intel P3/P4 with Intel chipset. >>



and later:



<< I test the PCI efficiency of a motherboard by running realtime reverbs from my Creamware DSP cards. They don't use any CPU at all, only the PCI bus to access main memory.
Results look something like this:
VIA KT266A - error on first reverb, max 3 reverbs.
VIA KT133A - error on first reverb, max 1 reverb, 2 after very low level BIOS tweaks.
VIA KX133 - max 1 reverb
AMD 761 - 2-3 reverbs before PCI overflow, 5 max. (the best chipset for PCI & AMD)
Intel 440BX - 6+ reverbs
Intel i815(E or EP) - 10+ reverbs
Intel i845+SDRAM - 10+ reverbs
Intel i850 - 10+ reverbs >>




Take a look at the entire thread HERE.


Any ideas regarding this methodology for performance? Does anyone utilize the PCI bus heavily in their applications? For many people that are into Audio or Video work, I think this would be a VERY important read...
 
There are several chipsets that support the Athlon XP. Perhaps that quote is in reference to the PCI latency problem that the KT266A chipset suffers from. However, the SiS735, ALi MAGiK1 rev. C, and nForce chipsets do not suffer from this problem.
 
i heard that all motherboards with the nForce chipset also had integrated video and sound which makes them very expensive but you will just need to get a higher quality sound card and faster video card anyway
 
You should wait for the nForce 415-D motherboards due later this month. They will be rid of the GeF2MX graphics and will therefore be much cheaper. They are supposed to debut around $100. On top of that, they will still include high-end integrated sound, NIC, modem, etc.

The nForce 420-D boards are very stable boards too (I built one for my bro a couple weeks back) and they are very very fast. 😀
 
Thanks for the reply Bovinicus (and AWESOME name by the way!),

I have been looking into the Sis 735 chipset, but again I have seen so many people having difficulty setting up their boards...and from what I understand it is a "crap-shoot" whether or not you get a functional boards from ECS.

The ALi MAGiK1 rev. C looks to be a very good board - and in fact there are several posts in the audio forum I go to that mention how effeciently it handles latency (one individual there supposedly uses an additional PCI add-on "case" with something like eight additional sound cards). However, I read a review recently (can't remember where from at the moment...uggh) but it clearly showed that the performance of the board, while not poor, just could not keep up with other available options.

The Nvidia solution spooks me due to the fact that it is sooooo new. I tend to think waiting for a little while to make sure no "bumps" in the road appear, seems to be the best logic right now.

Don't get me wrong...I would love to plunge into something like a dual Athlon XP board right now and render til "the cows come home"... 🙂. I just don't see a lot of positive feedback for real-time solutions coming for the AMD platform (except the Ali chipset) I even read somewhere (a linux video website) that the developers of a linux video application were running into problems with the dual-cpu AMD solutions due to latency issues.

I think it is rather interesting that (as taken from the post at audioforums.com):



<< ...as far as I know, most people don't do much realtime work on their computers, or usually only with AGP graphics cards for gaming. >>



One would think that this would be an area of prime interest for chipset developers to focus on for those of us who are not big gamers...
 


<< However, I read a review recently (can't remember where from at the moment...uggh) but it clearly showed that the performance of the board, while not poor, just could not keep up with other available options. >>

Just try and make sure you purchase a revision 2.1 board. Some of the boards used an old PCB, and slightly different layout. The caused some almost significant performance decreases over the brand new version of the board.

Also, thanks for the compliment. However, the name is usually use is CowPimp. AT wouldn't allow that name. Bovinicus is my alternate name for just that purpose. =)
 
Those PCI Latency issues only affect VIA chipsets. As others have pointed out, neither nVidia, SiS, ALi, or AMD chipsets suffer from such issues.

SiS 735 is a fine chipset. The only other solution I can recommend right now is an all-AMD one, which can only be found on the duallie boards. AMD north bridge coupled with AMD south bridge (762/766 or 768).
 
If you are so concerned with stability then why are you overclocking? But anyway if you think you'll be getting problems with that PCI DSP card with current Socket A chipsets then buy an Intel platform. 845B with DDR and a Northwood 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz (if you can find one, limited release only) sounds like the best option for you. You'll give up some performance compared with going for an AXP system but considering what you're using now I doubt you would notice that small difference. It's all about perspective.
 
As with all upgrades you need to evaluate your system as it stands, what areas are weak? Where does the performance seem sluggish? It might be the case that you can keep your existing board and just upgrade around it. Pick up a pair of P3-1Ghz for example...
 
i guess i don't understand what the question is...

for what you want, the via platforms performed miserably and the sis and ali platforms are relatively unproven. yet the intel platforms performed flawlessly.

don't get me wrong, i like amd and they have excellent performance for the price. but why would you not go with the proven/stable/reliable setup?
 
Bovinicus...have you seen THIS? 🙂

Pabster and andreasl thanks so much for the recommendations...I am really looking into an "all" AMD solution or the Intel 845B now. I am currently overclocking my boards (cause 300 MHz is slow to render some audio mixes) but have not had a single issue with stability
(I have the old PII 300's with the 450 MHz core). I was thinking about upgrading to PIII's but I can only use the 100 MHz FSB
(no 1/4 PCI divider for 133 MHz) so for the money spent it seems like the gains would not be that great.

MCS, it seems as though my system is running very smoothly and efficiently (I have also disabed ACPI). I guess I am looking at working on my rendering speeds (MP3 and Video) and am not sure if moving up to a pair of PIII on the 100 MHz FSB would be a logical move or if I would gain a lot more by moving to some of the other platforms as suggested by Bovinicus, Pabster and andreasl. Would the slower FSB have any detrimental effect on rendering audio tracks (say 16 wav files, each with 2-4 DX effects running)? Thanks again everyone for the excellent advice!



 
Sid03,

I must have been posting my last reply just as you were posting... I am really leaning towards the Intel solution for just the reasons you mention. However, having the dual-cpu setup is extremely handy...and for this reason I am looking at AMD as well. I am definitely passing on the via and sis solutions for AMD, but the via 645 looks very tempting for the Intel side of things. But you are exactly right in that I should go with something that is proven stability wise. Thanks for your suggestions...
 
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