AMD vs Intel: The Attack of The Microprocessors

[KuRnUp]

i al going back and forth between four processors, and still dont know which to go by, SOOOO many pro's and con's. i would like to decide soon, i want to get my rig up. the four processors that i have been looking at are...:

AMD:

AMD 2500+ "Barton" w/ 512K L2 cache 128 L1 cache Bus 333mhz RETAIL = $189.00 @newegg.com (maybe not the lowest, but a good idea of what it costs.

some other AMD t-bred (reccomendations welcome)

Intel:

P4 2.53 GHz w/ 512K cache 533MHz fsb RETAIL = $192.00

P4 2.4 GHz 512K cache 533MHz fsb RETAIL = on sale for $164.00 @ newegg.com



Where will i see the greatest preformance vs. cost, but not only that, why?

I heard that Intels' run cooler, and much better for OC'ing, how much better for this are they?

how good are the stock heatsinks and fans on each? do they NEED a new heatsink and fan for normal usage?

stability is another issue i see brought up, but i also hear form a lot of ppl that the stability problems are a load of bull, im not horribly concearned with this.

any other comments? all thoughts are welcome, i need to figure out which i want, cuz then i can buy my mobo. WHY IS THIS SO HARD OF A DECISION!!! AHHHHH..

thanks for your input.

 

[dullard]

Welcome to Anandtech.

Its a hard decision because they are about the same. You won't ever notice a performance difference between those chips, and the price is about the same too. So yes it is quite difficult to say one is better than the other. But for the same reason, we can say they are equal: get whatever you want, you will be happy with your decision.

The stock cooler on the P4 is great for normal use and for overclocking. The stock cooler on the Athlon works great at stock speeds, but most people find you need a better cooling solution for good overclocks.

Overclocking is a gamble. Any chip could overclock well, or might not at all. People have generally gotten some good overclocks on the 2.4 GHz P4. The 2500+ is too new (selling for less than a week now) to have any good overclocking data. Tom's hardware got a good overclock in the 2500+, but that was a handpicked sample.

Stability is very hard to measure, and you won't often find anything useful on it from a forum. Some people will turn on a computer, run only one program for days on end and say it is stable. To me that means nothing. I only get crashes when I open/close many programs doing many different tasks. If a computer can do all that, then it is stable. My definition is so much more strict than other people's. Their 'stable' computer may very well crash over and over again in my use. Since no two people define stability the same, you will never get much info from an online forum. One thing to note: as a general rule parts made to be as cheap as possible tend to be less stable. AMD tried hard to be the value platform, so many companies matched the AMD chip with the cheapest possible motherboard, cheapest possible ram, and cheapest possible power supply. Put all that cheap crap together, and of course you might get an unstable computer. Thus AMD got a bad name - it's not their chips that crash, but the cheap-as-possible systems they were put into. However if you put an AMD chip in a high quality system, it will be stable.

The same goes for Intel - put an Intel chip in the cheapest possible system (E-machines ring a bell?) and you get a less stable computer. It isn't Intel's fault, but more the other parts that don't do what they are supposed to do. Normally though, Intel chips are put into medium to high quality systems - thus Intel got a reputation for less crashes. It isn't Intel that caused that, but the companies assembling and selling the computers...

 

[microAmp]

In addition to dullard said,
I would start looking into motherboards, find out what features in the motherboard you want in there and go from there. Maybe one board for a particular CPU will cost more than another board for a different CPU manufacture, but both have the same features.

 

[AluminumStudios]

I'd say it's a hard decision because they are so equally matched.

Do you have any specific tasks that you plan on doing a lot? P4's tend to be edge out Athlons on Multimedia encoding and such - partially because of SSE2 and partially because of a higher FSB speed.

I have an Athlon XP2200+ (tbred-a) and am happy with it, but I have it overclocked a bit and it IS very hot. However I've hard that the higher speed P4's are very hot too.

So I like the previous suggestion of looking at the motherboards and seeing which one has the features you want.

 

[oldfart]

The C1 stepping 2.4B and 2.53s are regularly hitting 3 GHz with little to no Vcore increase.

 

[Hottie]

AMD or Intel is all about personal perf. I always suggest people to get the best they willing to pay because most people arn't going to o'c. I myself have a 1700+ w/ nf2 mb running at 2.2ghz, I willing to take the risk is because
1) I can afford to burnout a $50 chip
2) if it shorten the life of my cpu to 1yr, I know I can pay $50 for a 2200+ a yr later.
3) nf2 mb is very new and should have a lot of life left.

So, is all up to what ur going to do w/ it. If for normal use, 2ghz cpu should last u a while.

For the mb, if you go AMD go nf2. For Intel, I don't really follow their MB.
But remember to get some good Q ram.

 

[Novgrod]

Were I in your position--and i kinda am--i would get a CPU at a lower speed for significantly less money, get a good heatsink + fan, and overclock it to a safe level. If you can put together a computer, you can overclock a cpu.

It is my opinion that you will find few deals significantly better than an overclocked xp2100 or 1700 even on an nforce2 motherboard. Sure, it's always an uncertainty, but my understanding is that both these chips have had exceptional results in the world of overclocking, and if you order from newegg the turnover is quick enough that you'll get a nice shiny new chip.

I can speak for the ease and price/performance benefit of this setup because i know about it; i can't speak against intel cpus because i don't own any and i haven't looked into overclocking 'em.

and i've built two nforce/xp systems in the past two weeks. i haven't done any rigorous stability testing, but i sure haven't noticed instability.

hope this helps; probably not compared to the already-posted replies

 

[majewski9]

I agree with hottie and dullard. I was expecting a giant flame war but I am suprisingly happy to see educated people posting here. If I were you I would get an NForce2 board and a AXP 2100 TBred. For overclocking boards you can't beat the Epox 8RDA and for featured filled go with the ASUS A7N8X delux. 200 to 250 dollars is what you'll spend for the mobo + CPU. I can't stress how important it is to get a quality power supply and RAM. You can't beat sparkle, enermax, or antec for quality power supplies. At least 300 watts will do and at most 400 but you can probaly make due with even less than 300. Quality RAM is also a must! Crucial and corsair have great ram. I suggest you pick up two sticks of 256MB Corsair XMS DDR 400. 512 is perfect ammount for WIN XP.

Technically speaking Intel chips do not run cooler. MHZ for MHZ they do but heck a 1ghz Itanium2 has over 100 watts power dissapation and thats almost twice any AMD chip. Reason is 4 megs level 2 cache for some Itanium servers. Pentium 4 3.06 ghz is also a very hot runner as well. Intel's cooling setup right now is a lot better than AMD's but the Athlon 64 seems to have even better system and the new cooling guidelines for Barton get rid of a lot noisy and just plain ineffictive cooling fans. So its kinda of a toss up when you really think about it. They are both hotter than any socket 7 or socket 370 chip. Heck if you want a super cool runner you cant beat the VIA C3!