Poll: Stability

[KingofBladez]

heh, Ive never had an unstable system.
2 Intel 1 AMD

 

[vss1980]

After all these years going from 386 (AMD and Intel variants) machines upwards to now, I am often re-assured that any stability issues is always down to motherboard design/BIOS and chipset manufacturers.

The only inherently unstable systems I've ever had was a P133 system built using a very cheap 430vx chipset motherboard, and another using a K6-2 333MHz chip running on a Gigabyte GA-5AX ALi chipset board which refused to play nice with SCSI.

 

[MrThompson]

I think I should clarify something. Even though I have switched back to Intel, none of my AMD systems were unstable, even when properly overclocked. The AMD systems did take more work to get them stable though. Whether this has to do with Via or AMD is not clear. My guess is both probably contributed.

 

[Belegost]

I have to agree with the users causing instability. I live with a large family, and I'm the only one who buys computer parts. I maintain a box that is strictly mine, but when I upgrade I put my old hardware into the family computer.

I swear they can take the most stable system and turn it into a pile of rubble within days. Most recently I upgraded my aging P3-733 to a duron-950. I spent almost a day completely formatting and re-installing Win98SE (they refuse to use XP or Linux) and got it running stable. No more than 3 days later they were complaining that it was crashing...

The only computer I have had that they haven't been able to crash was a K6-450@333 on an Asus P5A, using Win98SE. I'm highly tempted to secretly switch them back to that...

That said, I have 4 systems running in the house:
1 stable Duron 950 running WinXP (current uptime of 36 days)
1 semi-stable P3-733 running Win98SE
1 stable Celeron 466 running Win98SE
1 stable K62 running Mandrake 8.1

 

[Boscoh]

Yep, I have to agree that the user causes a lot of the instability. Both from people that dont know what they are doing, and from people who think they know what they are doing. However, I think the poll should have been more along the lines of which company makes more stable chipsets for a given platform. VIA has way more stability issues with their current AMD chipsets than SiS or ALi does, and (Im not sure because I dont use non-intel chipsets for intel based systems) I think they also have a few of the same problems with their Intel based chipsets. So, I dont think the issue is wether you are going to have a stable system based on wether you chose an AMD or Intel processor, but moreso wether you are going to have a stable system based on what chipset you choose.

I have had more success with Intel simply because I only use Intel chipsets when I build Intel-based systems for people. But my home machine has an Athlon XP 1700+ @ 1.6Ghz on an Epox 8KHA+ KT266A board (which is IMO the best implementation of the KT266A on any motherboard, with the Abit coming in at a close second). Even though I have had more success with Intel, you will only take away my Athlon XP rig after you pry the case from my cold dead hands .

 

[Shaorinor]

Athlon system is more stable than my former Intel system.

 

[kvizbar]

I've had all of the above, my "most stable" being an Abit KT7A/Athlon 1133@1305 Windows 2000 workstation that had an uptime of over 6 months at one point. The least stable I've had was an Asus CUV4X/P3-750 combo that couldn't last more than a week running 2000.