Should I go for Intel or AMD?

[jiffylube1024]

<< You may be able to oc to 2.4 with Intel P4....
But you must think about the future of all P4 mobos..
Intel is using the new mobo for 2.53 P4 and the mobo you buy now for 1.6A will be useless..

But if you get AMD mobo, you can use it now with current XP and T'bred in the future..
You must know that AMD will support T'bred for the next few years...
But Intel won't support 1.6A after this month...

Intel may be better for ocing... but you will have to buy both mobo and cpu again in the future to upgrade >>



Not true, except for the uninformed. The only thing that the new 2.53 Ghz P4 'need' is a motherboard that supports 133 MHz FSB (quad pumped = 533 MHz). Now on current P4 motherboards, people are overclocking 1.6A's to 150, 160 and even 170 MHz FSB on certain motherboards, the ASUS P4B266 being one of the very best for extremely high stable FSB operation; the ASUS P4S333 and P4S533 are also good for overclocking but not as good.

So, if you buy a current P4 Northwood motherboard, although you will not have 'official' 133 MHz FSB support, rest assured that the motherboards WILL support this FSB if you so choose to upgrade to a 133 MHz FSB CPU in the future.

 

[Hendrik]

For all those of us who don't wish to overclock their CPU's, an AMD CPU is much preferable to any Intel one. An XP 1800+ beats anything Intel has to offer at that price (unless you overclock a Pentium 4 1.6A).

As for overclocking, not all P4 1.6 will overclock to 2.4 GHz, and even if yours does, a severely overclocked CPU is likely to cause issues of one kind or another at some stage.

As for the whining about noisy Athlon systems: with a good heatsink and a 8cm Panaflo fan on it, your system can be as quiet as any Intel based one.

Last but not least, all that nonsense about instability with Athlon systems and stability with Pentium systems is just that: nonsense. An nForce or SIS 735 based system is as at least as stable as any Pentium one, in my experience at least, and even VIA chipsets seem to have improved a great deal, mostly with the transition from 266 to 266a.

The long and the short of it is that if you want to have a high performance system for little money, and you don't want to overclock, go with AMD.

 

[Sid03]

yeah, but add a "good heatsink and a 8cm Panaflo fan" and you've just thrown your price advantage out the window. a 1800+ (1533mhz)w/good hs and fan will run around $150. in a couple weeks, you should be able to get a northwood 2000mhz for about $160, and it will come boxed with an exceptional quiet fan.


<< Intel is using the new mobo for 2.53 P4 and the mobo you buy now for 1.6A will be useless...
Intel may be better for ocing... but you will have to buy both mobo and cpu again in the future to upgrade.. >>

more amd zealot fud.


<< You must know that AMD will support T'bred for the next few years... >>

ummm... right. if you think the t-bred will still be made in 18months, let alone a "few years", you are mistaken.

if you upgrade with amd, the next big thing is hammer. and for that you'll definitely need a new motherboard.


but to answer the question, i'd go with a northwood. (btw, i own both a tbird and a northwood.)

 

[lung]

I've pretty much well decided to go Intel for the time being. Probably an Asus P4S533 or Asus P4T533-C if I can get one, P4 1.6A and 512MB ram.. I think that should do me until next year when it will be time to upgrade again..

 

[PC166]

Why buy weaker processor that is just purely mhz? That have no muscle, and no steam either LOL. maybe I should stand infront of Best Buy and convince people to buy AMD based cpu instead, stronger, cheaper and more stable? Confused aren't we? buy both and you wouldn't have to ask which to buy You can then compare difference, if amd work better then buy more of it.

 

[lung]

Actually, I'm not confused at all. I would much rather have a quiet, stable system than one that will be far noisier and that uses a processor that is somewhat known for infrequent, random reboots. I do not expect the system I buy now to be around for much more than a year, as that is about the upgrade cycle that I am currently on. If it turns out that AMD is the better choice later on, I will go for AMD. For now though, I would feel alot better going with Intel. And realistically, I will not be disappointed with a P4 1.6a overclocked to maybe 2.4. It will still be quite fast enough to play the games that will be coming out, especially when I get a Geforce4 4200 or possibly the 4600. I feel that a quiet stable system wins out over a noisy system that gets a bit higher benchmarks..

 

[Hendrik]

Unfortunately the message has to be repeated over and over again: today's Athlon systems, incorporating motherboards based on nForce, Sis 735 or Via 266A/333 chipsets, are every bit as stable as any Pentium based system (and I bet a non-overclocked Athlon XP 1800+ system would be considerably more stable and trouble-free than the overclocked Pentium 4 system you're about to build - your loss!).

To claim the opposite is to participate in groundless and malicious campaign of defamation.

As for noise, you can put an 8 cm Pabst on an Athlon which will cool it very adequately, and which will make the Pentium 4 stock fan seem noisy in comparison.

I'm getting tired of this nonsense that people keep circulating, but someone should correct it whenever it surfaces, otherwise people might start to believe it!

 

[SSXeon5]

-P4 1.6a
-Asus P4B266-C
-Samsung PC-2700

And your set .... Intel all the way!!!!

SSXeon

 

[Acanthus]

ok i gotta throw in my $.02, I own an AMD Tbird, and i own a Northwood based rig, my northwood based rig is just as stable as my athlon rig, the people that say its "empty megahertz" are full of crap, the northwood@1800 with rdram kicks the crap out of my athlon1800+ system, and is much more overclockable. For now i would go intel, maybe in the future i will go AMD when hammer comes out, its all specualtion on how good its going to be, whereas Northwood/Prestonia is out now, and selling now, and you can buy it now. My P4 1800a runs with no probles at 2400mhz (aside for an occasional volt beep on the damned P4B266-C mobo, still need to figure out how to disable it, has nothing to do with CPU though) i would reccomend a Pentium 4 1.6a with an Asus P4S333/P4S533 (whichever you like more since they are pretty much the same.)

 

[clayman]

This is an interesting thread that i've been reading with interest as im going to get a 1.8A P4 on the weekend (tomorrow).

Until reading this, I was under the impression that the P4 was the way to go for audio/video editing and encoding. Many ppl have told me that the P4's calculations are better (whatever that means) and that generally its strengths are in this area, more than the Athlons. Have i been previously misled?

 

[Heinrich]

Well, from a political point of view, I won't be giving Intel any more money.

This fat giant obese ass of a company rested on its butt and allowed a far smaller company to at least "equal" if not even "better" them in technology. How embarrassing! And their attempts at market intimidation well-documented here and on tom's hardware show what kind of company they are.

We are all far better off with more competition. So I say help keep AMD in business and prepare for the next 10 years of fighting against a goliath of a company with huge, deep pockets with a little tiny vote of your money. We will all benefit.

 

[DoubleL]

Sounds to me like you had your mind made up before you asked, I build computers and don't really play games, I am into mostly photo and video work, I have a Asus P4S533 1.6a@2.133 but I use a Dragon+XP1900 Not over clocked cause it is faster at everything I do, They are both good stable low noise computers

 

[LordSnailz]

This fat giant obese ass of a company rested on its butt and allowed a far smaller company to at least "equal" if not even "better" them in technology. How embarrassing! And their attempts at market intimidation well-documented here and on tom's hardware show what kind of company they are.

You definitely need to do a lot of reading before coming in here and spewing out this crap ...

 

[THUGSROOK]

lol - i love listening to AMD guys try to talk about P4 northwood cpus when they have no idea WTH they are talking about

btw im running a P4 1.6A @ 2800mhz 175fsb 350DDR cas222 on air cooling.
...and i dont know a thing about AMDs

 

[iahk]

What is the big issue here? I thought it was known the whole time?

P4 Northwood = Good performance/Great O/C
Athlon XP = Great performance/don't expect to o/c much

For examples of Northwood o/cing abilities, check out Thugsrook thread hehe.

Me? I got a Northwood 1.6 @ 2.4ghz with Retail heatsink and fan on an Asus p4b266c in February. USB problems? Just stick all your USB devices into the hub. poof, USB problems go bye bye.

Last November, I was all excited about the Athlon XP. I thought it was great that they gave such great performance over the P4's price. But then came that day in February that I saw Expandable's post in the Hot Deal forum about the 1.6A Northwood. I will never forget that day. I've never switched bandwagons that fast before.

Who know's. I'll probably jump platforms again when Hammers launch.

Oh yes, about the video encoding thing. I can't really compare to the Athlon XP, but from benchmarks I've seen, the difference is very very small. For reference, I can encode to mpeg1 at almost real time. Probably like 1.2:1 For mpeg2, probably 6hrs for a 110min movie at double-pass vbr.

 

[HowDoesItWork]

Advice on these boards usually requires a huge grain (or bag) of salt. People have their little egos on the line and defend their choice at the expense of truth or reason.

I would recommend that people go to reputable sites and look for benchmarks. Keep in mind what you use the computer for. A good Quake III benchmark bears no relationship to a CPU's MP3 encoding performance (for example). AMD and Intel CPUs both have strong and weak areas. It would suck to take even good general advice and then choose a CPU that is a dog in what you want to do.

Now (taking my little ego out of the drawer). I have a 1.6A which I can overclock to 2.4, but it isn't perfectly stable (requires reboot every 1-2 days). It will run perfectly stable at 2.2, but it benchmarks a little slower at 2.2 in games (hey, that is what I care about) than my wife's athlon xp 1800 (not overclocked). My wife's system is perfectly stable. Do I regret my choice? No, because I really enjoy overclocking. I get a kick out of it, it is a hobby in and of itself. But I can't stand here and beat my chest about it either. An XP 1800 (even with decent HS and quiet fan) would have cost me about $30 less than I paid for my 1.6a and would have performed slightly better stock than what I can overclock the intel to.

 

[oldfart]

I've built (2) P4 1.6A's @ 2.4 GHz, DDR400 with EPOX 4BDA/(2+) boards and Samsung PC2700. Both run perfectly stable @ that speed with nothing but the stock HS/fan. YMMV. Some have got primo CPUs that will do 2.4 @ default 1.5 Vcore. The ones I have are "average". One needs 1.65, one needs 1.675. Others have CPU's that can't get there. The newer batches all seem pretty decent.