The eternal question: Intel or Amd?

[cmer]

Hi!

I am quite confused. I am looking to upgrade my computer and I can't make my mind... Intel or AMD. As you know, most review sites are geared towards gamers (which I am not). Because of this, it is quite hard for me to determine which brand is better for what I do.

I am currently looking at the Athlon 64 3500+ and the P4 3.2. I mainly do Visual Studio .Net development, but always have many applications opened at once. I don't do video processing that much (beside very occasionnal conversion). However, I rarely do something very CPU intensive. I'd like to speed up compilation time and solution opening. We have a 25 projects solution which takes forever to open, especially since it is managed using SourceSafe. I currently have an Intel P4 2.6 with 1 gig of ram.

Here are the reasons why AMD seems like a good choice for me:

- 64 bits architecture. Who knows how better it will be once XP 64 bits is out?
- Lower overall latency
- Overall architecture seems better (on paper at least)
- Apperently they are now running cool (are they really?)
- AMD seems like a best bang for my buck.

And here are the reasons why I think Intel might be better:

- Hyperthreading. I'm worried about AMD's performance when doing multiple things at once.
- Speed. With some benchmarks, overall speed is better rated than AMD's.
- Cache. Intel has more cache. But apparently AMD's architecture doesn't need this much to perform. Who tells the truth?

I'm sure many of you have or had the same questions... I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this!

I'm also considering either an ASUS (most likely) or an ABIT board.

Thanks!

Carl

 

[CaiNaM]

i use both platforms. having multiple apps "open" won't make much difference one way or the other; if 2 apps reguiring high cpu cycles are running, you would benefit from the intel. single applications optimized for hyperthreading will also lean towards an intel advantage.

if you require heavy multitasking, i'd recommend intel. if you simply run multiple windows of apps that don't require high cpu time when running in the background, most single tasks run slightly faster on the amd.

amd does indeed run cooler, if for no other reason than it can do as much work as the intel at a much lower clockspeed. as for "bang for the buck", it's really a tossup, as good value can be found on either platform.

in the end, it's really a matter of a system tailored for your needs; in most cases people would be happy with either.

 

[clarkey01]

Dont forget X86-64 with the athlon, future proof.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Dont forget X86-64 with the athlon, future proof.

how is that? by the time win64 offers anyd tangible advantages (and frankly you're misinformed if you think it offers that many), current parts will likely be long obsolete anyway.

performance differences are likely to be minimal, if any. win64's biggest advantage is memory access, and frankly it will be some time before desktop users require (and even afford) more than 4GB memory.

legacy hardware compatibility will also likely be an issue.

the migration from 32-bit to 64-bit will take years (as did 16-bit to 32-bit). heck, just look at all the winME questions we still see in the forums, lol...

"future proof" is a term that simply does not apply to these types of discussions; there is no such thing in an industry where some parts of technology evolves so quickly, especially when the software side lags way behind, and (application software) replacement is often cost prohibitive.

servers will gain an advantage by moving to a 64-bit environment long before desktops will, and the a64, which we are discussing here, isn't even in that market (see opteron).

 

[stevty2889]

Dont' forget that the EM64T enabled prescotts with 2mb of Cache will start showing up shortly as well. But yeah for heavy multitasking, and visual studio, the Intel chip may give you better performance. A64 will liekly have the advantage if you don't do heavy multitasking, and they do run cooler.

 

[zakee00]

I would say intel on this one.

 

[clarkey01]

well he's buying now , I dont think EMT 64 come out for another 2 months or so.

If it can run on win64, to me that says future proof, regradless of performance, but if you wanna slate me fine.


I say go P4, try and get a northwood 3.4 Ghz, Im not a fan of prescott and its BBQ temps.

 

[BitByBit]

In all the benchmarks I've seen that include Visual Studio, the Athlon 64 platform wins outright in code compilation.
If this is, as you say, what you primarily intend to use your computer for, then the choice is obvious.

 

[clarkey01]

Heavy Mutlitasking cripples athlons, so I say Penitum 4 this time, even if the athlon wins in the tests, aslong as it doesnt destroy the P4 then dont bother.

 

[BitByBit]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Heavy Mutlitasking cripples athlons, so I say Penitum 4 this time, even if the athlon wins in the tests, aslong as it doesnt destroy the P4 then dont bother.

As far as I know, the *only* advantage the P4 has over the Athlon in multitasking is Hyperthreading.
Before HT, most reviews had put the Athlon above the P4 for multitasking.

Here is an exerpt from the following Link...

Many people think that, because of HyperThreading, multi-tasking should be much smoother on a Pentium 4 than on an Athlon 64. While it is true that HyperThreading can provide a large benefit in multitasking situations, in my experiences the Pentium 4 is still significantly less responsive than the Athlon 64, even in situations involving heavy multitasking.

Note: I am not trying to start a flame war here.
Interpret the above as you will.

 

[Snoop]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Heavy Mutlitasking cripples athlons, so I say Penitum 4 this time, even if the athlon wins in the tests, aslong as it doesnt destroy the P4 then dont bother.

Link?

Athlon 64 3500+ and the P4 3.2

I would go with the 3500. (IMO not a tough choice)
If you want a little more indepth review of these chips try Aces Hardware.

 

[Sc4freak]

Less responsive? That doesn't sound right. Hyperthreading, even if it doesn't benefit a program, is supposed allow a much faster response time by using the other (unsused, since the program is not suing HT) logical processor. I've noticed that enabling HT while running a CPU-Intensive program in the background helpes a lot to improve responsiveness. Without it my system was more laggy and unresponsive. Also, while running a program which could take advantage of HT, I noticed a 30% increase in performance compared with HT disabled.

 

[Vette73]

AMD Athlon64

 

[clarkey01]

Snoop, its well known P4's excel @ multitasking and Im more pro AMD , its just fact.

When I run norton on my 2000+ its just stops, run it on my 2.4 C and its like its not even there, same with my 2.8C. But even with 400 Mhz/Pr points more on 2.4C, the difference is stupid, and the athlon has more ram too.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Snoop

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Heavy Mutlitasking cripples athlons, so I say Penitum 4 this time, even if the athlon wins in the tests, aslong as it doesnt destroy the P4 then dont bother.

Link?

Athlon 64 3500+ and the P4 3.2

I would go with the 3500. (IMO not a tough choice)
If you want a little more indepth review of these chips try Aces Hardware.

it's the great consipiracy

if you search, you can find a few articles/reviews which touch on this, but for the most part the issue is simply ignored. a quick example:

Multi-task your precious, and watch how an AMD CPU bends over like a... (whoops, were not in the Tech Flame). Ugh, it will not be good.
Maybe its because Im one of the few real power users. Im burning DVD's, ripping audio and transfering to my NOMAD, and playing Far Cry(or other simular high end game) all at the same time almost every single day. Not to mention many other small side tasks like recording radio broadcasts also running in the background. I cannot even imagine how much pain an AMD64 would cause me on a daily basis.

Supposing all I do is burn movies and play high end games, how much time would an AMD64 cost me. Im burning about 6 movies a night(ever since I got the unlimited rental special at Blockbuster for $25/month. Of couse I oown the movies Im burning. The Blockbuster thing is...a coincedence). If Im only burning movies, it takes an average 25 minutes per movie start to finish. If Im playing a high end game, add about 2-3 minutes. A friend of mine has an AMD64 3200(I have a 3.0C), and he uses the same programs I use. His takes about 3-5 minutes longer than mine on average when its done as the only task. Now, when he trys to play a game its quite a different story. First off, his frame rates in Far Cry(and pretty much any game like that one) get real close to unplayable(I have an Albatron 5900 non ultra, he as an Asus 9800 Pro - the real nice 9800Pro). And the movie, omg, it more than doubles the average time to complete. I do 6 movies in 3-3.5 hours while playing games with good FPS. His games get sh8tty FPS, and would take him roughly 6-7 hours to do the same movies. To me, that means I would have to choose between making movies OR playing games, not both. Instead, I choose Intel and do both.


The combination of the 3.6GHz Prescott and the 925X chipset seems to be a potent one for multitasking. The higher clock rate really seems to give Hyper-Threading a boost, something Intel has suggested would be the case. We see a dead heat with the P4EE in the Business Winstone multitasking tests and substantial leads in the PCMark tests. The Norton AntiVirus/Photoshop Elements test sees the Northwood actually edging out the higher clocked Prescott. Of course, the Athlon 64 fares poorly in these tests. ~ ms partner - channel insider newsletter


For the multitasking scenario, we chose to run Norton AntiVirus in the background while using Windows Media Encoder 9 in the foreground to convert a 30-second AVI clip to a high-quality WMV file. We report the time it took to run just the video encode by itself and with NAV running in the background. The results show that Intel's Hyper-Threading clearly pays off. The Pentium 4 took about a minute less time to run the multitasking test than the Athlon 64 FX-51 systems did.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.

Processor

For the same price, we probably could have a socket-754 Athlon 64 chip, perhaps a 3000+. This may have bought us a little speed on individual benchmarks, but we had a very good reason for choosing a Pentium 4 in this configuration. Our machine is meant to watch and record TV, rip CDs, watch DVDs, do offline 3D rendering, edit photos--you name it. Frankly, the Pentium 4's HyperThreading feature makes it a much better multitasker than the Athlon 64. When you load up the CPU with very intensive tasks, HyperThreading lets you continue to perform other tasks without the system becoming quite so unresponsive. To see what I'm talking about, look at the multitasking performance charts from our most recent Pentium 4 CPU review.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/...s_200406/ai_ziff130578

and here's a recent 300 post dicussion on it from these forums.

 

[VIAN]

IIRC AMD was faster with compile times than Intel.


MULTITASKING

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,1558,1606719,00.asp
(socket 754)

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,1558,1606730,00.asp
(socket 939)

http://www.zdnet.com.au/review...3397,39157363-5,00.htm
(socket 939)


COMPILING TIMES

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipse...c.aspx?i=1941&p=11
(both sockets)

 

[flyswatter]

Intel for video and intel optimized apps.. Amd for gaming, other apps, and electricity

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: VIAN
IIRC AMD was faster with compile times than Intel.


MULTITASKING

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,1558,1606719,00.asp
(socket 754)

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,1558,1606730,00.asp
(socket 939)

http://www.zdnet.com.au/review...3397,39157363-5,00.htm
(socket 939)


COMPILING TIMES

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipse...c.aspx?i=1941&p=11
(both sockets)

unfortunately the multitasking tests paint a poor picture.. they are very specific tests, and frankly not very revealing.

the only area where the amd's score well vs the intels is "scenario 1", which consists of file tasks in the background - very poor as a test as it's requires little cpu. the other tests which require a bit more cpu time (tho arguably not much more) shows the intel systems significantly faster, and gives you a glimpse of what is going on. this disparity only increases as the cpu requirements for the foreground and background tasks are increased.

as for the compiling tests, it's a logical conclusion the amd would fare better - it's faster at single tasks, something i've never questioned. the shorter, more efficient pipes of the a64 as well as the lower latency provided by the on die controller is highlighted here. compiling stuff under linux has proven this to me over and over. another area where my amd excles over my intels is file compression, however this changes if i'm compressing two files at once instead of only one.

what would be more interesting (and actually relevant to this discussion) is to see how compiling a second task would affect the test. i'd bet money it would bring the amd to it's knees, as my own tests have shown this to be the case.

at any rate, when the dual cores finally make it to market, i'm not sure how intel will compete unless they completely revamp their architecutre, as it seems to me amd will have overcome their last legitimate weakness when comparing to intel. imo intel will really be hurting in the desktop market.

Originally posted by: flyswatter
Intel for video and intel optimized apps.. Amd for gaming, other apps, and electricity

actually my amd does just fine (compared to my intel) in video - as long as i'm not doing something else like playing hl2 or WoW while something is encoding in the background, in which case my amd is almost useless. hl2 suffers from erratic framerates, and the background encoding task takes several hours longer (4 or 5 times longer the last time i tried it iirc). the intel on the other hand has solid framerates, and the encoding times are minimally longer.

when encoding is the only task, my amd's are as fast or almost as fast (no worse than the 10% give or take my intel gives up to the amd when gaming), and when encoding audio in some cases it's even faster.

 

[slash196]

I guess you can't wait for dual core then, huh?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: slash196
I guess you can't wait for dual core then, huh?

True. I agree with what most people say above. However Intel is not THAT much better in multi tasking. Yes there is a tangible difference but the heat and power consumption are glaring faults also.

Also you could get dual opterons (140 IIRC). If you do as much multi tasking as you lead us to believe dual opterons will be WORLDS faster than P4HT.

-Kevin

 

[asm0deus]

if i could afford i would have gone intel, but im poor, and my money is better spent elsewhere. amd64 is a great upgrade though, whenever i get my finances straight i plan on having both intel and amd side by side. tons of speedy RAM and fast HDDs can make the difference too. if you're encoding to the same drive you're playing games from is not the best way.

 

[sonoran]

Originally posted by: cmerWe have a 25 projects solution which takes forever to open, especially since it is managed using SourceSafe. I currently have an Intel P4 2.6 with 1 gig of ram.

You don't need a faster machine so much as you need a gigabit network, with the servers located on the same subnet you're on.

Seriously - I can't imagine a slightly faster client machine is going to make much difference here.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: slash196
I guess you can't wait for dual core then, huh?

yea, i think it will absolutely rock

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
True. I agree with what most people say above. However Intel is not THAT much better in multi tasking. Yes there is a tangible difference but the heat and power consumption are glaring faults also.

it depends on what you're doing. in some cases intel is most definately THAT much better. fortunate for amd the majority of users don't game and encode at the same time

at the same time, it's hardly fair to overplay the difference in heat/power consumption while underplaying the differences in multitasking.

i would say that, in more circumstances than not, the intel is not quite up to par with the amd, and dual core/single cpu designs will likely eliminate what i see as the only "achille's heel" of amd. imo the overall design of the amd64s have an advantage over intel, but there are just some things that I do on my pc where my a64 disappoints; dual core should eliminate that.

bottom line is neither brand is perfect, and both have their strong and weakpoints (i also think overall intel has more "weak points", but while legitimate, many people overexaggerate these points). how that plays into things depends largely on your needs for a pc, but the fact is neither is incapable of doing all things pretty well; sometimes one just does it better than the other, but both architectures are quite capable of getting the job done.

Also you could get dual opterons (140 IIRC). If you do as much multi tasking as you lead us to believe dual opterons will be WORLDS faster than P4HT.

-Kevin

but a p4 w/HT will handle it just fine. i don't want the expense and complexity of a smp system, and it's hardly fair to compare a dual cpu system to a single cpu system.