the truth about INTEL vs AMD

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Compellor

Senior member
Oct 1, 2000
889
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NOS440:

I've penciled my Duron only once -- and this was done 1 1/2 months ago.

As far your system setup kicking the $hit out of any TBird... Depends on what your running for a video card. Even if they're both using Geforce 2's, a lot would depend on which brand (Elsa, Asus, Hercules, etc.), as well as what set of drivers (there are so many...). Memory brand/type would also play a major factor. I still think Intel is better for gaming, overall, but AMD is just as good as any Intel based system -- depending on how good the other components are.
 

WyattBurp

Member
Jul 14, 2000
35
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mikelou26,

Here is my 2 cents:
1.) For reference, I own a Celeron (coppermine core).

2.) AMD's current core, K7 or Thunderbird is far more scalable than the PIII. The PIII is/was an excellent design but it is already at its upper clock limit.

3.) The P4 design has many problems now. It is far more scalable than the P3. However, for the present it is very inferior to the P3.

4.) AMD's K7 cpu is less expensive, but mobo's are more expensive. So do people actually save money? Well amybe if you toss in the Rambus RAM factor.

5.) I avoided AMD over concerns that software may not be 100% compatible. I may be wrong, or it may depend upon what uses on plans for their computer.

6.) Intel made this unholy alliance with Rambus. Rambus RAM sucks big time. It is technologically inferior to SDRAM and is far more expensive. I will cheer the day Intel dumps Rambus. Fortunately there still are choices that do NOT rely on Rambus RAM.

7.) The Duron vs Celeron battle being waged in computer stores is missleading customers. There might be 2 700MHz machines and the Duron may be less expensive, but what many DO NOT realize is that the Duron FSB is running at 100MHz vs. 66MHz for the Intel Box.

All of the above is just my opinion.

 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
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76
"everything
that u said
about the price/ performance
i have already
STATED"

What isn't in this world about price/performance? Under your persumption, why wouldn't I go and buy a Super Scaled 4x Risc RI2000A Processor system. It would BLOW away any Personal PC with FPU and MIPS. Why wouldn't I? Well first of all, i can't afford such a behemoth, and even if I COULD, it won't be practical because of the $200,000 price tag. It'll be some monster braggin rights but its just NOT practical. This applies to Personal computers as well. You have to analyze why you would buy the P3 1GHz, it depends on how much more it costs, how it performs and how it compares to the nearest competition. AMD Tbird 1.2Ghz $492 Intel P3 1Ghz $454 You be the judge.



<< BEFORE, I SAID VIA chip SET FOR AMD is buggy >>


And how would you know?? LOL!!
 

saint2608

Member
Nov 13, 2000
119
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I have run and sold both PIII's and AMD's. Dollar for Dollar, the AMD kills the Intel. Everybody seems to agree with that. How about comparing the Tbird 1.2GHz to the extremely hard to find PIII 1GHz and the AMD would in almost everything if not everything. The P4's are a joke. They are called that so Intel can advertise that they have the fastest chip in the PC market, but lets face it, for almost $1,000 for the 1.4GHz, how many PC's are they going to sell? It is a server chip (or will be whenever it actually hits the market) and is just used to boost Intel's name in the PC market. Sorry guys, I give AMD the credit for the better CPU's and Intel the win BY FAR for the better advertising. After all, for almost all people buying PC's these days, the chip manufacturer that makes the most money is not the one that has the best product, but the one that convinces the market that they have the best product, which Intel is superb at.
 

Compellor

Senior member
Oct 1, 2000
889
0
0
Mikelou26:

The older VIA chipsets had some problems, but the newer, VIA KT133 chipset (found on the ABIT KT7) is very stable. The only problems that still exist with it are the way the drivers get installed (people with problems are doing it wrong). The chipset, itself, is rock solid.
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Compellor thank god someone is telling the truth and not using VIA for a AMD crutch...
 

WyattBurp

Member
Jul 14, 2000
35
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mikelou26,

One last comment:
8.) The BX chipset is the best chipset that anyone ever made. VIA chipsets are completely inferior, although the KT133 is not bad. all the chipsets Intel has &quot;tried&quot; to make after the BX have either been targeted to the low end user (810 &amp; 815) or the high end (840 &amp; 850). The highend chipsets all rely on Rambus RAM and that's why even an 815 can beat those expensive alternatives.

 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
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NOS440 I think your making a fool out of yourself for not reading Compellor's post properly. He clearly stated that the OLDER chipset for the Classic Athlon had some problems(which have been fixed), not the newer KT133 Chipset. Which he stated as &quot;ROCK SOLID&quot;
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Dexion

I think you should read my post more closely I was giving him a compliment. Don't you feel salty. I agree that there is nothing wrong with the VIA chipsets. I still think the problems with the Classic Athlon was the Classic Athlon.
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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saint2608 the facts are not in yet on the P-4 so how can you make these statements. I refrain from speculating !!!
 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
0
76


<< I think you should read my post more closely I was giving him a compliment. Don't you feel salty. I agree that there is nothing wrong with the VIA chipsets. I still think the problems with the Classic Athlon was the Classic Athlon. >>



Salty? Not exactly. I think your more arrogant than giving a compliment. I think you should just go away and suck your Intel P3 sticker since you love it so much. Your giving BIASED opinions against AMD.
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Not Biased and I'm not insulting people. So go suck your Athlon sticker or would you like me to send ya 12 I have sitting here ......... LOL!!!!!!!
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Want to hear something real funny I'm wearing a AMD Athlon T-shirt as I type this .......LOL I figure someone has to advertise for them there to cheap to do it.
 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
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NOS440 Well its evident that all your doing is trolling on this thread. With little facts and more personal opinions, how are you contributing to this thread? Your more of insulting us with unthoughful and uneducated comments, in which would result with an equally insulting reply.

As much as you think that I'm some AMD fan, I'm not. I'm a computer enthusiast that has used and owned both Intel and AMD platforms within my lifetime and found that the current AMD products are vastly reliable with the best performance for the price.
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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best performance for the price.

I can agree with that. But I never base my buying decision on price it is my last consideration
 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
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Let me pose one question then. How much more performance and reliability are you getting for purchasing a P3 1Ghz over a Tbird 1.1Gz? How much more or less performance? How much more or less reliability or stability? How many more or less FPS? If you can justify that INTEL platform is worth the $100 more than the AMD with all those considerations, then I can easily say that &quot;you win&quot;.

What is your purchasing considerations, if its NOT the price?
 

Compellor

Senior member
Oct 1, 2000
889
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0
Well, being a die hard user of Intel CPU's for the past five years, I always saw the AMD and Cyrix CPU's as a joke. Before the Athlon came along, AMD just didn't impress me. They always had a slower FPU, and no gamer that I knew would own one. It wasn't until I saw the reviews on the AMD Duron/TBird that finally made me switch. Cost played a major factor, because I wanted to replace my aging PII 350/TNT setup with an inexpensive Duron, and a more expensive GeForce 2 GTS. This combo -- Duron and GeForce 2 GTS -- makes for one hell of a gaming machine!

If anyone here has played Deus Ex, you may have experienced sluggish frame rates. On my old system, I had to turn off most of the eye candy; with the new system, it's really smooth at 1024 x 768 -- with all eye candy on (looks awesome, too). I run Quake 3 at 1024 x 768, using 32 bit color and textures, and also curved surfaces set to max, without any slowdowns (any slowdowns I do experience are from network lag). Lag affects game play performance for me, not frame rate, since the game runs like butter on my machine.

I would have went with Intel again, had they lowered their prices on their current crop of CPU's. As far as AMD goes...I'm impressed, they finally got it right.

 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
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I havn't purchased a 1 ghz P-3 and I would never buy the top mhz processor from either company. I'm a avid overclocker and tried the Athlon Classic I bought 2 and found them to be very flaky compared to a P-3. Now before you freak out I realize that the T-Bird and the newer chipset are working alot better But that to little to late for me. Yes I'm am a Intel fan and the reason I am is I have never gotten stuck with a motherboard or processor that I have owned from them and I have had many. But I have 2 Athlon's and a Motherboard that I can barely give away in less than a year from AMD. That is a bad Value period...
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Oh Performance, realiblity, stabilty , features , compatibility and resale .......... :)
 

Renob

Diamond Member
Jun 18, 2000
7,596
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Compeller could you please tell my the right way to instal my via drivers. Thanks........
 

Dexion

Golden Member
Apr 30, 2000
1,591
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To me thats just a personal opinion, and it doesn't justify the extra costs. Infact, even Anand himself has chosen to use AMD for our forum servers which proves that its good in performance, reliablitity, stability and all that goodness.

Given that you have had bad experiences with older AMD athlons, however could the problems not be AMD itself? could it not have been poor motherboard or or problems with the OS? Which indirectly causes you to think that the problem is AMD? I also have a few new Intel boards that I purchased that I have given away, does that mean its bad platform? NO, computers are always advancing and the need of upgrading is in the eye of the beholder. There isn't anything wrong with a Classic Athlon, and due to its competitive pricing its still a great product, however its just not as shiney as it used to be due to AMD's and Intel's Newer products.

 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
1,960
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Well all I have to say is I know that I have personally built at least 50 PC's for myself and friends and worked on a number of Athlon systems(mostly Clasic) and I think Intel systems are much simpler to setup. Now I'm sure that the next thing you will say is that oh he probably didn't install the driver right the AMD stuff doesn't have built in support in windows. Well I've built 3 815 chipset PC's and have had no problems and also VIA Intel systems and had very few problems(neither of these have built in support). So why so many problems with the AMD platforms and I own a 750 chipset and a VIA KX133 motherboard and they both were a pain to get to work right and never did. In fact I had a weird problem with my own system on boot up and as soon as it reached the windows desktop I would get a weird bright green strip accross the top of the screen and a dead lockup. This was on the 750 and the via. All the same hardware on a Intel system works fine. nothing else change but the motherboard and processor. This would happen 2 out of 3 boots sometimes cold and others when hot no rime or reason with different fresh loads of windows. You explain stupid sh!t like this tried different power Supply's and memory you name I tried for 6 months never got rid of it. What would this do to your opinion of AMD ?????? is the 100$ worth the headache. Every friend that took the AMD dive along with me has done the same thing as I they have switch back and are stuck with there old AMD parts no one wants them. Explain these thing to me rather than being insulting. In fact a friend of mine that frequents this board just switched back I tried to get him to try another Athlon (TBird) and he said quote &quot;no Fukin way&quot; another has a compaq Athlon and say's he can't wait till he can get another P-3 but blew his wad on the Athlon. So are all these people and experiences wrong I think not.
 

Compellor

Senior member
Oct 1, 2000
889
0
0
Renob,

This was taken from the ABIT KT7 FAQ (but should apply to all VIA chipset systems):

A clean install of the operating system is recommended. The following installation procedure is known to work for Windows 98SE:

For a really clean boot ... boot into DOS using a floppy, then:
- Use FDISK to create DOS partition on disk (!!this destroys existing data on disk!!)
- FORMAT C: /S to format disk (use /Q for quick format) (!!this destroys existing data on disk!!)
Install Windows
Install latest VIA 4in1 service pack
Install latest VIA USB filter driver
Install Microsoft VIA USB patch (on Windows 98 or 98SE)
Install latest DirectX and latest patches
Install latest video drivers
Install latest sound card drivers
Install latest HPT370 software (on the KT7-RAID)
Install other latest drivers, e.g. joystick, graphics tablet, etc
Install applications

Prior to all of this, I disabled ACPI while installing Win98 SE (ACPI interferes with IRQ's), and also installed each individual card seperately in my system, AFTER the OS was installed and running properly. It's my belief that ACPI is the culprit of many peoples' problems (certain combinations of hardware don't work well when cards are all sharing the same IRQ).
 

ravedave

Senior member
Dec 9, 1999
541
0
0
the problem with setup is the VIA chipsets and not the athlons.
Apollo Pros are just as bad.

Me I'm a big cheapskate pennypicher.

I look at AMD technology:
DDR FSB
much better FPU
DDR ram (soon)
and I look at the price.
In most cases AMD is the winner.

as far as $4k server systems go I couldnt tell you but for the average person a duron is 100X better than a celeron and an athlon is the same as a PIII but cheaper.