Which is better?

[RollWave]

I have 2 rigs now and I'm just wondering which is better? the A64 or the Intel 3.0C?

 

[JBT]

Better for what? A64 is def "better" for games.

 

[RollWave]

What about general usage? And is the gaming performance hands down to the A64? What about without XP64bit?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Uh-oh, time to don the asbestos suit...

A64 is better at gaming.

I'm not really certain what the intel processor is better at. Encoding divx and mp3 comes to mind (although I've seen benches that seem to put amd pretty close to intel in those as well).

 

[RollWave]

excellent

 

[RollWave]

My intention wasnt to start a flame war, I was just curious since I'm running both procs

 

[n7]

They are both good.

Why don't you bench both & compare yourself ?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: rnp614
What about general usage? And is the gaming performance hands down to the A64? What about without XP64bit?

As far as gaming is concerned, I haven't seen a single benchmark here (on anandtech) that shows an intel cpu beating any A64 cpu in gaming performance at a given price point. I don't follow other sites as closely as I do this one, but most seem to support this.

What do you mean by general usage?

 

[RollWave]

different vid cards :/ so I cant bench really. General usage = lots of MS Office progs open and browsing web/email

 

[SilentZero]

Originally posted by: n7
They are both good.

Why don't you bench both & compare yourself ?

This would be my suggestion also, and the most logical one.

 

[RollWave]

Oh and the Intel is running raid zero, the A64 is not. these systems are too different to get any real results I feel...

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: rnp614
different vid cards :/ so I cant bench really. General usage = lots of MS Office progs open and browsing web/email

Well, if the intel processor has hyper-threading then it has a real advantage over the amd processor, at least in general usage as you define it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For most "general usage" there is no real advantage to spending the money for either, both offer much more CPU power than you'll ever need.

It's only for applications that actually load the CPU, like playing a game or encoding an MP3, that you should care about benchmarks.

The fact that one can process 10,000 keystrokes a second in MS Word doesn't really make it better than one that can only process 5,000. Even something like MP3 encoding only matters if you actually do a lot of it.

My music server has a "slow" Tualatin 1.3 GHz processor that takes ten minutes to rip and encode a music CD. But since I only buy a couple of new CDs a month, I'd get almost zero benefit from buying a 3 GHz CPU to reduce the rip and encode time to 6 minutes for just 2 CDs a month.

Well, if the intel processor has hyper-threading then it has a real advantage over the amd processor, at least in general usage as you define it.

that's true when/if any one task is heavily loading the CPU. Having a bunch of essentially idle applications doesn't really favor one over the other.

 

[l Xes l]

In most of apps.. intel faster
In every game.. AMD faster..

 

[MobiusPizza]

Video/Audio Encoding: Intel
WinRAR compression and decompression: AMD
Science apps, Mathematica: AMD
Games: Same price point, AMD (Inc. cost of DDR2 VS DDR, motherboard)
Multitasking: Intel

 

[Appledrop]

Originally posted by: krnxpride83
In most of apps.. intel faster

uh oh.. *MUST RESIST TEMPTATION*

 

[Pabster]

Put on the flame suits, gentlemen

Of course the 3.0C is the superior chip. That is, for multitasking and especially for audio and video encoding. If you are a big gamer, the 3000+ is faster, but with a 6800 or X850 you'd never notice.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Azzy64

Originally posted by: krnxpride83
In most of apps.. intel faster

uh oh.. *MUST RESIST TEMPTATION*

I know how you feel hehehehehehe

 

[RollWave]

I guess my bottom line is that my X800XT AIW card seems to get along much better with my A64 board

 

[Oyeve]

NM

 

[dmw16]

MS Office progs open and browsing web/email

What does good performance in MS Office look like? I can only get about 30fps in Excel with my computer. Maybe I need a faster video card.

 

[RollWave]

I meant ability to go from one to the other and having multiple PDFs and the like. But I guess those things are Ram dependent more than CPU dependent.

 

[RussianSensation]

ANSWER

Of course A64 3000+ has the potential to oveclock to 2.6ghz or more. Every 200mhz increase in speeds for a64 results in a much larger speed increase than 200mhz for Intel.

Also look here:

Interactive CPU charts

Hopefully these will help to answer your questions without Bias.

 

[Dman877]

Six of one, half a dozen of another. The P4 has a slight edge in multi-tasking (with cpu-intensive tasks, the difference is negligable in my experience, only in lighter task does HT help any) while the A64 is slightly better in games. Encoding can go either way, it depends on the apps you use.

For office/internet use, I'd prefer the A64 because it clocks down to 800 mhz (those tasks don't use any cpu at all fyi) and uses less power.

 

[RollWave]

Hrm having a problem with the A64:
I have 1 stick of 512mb Corsair XMS that is working fine (i'm using that comp right now) but when I put in the second stick the computer doesnt do anything. The screen just sits black and nothing comes up. I've read the site and I believe that I use slots 2 and 4 for Dual Channel. Are there any settings I need to check or change?