The Great Debate - AMD or Intel

Hey All :D

I'm thinking of buying a new system and i'm having a little bit of trouble deciding between these two cpu's.

Basically the choice is between the Intel P4 2.8 GHz (800FSB) and the AMD Athlon Barton XP3200+ (400FSB).

The system will (Hopefully :D ) be a supped-up gaming rig and thust needs to be able to handel next generation games.
I've been told that the superior Mhz & fsb level of the p4 puts it ontop. However on the other hand, i've also be told that the AMD's extra featuers ie mmx, 3dNow!+ put's it ontop... :confused:

So which cpu would be best for gaimg ?

Cheers, Dave. :D :D :D

well. it breaks down simply, are you rich?

if yes, get intel, the fastest one you can afford (or would like to speand)

if no, get an 1700 JHUIB and an nf7 v2 and clock it to 2.5 ghz

personally i'd go intel (cant belive im saying this :E )

AMD 1700+ or 2500+ @ 2.5Ghz will beat upto bout 3.5Ghz P4 :P

Sorry I should have said, i'll probably be running everying at stock speeds.

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Originally posted by Dave_07
Sorry I should have said, i'll probably be running everying at stock speeds.

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So how much cash you got to spend ?
Just the system you need, or a moniotor, keyboard mouse ect.. aswell ?

Yup, the whole thing will be from scratch.
I've been working my butt off and have saved up about £1800.
Could stretch to 1900.

If you've got that sort of money - go for the P4 - the current springdale and canterwood platforms are basically superb, and feature laden, and P4s tend to cause less thermal problems in the summer.

As an AMD fan, however, I will now have to spend the next week apologising to my entire spec. for betraying it.

personally i am dissapointed with my P4 setup over my athlon setup,

for a 900MHz increase in clock speed, SETI is only 10-20 minutes faster per WU, and 3DMark is less than 1500 3dmarks higher (2001), for a £135 processor i expected more tbh :p

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Originally posted by SKILL
personally i am disappointed with my P4 setup over my athlon setup,

for a MHz increase in clock speed, SETI is only 10-20 minutes faster per WU, and 3DMark is less than 1500 3dmarks higher (2001), for a £135 processor i expected more tbh :p

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Thats because the cost : performance ratio of AMD's is unbelievable at the moment.
2400Xps for about £60
2600's for £75

Cost wise they cant be beaten, its only when you get to the high end of the processing market intel is winning at the moment, and even then, at a stupid price IMO.

personally id just go with the best you can afford. personally for me thats AMD, and currently pound for pound, you can get a lot more AMD for your money i think.

Are AMD not going to be setting out a new line soon, i can't remember the factory name of it at the moment...
Could these be AMD's answer to 800fsb p4's ?

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Originally posted by Dave_07
Are AMD not going to be setting out a new line soon, i can't remember the factory name of it at the moment...
Could these be AMD's answer to 800fsb p4's ?

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64bit is the next big step :)

you *can* acctually buy them at the moment if your willing to pay premium prices :)

AMD have the hammers witch will be there next line of chips hopefully, they have constantly been delayed all year there will eb the, SledgeHammer and the ClawHammer when they finally arrive that is anyway. To be honest the bottom line is that AMD offers better value for money but Intel offers faster performance because they have such a high FSB (800) witch at the moment AMD just cant match.

a bit OT but, are the 64bit chips compatible with 32bit stuff? u dont need a 64bit OS and Apps etc?

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Originally posted by Matt
a bit OT but, are the 64bit chips compatible with 32bit stuff? u dont need a 64bit OS and Apps etc?

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The AMD solution will allow 32bit app's to run on them, intels wont.
Im not 100% up on 64bit at the moment, need to check a few things before i say anything more :)

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Originally posted by Agent
The AMD solution will allow 32bit app's to run on them, intels wont.
Im not 100% up on 64bit at the moment, need to check a few things before i say anything more :)

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apparently the new Intel 64Bit chips (in the pipeline - not Itanium which is already out) will run 32bit apps but very poorly as they do so via Emulation and not dedicated like AMD's hammer.

intel don't have a 64bit/32bit processor in development at this time for the desktop market, they might hack prescott about to do this, but somehow i doubt it...

TiG

As far as I recall, there was a processor Intel were working on (codenamed Yamhill?) that took a similar approach to AMD in that it would run 32 and 64 bit code natively, but development was dropped in favour of concentrating on Itanium and Itanium2 (which do run 32 bit code in emulation and right poorly at that :) )

yer Nicomach this is what i said, yamhill is the rumour that 64bits will be added to the prescott chip.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/23835.html

Thanks
TiG

Quote:

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Originally posted by Agent
The AMD solution will allow 32bit app's to run on them, intels wont.
Im not 100% up on 64bit at the moment, need to check a few things before i say anything more :)

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That's a VERY dangerous move by Intel! Not supporting any current software or even operating system could be detrimental to them!

If that right then Intel must have something else up its sleeve. Theres no way that huge company like this is gona give away its market share. Not a chance

AMD offers excellent value for money, especially if you overclock, the performance increase margin on a top end Intel rig does not warrant the extra expense involved (unless you're rich) :)

i would go for the AMD system, personally, with a top notch cooler like the SLK-800. (mainly for price reasons)

but if I had all that cash, I'd wait a while till you can get a dual opteron system with AGP / or a PCI-X graphics card. Or maybe if the Athlon64's will let you have them as a dual CPU system...

alternatively I would be tempted to get a laptop, or replace some of my PCs with Hush PCs. mmm silence...

A few of you are saying he upcoming intel can do emulation ?, but how much if this is hardware side ? as emulation is usualy done via software and not hardware.

Intel will be bringing out a newer P4, which is basically just the same CPU but faster... still 32bit.

The 64bit Itanium II will be able to run emulation through software, but this is purely a server CPU.

So I guess Intel are going to continue offering 32bit P4 CPU's (could be called the P5 the new one can't remember) at high speed's eg 3.2ghz, 3.4, etc, it won't be long till they are at 4ghz, and AMD will have the Athlon 64 at about 1.8ghz, 2ghz maybe more, so Intel should still be able to compete very well as the CPU's MHZ is nearly twice as fast.

But, the AMD 64bit CPUs could be cooler than the P4 : "The article appears to say that the power consumption of Prescott (son of P4) is much higher than Intel expected and manages a not so cool 100 watts. La Intella apparently wanted it to perform at 86 watts"

It's also debatable how much extra speed 64bit gives to the general user. As it's probably more important for Workstation and Server users... more

there's an Opteron motherboard with AGP here

Josh

ps - all this stuff is on www.theinquirer.net

Well, my 'allegiance', if you want to call that changes from time to time... However, I can tell you right now, i've more Intel rigs than AMD rigs... Check this out for yourself:

dual AMD XP2000+ (main rig)
dual AMD XP1900+ (render farm/SETI rig)
dual Intel Xeon 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB) (render farm/SETI rig)
dual Intel Xeon 2.4GHz (400MHz FSB) (render farm/SETI rig)
dual Intel Pentium III 650MHz (server)
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB) (gaming rig)
Intel Pentium III 1GHz (133MHz FSB) (LAN rig)

:D

PS: see my site for full configurations. ;)

Anyway, which CPU I pick is entirely down to how suitable it is for my purpose. Right now, it would appear that Intel has the upper hand...

Dave07:


my pc, cost uinder £1700 recently:

xp barton 2800+
with slk800 cooler and ystech fan
coolermaster201 case
antex430w psu
2 * 512mb cas2 twinmos ram
asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard
2 * 120gb hard discs
3.5'' temperature gauge (al, natch)
sony dvdr burner
coolermaster cooldrive3 hdd cooler

finished with:
18'' dell/lg black 20ms lcd
and a logitech cordless optical desktop. in black

I most defintely recommend it, and it looks sooooooo cool. pics soon to come

dgr

If price is no object, then I say the 2.8P4 with good mem and overclock it to 3.2/3.4 on air.

If price is an issue, then just buy a cheaper AMD.

small form factor? :)

Mac G5 Dual is a faster option, for anyone with needs other than gaming (I hear there are more games for PC than Mac). Right now G5 runs legacy 32-bit software the same speed as a high-end PC; once the 64 bit applications and system are available, it should be faster.

Here,s your "BEST" computer cure ok laugh!! get it off your chest OK now that you calmed down here it is # 1 system for the next few years ASUS P4T533-C MB 2 sticks or more of 1066/256 RDRAM and a gf4600ti video card, and you think you went to heven. other stuff don't really matter,54 or 7200 rpm HD will works just fine.BTW I tried the 800 fsb system and my games didn't in prove a drop.I have two system with the same MB but I use a 3.06 cpu.But the 2,4 ghz will do you justice.And one other thing you want never haft to worry about heat related problem :).(BTW I tried the FX5900 Ultra 256 and the ATI 9800 pro 128 and they didn't show me the diff I was looking for)

Off subject but some here might like to know...that Rambus won it,s case in court (check the read at http://www.xbitlabs.com it was posted on 8 oct 03) so I guess the money will be rolling in to Rambus from the ddr guys :).just as I perdicted back when it all started.