now that more than 50% of us are AMD fans

[shiato storm]

intel have a finger in almost every computer retailer's production processes - Dell is probably the biggest that comes to mind - and if AMD want to compete with that they have to have an exceptional product. Although there have been many postings/reports about the head's of dell discussing intel/amd its clear the two are 'in bed together'...if it were AMD, the knowledgable computer user's choice, then their future would be somewhat safer. saddly as we all know the heads of dell reject any questions towards the matter, I bet if they did they'd get serious legal probs from intel.
BUT AMD are now seen more and more by computer retailers, mesh, tiny(!) and the like - not able to take on dell in terms of sales volume but certainly beded in there. plus theres us, the knowledgable computer user that buys our cpu's individually. this is more costly for us but good for amd - as when sold as part of a computer the retailer no doubt buys 'in bulk'. if AMD go out of business a hole in the market is created - and intel will not fill it, the incentive for the next best thing might not be driven as hard as it is today and so developement will slow, lack of competition is not good.
if amd go who will step up to take on intel? thats a worrying thought indeed!

[iranu]

Why would you want to buy a Intel chip that won't support Windows 64 for the same price as an AMD one that will?

Zak33 - you appear to contradict yourself in your original post imho;

Talking about buying cheap intel systems for mum to surf the net then saying top spec AMD64's are the price of a small house. Which is it that you want?

In these discussions it is better to start with a budget of say £500 (AND NOT A PENNY MORE) and see what the relative merits of each system are.

If mum needs to surf the net and do a bit of word processing then that old 1Gz P3 (everyone has an old pc lying in bits somewhere) with an additional 512mb ram and win XP is more than adequate. Hell buy a shiny new, cheap 17" TFT and she wouldn't know the difference!

[malfunction]

I basically will buy whatever is the best value - the old bang per buck - as long as I don't have to go with a VIA chipset which is why I was a late convert to AMD - had an (original) Pentium 120, P200MMX, a celeron 600, then a P3 800 and finally a Tualatin Celeron 1.1GHz which ran at 1466MHz no problem... Then finally went AMD with an XP1700+ and now XP-M 2500+... Have kind of gone back to Intel (have a Pentium M in the HTPC I'm slowly putting together - but I got that on ebay for £10)... Never fancied the P4 core though with dual channel DDR, an 800MHz FSB and hyper threading I can see the appeal... Still a bit too pricey for what you actually get but (having used HT P4s at work) they are at least smooth to use and supposedly good for media encoding...

[Clstrphbc_donut]

2.4's dont hyper thread

Yet mine does? I must have a superior chip!

I have a 2.4C that does 3.4 on stock volts, and is 800FSB/HT enabled.

It's a keeper me thinks.

[Mblaster]

Yet mine does? I must have a superior chip!

I have a 2.4C that does 3.4 on stock volts, and is 800FSB/HT enabled.

It's a keeper me thinks.

My dads P4 2.4 has HT, I think they all do

[malfunction]

My dads P4 2.4 has HT, I think they all do

There were several flavours AFAIK:

24 x 100 (512K L2, Northwood core, 400MHz FSB no HT)
18 x 133 (512K L2, Northwood core, 533MHz FSB no HT)
12 x 200 (512K L2, Northwood core, 800MHz FSB HT)

And now even:

18 x 133 (1MB L2, Prescott core, 533MHz FSB, no HT)

[tiggerai]

he he he we'll see...
my bf is hell bent on the intel side, whereas I'm a AMD purist.
He wants dual core in the summer, and I want to go AMD64. We'll see who comes up trumps on price, power etc.

I'm AMD all the way, just bought my mum a new sempron rig for h'internet surfing (replaced an old Intel celery)

[Rcb]

who fancies jumping ship and going back to Intel?

I mean it took forums like this good place YEARS to get AMD to where they are now. 5 years ago no one exceptOC and Hardware steadfast's had AMD PC's.

Now we ALL suggest our Mum's buy them for interweb surfing!

So...is it time to do a U turn and rush back to Intel? It's not like a 64 bit system from AMD is uber cheap now is it? I mean my first Athlon Slot A was a 500 that I overclocked to 600, and it was as good, if not better than a P3 600. And it was WAAAY cheaper. Even if it DID need a Nuclear Power Station for a PSU.

But now that a top spec 64 bit AMD is smal semi detached house in Eire money, might be time to turn and peg it back to Intel for a year.

What do you think?

No. AMD are better for gaming.

[aidanjt]

AMD64 is still worthless for the majority of users, the real benifits of 64bit processors wont even show until AMD64 software becomes mainstream, the only AMD64 users which are at an advantage right now are Linux folk.. I'm going to wait until Dual-core cpus mature and 64bit settles right in.

[skuzgib]

AMD64 is still worthless for the majority of users, the real benifits of 64bit processors wont even show until AMD64 software becomes mainstream, the only AMD64 users which are at an advantage right now are Linux folk.. I'm going to wait until Dual-core cpus mature and 64bit settles right in.

I disagree - similarly priced athlon64's beat P4s in everything bar audio/video encoding; even in a 32bit environment.

[aidanjt]

In terms of price vs. performance ratio yes, but Intels highend offerings are better performers.

And my comment was regarding the utilisation of the architecture. It isn't fully effective in legacy mode.

[Boogle]

A £297 2Ghz P-M will beat the A64 FX55 (£554) in some games, and is always faster than the A64 3400+ in games. Thats with a chipset that only supports DDR333, single-channel.

I think Intel have the best price/performance ratio if you're willing to make do with SFF or MicroATX.

At the moment if you ignore the P-M it doesn't matter what CPU you get. However, what bothers me is the extreme fanboyism that AMD may be garnering, just like ATI have recently. While the idea of supporting the under-dog is valid in the AMD market (and in the case of the Winchester core is most definately the choice to go for if you value the planet's energy). However it doesn't stand with ATI since a) They started out as the largest graphics manufacturer prior to the GeForce 256 and b) They have more market share than nvidia. Now the problem with this is if AMD has zealots like ATI do, then we'll have trouble getting people to go for the best vfm.

Ideally if you were neutral, you will hopefully agree that the Athlon Thunderbird was originally the best option, then when the Northwood core came out the P4 was the best option (a few 'cores' came out from AMD that were the previous core renamed, with no speed-boosts in mhz). Then the best option moved over to the A64 about a month after release to let the prices fall. Now with the P-M its back in Intel's court. Lets hope Intel decide to support the P-M more fully since it runs very cool, uses little power and really shows up both the A64 and P4 (P4 moreso).

I hope both AMD and Intel continue to trade places, and fanboys / zealots start to realise healthy competition is good, and must continue. Blindly supporting a company isn't really the best of options since it can unbalance the market, increase prices, and in the worst case cause a company to leave the market - greatly reducing development. Look at Windows and the Game Boy for examples where monopolies aren't good. PVR made a 3D chip that could run Quake3 and run in a mobile phone 3 years ago (called the PVR MBR), yet the Game Boy Advance SP was no better than the previous version, but with a backlight and requiring an extra fee to plug headphones into it. a PORTABLE device that doesn't come with a headphone connector as standard. Hmmmm.....

[jimborae]

you're not helping me here 2.4's dont hyper thread

.......

Please know your stuff before you post sir!!!!

As others said before me, the P4 2.4c 800fsb, does hyperthread, thats exactly why i bought it. And to overclock the hell out of it as well.

[Swafe]

theres A B and C...only 1 ( the C) has HT afaik, so only 33% of the chips have it


as for me, AMD is the way i go, and the way I stay. im not into gaming no more, im into price, and as much as i can get, for as little as i can spend

for example, i picked my current CPU (xp1700, does 2.4ghz) for 25 quid on a forum, what can you get for 25 quid ? a 1.3ghz P3 that does 1.4 ? bah useless

i know not all chips overclock as well as the jiucbs or whatever they were but AMD chips always seem like a great buy, the A64s are more exspenive than the older chips they did, but there worth it ! to think a xp3200 winny will speed past most p4s available at the moment - even 3.6ghz and the like, THEN they overclock like hell

did i mention there 64 bit too ? future proof as a bonus

[iranu]

Boogle - do you have a link for P-M 2ghz v FX55 gaming/encoding/desktop performance?

I usually go to tomshardware but P-M not included in the testing.

Would be interesting to see. A friend of mine has one of these in a laptop (obviously) and I can confirm it is very fast.

[Boogle]

Boogle - do you have a link for P-M 2ghz v FX55 gaming/encoding/desktop performance?

I usually go to tomshardware but P-M not included in the testing.

Would be interesting to see. A friend of mine has one of these in a laptop (obviously) and I can confirm it is very fast.

I can't find the review where the P-M consistantly outperformed the FX55. Some reviews seem to vary wildly between themselves. On some occasions I've seen the 2Ghz P-M slaughtered by a 3Ghz P4, having a 1.5Ghz P-M in my laptop and a 3.2Ghz P4 I know this cannot be true. I think that some reviews are using the Banias core P-M and not Dothan, with Dothan being significantly faster.

Anyway I've listed some reviews below (including one from Toms Hardware just for you ). The P-M is not very good at encoding at all, and has no HyperThreading so multitasking is a little slower than the P4 (but no worse than the Athlon). I'll have a 2Ghz P-M later today so I'll run some of my own tests to see how fast it 'feels'.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1728509,00.asp
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...=dfipm&page=10 (shows P-M in best light of all the reviews)
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherb...boards-09.html
http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=635&pid=2407
http://www.behardware.com/articles/546/page8.html

The P-M seems to get massive boosts when overclocked which would imply that the P-M is severely lacking in FSB bandwidth and memory bandwidth.

AOpen are releasing a new P-M mobo with the 915 Mobile chipset: http://www.vr-zone.com/index.cgi?i=1659&s=1

I prefer the P-M not just for performance, but because of its power saving features. Wasting energy is just that - a waste. Plus a P-M can run passive when idle, and extremely quiet under load