Amd vs. Intel

[Terr Fangbite]

For years I have worked with chips from both companies and generally I buy AMD chips over Intel chips. I have no real reason why though, just a matter of preference. What I was wondering is if there is any real difference between the Athlon and Pentium chips and the Duron and Celeron chips.

[Melchior]

AMD CPUs are usually cheaper, consume less power and, AFAIK, AMD never tried to implant anti-privacy shit in their products.

[Ace Pace]

As of now? AMD all the way, there is no reason to get a hot, PRICEY Intel CPU unless you are doing 3d artwork or movie rendering.

Esspecially games, if you want games, AMD all the way.

[Ma Deuce]

These days I'd go for AMD, especially for gaming. Their latest CPUs are superior to those of Intel in most respects (they do have lower clock speed, but AMD CPUs can do more "work" per clock cycle than Intel CPUs). Intel's problem is they decided to rest on their laurels the last few years, rather than continue the innovation that got them where they are in the first place...

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Intel is good if you're doing some multitasking stuff like encoding VCD at one hand and while making some PowerPoint presentation on the other hand (at the same time). For gaming, I'd rather use AMD.

Intel is only good for gaming if you play anything based on Quake III engine, which is pretty memory bus-hungry. However, in everything else AMD beats Intel.

If you're using 3dfx and using 3D-Analyze to emulate HW T/L, go with AMD. IIRC AMD has better fpu and it would help much in doing the TL with the CPU.

Just a side note, most folks at http://www.3dfxzone.it prefers AMD for their "Voodoo-legacy" systems. The most popular config is Voodoo5 5500 with KT-333 mainboard since they support both Universal AGP and Barton 3000+ CPU.

And of course, now AMD 64 was around....

[Ace Pace]

Intel is only good for gaming if you play anything based on Quake III engine, which is pretty memory bus-hungry. However, in everything else AMD beats Intel.

The Quake 3 engine may like the memory transfare, but AMD still beats Intel there.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Intel is only good for gaming if you play anything based on Quake III engine, which is pretty memory bus-hungry. However, in everything else AMD beats Intel.

The Quake 3 engine may like the memory transfare, but AMD still beats Intel there.

Really? Which benchmark did you read? Anyway, now there's another reason to not regretting my choice sticking with AMD no matter how much FSB clockspeed boasted by Intel.

How about FPU? Is it confirmed that AMD has much better FPU than Intel?

The only Intel I've got is the one in my laptop. Of course, it's a company's laptopt, and being a Wintel wanker, my company prefers spending their money on Intel expensive brand an Windows XP instead of buying some really kickass systems.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

For years I have worked with chips from both companies and generally I buy AMD chips over Intel chips. I have no real reason why though, just a matter of preference. What I was wondering is if there is any real difference between the Athlon and Pentium chips and the Duron and Celeron chips.

Things have come a long way since the bad old days of the eighties and early nineties when AMD was essentially producing Intel clones. The architecture of a modern Pentium 4 and the architecture of an Athlon XP/Duron/Sempron differ greatly. AMDs execute more instructions per clock cycle, allowing for similar performance to an Intel part, at a lower clock speed. However, Intel CPUs can move data through memory and in and out of cache a fair bit faster than AMD CPUs can, so an Intel wil own an AMD at tasks requiring high memory bandwidth (such as video and image processing.)

But, for the typical desktop user, the value leader tends to be AMD (since AMDs at a given performance tier tend to be a bit cheaper than their Intel counterpart.) This holds true in most areas, except in mobile (read: laptops) computing, where Intel is the undisputed king (due to the sophisticated speed and thermal management Intel CPUs have built into them.)

[Arrow]

I prefer Intel chips. The main reason being several bad experiences I've had with AMD motherboard chipsets (VIA - what a total fuckjob - and SiS). I haven't had trouble with Intel chipset motherboards - everything works with them, no questions asked (the advantage of being the big name in the chipset game).

Also, I love hyperthreading. I tend to do multiple things at once, at work and at home, and having two logical cores compiling programs, or one running a game while another manages some downloads, just kicks ass. Also, if something locks up and won't give back the CPU, the other hyperthread still accepts input, allowing me to kill the offending process. Now, with multiple core chips becoming standard, this advantage won't last too much longer.

[Slartibartfast]

I'll usually buy whichever one is in stock at the time of the upgrade. Last time I bought the Intel one 'cause it came in a package including memory and the mainboard, costing about 25% less than the three things combined.

So no preference.

[General Zod]

I prefer Intel chips. The main reason being several bad experiences I've had with AMD motherboard chipsets (VIA - what a total fuckjob - and SiS). I haven't had trouble with Intel chipset motherboards - everything works with them, no questions asked (the advantage of being the big name in the chipset game).

Also, I love hyperthreading. I tend to do multiple things at once, at work and at home, and having two logical cores compiling programs, or one running a game while another manages some downloads, just kicks ass. Also, if something locks up and won't give back the CPU, the other hyperthread still accepts input, allowing me to kill the offending process. Now, with multiple core chips becoming standard, this advantage won't last too much longer.

did you go for a substandard, cheap as possible board, or one of the more top of the line models? i've not had any problems with AMDs high end boards.

[Uraniun235]

I find AMD to have a better price/performance ratio for my purposes (gaming, mostly), so that's why I buy AMD chips. However, Intel chips do excel at certain tasks, and right now the Pentium-M chip is IMO still the best x86 laptop CPU one can buy.

Intel took a gamble with their design philosophy starting with the Pentium 4, that they could ramp up clockspeeds fast enough and high enough that it would offset their poorer IPC count. While that gamble did pay off, at least in a marketing sense, it's starting to peter out. My guess would be that we're eventually going to see a new generation of Intel desktop chips based off of their Pentium-M architecture (which differs from the Pentium 4 architecture) but leaning less towards the strict heat and power efficiency that laptops require and more towards performance.

Also, I love hyperthreading. I tend to do multiple things at once, at work and at home, and having two logical cores compiling programs, or one running a game while another manages some downloads, just kicks ass. Also, if something locks up and won't give back the CPU, the other hyperthread still accepts input, allowing me to kill the offending process. Now, with multiple core chips becoming standard, this advantage won't last too much longer.

Multiple cores won't be out for some time and even then will only be available in the very best CPUs at first.

[SPOOFE]

I used to be a big shill for Intel's Northwood core... back then, the only area AMD had Intel beat was price. Nowadays, though, the Athlon64's are cheaper, faster, cooler, and aren't part of one of the sloppiest processor lines I've ever seen (goddamn, there's like five different Intel chips at each performance point!).

The simple fact of the matter is that Intel's 90nm process sucks balls, and until they upgrade to their 65nm process, I have no hopes of their products being worthwhile... and even then it remains to be seen.

EDIT:

Multiple cores won't be out for some time and even then will only be available in the very best CPUs at first.

I guess it depends on what you consider to be "some time"... both Intel and AMD are expected to demonstrate their dual-cores later this year and release them early next year. They are likely to be expensive, though, due to lower yields per wafer.

[Arrow]

did you go for a substandard, cheap as possible board, or one of the more top of the line models? i've not had any problems with AMDs high end boards.

I avoid the cheap route, if at all possible. It always comes back to bite you in the ass.

Anyway, the AMD motherboards I personally owned were Asus boards. At work, back when built our computers, we used Abit boards (and I think an MSI board or two were used). All of these boards are the high-end of the non-server boards. And most of them have had some problem or another, which usually got traced back to the chipset (memory controller and AGP being the most common problems), and most of these boards (including my personal ones) have been shit canned.

The poor quality on those chipsets has put me off from using AMD. Every Intel ship I've used (at home and at work, again) has always run flawlessly.

[Cal Wright]

Well, I'm no expert like these guys, but I've used AMD starting with thier 400mhz processor back in 98-99 and moved up from there. I'm currently running an Athlon 2400 XP, and I play mainly Quake III, JK Outcast and Doom 3. So far, it's great.

[Ace Pace]

About Duel-cores, if your a gamer, stay away from the Intel CPU's.

Intel is going way wrong with their duel core plans, starting from desktop and mobile and going to servers, which as any programmer will probebly tell you, is fucking stupid, as Servers are the platform which will benefit the most from an added core.
Gamers won't enjoy the extra core, because very few games are multi-threaded.
Not to mention heat, the first Intel CPU's will be basicly 2 presscott-2 cores stuck together with no inter-connection. Now imagine the heat from 2! prescotts....


AMD duel-cores will be longer for coming, but they might bring more of a boost, but expect AMD to stay single core a while longer.


There is no reason to steer away from AMD based motherboards, Nforce4 ultra boards are great, the only possible problem is that recently, a problem came up with the latest AMD chips and Nforce3-4 boards, but nothing that can't be fixed by a BIOS update.

KAN, I suggest you check this chart, notice the ONLY Intel CPU's on top are the EE editions, which are based on the older Northwood core(not Prescott), otherwise, every AMD74 CPU beats its comparable P4.

[Stark]

Oh god. Arrow just reminded me about the AMD-Asus board that destroyed my $150 headphones, my 9700, my 9600, my ipod headphones, my memory, etc. Gah, what a pile of shit.

But AMDs are, at the moment at least, the better buy. A-64s are remarkably cheap per performance, and the high-end P4s are embarrassing.

[Uraniun235]

I avoid the cheap route, if at all possible. It always comes back to bite you in the ass.

Anyway, the AMD motherboards I personally owned were Asus boards. At work, back when built our computers, we used Abit boards (and I think an MSI board or two were used). All of these boards are the high-end of the non-server boards. And most of them have had some problem or another, which usually got traced back to the chipset (memory controller and AGP being the most common problems), and most of these boards (including my personal ones) have been shit canned.

The poor quality on those chipsets has put me off from using AMD. Every Intel ship I've used (at home and at work, again) has always run flawlessly.

Err, what chipsets are these? I know plenty of people have had issues with VIA chipsets, but the Nforce chipsets have always sounded like winners to me from all the praise I've heard about them.

I guess it depends on what you consider to be "some time"... both Intel and AMD are expected to demonstrate their dual-cores later this year and release them early next year. They are likely to be expensive, though, due to lower yields per wafer.

Arrow said "multiple core chips becoming standard" and I intended to point out that this was not yet the case. I fully expect to see single-core chips still being sold two years from now.

[Arrow]

Err, what chipsets are these? I know plenty of people have had issues with VIA chipsets, but the Nforce chipsets have always sounded like winners to me from all the praise I've heard about them.

These were VIA chipsets and I think a SiS chipset. Its been a while, so I don't remember the model numbers. But this was back in the timeframe from slot K7s to the Thunderbirds.

But, I have been considering an Nforce solution for my next computer (which I'll probably be building at year's end).

Arrow said "multiple core chips becoming standard" and I intended to point out that this was not yet the case. I fully expect to see single-core chips still being sold two years from now.

Yes, but I expect to see single core chips primarily being for the low-end market.

Intel is going way wrong with their duel core plans, starting from desktop and mobile and going to servers, which as any programmer will probebly tell you, is fucking stupid, as Servers are the platform which will benefit the most from an added core.
Gamers won't enjoy the extra core, because very few games are multi-threaded.
Not to mention heat, the first Intel CPU's will be basicly 2 presscott-2 cores stuck together with no inter-connection. Now imagine the heat from 2! prescotts....

I am a programmer, and I have to ask you: What the fuck are you talking about??! Every major game engine is multithreaded. I remember looking at the thread count for UT2k4 a while ago, and it was running 11 threads during one game (use the task manager to view your thread count for each process). Typically, you have threads for handling scene traversal/submitting data to the graphics card, AI, Physics, Input, Networking and Script execution. If you tried to run these things in a single thread, your game would crawl. Executing these threads on any multicore CPU will give you a nice speed boost (now, running across multiple CPUs won't, thanks to bus speed).

Read.

Now as for the heat issue, the above article also points at the the heat per cm^2 doesn't change, so cooling isn't an issue. The issue is power supply.

[Ace Pace]

These were VIA chipsets and I think a SiS chipset. Its been a while, so I don't remember the model numbers. But this was back in the timeframe from slot K7s to the Thunderbirds.

But, I have been considering an Nforce solution for my next computer (which I'll probably be building at year's end).

VIA had some bad years, but every review says their new chipsets are rock solid.

I am a programmer, and I have to ask you: What the fuck are you talking about??! Every major game engine is multithreaded. I remember looking at the thread count for UT2k4 a while ago, and it was running 11 threads during one game (use the task manager to view your thread count for each process). Typically, you have threads for handling scene traversal/submitting data to the graphics card, AI, Physics, Input, Networking and Script execution. If you tried to run these things in a single thread, your game would crawl. Executing these threads on any multicore CPU will give you a nice speed boost (now, running across multiple CPUs won't, thanks to bus speed).

Do you understand the differance from a game(UT2K4) made by many of the top programmers in the games industry, and the average game?

While top games like UT and HL2 are multi-threaded, look at the average game.

[Arrow]

Do you understand the differance from a game(UT2K4) made by many of the top programmers in the games industry, and the average game?

While top games like UT and HL2 are multi-threaded, look at the average game.

Define average. Because if average is something running on the Quake 3, Unreal 2, or some other middle of the road engine, I'm very sure they're all multithreaded (hell, the Q3 engine could take advantage of mutliple CPUs).

Also, it doesn't take a genius to use threads. Any decent programmer can use them and avoid deadlocks and races. How efficient the implementation ends up being is another matter.

[Slartibartfast]

Well it helps if you actually know anything about programming.

[Assassin X]

I think everyone KNOWS AMD are better BUT a few years go they sucked for games.

Then some games had issues with them and the games didnt work right, i would know, even had a bunch of game tech support people tell me. Now its not a problem.

Personally i still prefer a Pentium even though AMD is better.

[phongn]

Define average. Because if average is something running on the Quake 3, Unreal 2, or some other middle of the road engine, I'm very sure they're all multithreaded (hell, the Q3 engine could take advantage of mutliple CPUs).

A game capable of running on multiple CPUs or cores is the exception to the rule. Yes, there are a few games that do it but the meat of the program seems to remain on a single core. Networking, sound, input and whatnot are not exactly the most CPU intensive tasks.

Also, it doesn't take a genius to use threads. Any decent programmer can use them and avoid deadlocks and races. How efficient the implementation ends up being is another matter.

Uh, no, multithreading properly is hard, especially for something like a game--nevermind if you want a nice performance boost over multiple cores. Why else do so few programs use it? Not all solutions lend themselves to parallism.

[Arrow]

A game capable of running on multiple CPUs or cores is the exception to the rule. Yes, there are a few games that do it but the meat of the program seems to remain on a single core. Networking, sound, input and whatnot are not exactly the most CPU intensive tasks.

Which is why I said it could take advantage of multiple cores, and not that every game uses it.

Also, AI, Physics and Scene Traversal are CPU intensive tasks.

Uh, no, multithreading properly is hard, especially for something like a game--nevermind if you want a nice performance boost over multiple cores. Why else do so few programs use it? Not all solutions lend themselves to parallism.

First of all, multithreading is more of an issue of design than anything else. Spawning threads and using mutexs is pretty simple to code. If your design is piss poor, yes, you're going to have a bitch of a time making your multithreaded engine work. But if your tasks are grouped together in a logical fashion, and have a defined communication mechanism for moving data to your threads and between threads, then you'll have fairly smooth sailing when you code it.

As for using multiple cores, you can use a middleware library for spawning your threads, and your process will use those cores. Windows likes to keep a process's threads in one core, but the pThreads library for Windows will span cores - I've seen it action on a hyperthreaded machine (which logicall y appears as a multiple core processor).

Also, as for most applications not using multiple threads, I suggest you look at task manager. On my machine,
Outlook currently has 10 threads running,
FireFox has 13 (up from 12 a moment ago),
Internet Explore has 16,
The task manager itself has 3,
Word has 4,
Spybot has 2 at startup and 3 when looking for Spyware,
Norton AV's background service has 3,
Nexus The Jupiter Incident has 5 during a mission,
my Steam client has 20 (WTF is it doing!?!),
NWN has 9 during game play,
Nestor (the 8-bit NES emulator) has 5,
ZSNES has 6,
Windows Media Player (doing nothing at startup) has 11,
Fraps has 4 at startup
and my old copy of CPUID has 4.

(put into list format for clarity)

With 32 processes running (Firefox and Windows), only 3 have a single thread.

Look around you, threads are everywhere.