[sapiens74]

I want justifiable answers to this AMD vs INTEL thing. I've been on both sides and want to know what you think

[clutch]

I like the reliability of the Intel systems, but the processors are simply starved when it comes to memory usage unless you can overclock the hell out of them (like your system) or wait for the newest RAMBUS 1066 RDRAM to come out and make the processors shine. The AMD units units are faster clock for clock and cheaper as well, but I don't care for any of the chipsets that they have to be mated to. So, for the time being (in the next couple of weeks anyway as I am getting a Northwood 1.6GHz or so to O/C) I will stick with Intel stuff for my boxes.

[Brian Frank]

For home/enthusiast users, AMD is a better bet. Nothing wrong with Intel at home, but AMD gives a bigger bang for the buck. For business use, it's primarily the chipsets that need work. Not just Via, but AMD's own as well. Add to that the heat output and more likelyhood to fry than the P4 (not sure about the Xeon), and rackmount servers are a big no even with the Palimino.

For SMP, I personally feel that Intel is better here. AMD is the noob here. My gaming rig runs a 1.4GHz T-bird, and my file server runs a Duron. My duallie runs a couple of 800EB P3's. As cool as dual Athlon's are, I think they're much more of a hassle than I want to deal with.

[sapiens74]

I just got put in charge, with 3 other persons of our IT department for a fairly large company in Seattle, and surrounding areas. One of the decisons we have to make is on buying new PC's and I refuse to support anything other then Intel. Too many problems. As for the home user, if you have time to update bios' and drives all the time, and or never upgrade then AMD is the way to go

[pimpin_228]

well actually my amd system now is stable the only ime i get lockups is when i install appz that i don't like, especially icq for some reason when i install that it don't like it

[Palos]

If you have infinite time on your hands to troubleshoot, install patches and tweak the living daylights out of your PC, then go for AMD.

If you want stability at a (theoretical) loss of speed, go for Intel. I say theoretical, because all this huge flamewar going on about AMD vs.Intel CPU performance is, I think, a bit pointless: noone notices any slowdowns or performance boosts in daily tasks, using one or the other CPU...on paper things might look different, but for God's sake, who's gonna mind waiting 1.5 seconds for Photoshop to start up using an AMD, instead of 1.8 seconds with an Intel ???? (might be the other way around, but that's my point)

I say that Intel is worth the extra money just because it has better platforms for their CPUs to run on.

[JP-]

Well when i had my amd systems i was probably about the most anti-intel person you could have met, but having actually owned some intel systems now, including this 1 i realise all the unnecessary work i had to put into the amd systems to get them working, and it really wasnt worth it. My entire system setup consisted of the following

buy stuff, build computer, install windows, overclock, play games

voila no patches or tweaks required.

I dont blame AMD or anything cos i think they are a good company and have provided good competition for intel but i couldnt recommend any amd system that has a via chipset to anyone ever again.

Also as far as i know the Intel NW 2.2 is the fastest processor out at this time

[pmistry]

I'm a fan of Intel's engineering. The P4 processors are good processors, well designed and hard to fry. These processors are good for running apps today but will be better in the future too since not alot of software/drivers don't have complete/optimized SSE2 and other P4 improvements. Dual processors, chipset reliability are all examples of Intel design/engineering.

AMD chips are fast and are good for what computing is today. If you want to run current programs as fast as possible an AMD chip is the way to go. They are also cheap. I have a love/hate relationship with VIA and their chipsets, sometimes they work flawlessly, other times you need a tweak here and there, and sometimes the chipset will cause problems even if you look at it funny. I think AMD processors would be better if they had a solid chipset manufacturer. VIA has chipsets with good features but give people problems sometimes. SiS is not the most recognizable manufacturer for chipsets and their OEM solutions like integrated video scare people from trying their products. Then there is AMD themselves whose chipsets usually lack good features, like when the original SLOT Athlon was out AMD lacked AGP4x and PC133 support.

[JP-]

Maybe Nforce is what they need if i needed an AMD chip right now, id go for mr.nforce

btw, the original amd chipset for the athlon, the 750/751 irongate 8) officially stated 2x agp but there was a bug that made it totally unstable if you actually used it, so in practice it was only a 1x board. Its what i used a while back.

[BladeRunner]

I'm an Intel guy through and through
From my early 386 to my current P4 I've stuck with Intel all the way.
I've even totally stuck to Intel chipset's too.
The reason?
Like anything in life once you are happy with something you tend to go back to the same manufacturer again and again.
I've never owned an unstable Intel system.
They have always done exactly what I have asked of them.
Every one I've built it's been a simple matter of all cards in, install OS, jobs a good 'un!

Now if I was a crazy as some of the people over at madonion.com I would have ditched Intel a long time ago.
Just to get those extra few points I would have had to go AMD.
Instead I have a PC that can do everything I want it to do and then some and is 100% stable.
Until the day I have a problem with an Intel/Intel set-up I shall be sticking with them.

[clutch]

Quote:

Maybe Nforce is what they need if i needed an AMD chip right now, id go for mr.nforce

btw, the original amd chipset for the athlon, the 750/751 irongate 8) officially stated 2x agp but there was a bug that made it totally unstable if you actually used it, so in practice it was only a 1x board. Its what i used a while back.

To be fair though, Intel wasn't entirely clear on its specs with respect to AGP, and I remember there being bugs with the TNT-based cards and certain LX-based motherboards where the system would lock up depending on the rendering demand (most fixes could be done with firmware, but some were due to a lack of appropriate power to the slot). However, even when Intel did clear it up and the card vendors were all in agreement, there still seemed to be too many bugs in the AMD-supporting mobos to warrant buying them.

[JP-]

Yeah i didnt really mind it being 1x, i mean the board was 100% stable other than that, and it managed a run of 3dmark with it set to 2x so i was happy.

[Marktait]

I gotta say i like AMD systems, iv never actually had an Intel but i know of three people that have and i have used there systems a few times.Mainly iv stuck with AMD since i had my AMDK6-2 450Mhz, the reason i stuck with it after that is because i was getting much better results from it speedwise than my cousin was getting with his Intel P3 500Mhz. Everyone in my family have all turned to AMD after having there Intels so this also made me get my two systems as AMD Powered as my cousin has a AMD Athlon TBird 850Mhz which he loves and my uncle has his new AMD Athlon TBird 1.0Ghz which he seems to enjoy, both them have said that they will probably stick to AMD CPU's in future.

Like BladeRunner said:"Like anything in life once you are happy with something you tend to go back to the same manufacturer again and again."

I couldnt agree more with that, for me anyway.
----------------------------------
1st Computer
----------------------------------
AMD 1700+ Athlon XP
ASUS A7V133A VIA Motherboard
512MB PC-133 RAM
64MB GeForce 3 Ti200 (Det 27.10)
60GB IBM 7200RPM HardDrive
16x/48x LG DVDDrive
40x Compag CDDrive
16x/10x/40x LiteON ReWriter
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 1024 Player
Creative 4.1 Surround Sound 1600 Speakers
10/100 Netgear Ethernet Adapter - 2nd Computer Networked
WinTV Primio FM TV/Radio Tuner
----------------------------------
2nd Computer
----------------------------------
1.2Ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird
512MB PC-133 RAM
64MB GeForce 2 MX200
60GB IBM 7200RPM HardDrive
40GB Seagate 5400RPM HardDrive
16x/48x LG DVDDrive
24x/10x/40x Samsung ReWriter
Creative SoundBlaster 128
10/100 Genius Ethernet Adapter - Cable Connection
10/100 Genius Ethernet Adapter - Laptop Networked
10/100 Genius Ethernet Adapter - 1st Computer Networked
300Watt RMS 2.1 Active Subwoofer Logic Speakers
----------------------------------

[sapiens74]

I guess it depemds on hwat makes you happy. Running an IT department, I would not be happy supporting AMD. Add that to pretty incompetant users and I'd have even more work to do, :P. In the IT department we need 100 percent stabilty. The AMD platform has never offered that.

[JP-]

Totally agree, i have also supported systems for basically stupid users these ppl barely even know how to work MS Word, can you imaging telling them to change there agp driving control or there vcore over the phone? they wont have a clue

[sapiens74]

You'd have to give them PCI video cards just to be safe.

[pmistry]

Ahhhh yes PCI video cards, my 486 has an ISA video card. It has a whopping 1 meg of memory, and it can run 640x480 resolution in an astounding 256 colors with a 60hz refresh rate. It can do 1024 but thats like asking god to put another color in the rainbow.

However, its a pretty stable computer since it has an Intel 486 DX2 66 processor on an Intel chipset.