AMD or Intel

Blown · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:52 am Post subject:

winner or not, I still buy amd.

Mike · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:19 am Post subject:

KopiKat · Registered User Joined: 15 May 2002 Posts: 923

Forward compatability, that's why. If you buy a motherboard that accepts AM2 chips and only buy a 90nm Athlon X2 3600+, you can buy a quad core K8L in 6 months and it will still fit in your AM2 socket.

In addition, they still have the best power management. Don't let intel lie to you about their TDP figures. Their TDP figure stands for "Typical Design Power", which is the average running temperature of the processor. AMD's TDP figure stands fore "Total Design Power", which is the MAX that the AMD processors will run at. If AMD were to use Intel's definition of TDP, it would be much closer to 35-40 watts on it's 89 watt TDP processor as it currently stands.

64 bits still runs better on AMD, and their memory bandwidth is vastly superior. It also handles multithreading better as a result of it's direct connect architecture and lack of a unified cache which must be flushed whenever one core needs to fetch something that isn't already in it.

The benchmarks you are seeing are canned benchmarks on things like SuperPI and Prime95, which has absolutely no bearing on reality what so ever. Those are small programs that easily fit inside intel's monsterous 2MByte caches, and thus will run much faster.

If you get a video game that doesn't fit (like any source game), the performance between the two is dead even. Proof is in the benchmarking, so here's a link:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTEwOCwyLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Chose wisely.

-KK

For reference, the Athlon FX62 costs 750 at tigerdirect right now, and the Core 2 Extreme 6800 costs 975. The Core 2 6700 costs 550. And AMD's 5200 X2 costs 500, with performance comparable to that of the Core2 6700.
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Simpleman · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject:

O'cmon Comadore64 all the way!!!!!!

or

AppleII

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regis · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 2:16 pm Post subject:

I still love my old 80286!!

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Mike · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject:

KopiKat · Registered User Joined: 15 May 2002 Posts: 923

So then it really comes down to what you do more. Do you play video games more? Or do you run SuperPi while encoding your DVDs?

Being that this is a gaming forum for the most part, I would say that gaming is the relevant factor in the equation of performance, and thus you will be equally well served with an AMD or Intel processor with respect to gaming, and pay roughly the same price.

If you are forward looking though and plan on upgrading your processor within a year or two so that you have a better rig, then AMD is the clear choice, being that its stuff is all forward compatable with future offerings if you use the AM2 socket, and you have more upgrade options available to you for the future, being that Intel wont have a new architecture out for at least another year, whereas AMD's new architecture is coming out within just a few months.

-KK
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DaKon · Ville Supporter Joined: 19 Feb 2002 Posts: 2342

Intel is using the same socket for 2 core and quad core.

Also for a more complete review on all amd and intel products look at
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=430&model2=464&chart=165

It is simply a better performance break down.

Hands down, with pretty much everything the e6600 core2 conroe beats fx62, and in a lot of cases the e6400 does.

Price comparison e6400 $200.00
fx62 $817.00
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Mike · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 7:57 pm Post subject:

KopiKat · Registered User Joined: 15 May 2002 Posts: 923

Yorkfield is not a new architecture, it's simply a "dumb-shrink" to 45 nanometers. That means Yorkfield is just a 45nm quad core Kentsfield. Not a "new architecture" by any means. AMD's K8L is a new architecture in every respect, it has new instruction sets, new SSE, new load-store mechanisms, a new type of cache (see Z-Ram), quad core, and 65 nm to boot. It's pretty much a complete redesign of K8. I have heard differently that K8l is slated for Q2 2007, which is somewhere between 6 to 9 months from now. That's the new architecture.

The current stuff to look forward to is AMD's K8 @ 65nm die process. It's same old K8, but shrunk down to 60% of the size. Intel got a 40% performance gain out of it's 65 nm shrink based on P3 architecture, and while not immediately, the same will be the case for the 65nm shrink of K8. Roughly 40% less power used, and about a 40% increase over old 90nm K8's.

Apples to oranges, with respect to Yorkfield and K8L.

Intel is quite a ways off from any "new" architecture. It's not even on the road map yet.

-KK
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StrontiumDog · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 8:50 pm Post subject:

Blown · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:03 pm Post subject:

Simpleman · Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2006 9:05 pm Post subject:

Yup as long as I get from .A-.B really doesn't matter whats under the hood. IMHO. I have 2 AMD's and 3 Intels....lol I spread the love

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mUj0 · Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:49 am Post subject:

Might as well put my 2 cents in....

I buy whats cheap.

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Colossians 2:20 "You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the evil powers of this world. So why do you keep on following rules of the world"