Chip Wars: AMD vs Intel .... GO!

[KynloStephen66515]

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Which one is best?  What would you choose?  Why would you choose it?  Why is the person choosing the other one wrong?

YOU DECIDE!

[MilesAhead]

I don't know but I seem to be 180 degrees out of phase.  I bought 2 HP desktops in succession with Intel Pentium 4 CPUs with hyper-threading when i should have purchased AMD 64 bit CPU based machines.  When I finally got a quad core it was a Phenom I when I should have purchased one of the Intel quads.

I think the only one I was really happy with was the AMD 5200+ Dual Core.  That machine ran smooth and quiet.  It performed fairly well considering it only had 2 GB ram.  But it had one of those crippled Intel on the motherboard video chips with only 8 MB ram on the chip.

All the other listed CPUs were very noisy.

[Deozaan]

All the other listed CPUs were very noisy.

Do CPUs actually make noise?

[eleman]

I think the only one I was really happy with was the AMD 5200+ Dual Core.  That machine ran smooth and quiet.  It performed fairly well considering it only had 2 GB ram.  But it had one of those crippled Intel on the motherboard video chips with only 8 MB ram on the chip.

How on earth were you able to run an AMD cpu on Intel chipset?

[Shades]

All the other listed CPUs were very noisy.

Do CPUs actually make noise?

If you put them in a microwave...

The CPU fans of your Intel processors were crap. An after market CPU fan would have made a lot of difference. Never had noisy stock CPU fans...then again every 6 months or so I thoroughly clean out the accumulated dust in each PC. Graphite or other forms of lubricant I apply as well (when necessary).

Back to the topic: Depends on the main task of the PC, to be honest. I have had good experiences with multi-cores from both AMD and Intel. In the days of the single-core CPU's I rather used AMD. Most of my servers still use those CPU's as they are still going strong after 10 years.

However, I do work with a lot of i5 (2nd gen) and i7 CPU's (1st gen) in workstations & servers as well. To my knowledge, AMD is better when you work with multi-threading software. Price wise there isn't much difference between AMD or Intel here in Paraguay. Whatever money you save with the AMD CPU, you have to spend on more expensive motherboards.

As there isn't that much software out (for consumers) that actively/efficiently uses multi-threading, my choice today would be to buy Intel for raw calculation performance.

Don't have experience with the AMD APU's, but I do find these interesting. But these are not available through the regular retail channels over here.

[4wd]

I've pretty much stuck with AMD CPUs purely for the cost - I really can't justify the extra cost of Intel, (both CPU & MB), for the little bit of gain.

The only Intel CPUs I have are ones where I didn't get a choice, ie. laptop, netbook, and freebie Dell XPS.

[Renegade]

I vote for Texas Instruments and Motorola!

[MilesAhead]

All the other listed CPUs were very noisy.

Do CPUs actually make noise?

Well, they can play Madonna. 

It turns out on the Phenom it was actually the GPU fan kept kicking in.  That thing surged so it sounded like a tropical storm was outside.

[4wd]

That thing surged so it sounded like a tropical storm was outside.

Seeing as you're in Florida, it probably was 

[MilesAhead]

That thing surged so it sounded like a tropical storm was outside.

Seeing as you're in Florida, it probably was  

Too often true.  Seems like every big breeze the cable went out for 2 weeks.  No internet, no TV. Usually we got power back in 2 to 4 days.

Ironically Katrina passed right through but it was only up to 80 MPH.  I didn't lose cable or power.  It picked up all the ferocity over the gulf.

[SeraphimLabs]

For the longest time Intel and AMD sort of alternated generations, Intel would make a really good CPU then AMD would make a better one back and forth.

What went wrong is where Intel hit thermal problems real bad on the Netburst architecture and had to take a step back, resulting in the core architecture that has since been improved on in other ways, AMD rode smoothly through that- only to slam into it full throttle with the Phenom.

I've heard from a lot of people that the early Phenom CPUs had the same thermal nightmare issues as the Netburst P4s- issues that I can say from experience the modern Sandy Bridge and Haswell CPUs have no problems with.

But at that point Intel gained a market lead that is forcing AMD to stay in catch up mode, and AMD is not competing anywhere near as well as they used to. The 4th generation I-series from Intel has been worth it in every test I've put them through, combining high efficiency at low usage with high gear computing power for heavy demands.

I hope AMD gets back on top of things soon. Simply because if Intel stays in the lead too long they'll become complacent, and the quality of their product line will drop while the price continues to creep upward. Having a neck and neck competitor in the market forces both companies to be competitive at all times, holding prices down and quality up.

[40hz]

I vote for Texas Instruments and Motorola!

Not so sure about TI. But a big +1 for Motorola. I miss those guys and their 68xxx architecture. That flat memory map alone was worth it.  One of the easiest and funkiest chips to engineer or code for. (My 'commode door" roots are showing. )

And while we're on the subject of drop-the-ball wunderkinder, too bad about Transmeta. There are no secrets that can be kept indefinitely in the CPU world - stealth startup or no stealth startup.