[Turnsky]

Originally posted by J3Vr6
So why is AMD better than Pentiums?  I always hear people saying AMD is the way to go, but why?  My 450 mhz was AMD and my brother in law had a pentium 400.  We both had the same amount of memory, from the same manufacturer, and I had a better graphics card (at the time).  But his computer always benchmarked higher than mine.  It drove me nuts.

*ahem*.. Money talks dude, AMD's are cheaper than intels, it's as simple as that..

[diamondgeezer]

Exactly. Intels are more expensive because 'everyone knows they're better'

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Exactly. Intels are more expensive because 'everyone knows they're better'

is that sarcasm.. or a value judgement?

[diamondgeezer]

No, seriously. Ask the guy on the street. It's one of those 'everyone knows that' things. I mean the average punter has never even heard of AMD until some time after they've bought their expensive Pentium box and have begun surfing, right? Therefore Intel must be better since no-one's heard of AMD. You see what I mean? Go find a random dude and ask him whether he'd buy an Intel or AMD chip of the same rating...

[Tiara]

We did exactly that when I was still at the Uni. This little enquete had an outcome of 67% AMD - 33 % Intel... So...

I too prefer AMD over Intel.

[diamondgeezer]

At Uni, huh. And were you asking uni students or white van men?

If it was average dudes on the street you were asking and you got that result, I'll eat one of Petrarch's hats

[Tiara]

We don't perform enquetes solely based on students. Thats just creates a false image. We did ask some students but most was on the streets, parents, brothers/sisters, you name it.

Though it was 1 year ago.

Ow, and have a nice dinner

[J3Vr6]

oK, well I already knew AMD was cheaper.  That's a given.  But performance wise/number wise/benchmark wise, is AMD better than Intel Pentium?

I'll be honest, when I was thinking of building my new pc, I was thinking of getting pentium this time just cuz I don't know any better (that benchmark I did w/ my bro in law left a scar in me, sniff).  I saw some benchmarking pages about AMD's and Pentiums and it seems you have to get a faster AMD chip to compete w/ an Intel (ie. getting 1.6 ghz AMD that's comparable to 1 gig pentium, these aren't real numbers btw so I could be off).  But of course, AMD is cheaper so that bigger cchip would still be cheaper.

Why would someone who knows computers purposely buy intel over AMD, or vice-versa, if the price of the product wasn't a factor?

[TheCelestialOne]

Saying "clock cycle efficiency determines CPU performance" is as bad as saying clockspeed equals performance. Clock cycle efficiency simply determines how many instructions a CPU handles per clock cycle under ideal conditions, if there's a cache miss or a branch prediction miss we'll loose valuable clock cycles making up for it, thus cutting into a CPU's clockspeed efficiency. So there's no such thing as a raw and clear-cut clockspeed efficiency comparison, it is an indication how efficient a CPU executes but not an indication of real world performance.

The AMD Athlon XP 1800+ runs at a 1.53GHz clockspeed, has an 1800+ performance rating and cannot be directly compared to an Intel CPU, yet does offer performance better than that of a 2GHz Pentium 4. It is admirable that their 1.53GHz Athlon XP performs better than the 2GHz Intel part, despite the fact that the Intel CPU has a 500MHz clockspeed advantage, a 400MHz FSB and RDRAM memory with 3.2GB/s of bandwidth. The 1800+ rating is not the CPU's clockspeed but rather a performance rating meant to indicate the real-world performance.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Tiara
Ow, and have a nice dinner

Fine. Petrarch! I need to, er, 'borrow' a hat...

If anyone's interested, I've overclocked my XP 1800+ Thoroughbred from 1.53 to 2.0 GHz - and it runs just as smooth as the day I bought it. Yay! And so forth.

[TheCelestialOne]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer

If anyone's interested, I've overclocked my XP 1800+ Thoroughbred from 1.53 to 2.0 GHz - and it runs just as smooth as the day I bought it. Yay! And so forth.

Told ya so!

[diamondgeezer]

Yep. And it got me about 100 extra points on my 3D mark score

Oh well, the important thing is that I scored a nice round 10000

[J3Vr6]

Ok, that satisfies me  Now, how fast of a chip do I need to be able to play todays games and the games of the next... Hmmm... let's say be able to play games for the next couple of years?

[TheCelestialOne]

For the next 3 years you should be safe with a 2.4 GHz (or higher) + ATi Radeon 9200 or above unless game development takes a big ass leap.

Though, graphics cards might be a thing you want to keep up to date with by changing it every year/ 1 and a half years just to be on the safe side

[Nico]

note that with my radeon 9700 and ( hold your breath ) my athlon 900, I still have to find a game that won't run fine on high to medium display settings.
yet I still want to chnage it, coz somehow I feel that situation will come to an end pretty soon

[Grey Wolf]

OK, here we go AMD MHz(for the T-bird)/PR(for everything else) vs. Intel MHz:
Thunderbird (Athlon) vs. Tualatin (last-gen P3): Pretty damn close.
Thunderbird (Athlon) vs. Willamette (first-gen P4): Thunderbird (the Willie sucked )
Thunderbird (Athlon) vs. Northwood (The P4 'A's): Northwood
Thouroughbred (Athlon XP) vs. Northwood (Both A and B): Thouroughbred
Thoroughbred (Athlon XP) vs. Northwood (C): Northwood
Barton (Athlon XP) vs. Northwood (C): Northwood
Clawhammer (Athlon 64) vs. Northwood (C): close, but Clawhammer is slightly ahead except in memory bandwidth intensive applications
Sledgehammer (Athlon FX/Opteron) vs. Northwood (C): Sledghammer

From the first reports of the P4EE, and also the comparison of the Xeon core it's based on to the core without the L3, show that the P4EE will be a fairly lackluster performer, with only a 5% lead over a standard Northwood-cored P4 at the same clockspeed.

From this, it most likely that AMD will hold the title of "Fastest Desktop CPU" until the arrival of Prescott, at which point the leader may change.

I'm waiting for the San Diego vs. Tejas battle myself :devil:

[ChronoReverse]

I dunno, Intel themselves have admitted that a Prescott at 3.2GHz will be slower than the P4EE at 3.2GHz.  The Prescott better ramp up like mad or there will be problems.  And with 103 watts of power dissipation average (and 120 under load) it won't be easy...


And from the benchmarks I've seen leaked so far, the Clawhammer more than just barely beats the Northwood C.  The only thing it lost in was the usual media content creation benchmark, but it was _close_ this time, rather than the P4 having that huge lead it usualy has.


And an article benchmarking the P4EE 3.4GHz was released shortly before it was pulled again.  Except for Comanche4 (where it was faster by 15% than 3.2GHz Northwood C) all the speed improvements were less than 10%.  Meanwhile, the slowest of the Clawhammers (Athlon64 3200+) beats the 3.06GHz by more than 10% across the board except for content creation.

[Grey Wolf]

I was being conservative. You see, I'm a known AMD fanboy So I was giving Intel the benefit of the doubt.

EDIT: Here's the P4EE benchmarks: http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=105039020