INTEL & AMD Deep Thoughts

[Bradster]

I must make this clear before I start; I honestly don’t have a preference, and however the way the information is presented to me I choose one over the other. If that changes or I have a better understanding of it, then I mostly would change my mine because of cost. I could care less which CPU I choose as long as I know what I’m buying and how fast it is. That said recently I went with all INTEL for a really simple reason.

If someone states "that’s an Intel 3.0 core 2 duo". I know exactly how fast that is.

If someone says "that's an AMD 3400", no freaking clue until I look it up. I think if they would state the speed in the name of the chip to indicate what the heck it is, this would make an impact. I’d of most likely go AMD because of price.

Even when searching for a motherboard for AMD. An example would be, it supports up to AMD 3800. Ok… how fast is that? Go to AMD website look up the chip. They present this kind of documentation.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_13909_14326,00.html

Ok neat, so my question remains how fast is it? Go to places like Tom's hardware benchmark charts and look at the pretty colors and think how nice it would be to understand it.

My last AMD was a K6 at which point they still included the speed of the CPU in the name, or least understood it. Call me crazy but why make the customer go through unnecessary research? If they want you to buy, shouldn't it be clearly marked and advertised?

Ok this is the part you call me stupid and show me what i'm missing because it just doesn't make since to me.

[Stealthy]

Clock speeds aren't really the best indicator of how fast a CPU is anymore, unless you're comparing CPU's from the same family, i.e. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Gz vs Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 Ghz. Other factors that affect processing power are things such as size of onboard cache, number of cores, and how the CPU handles the processing of intructions.

There are a couple of good webistes dedicated to hardware reviews that I go an check out if I'm looking to upgrade / change my system:

www.anandtech.com and www.tomshardware.com.

This being said, Intel are currently on top in the desktop stakes, and pretty much have been since the release of the Core Duo CPU's. They are also offering the best bang for your buck so to speak, although this will probably change with the next round of AMD price drops.
AMD's next generation of desktop CPU's are still about 3-6 months away, but the expectation is that they should at least match the Intel CPU's in performance.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
Stealthy

Hope this helps...

[cookcpu]

I have the same problem with you on identifying those AMD or Intel cpu and I have to look up through google to see which is better.

I found this forum which give a guideline base on one budget. It does make life easier.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1093205

[Bradster]

Nice! Thanks for those answers.

I wish the industry would come up with a labeling system as a whole to best understand what exactly the speeds are. Car manufactures did it, Horse power, torque, etc. CPU’s can too darn it.

In the mean time I’m standing here at the CPU dyno :lol: At Toms hardware thinking to my self, I must have ate something bad. Because i'm seeing all these color charts showing up on the screen :shock:

I’m not entirely clear at the data results from the 2 CPU’s I’m comparing on what I’m looking at, little help ?:oops:

[Stealthy]

I assume you're talking about this:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html

Tom's hardware have a bunch of different benchmarks so you can match it up to what you are primarily going to use your PC for. For us multiboxers, the gaming benchmarks would fit best, so choose either:
Prey, Quake IV, Serious Sam, Supreme Commander, Unreal Tournament or Warhammer.

The score listed is frames per second (FPS), and obviously faster is better! :)

Note - The Intel CPU's are listed in blue, AMD in green and the two your select are in red.

Hope this helps...

[Bradster]

Thanks, It's pretty bad how I missed what the colors mean and it was right there in the open too. :o

That's why it was confusing that and why it listed so many others I didn't select. I get it now, now that I do I just feel sad lol

[Djarid]

It is all a lot more complicated that this specially if you are talking about multiple instances on the same hardware.

CPU for many MMOGs is no longer the overriding performance factor and if you are running multiple instances then Graphics performance and memory access become far more important.

AMD (X/M)2 and Intel both suffer from FSB bottlenecks in that all memory and peripheral communication has to go through the common FSB... multi core / multi processor just further congests this bus.

AMD FX/Opteron and Intel in 2009 will use a hypertransport technology which will allow processors to use a more direct and less congested path to memory / peripherals

[MrLonghair]

Where did you get the "Intel 3.0 core 2 duo" thing? I never see it that clearly written. AMD 3400, 5200, 6400 tells me performance like that in megahertz, just like the Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP families, but it seems that they're dropping that way of labelling processors soon.

"Intel Celeron 440", says the online store listing, I have no idea what that means, it's not the speed, it's not the megahertz, nor is it 4.40 Ghz of performance.

"Intel Core 2 Duo E6850", is that like 6.85 Ghz of performance or what? The cores run at 3.0 ghz which doesn't mean anything, because it's all about the internals, I remember AMD K6-2 processors beating P3 processors running at faster speeds. Athlon XP processors running at around 1.8 - 2.2 ghz kept smashing way faster Pentium 4s for a while.


(if building multiboxing, go AMD AM2, unless you get a great deal right from an Intel factory this is the best bang for the buck)

[Wilbur]

The best chips available on the Market right now, are the new Barcelona core Opterons.

They win hands down. HyperTransport 3.0 eliminates pretty much all the FSB Bottlenecks, You can have upto 8 CPU's on a single motherboard (thats 32!! cores). With DDR3 about to make inroads into the memory market in a BIG way, Opterons are looking like the chips that'll get the most out of it.

[Bradster]

Where did you get the "Intel 3.0 core 2 duo" thing? I never see it that clearly written. AMD 3400, 5200, 6400 tells me performance like that in megahertz, just like the Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP families, but it seems that they're dropping that way of labelling processors soon.

"Intel Celeron 440", says the online store listing, I have no idea what that means, it's not the speed, it's not the megahertz, nor is it 4.40 Ghz of performance.


3.0 Intel core 2 duo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028

Celeron 440
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220133

You are right longhair. Intel is starting to do that as well, like with the 440.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well ya only $600 plus per chip ... and what you need a server board for them?

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3091&p=2

Well the 2S are not so expensive:


AMD 2S Processors
Quad Core CPUs
Quad/ Dualcore Clock Codename L2 L3 HT Mem bandwidth TDP Price
Opteron 2350 Quad 2GHz Barcelona 4x 0.5MB 2MB 1000 MHz DDR 10.6GB/s 95W $389
Opteron 2347 Quad 1.9GHz Barcelona 4x 0.5MB 2MB 1000 MHz DDR 10.6GB/s 95W $316
Opteron 2347 HE Quad 1.9GHz Barcelona 4x 0.5MB 2MB 1000 MHz DDR 10.6GB/s 68W $377
Opteron 2346 HE Quad 1.8GHz Barcelona 4x 0.5MB 2MB 1000 MHz DDR 10.6GB/s 68W $255
Opteron 2344 HE Quad 1.7GHz Barcelona 4x 0.5MB 2MB 1000 MHz DDR 10.6GB/s 68W $209


The place I buy from dosnt have the 23xx listed yet ...