Real World Comparisons: AMD 3200 -vs- Intel 3.2. Your thoughts, experiences....

(Ted Grevers) wrote in
om:

comparing the AMD 3200 to an Intel 3.2GHz.

what ? why are you comparing products from different price ranges ?

as well as 800MHz FSB.

800 ? are you sure ? more like 200MHz


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On Sun, 1 Feb 2004 21:19:20 +0000 (UTC), RusH wrote:

as well as 800MHz FSB.

800 ? are you sure ? more like 200MHz

Although it's a marketing hype the truth is that quad-pumped 200MHz bus is roughly equivalent to a
real 800MHz classic bus unable to transfer data more than once per clock cycle. It might be more
like a 700MHz equivalent classic bus maybe but surely it can deliver almost 4 times as much.
Otherwise companies such as Nvidia and ATI wouldn't have bothered using DDR memory before the rest
of the industry in order to achieve higher bandwidths than what previous classic technologies
allowed.

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:48:15 GMT, gaffo wrote:

not for me, though i've heard of the CXT? k-6 core patch for the older
k-6's under windoze was needed to work.......though this is RARE thing.
Most chips regardless of brand work!

Actually, if I remember my own history correctly, the K6-2 worked fine
without the CXT tweak but performance went up by a significant bit
with it.

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wrote in
:

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004 21:19:20 +0000 (UTC), RusH
wrote:

as well as 800MHz FSB.

800 ? are you sure ? more like 200MHz

Although it's a marketing hype the truth is that quad-pumped
200MHz bus is roughly equivalent to a real 800MHz classic bus
unable to transfer data more than once per clock cycle. It might
be more like a 700MHz equivalent classic bus maybe but surely it
can deliver almost 4 times as much. Otherwise companies such as
Nvidia and ATI wouldn't have bothered using DDR memory before
the rest of the industry in order to achieve higher bandwidths
than what previous classic technologies allowed.

so ? they can write 2 trilion Teraherz on the box and it still will
be 200MHz on my osciloscope ! Not to mention real world performance,
the hell with numbers.


Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://kiti.pulse.pdi.net/qv30/
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

On 31 Jan 2004 20:12:38 -0800, (Ted Grevers)
wrote:
I'm posting this for two reasons: One, I want to know what people have
seen in comparing the AMD 3200 to an Intel 3.2GHz. Also, what are the
benefits of selecting the Intel system over AMD, or AMD over Intel
system.

I am tired of reading magazine reviews of the 2 systems side by side.
I'm curious what the real world has seen of these two systems. To me,
depending on who owns the magazine, it can be biased reporting.

And now you come to Usenet where you can get REALLY biased reporting!
:

My goal is to purchase a replacement to my current Intel system in the
next 30 days, and outside of what's read in the magazines, I don't
know anyone with either the AMD or Intel systems running at the new,
higher speeds.

Presently, I'm biased towards the Intel system, only because I have
never owned an AMD based system. Are there software incompatibilities
to be worried about, or a unique set of patches that an operating
system may need based on the processor itself?

First off, the processor counts for dick-all when it comes to
compatibility issues. Sure, there are some minor errata for the
chips, both AMD and Intel document the bugs in their chips very
completely (there's no way in hell you would ever see that kind of bug
documentation from a software company!). It's perhaps interesting to
note that AMD consistently has fewer processor bugs than Intel, which
has lead to a bit of a joke that AMD is more Intel-compatible than
Intel is, though in reality it could simply be that Intel documents
their bugs a bit better. Either way, you're chances of EVER
encountering any of the problems listed on errata sheets is pretty
much nill.


Now, what IS important here is the motherboards. AMD and Intel
processors use quite different electrical and bus interfaces for their
processors, so obviously you can not stick a current AMD chip and an
Intel chip into the same motherboard. Where CPUs pretty much just sit
there and crunch numbers, motherboards are a bit trickier. CPUs don't
need any sort of drivers, motherboards do (or more specifically, the
chipsets used on the motherboard require drivers). This is where the
problems occur.

There are a fair number of companies that produce motherboard chipsets
for various markets, but when you look at chipset out there for
desktop systems you end up with the following options:

Intel P4 : Intel, VIA and SiS
AMD AthlonXP or Athlon64 : nVidia, VIA and SiS

Now, the problem with all of this is that drivers for motherboards
have, to put it bluntly, sucked ass. VIA in particular have a rather
poor reputation for their driver quality (another company called ALi
has a similarly bad reputation, but they've nearly been put out of
business so their chipsets are quite rare). SiS and Intel have both
been kind of on-again/off-again in their driver quality, though SiS
has never managed to loose their low-budget reputation, so their
chipsets are mainly found on cheap (and often poorly made) boards.
nVidia is a bit of a newcomer to the game (they only just started
making chipsets 2 or 3 years ago, though their claim to fame of sorts
is that they make the motherboard chipset used in Microsoft's XBox).
They don't have as long of a track-record as the others, but generally
speaking they have done a MUCH better job then the others.


Anyway, getting back to the subject of your post, the problem with AMD
is that they have often had really ****ty chipsets to support their
processors. AMD does make their own chipsets, but only for high-end
workstations and servers. Until nVidia showed up, you were pretty
much stuck with either a really low-end board using an SiS chipset or
a board using a VIA chipset with really crappy drivers. This lead to
all kinds of compatibility problems that were blamed mostly on AMD.
Intel processors, on the other hand, mostly live on motherboards with
Intel chipsets. While Intel's record with chipset drivers has been
kind of weak, they weren't consistently bad like VIA. Much of this
reputation has lingered, despite the fact that nVidia has now given
AMD a really credible chipset supplier.

The main focus of this system will be for Photoshop, as well as
Illustrator, and some Video encoding and editing work. If it were for
surfing the web, and email, I'd stick with the current system I have.

Well, I won't go into too much detail in terms of performance because
there are TONS of web reviews out there that do a better job of
comparing the chips than I could do. I will agree with some other
posters here that the P4, generally speaking, does a better job at
most of the tasks you're looking at than the AthlonXP and often better
even than the new Athlon64.

However they are often close and different software can make a big
difference, even for what would see to be identical tasks. For
example, encoding video using the DivX codec is quite a bit faster on
the P4, but encoding video using XVid codec is quite a bit faster on
the Athlon64 and even the AthlonXP manages to outperform the P4. Both
XVid and DivX codecs are implementations of MPEG4 video compression,
both do the same basic job and produce very similar results, but the
performance of each can vary by a fair bit.

As a level set, the system that I eventually do get will have 1GB of
RAM, as well as 800MHz FSB.

Don't get too focused on that "800MHz FSB" thing. First off,
technically speaking, there is no such beast. Intel's Pentium 4
processors use a 64-bit 200MHz QDR processor bus, for an effective
800MT/s. AMD's AthlonXP chips use a 64-bit 200MHz DDR processor bus
for an effective 400MT/s. AMD's Athlon64 use a 64-bit wide 200MHz DDR
memory bus and a 16 + 16-bit wide 800MHz DDR I/O buses. In short,
it's a whole lot more complicated than the single "800MHz FSB" tag you
might see waved around. Heck, even the 'FSB' term, or "Front Side
Bus" doesn't make much sense anymore since we no longer have a
backside bus.

In the end, you can get data too/from the chip in a number of
different ways, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Generally speaking, the Athlon64 is a tiny bit better at this data
moving than the Pentium4 which is in turn better than the AthlonXP.


After all this, I've most likely just ended up confusing the situation
more than helping, so I'll try to sum a few things up with some simple
recommendations he

For what you're looking at, I would personally recommend a either a
2.8C GHz P4 processor and a motherboard using an Intel i865 chipset
motherboard. MSI makes a nice motherboard called the 865PE Neo2.
There are other, faster options, but this combo should probably give
you really good bang for your buck. The "2.8C GHz P4" has the 800MT/s
processor bus, as opposed to the "2.8GHz P4" that has only a 533MT/s
bus. Of course, the 3.0C and 3.2GHz P4 chips will offer a bit more
performance, but they'll add a fair bit to the cost and typically the
small improvement in performance isn't worth the large extra cost.
Similarly, most review sites test the P4 on the slightly faster i875
chipset instead of the i865 chipset, but the difference is only 2-3%
in performance but $75-$100 in cost.

AMD makes some great chips, and for many applications I highly
recommend them. However, for your specific use, Intel's chips have a
tendency to do a bit better than the AthlonXP. The new Athlon64 is
certainly an option, however these chips tend to be a bit more
expensive for the performance they offer (for your applications, in
some other apps they offer great performance for their price) and I'm
not entirely satisfied with the selection of motherboards for them at
the moment (most Athlon64 motherboards use VIA chipsets, and while
VIA's drivers have improved in the past 5 years, they still have more
than their fair share of itzy-little problems that tend to cause
premature graying of the hair).


Of course, the processor is only one piece of the puzzle. On top of
that you'll want to find yourself some good, brand-name DDR400 memory.
More specifically, you'll want 2 sticks of 512MB a piece (in most
current P4 boards you need to add memory in matched pairs). The easy
way to find good quality memory it to go to www.crucial.com. Crucial
is Micron's retail front-end (Micro = the second or third largest
memory producer in the world). However, you can simply get the memory
from the same store you bought your processor and motherboard. If you
go that route, I have two pieces of advice: 1. do NOT buy the
"generic" memory, it will OFTEN have a dead cell or two that will
cause totally random and hard to identify problems, and 2. do not buy
the super-dooper whiz-bang memory with Blinky Lights (tm) that many
companies are trying to sell, it's no faster but costs a LOT more. My
regular on-line vendor carries some Samsung memory modules for a great
price, and it's likely that wherever you buy stuff they will have a
similar sort of deal.

There's also the question of video cards. This discussion is perhaps
best left to others as I'm no expert, but a good 2D card is probably
your best bet, perhaps an ATI Radeon 9200 or even a Radeon 9600?
Don't go all out for the top-end cards unless you're a hardcore gamer,
the performance for non-games doesn't change much. On the flip-side,
don't cheap out too much or image quality may suffer a bit (this is
particular a concern if you have a 19" or larger monitor or a 17"+
LCD).

The last thing to think about is your hard drive. The hard drive
plays a MAJOR role in determining not only the overall speed of the
system, but also the perceived "feel" of the system. A system with a
really fast hard drive will feel much more responsive, even if it
doesn't speed up long calculations any. Your best bet for hard drive
comparisons is the website: www.storagereview.com, they REALLY know
their stuff and compare most common drives. Personally my choice
would be either a Seagate or Maxtor 120GB SATA drive with 8MB of
cache. Those two companies tend to make *quiet* drives (something I
appreciate) while still being pretty fast. If you aren't as worried
about noise as me, Western Digital drives tend to be a bit faster.
Either way, a fast SATA drive with 8MB of cache is highly recommended
IMO. The large cache really helps performance and while SATA doesn't
improve performance much over ATA100 or ATA133 drives, it's sort of
the standard for the future, plus it also makes cabling inside your
case easier.

So, to sum up, I would get a system that looked like the following:

Intel P4 2.8C GHz processor
MSI 865 Neo2-PLS motherboard
2 x 512MB brand-name memory
Sapphire Radeon 9200 video card
Maxtor DiamondMax 9 SATA, 8MB cache, 120GB hard drive

Plus whatever accompanied peripherals you need.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:26:53 GMT) it happened Tony Hill
wrote in
:
Wow, lots of good info.
I had one maxtor, it made so much noise you could not use the phone
in the same room, and the cat went up the curtains when it spinned on.
So, it all depends perhaps if you have a monday or a tuesday product...
JP

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 17:39:26 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Feb 2004 09:26:53 GMT) it happened Tony Hill
wrote in
m:
Wow, lots of good info.
I had one maxtor, it made so much noise you could not use the phone
in the same room, and the cat went up the curtains when it spinned on.
So, it all depends perhaps if you have a monday or a tuesday product...

The recent Maxtors have FDBs so are just as quiet as the Seagates for main
spindle bearing noise but then again, the one Maxtor I got ~9months ago
started to crap out after 6months with bad sectors. They're also being
bitchy about an RMA on the warranty. Oh and the Maxtor diags don't work
with nVidia chipsets - they've been saying "real soon" for all the 9months
I've had the drive. The Seagates have been good so far and ultra quiet.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Tony Hill wrote in
.com:

Athlon64 is certainly an option, however these chips tend to be
a bit more expensive for the performance they offer

comparing to P4 it will be almost equal in price but faster

most common drives. Personally my choice would be either a
Seagate or Maxtor 120GB SATA drive with 8MB of cache.

Seagate should be ashamed becouse of its Write speeds, Maxtor sounds
like a little machine gun

If you aren't as worried about
noise as me, Western Digital drives tend to be a bit faster.

This one is like a M60 machine gun

and the fastest 120GB HDD now belongs to ... Samsung No, I'm not
kidding .
SP1213N - this is one piece of wonder, best write times, best average
read and acces time (HDTach) + its quiet (kind of :P)

Either way, a fast SATA drive with 8MB of cache is highly
recommended IMO.

a fast PATA/SATA with 8MB.

The large cache really helps performance

yep

and
while SATA doesn't improve performance much

should be "at all"

ATA133 drives, it's sort of the standard for the future, plus it
also makes cabling inside your case easier.

and its ~10-20% more expensive, wooohoo round cables - gotta have
them

So, to sum up, I would get a system that looked like the
following:

Intel P4 2.8C GHz processor

AMD XP 3200 (faster+cheaper) or AMD 64 3200 (faster+almost same price
range)

MSI 865 Neo2-PLS motherboard

Asus A7N8X Deluxe GOLD or MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R (Asus would be nice but
is 2 times more expensive)

2 x 512MB brand-name memory

1 x 1 Gig of brand mem, no point in getting dual channel for a 20%
added cost

Sapphire Radeon 9200 video card

yup, excellent choice for a nongamer/lighy gamer

Maxtor DiamondMax 9 SATA, 8MB cache, 120GB hard drive

Samsung SP1213N PATA 8MB cache, 120GB hard drive

Plus whatever accompanied peripherals you need.

like brand name keyboard/mouse (Microsoft/Logitech, do not touch
those 5$ cheap crap)
good display (only one pair of eyes for a lifetime - remember that)
PSU - brand name =400W


Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://kiti.pulse.pdi.net/qv30/
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004 23:15:18 +0000 (UTC), RusH
wrote:
Tony Hill wrote in
t.com:

Athlon64 is certainly an option, however these chips tend to be
a bit more expensive for the performance they offer

comparing to P4 it will be almost equal in price but faster

Not in my neck of the woods at least. The cheapest Athlon64 I can
find is about $350 CDN (~$250 US) for the 3000+ (from a reliable
vendor, some bargain-basement places sell it for a bit less).
Motherboards for the Athlon64 start at about $175 CDN (~$135 US). For
comparison, I can get a P4 2.8C GHz processor for $275 (~$200 US) and
a motherboard for $120 (~$95 US). The performance for the
applications the original poster listed would be very similar between
these chips as they were applications that the P4 often does quite
well in (high-bandwidth use and lots of SSE2 optimizations). For some
other users I might have a different recommendation.

most common drives. Personally my choice would be either a
Seagate or Maxtor 120GB SATA drive with 8MB of cache.

Seagate should be ashamed becouse of its Write speeds, Maxtor sounds
like a little machine gun

For anyone reading here, don't bother putting too much value in
peoples comments about hard drives. Go to www.storagereview.com,
that's about the ONLY place you're likely to find RELIABLE information
about hard drives, both in terms of performance and how loud the
drives are. Storage Review also has a nifty reliability survey that
can give you some hints as to what drives are reliable and which ones
aren't.

If you aren't as worried about
noise as me, Western Digital drives tend to be a bit faster.

This one is like a M60 machine gun

and the fastest 120GB HDD now belongs to ... Samsung No, I'm not
kidding .
SP1213N - this is one piece of wonder, best write times, best average
read and acces time (HDTach) + its quiet (kind of :P)

Again, go to Storage Review for the real-deal here. Fire up their
"Performance Database" and compare this Samsung drive (they tested the
160GB model) with some drives from Maxtor, Seagate, WD and Hitachi.
The Samsung drive does fine, but it pretty much middle of the pack.
There's not a huge discrepancy between the various companies.

and
while SATA doesn't improve performance much

should be "at all"

It occasionally get's you up to 5% boost in performance, but for the
most part you're right, not a performance issue.

ATA133 drives, it's sort of the standard for the future, plus it
also makes cabling inside your case easier.

and its ~10-20% more expensive, wooohoo round cables - gotta have
them

From the prices I see it's only an extra $10-$15 for SATA over ATA133
drives, which is less than I would pay for round cables. ATA133 is
fine, but at this point in time I would recommend SATA for people
buying new systems. It's quickly becoming the standard for drives and
has enough advantage, IMO, to make up for the extra $10-$15 in price.

So, to sum up, I would get a system that looked like the
following:

Intel P4 2.8C GHz processor

AMD XP 3200 (faster+cheaper) or AMD 64 3200 (faster+almost same price
range)

The AthlonXP 3200 will be slower than an P4 2.8C for most of the
applications listed by the original poster. The Athlon64 3200+ is a
fair bit more expensive, probably an extra $200 - $300 US on the whole
system price. Considering the entire system would work out to about
$700 US for the P4, an extra $200-$300 is a lot.

Plus, as I mentioned, I'm not satisfied with the current crop of
motherboards, almost all are based on VIA chipsets. I've used too
many VIA chipsets in the past with their drivers that just never quite
work right, even when there are no obvious problems that can be
pinpointed. See that recent thread titled "Why does everyone hate
VIA", or words to that effect, for most info. Otherwise there are
nForce3 150 boards with lower performance and missing some features
(no SATA support for one, while it's not such a big deal to get a PATA
drive vs. an SATA drive now, I would DEFINITELY recommend against any
motherboard that doesn't have native SATA, and the add-in PCI SATA
chips are a very poor substitute). SiS chipsets are only available on
el-cheapo bargain bin motherboards.

Until the nForce3 250 Pro chipset comes out, I really have a tough
time recommending the platform to most people, especially given that
it's currently a high-end/high-priced platform. The slightly slower
but cheaper equipment almost always offers better bang for your buck.
In the case of the original poster, the P4 would offer very good
performance.

Plus whatever accompanied peripherals you need.

like brand name keyboard/mouse (Microsoft/Logitech, do not touch
those 5$ cheap crap)

Agreed. Plus I would HIGHLY recommend an optical mouse (these are
becoming fairly standard these days). They work just SO much better
than the old "ball" mice.

good display (only one pair of eyes for a lifetime - remember that)

Yup. A good monitor is also one piece of equipment that you can bring
to a new system, even if every other part is upgraded.

PSU - brand name =400W

With power supplies, go for quality over quantity. A good quality
300W power supply will do MUCH better than an el-cheapo 500W power
supply any day. Antec is always a good name to aim for, and
ThermalTake seems to now have some good supplies for very reasonable
prices (very quiet fans as well).

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

The little lost angel wrote:

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:48:15 GMT, gaffo wrote:


not for me, though i've heard of the CXT? k-6 core patch for the older
k-6's under windoze was needed to work.......though this is RARE thing.
Most chips regardless of brand work!


Actually, if I remember my own history correctly, the K6-2 worked fine
without the CXT tweak but performance went up by a significant bit
with it.



one of the k-6's had a problem with windoze-98First
Edition.................something to due with the timing. The chip ran
too fast for windoze to work correctly. M$ offered a patch to fix it
within a few weeks. This was YEARS ago and I've forgotten all the details.


try google.




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