Intel chipsets are the most stable?

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 10:04:50 -0400, Tony Hill
wrote:

....snip...
However when nVidia entered the game, the rules changed somewhat.
nVidia right out of the gate had VIA and ALi beat cold in terms of
driver quality and their chipsets were used on higher-end products
that SiS (if you use low-end crap components on a motherboard with a
****ty design, it really doesn't matter how good the chipset is, your
board will still suck). The result of this was two-fold: first off it
gave a real, viable competitor to Intel for the most stable chipsets,
and secondly it really forced VIA to pick up their socks. While I'm
still no big fan of VIA chipsets, my understanding is that their
latest couple versions have been rather significantly better than
where they were two years ago.


Also, Intel is hardly without their own faults as well. While some of
their chipsets have been good, they have had their own sets of
problems, ranging from the extremely problematic memory interface of
the i820 chipset to the very poor quality of the early i810 drivers,
and pretty much all of us who were dealing with PCs back in the late
'96/early '97 time frame remember incredibly problematic ATA drivers
for the PIIX4 southbridge (this caused many people to have to format
and re-install their entire OS just because they installed patches and
drivers in a different order than was required).


Personally, if I were to build a system using an Intel processor, I
would probably stick to an Intel chipset simply because the only
advantage of non-Intel chipsets is about a $5 price savings (ie
nothing). On the other hand, my last 4 motherboard + CPU combos have
been using AMD processors, obviously all of which used non-Intel
chipsets (2 x SiS, 1 VIA and 1 nVidia). If I were to buy a new system
today, it would have an AMD processor in the thing and an nVidia
chipset on the motherboard, because IMO they are now the leaders in
terms of chipset driver quality, not Intel.

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

I could agree that early VIA chipsets were not flawless in terms of
stability, performance, features, whatever else you look at. However,
these chipsets were found in mostly low-end boards, and the makers
thereof cut every corner to bring the price point down. With $hitty
design and $hitty components, these boards could be nothing better
than $hit. Moreover, these boards were mostly used together with the
lowest of the lowest priced components that had their own stability
issues and $hitty drivers, whereas Intel boards tended to be used with
higher-end components. Yet, even then there were some boards that,
when set up correctly and with at least marginally good PSU, video,
and NIC, were quite decent and stable performers. Case in point - my
1998-ish FIC VA503+ board that is still alive in my second system with
k6-2+ overclocked to 600MHZ - I use it to browse some iffy sites when
I would not want to risk infecting my main system with some crap. By
the way, that one - dual Opteron on MSI board with VIA KT800 chipset -
has yet to show a blue screen. Yes, a few times I had app crashes -
when I debugged .NET apps that make calls to unmanaged functions ;-).
When I do same things at work, the all-Intel IBM NetVista PC usually
shows BSOD.

And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.
PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2038&p=3
Business Winstone 2004

1. AMD Athlon64 FX53
2. AMD Athlon64 FX51
3. AMD Athlon64 3400+
4. AMD Athlon64 3200+
5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as
Extremely Expensive)

OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the ****
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for
the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point
of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better
deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for
buck". That is still true. -Dave

While those who spend over $500 for a cpu may not be a large percentage
of pc buyers, there are many gamers who will spend around $300 to get an
an Athlon 64 3500+.

"Dave C." wrote:


And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.
PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2038&p=3
Business Winstone 2004

1. AMD Athlon64 FX53
2. AMD Athlon64 FX51
3. AMD Athlon64 3400+
4. AMD Athlon64 3200+
5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as
Extremely Expensive)

OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the ****
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for
the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point
of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better
deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for
buck". That is still true. -Dave

Never anonymous Bud wrote:

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." on
Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:15:44 -0400 spoke:

So the P4 3.2/3.4 and Athlon64 3200/3400 would be the best indicators of
who has the best bang for buck, at the moment.

Gaming: OpenGL: The Intel chips are much faster

Hmmm, at tomshardware.com, in a recent review,
using Quake at 1024x768, the P4 3.4gnz hit 234fps, an A64-3400 hit 229.

NOT 'much faster', barely 1% difference. Statistically a tie.
(I consider 2% difference to be a tie,
5% to be a marginal win, 10% or more is a clear win).

Gaming: DX8: The AMD chips are faster, no doubt about it

Wolf, A64 hit 156.1, P4 hit 156.4, NO difference.
Comanche, A64 did 70.38, P4 did 66.33. Slight win, AMD
Unreal, A64 did 147.11, P4 did 127.01, clear win, AMD.

Gaming: DX9: It's virtually a tie, as the AMD chips are two to three

3DMark graphics, A64 at 6607, P4 at 6611, tie.
3DMark CPU, A64 at 747, P4 at 735, tie.
Aquamark 3, A64 at 105.69, P4 at 107.6, tie.
FarCry, A64 at 220.8, P4 at 207, slight edge, AMD.


Well, I have NO idea where you're getting YOUR info,
but many here claim Toms Hardware is an Intel shill,
yet the numbers CLEARLY show AMD at least keeping pace
with Intel, and often beating them.

One thing stands out, though. With a 64 bit OS, it's expected that the
Athlon 64/FX/Opterons will get roughly a 20% speed increase. And, Microsoft
is considering making the upgrade to Windows XP-64 free to those that have
a valid XP license and a 64 bit processor. They expect the OS to be
available 1st or 2nd quarter in '05. You can download and run the beta,
now.

Dave C. wrote:
And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.
PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2038&p=3
Business Winstone 2004

1. AMD Athlon64 FX53
2. AMD Athlon64 FX51
3. AMD Athlon64 3400+
4. AMD Athlon64 3200+
5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as
Extremely Expensive)


OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the ****
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for
the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point
of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better
deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for
buck". That is still true. -Dave


Ok lets just use A64 3200 and P4 3,2 Prescott.

Business Winstone = Clear win for A64 3200+
Content Creation = AMD again.
All Sysmark 2004 tests goes to P4.

Aquamark = tied
Aquamark CPU = P4
Halo = tied
GunMetal = tied

Both UT2k3 tests goes clearly to A64 3200+
Warcraft 3 slight edge to A64 3200 but I think it should be considered a
tie.

Q3 = A64 3200+
Jedi Knight = A64 3200+
Wolfenstein = A64 3200+

ALL 3 are OpenGL tests which you claim P4 is superior in. Sorry but you
have NO evidence that shows that.

JK wrote:

chrisv wrote:

JK wrote:

We went through this already several times.

Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It
was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop
performance by such a large margin.

Your AMD bias is so obvious that it's easily disregarded.

LOL! Look at the benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6

Johannes H Andersen wrote:

JK wrote:

chrisv wrote:

JK wrote:

We went through this already several times.

Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8) It
was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in desktop
performance by such a large margin.

Your AMD bias is so obvious that it's easily disregarded.

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 00:50:35 GMT, "Frank" wrote:


"JK" wrote in message
...


chrisv wrote:

JK wrote:

We went through this already several times.

Ahh. Intel/AMD flame wars. It brings back so many memories. 8)
It
was more fun back in the Pentium/K6 days, though...

It was much more of a contest then then. Now AMD is beating Intel in
desktop
performance by such a large margin.

A few _cheap_ corporations or bureaucracies will use AMD and off brand
chipsets....Check out the banks who need no fault tolerances....
Intel based IBM........

If the banks have any sense at all, and I believe they do, they will most
certainly not be running mission critical servers on distributed
x86/Windows platforms. That's a role which is still best filled by an IBM
mainframe.

As for branch servers and desktops, Dell is probably the choice and of
course that means Intel x86, for the moment but not for any reasons of
technical excellence or superiority. If I were a bank IT decision maker
though, I'd be wary of placing such faith in an organization with such a
fragile business model.

As for fault tolerance I dunno where you got that from - Intel doesn't have
it in any form, in house - they get that from 3rd parties and specialist
OEMs... just like AMD does.

I don't follow why you'd think "cheap" would be associated with the use of
AMD CPUs - a throwaway comment that.

Rgds, George Macdonald

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

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:15:44 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:
The following is an article on the Athlon 64 2800+. But more interesting
is,
the benchmarks included in the article are a GREAT comparison of the 3.2GHz
P4
processors with the Athlon64 3200+. In this article, these two processors
are
pretty evenly matched, with Intel being faster on some benchmarks, and AMD
being faster on others.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2038&p=1

So here they tested 6 games, of which the Athlon64 3400+ was faster
than the P4 3.4E on 5 of them and they were tied in the (video-card
limited) 6th game.

Now lets look at what Sharky Extreme has to report in their article about
the
3.4GHz Prescott processor. This one has benchmarks that are a great
comparison
of the 3.4GHz Intel chips with the Athlon64 3400+. Here, you have to be
careful,
as Sharky doesn't organize their charts in order of fastest to slowest. And
on
some charts, LOWER scores are better. But if you read all the benchmarks,
you
will again notice that the two chips are pretty evenly matched, with AMD
faster
on some and Intel faster on others.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...261_3329681__1


Did you even bother reading this articles before making your post?!
In this article they test 5 games, of which 1 is video card limited
(CPUs all score basically the same) and in the other 4 the Athlon64
was faster! When comparing the P4 3.4E vs. Athlon64 3400+, the latter
is faster by 6%, 3%, 22% and 13%. Even if the video-limited test the
Athlon64 came out 1% faster, though I'm sure that's within the margin
of error for the test.

In this same test the Athlon64 was also faster in their Office
application test and Content Creation test. The only tests in which
the P4 was faster were their synthetic benchmarks (which simply showed
that the Athlon64 they tested did indeed just have a single memory
channel while the P4 had a dual channel memory) and the 2 media
encoding tests.

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

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 07:59:13 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:

And you should visit your optician. You clearly need your vision checked.
PROOF you have not read the tests you link to.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2038&p=3
Business Winstone 2004

1. AMD Athlon64 FX53
2. AMD Athlon64 FX51
3. AMD Athlon64 3400+
4. AMD Athlon64 3200+
5. Intel Pentium 4 EE 3,4 GHz (EE = Extreme Edition, popularily known as
Extremely Expensive)

OH I get it now. You are evaluating processors on the basis of who the ****
cares about cost? If I wanted to pay more for a processor than I did for
the last car I purchased, then YES, the benchmarks might support your point
of view. But I have claimed all along that Intel processors are a better
deal at the price point most people are building at, in terms of "bang for
buck". That is still true. -Dave

Uhhh.. Dave?! Are you hitting the crack-pipe here?! The Athlon64
3200+ mentioned above costs $204 at Newegg.com. The slightly slower
P4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition costs $999.

How in the hell can you claim that the slower $999 processor gives you
better bang for your buck than the faster $204 process?!?! Ok, to be
fair there ARE tests in which the P4EE is a faster chip, but it
basically NEVER offers a very good "bang for buck"!

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