Intel chipsets are the most stable?

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 17:54:51 -0400, Ruel Smith wrote:

JK wrote:


Why is it that people who claim Intel chipsets are more stable, never
provide statistical proof to back up their statements? Perhaps it might be
that they can't find any.

I don't have any statistical data to back it up, but I can believe it.

You have *no* information, but continue to believe. Hint: There is no
Santa Claus. You're daddy is the one eating the cookies and milk.

Many technologies on the motherboard are Intel technologies, like the PCI
bus.

Hmm, TI invented the integrated circuit, so I'd guess that no one else
coudl make them either. Xerox, the plain-paper copier. Bayer, the
asperin... Yep, makes perfect sense.

It stands to reason that since they invented it and have honed it
over the years that they have a rock solid implementation of it.

I see. PCI is *so* complicated that no one could possibly get it right,
even after 10 years.

Their reputation over such technolgies depends on it.

Their VP of Marketeering's bonus depends on you believeing such blatent
absurdities.

--
Keith

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

You must have a pretty ****ty car.

wrote:
[...]
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.

I've got a K6/2 doing that's been doing server (web server, SSH, VNC, print
server, a few other things) duties for the past 1 1/2 years. It's about the
most "generic" machine I have around at the moment:
1) Motherboard is a a Jetway 530BF (512KB L2 cache)
2) CPU is a K6/2-400, running at stock (not worth overclocking ).
3) One 256MB PC133 stick (picked up as 128MB), two 64MB PC100 sticks, all
three generic. Yeah, I know, it can't cache all this, but it's better than
hitting the disk
4) El-cheapo AT case with 250W PSU
5) Some 10 gig HDD, cdwriter
6) Windows 2000 Profesional
7) A NIC, an ADSL card, a USB 2.0 card, various other bits

Now, you'd think that with a config like this, it'd be falling over every
few days (though the SiS 530 wasn't too bad of a chipset stability wise).
Not so ... it's been taken out of service perhaps 6 or 7 times in the past
year and a half, all due to power problems or house rewiring (and in one
case to install the cd writer). Up until the power cut two days ago, it had
been up for slightly over 4 months. So even with dirt cheap, generic,
bottom-of-the line components you can have great stability. Sure, the
performance won't blow your socks off, but price (free, as I already had all
the bits) vs performance it comes out quite well

[...]

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz - My inbox is always open

JK wrote:

LOL! Look at the benchmarks.

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

And where is this "large margin"?????? Then I have seen other discussions
on the net about AMD64's fussiness with memory and problems with new
motherboards. Also reported in Tom's hardware guide.

"fussiness" ?

Just choose the proper memory.


"problems with new motherboards."

Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand
that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault
of AMD.

Johannes H Andersen wrote:

JK wrote:

LOL! Look at the benchmarks.

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

And where is this "large margin"?????? Then I have seen other discussions
on the net about AMD64's fussiness with memory and problems with new
motherboards. Also reported in Tom's hardware guide.

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:23:39 +0100 Franklin wrote in
Message id: :

I came across this. Is the guy right?

QUOTE
Volumes have been written on this subject, but suffice to say that
Intel chipsets are the most stable. I do not know if this is because
Intel does a better job at manufacturing their chipsets than other
companies, or that software manufacturers test their software more
thoroughly on Intel-based systems, since they are more popular ..
more than they do on systems based upon non-Intel chipsets. Or a
combination of these factors.

Either way, a system based on an Intel chipset will provide you with
the most stable computing experience. This is common knowledge in the
community. Everyone knows it.
END QUOTE

http://radified.com/Articles/stability.htm

Fact: This has always been true, and most likely always will be. In
addition, Video encoding, which I use my computer for most often, is much
faster on P4 platforms.

JK wrote:

"fussiness" ?

Just choose the proper memory.

"problems with new motherboards."

Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand
that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault
of AMD.

I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a well
performing P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reported
for boards for the AMD64, see e.g.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...t%26start%3D50

"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."

As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.

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

Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. Intel
Northwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win other
important benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

Johannes H Andersen wrote:

JK wrote:

"fussiness" ?

Just choose the proper memory.

"problems with new motherboards."

Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand
that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault
of AMD.

I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a well
performing P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reported
for boards for the AMD64, see e.g.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...t%26start%3D50


That is a Microsoft issue, not a hardware issue. If they don't already have a patch for this, they will probably have one soon.


"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."

As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.

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

Where on that page do you not see a clear win for AMD when comparably priced
processors are compared?



Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. Intel
Northwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win other
important benchmarks hands down.

Like what? 32 bit video editing benchmarks? Very soon 32 bit video editing
benchmarks on the Athlon 64 won't mean much, as there will be great performing
64 bit software for that.

Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

The applications where the Athlon 64 doesn't outperform a comparably
priced P4 running 32 bit software will benefit tremendously from a move
to 64 bit software.

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:41:26 GMT, Johannes H Andersen
wrote:
JK wrote:

"fussiness" ?

Just choose the proper memory.

"problems with new motherboards."

Choose a decent brand of motherboard. If you choose a brand
that makes low quality motherboards, it is your fault, not the fault
of AMD.

I don't choose any motherboard at the moment since I already have a well
performing P4 machine. But I've noticed some teething problems reported
for boards for the AMD64, see e.g.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...t%26start%3D50

Huh?! Your link points to a message discussing two very specific
problem. The first is strictly a software issue and doesn't even
mention a hardware platform, the second is a very specific issue with
Intel's C0 stepping of Prescott P4's and Celeron-D chips!

"AMD is beating Intel in desktop performance by such a large margin."

As for benchmarks, even the site you quoted is not a clear win at all for AMD64.

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

Forget about P4EE, nobody buys them for their own money. Compare e.g. Intel
Northwood 3.2 and a AMD64 3200+ . AMD64 win some, but the Intel win other
important benchmarks hands down. Just click on the subsequent pages on the site...

Fine, let's do a direct comparison of which chip is faster and by what
percentage (anything less than 1% I'll consider a tie as that's well
within the margin of error)

AMD Athlon64 3200+ wins:
Business Winstone 2004 (11.5%)
Content Creation Winstone 2004 (7.7%)
Unreal Tournament Flyby (8.0%)
Unreal Tournament Botmatch (18.0%)
Warcraft 3 (2.4%)
Quake 3 (4.2%)
Wolfenstein (1.8%)
Jedi Knight (2.8%)
Quake 3 Source Compile (14.5%)


Intel "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz wins:
DivX encoding (21.2%)
Aquamark CPU (9.1%)
3DStudio (23.2%)
Lightwave (17.6%)


Tied:
Aquamark FPS
Gunmetal


So the Athlon64 wins more tests, while when the P4 wins it tends to do
so by a larger margin. If we average all the tests out we get that
the P4 is faster by 0.013% (ie they're tied).

Now if we throw price into the equation, we get that the Athlon64
3200+ costing $204 while the "Northwood" P4 3.2GHz will set you back
$244 (prices care of www.newegg.com) The motherboard cost for boards
used in this test should slightly favor AMD (VIA K8T800 based socket
754 board vs. Intel i875P based Socket 478 board) while all other
components in this test were identical.


Soooo... long story short, if you want to do lots of media encoding or
3D rendering, according to this test at least, you should stick with
the P4. If you want to play games, do general office tasks or compile
code, you should go for an Athlon64. You should also stick with the
Athlon64 if 64-bit code is important to you, or if you want the extra
security offered by non-executable data pages. And finally, sticking
with an Athlon64 will also shave a small amount off the price of your
system.


So where is the better value in the Intel system?

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

next use unreal microsecond comparisons benchmarks on the wearing of
tire tread.