Intel, AMD...

Hello
in Italy there is a big diffusion of Amd. Intel is considered an expensive
and useless brand compared to Amd. In our newsgroups there is a big quantity
of trouble messages with Amd, and not with Intel.
I would know, as a little survey, who win between Amd and Intel, what is
your opinion about....

Thanks!

--
Mirko (18,?,CE)
"Quello che capita" driver
Powered by Intel P4 2.80C and Asus Motherboard
"comunque di solito chi ha AMD ha una certa cultura
informatica per cui è più facile che posti nei NG." (Alec)

Mirko wrote:

Hello
in Italy there is a big diffusion of Amd. Intel is considered an expensive
and useless brand compared to Amd. In our newsgroups there is a big
quantity of trouble messages with Amd, and not with Intel.
I would know, as a little survey, who win between Amd and Intel, what is
your opinion about....

Thanks!


Note: opinions expressed below will probably inflame passions about things.
I state here that these are just my opinions and observations. Bleeding
edge game players will take exception to some of my statements, and I
realize that they are a special case. I am making general statements about
the average user.

In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real difference
between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except the price. For
most users there is no noticable performance difference no matter what
software you are running. Years ago it used to be that AMD lagged behind
Intel for floating point performance, but even then you would not notice
the difference unless you were doing modelling of the atmosphere or
something like that.

If you are a bleeding-edge game player, the difference between the two makes
no real difference since the graphics card does most of the work. For the
money you save getting an AMD you can get that much better a GPU and more
system memory. In addition, you may squeeze out a few more frames per
second. Benchmarks (see www.tomshardware.com) currently show the latest
from AMD being faster than the latest from Intel for this. But you must ask
yourself if the difference in frame rates is really that great, since frame
rates in the lower two hundred range are way faster than your brain will
notice. And even if the latest game taxes the CPU, other bottlenecks like
memory bandwidth have a far greater effect(IMHO).

For business applications, benchmarks showing the difference between the
processors are measured in seconds or tenths of seconds. Faster memory
makes the biggest difference because more data is moved per unit time, but
even then you are talking about sub-second measurements.

The bottom line is the price difference. Even if the current benchmarks
showed that Intel edged AMD, I would still get the AMD because for the
lower price I could get more of something else, like memory or better GPU.
The performance difference has long since ceased to be anything worth
considering except in exceptional cases.

I would add that a true 64 bit machine like AMD offers provides added
incentive to get it, to take advantage of software written for 64 bits.

Sorry if what I have written was a bit long, and if it incites flames. That
is not my intention.

Eli

Eli Kane wrote:

Mirko wrote:

Hello
in Italy there is a big diffusion of Amd. Intel is considered an expensive
and useless brand compared to Amd. In our newsgroups there is a big
quantity of trouble messages with Amd, and not with Intel.
I would know, as a little survey, who win between Amd and Intel, what is
your opinion about....

Thanks!


Note: opinions expressed below will probably inflame passions about things.
I state here that these are just my opinions and observations. Bleeding
edge game players will take exception to some of my statements, and I
realize that they are a special case. I am making general statements about
the average user.

In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real difference
between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except the price.

Not quite. Look at benchmarks for Doom 3 for example. Even a $1,000
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE doesn't come close to the performance of a $285
Athlon 64 3500+ running Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7

A $185 Athlon 64 3200+ socket 754 beats the $1,000 Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE
running Business Winstone 2004.

It isn't just a price difference, but the higher level Athlon 64 chips provide
performance for some very widely used applications that no Intel
desktop processor can match. The Athlon 64 also allows upgrades to 64
bit software. The Intel 64 bit desktop processors are expensive and
very hard to find(unless you want to buy a system with one from Dell).

For
most users there is no noticable performance difference no matter what
software you are running. Years ago it used to be that AMD lagged behind
Intel for floating point performance, but even then you would not notice
the difference unless you were doing modelling of the atmosphere or
something like that.

If you are a bleeding-edge game player, the difference between the two makes
no real difference since the graphics card does most of the work.

Not true for Doom 3 and many other games.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. At least with an Athlon 64 3500+
or higher processor, a high end video card can finally achieve its potential in many
games.


For the
money you save getting an AMD you can get that much better a GPU and more
system memory. In addition, you may squeeze out a few more frames per
second. Benchmarks (see www.tomshardware.com) currently show the latest
from AMD being faster than the latest from Intel for this. But you must ask
yourself if the difference in frame rates is really that great, since frame
rates in the lower two hundred range are way faster than your brain will
notice. And even if the latest game taxes the CPU, other bottlenecks like
memory bandwidth have a far greater effect(IMHO).

For business applications, benchmarks showing the difference between the
processors are measured in seconds or tenths of seconds. Faster memory
makes the biggest difference because more data is moved per unit time, but
even then you are talking about sub-second measurements.

The bottom line is the price difference. Even if the current benchmarks
showed that Intel edged AMD, I would still get the AMD because for the
lower price I could get more of something else, like memory or better GPU.
The performance difference has long since ceased to be anything worth
considering except in exceptional cases.

I would add that a true 64 bit machine like AMD offers provides added
incentive to get it, to take advantage of software written for 64 bits.

Sorry if what I have written was a bit long, and if it incites flames. That
is not my intention.

Eli

JK wrote:

In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real
difference between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except
the price.

Not quite. Look at benchmarks for Doom 3 for example. Even a $1,000
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE doesn't come close to the performance of a $285
Athlon 64 3500+ running Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7

True, it does beat it with 82.7 fps vs. 77.3 fps. I do state further down
that you get more bang for your buck with the AMD. I guess my point is that
if you were to be given two machines running Doom3, one with the AMD and
the other with the Intel, you would be very hard pressed to determine which
one was which, based on gameplay. The performance difference between their
top-line chips is not so great in terms of ability to notice, in my
opinion. The happy thing is that not only do you get a few more fps with
AMD, but it costs way less. It's just that the price diff is the major
difference, not the (noticable) performance. Stated another way, suppose
the AMD cost $1000 and the Intel cost $185. Would you shell out that much
more money for those extra 5.4 frames or would 77.3 be perfectly fine?

It is misleading to say that there is a 7% performance difference in those
benchmarks at 1280x1024. It is accurate to say there is a 7% frame rate
difference, but performance is arguably something noticed by the user. As
frame rates increase, the meaning of a 7% increase lessens. The difference
between 32 fps and 26.6 fps is also 7%, but you will notice lag and jerky
movements on screen at 26.6fps. That same 7% difference in these benchmarks
will not be noticed.

One thing to note: if you look at the performance curves on the first page
of that article, you can clearly see that moving from a Radeon 9800 Pro to
a GeForce 6800 with the same CPU makes a HUGE difference. At 1280x1024 you
go from about 30 fps to about 75 fps. This clearly shows that the GPU does
the heavy lifting.

By the way, as far as full motion is concerned, the human eye percieves it
fully at a rate of 30 to 32 fps. The idea is to keep the game engine
portion from stuttering so that the GPU can maintain full motion. I would
be interested to have benchmarks that record numbers and lengths of stalls
in gameplay over unit time rather than a frame rate per second.


A $185 Athlon 64 3200+ socket 754 beats the $1,000 Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE
running Business Winstone 2004.


Yeah, I concede this point for heavy business apps like database transaction
servers and heavy e-commerce apps. But I do say that I was stating opinions
about the average user.


Eli

Eli Kane wrote:

Doh!

It is misleading to say that there is a 7% performance difference in those
benchmarks at 1280x1024. It is accurate to say there is a 7% frame rate
difference, but performance is arguably something noticed by the user. As
frame rates increase, the meaning of a 7% increase lessens. The difference
between 32 fps and 26.6 fps is also 7%, but you will notice lag and jerky
movements on screen at 26.6fps. That same 7% difference in these
benchmarks will not be noticed.


I meant 32 and 29.76 fps with a 7% diff. Duh.

Eli

Eli Kane wrote:

JK wrote:

In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real
difference between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except
the price.

Not quite. Look at benchmarks for Doom 3 for example. Even a $1,000
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE doesn't come close to the performance of a $285
Athlon 64 3500+ running Doom 3.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7

True, it does beat it with 82.7 fps vs. 77.3 fps. I do state further down
that you get more bang for your buck with the AMD. I guess my point is that
if you were to be given two machines running Doom3, one with the AMD and
the other with the Intel, you would be very hard pressed to determine which
one was which, based on gameplay.

Very funny. If one machine had an Athlon 64 FX-55 and the other had a
Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE, you would definitely notice a difference.

The performance difference between their
top-line chips is not so great in terms of ability to notice, in my
opinion. The happy thing is that not only do you get a few more fps with
AMD, but it costs way less. It's just that the price diff

Or perhaps the performance difference at each price point?

is the major
difference, not the (noticable) performance. Stated another way, suppose
the AMD cost $1000 and the Intel cost $185. Would you shell out that much
more money for those extra 5.4 frames or would 77.3 be perfectly fine?

It is misleading to say that there is a 7% performance difference in those
benchmarks at 1280x1024. It is accurate to say there is a 7% frame rate
difference, but performance is arguably something noticed by the user. As
frame rates increase, the meaning of a 7% increase lessens. The difference
between 32 fps and 26.6 fps is also 7%, but you will notice lag and jerky
movements on screen at 26.6fps. That same 7% difference in these benchmarks
will not be noticed.

One thing to note: if you look at the performance curves on the first page
of that article, you can clearly see that moving from a Radeon 9800 Pro to
a GeForce 6800 with the same CPU makes a HUGE difference. At 1280x1024 you
go from about 30 fps to about 75 fps. This clearly shows that the GPU does
the heavy lifting.

By the way, as far as full motion is concerned, the human eye percieves it
fully at a rate of 30 to 32 fps. The idea is to keep the game engine
portion from stuttering so that the GPU can maintain full motion. I would
be interested to have benchmarks that record numbers and lengths of stalls
in gameplay over unit time rather than a frame rate per second.


A $185 Athlon 64 3200+ socket 754 beats the $1,000 Pentium 4 3.4 ghz EE
running Business Winstone 2004.


Yeah, I concede this point for heavy business apps like database transaction
servers and heavy e-commerce apps. But I do say that I was stating opinions
about the average user.

Eli

JK wrote:

The performance difference between their
top-line chips is not so great in terms of ability to notice, in my
opinion. The happy thing is that not only do you get a few more fps with
AMD, but it costs way less. It's just that the price diff

Or perhaps the performance difference at each price point?


Good point. Nothing from Intel at a similar price comes close. But that is
not what the comparison is. The comparison is based on "performance"
between both competitor's top-line chips. In no way am I saying that
Intel's latest is as fast as the latest form AMD. What I am saying is that
I doubt seriously if, given the same GPU and memory config, you will notice
a difference in everyday apps.

Eli

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:39:57 -0600, Eli Kane
wrote:

JK wrote:

The performance difference between their
top-line chips is not so great in terms of ability to notice, in my
opinion. The happy thing is that not only do you get a few more fps with
AMD, but it costs way less. It's just that the price diff

Or perhaps the performance difference at each price point?


Good point. Nothing from Intel at a similar price comes close. But that is
not what the comparison is. The comparison is based on "performance"
between both competitor's top-line chips. In no way am I saying that
Intel's latest is as fast as the latest form AMD. What I am saying is that
I doubt seriously if, given the same GPU and memory config, you will notice
a difference in everyday apps.

Eli

I doubt that many buyers care what the performance is of the
top offerings from either company. It's quite rare for
someone to pay in excess of $800 for a single desktop/PC
CPU, even if they'd spend $400 for a video card.

JW wrote:
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:07:20 -0600, Eli Kane
wrote:


Note: opinions expressed below will probably inflame passions about things.
I state here that these are just my opinions and observations. Bleeding
edge game players will take exception to some of my statements, and I
realize that they are a special case. I am making general statements about
the average user.


I'm considering AMD instead of Intel. But, a friend of mine
who works as a Techie in a Television Station, is very familiar with
Microcomputers, and he has been on Seminars where they were discussing
the merits and flaws of both Intel and AMD. He was told that AMD
typically does NOT do the CHECKSUMS as often, and to the same degree,
as Intel. Is this true, and could this result in data corruption?

Checksums? Checksums are normally done in software, so are completely
CPU-independent. If your data is sensitive, implement checksums in your
applications.


In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real difference
between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except the price.


Then what about the adage: You get what you pay for? Does
Intel COSTmore because it's WORTH more?

A non-argument. Cost is regulated by market forces which have little or
nothing to do with quality or performance. Take cars. A Toyota is
cheaper than a Ford, yet more reliable and fuel-efficient. But hey,
maybe the Ford is 'worth' more...

Or to stay on-topic for computing, take Rambus memory- it's been
consistently vastly more expensive than plain old SDRAM derivatives, yet
apart from a brief period in the early P4 era it only just managed to
equal (DDR-)SDRAM performance, it ran hotter and was less flexible (max
2 modules per channel with a performance loss for 2 as compared to 1).

That's not to say that cheaper is always better, it's just to illustrate
the pointlessness of such an argument.

For
most users there is no noticable performance difference no matter what
software you are running. Years ago it used to be that AMD lagged behind
Intel for floating point performance, but even then you would not notice
the difference unless you were doing modelling of the atmosphere or
something like that.


....or AUTOCAD, or 3D modelling, or photo and text editing?
I'm just wondering.

Text editing can be done perfectly satisfactorily on a Digital PDP-11
from the 1970s...

Photoshop is FPU intensive when running filters and utilises SSE(2)
extensions. Before AMD supported SSE2, Intel and AMD CPUs were about
equal, since SSE2 support AMD wins hands down, particularly when
measured on a performance/dollar scale.

See:
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/0,39023100,39164010-4,00.htm

In Autocad an Athlon 64 3400+ performs on average 8.3% better than a
similarly priced P4-3200

See:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...4-3400_16.html


If you are a bleeding-edge game player, the difference between the two makes
no real difference since the graphics card does most of the work. For the
money you save getting an AMD you can get that much better a GPU and more
system memory. In addition, you may squeeze out a few more frames per
second. Benchmarks (see www.tomshardware.com) currently show the latest

from AMD being faster than the latest from Intel for this. But you must ask

yourself if the difference in frame rates is really that great, since frame
rates in the lower two hundred range are way faster than your brain will
notice. And even if the latest game taxes the CPU, other bottlenecks like
memory bandwidth have a far greater effect(IMHO).


Are we talking faster frame rates AND high resolution, at the
same time?

Whatever you want. Either a lot more of one or a little more of both.
It's just a ratio you can set as user. More power just gives you a
little more choice.

For business applications, benchmarks showing the difference between the
processors are measured in seconds or tenths of seconds.

In the computer world, SECONDS is an awfully long time! Such a
time lag is a VERY SIGNIFICANT difference.

So assuming there is a 1-second advantage for CPU x in Excel (Winstone
Business 2004 benchmark, say). Assume doing 12 such calculations per
day, five days a week, makes one minute's difference. That means a whole
lunch break per year (allowing for holidays etc), assuming the employee
in question never ever does anything parallel...

That must compare to nose-picking in terms of time wastage (plus the
obvious fact that an employee incapable of multitasking is a far bigger
problem in itself)

Faster memory
makes the biggest difference because more data is moved per unit time, but
even then you are talking about sub-second measurements.


But isn't faster memory related to CPU speed?

No.

The most important factors are the speed of the memory chips (far slower
than CPUs these days) and the width of the bus with which to access
them, determining how many chips can be accessed in parallel. A close
second is the latency, how long it takes for a request for data from the
CPU to get to the memory and back.

Using two memory controllers in parallel can double maximum throughput,
a step Apple incidentally took in the mid 1990s, years before PC chipset
makers thought of it (and even then it was the rather obscure ALi who
first implemented it on the little-known Aladdin 7 chipset, which could
take both Intel and AMD Socket 7 chips). These days most performance
chipsets have dual channel access.

Latency can be addressed by CPU cacheing (mainstream CPUs now have a
Megabyte of L2 cache) and integrating memory controllers into the CPU
(which AMD has done in the Athlon 64 series).

Pure CPU speed can even be a handicap, because it means the CPU is
running so much faster than the memory that it spends an awful length of
time idle waiting for data. The first Celeron CPUs based on the P4
illustrated that, with the CPU running up to 28 times faster than the
bus that connects it to the outside world and 14 times faster than the
best memory it could be paired up with, yet a tiny 128KB cache which
couldn't compensate for it.

The bottom line is the price difference. Even if the current benchmarks
showed that Intel edged AMD, I would still get the AMD because for the
lower price I could get more of something else, like memory or better GPU.
The performance difference has long since ceased to be anything worth
considering except in exceptional cases.


I guess you could say that a $200 difference may be NAME
related. But what does it REALLY mean when Intel costs about $800 MORE
than the equivalen AMD?

It means that the marketplace is prepared to pay $800 more for snake oil
brand x rather than snake oil brand y. Assuming (as I do, incidentally)
that the intrinsic value of Intel and AMD chips is almost identical, if
Intel can get away with charging more, who are we to complain. AMD would
do the same if they could- and that they can't is merely a product of
market perceptions. In fact, as savvy consumers our response should be
to favour the better value over the inflated repuation, a choice that
collectively will push up AMD prices and drop Intel prices. And if Intel
ever becomes cheaper whilst delivering comparable intrinsic value- hell,
buy Intel.

I would add that a true 64 bit machine like AMD offers provides added
incentive to get it, to take advantage of software written for 64 bits.


But, isn't the Intel P4 a 64 bit processor?

No.

The only thing '64-bit' about the P4 is it's bus, but then Intel (and
AMD) buses have been 64b wide since the days of the first Pentium in
1993. What is commonly meant by '64b' is that is can address 64b of
(virtual) data and process 64b long instructions. In that sense the P4
is firmly 32 bit, at least, except for the very latest EMT64-P4 CPUs,
which (just like the Athlon 64, incidentally) consist of a traditional
32b chip with a set of 64b extensions bolted on.

'True' 64b chips are rare beasts, Intel has its Itanium, Sun the
UltraSparc, and HP the PA-RISC64 and Alpha CPUs. MIPS also had a few in
times gone by, and IBM has its Power-series (with derivatives in Apple
G5 systems). However these chips are rarely seen on the desktop (OK, I'm
typing this on an Ultrasparc IIi-based machine, but this is not a
typical desktop ), mainly because they don't run Windows (except the
Alpha which ran NT) and are prohibitively expensive.

64b is a double-edged sword too, because having to double the length of
all addresses seriously bloats code, which decreases performance. 64b is
mainly hype, the prime use for most mortals is that it allows more than
4GB of RAM on a fairly simple motherboard.


And just for the record, I own more Intel-based systems (4 in use) than
AMD-based ones (2). I greatly admire Intel CPUs from a technical point
of view, as do I AMD CPUs and other more obscure stuff as well- I
particularly like Intel's tendency to over-engineer slightly. But when
price becomes a factor (as it always is in the real world), you want the
most bang for your buck. And Intel usually (though not always!) does not
deliver.
As an excercise, take a good benchmark in an application you consider
important. Then look up the prices of the CPUs in a pricewatch or
whatever. Divide the performance by the price. Then list the CPUs in
terms of price/performance. Finally choose the minimum performance
(and/or the maximum price) you are prepared to accept and discard the
CPUs that fail that mark. Choose the cheapest of what is left. That is
the rational way to choose a CPU.
7 times out of 10 that will lead to an AMD CPU at the moment. The
remainder will usually be laptops, where the Intel Pentium-M and
Celeron-M lines are quite remarkable, particularly as they combine
excellent performance with extreme economy in electrical terms.

And as for reliability- there are two relevant points:

1) the economic lifespan of a system
2) the technical lifespan of a system

In business most computers are written of over 3 years, which means that
almost always the techinical lifespan is much longer. For home use 5
years is more common and then technical issues become more important. A
system is good if its technical lifespan is longer than its economic
one. The technical bottleneck is almost always the moving parts. CPUs
don't move.

If you intend to play with your hardware, rebuild your computers
regularly and swap components, the physical strenght of CPUs becomes
relevant, and until the advent of the Athlon 64 Intel had a considerable
advantage due to their aforementioned over-engineering.
But idiots like me account for less than one percent of users. If you're
one of the 99%, your CPU will stay in one place and never be at risk
from the dreaded core crunch (which incidentally CAN happen with older
Intel P3 CPUs too, a fact I can unfortunately relate out of personal
experience- although the cause was a badly secured heatsink which
bounced around too much during a long drive. That (as with similar AMD
incidents) was user negligence, not a design fault.

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:07:20 -0600, Eli Kane
wrote:

Note: opinions expressed below will probably inflame passions about things.
I state here that these are just my opinions and observations. Bleeding
edge game players will take exception to some of my statements, and I
realize that they are a special case. I am making general statements about
the average user.

I'm considering AMD instead of Intel. But, a friend of mine
who works as a Techie in a Television Station, is very familiar with
Microcomputers, and he has been on Seminars where they were discussing
the merits and flaws of both Intel and AMD. He was told that AMD
typically does NOT do the CHECKSUMS as often, and to the same degree,
as Intel. Is this true, and could this result in data corruption?

In my opinion, which is not all that important, there is no real difference
between the competing processors from AMD and Intel, except the price.

Then what about the adage: You get what you pay for? Does
Intel COSTmore because it's WORTH more?

For
most users there is no noticable performance difference no matter what
software you are running. Years ago it used to be that AMD lagged behind
Intel for floating point performance, but even then you would not notice
the difference unless you were doing modelling of the atmosphere or
something like that.

....or AUTOCAD, or 3D modelling, or photo and text editing?
I'm just wondering.

If you are a bleeding-edge game player, the difference between the two makes
no real difference since the graphics card does most of the work. For the
money you save getting an AMD you can get that much better a GPU and more
system memory. In addition, you may squeeze out a few more frames per
second. Benchmarks (see www.tomshardware.com) currently show the latest
from AMD being faster than the latest from Intel for this. But you must ask
yourself if the difference in frame rates is really that great, since frame
rates in the lower two hundred range are way faster than your brain will
notice. And even if the latest game taxes the CPU, other bottlenecks like
memory bandwidth have a far greater effect(IMHO).

Are we talking faster frame rates AND high resolution, at the
same time?

For business applications, benchmarks showing the difference between the
processors are measured in seconds or tenths of seconds.

In the computer world, SECONDS is an awfully long time! Such a
time lag is a VERY SIGNIFICANT difference.

Faster memory
makes the biggest difference because more data is moved per unit time, but
even then you are talking about sub-second measurements.

But isn't faster memory related to CPU speed?

The bottom line is the price difference. Even if the current benchmarks
showed that Intel edged AMD, I would still get the AMD because for the
lower price I could get more of something else, like memory or better GPU.
The performance difference has long since ceased to be anything worth
considering except in exceptional cases.

I guess you could say that a $200 difference may be NAME
related. But what does it REALLY mean when Intel costs about $800 MORE
than the equivalen AMD?

I would add that a true 64 bit machine like AMD offers provides added
incentive to get it, to take advantage of software written for 64 bits.

But, isn't the Intel P4 a 64 bit processor?

Sorry if what I have written was a bit long, and if it incites flames. That
is not my intention.

Eli

JW
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION is certainly true for
Israel in its conflict with the Arabs. Now Microsoft
has adopted the slogan as follows: FALURE IS NOT AN
OPTION. IT COMES BUNDLED WITH THE SOFTWARE!"