AMD vs. Intel!?

[Jawa Man]

Yo. I've decided to build my own computer for games for around $600. However, I am stuck now. What magazines and such seem to recommend is the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and up. I have a 3200+ Venice in my sights ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535 ). However, it is only a 2.0 ghz processor. For only $20 more I could be getting an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0 ghz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116198 ). And for some reason, as the price gets steeper with AMDs, the ghz barely changes. Is there something about AMD that makes it better despite the ghz problem?

[Gideon Brown]

AMD vs. Intel!?

Winner: Chuck Norris.

[Jawa Man]

Oh yeah, and here's what I have so far with the AMD in mind.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939
Windows XP Home Edition
eVGA GeForce 6800 / 256MB DDR / PCI Express
MSI K8N Neo4-F NVIDIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard
Premium 5511 Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
2 512 MB RAM (PC 3200)

[Jawa Man]

Winner: Chuck Norris.

I'll roundhouse kick your face into pwnage!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111oneone LOL!!

[Xavier]

Get out there and find the benchmarks for each processor and see how they stack up. I'm one to prefer AMD over Intel on purely religious grounds, except in mobile form-factors.

[Soundsurfr]

Oh yeah, and here's what I have so far with the AMD in mind.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939
Windows XP Home Edition
eVGA GeForce 6800 / 256MB DDR / PCI Express
MSI K8N Neo4-F NVIDIA Socket 939 ATX Motherboard
Premium 5511 Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
2 512 MB RAM (PC 3200)

I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I'm running an AMD processor to do very CPU intensive audio recording work and the thing kicks butt. Very fast, very stable, and overall it was cheaper (at the time - two years ago) to go with the AMD chip.

[Jawa Man]

I found a comparison on zdnet between comparable AMD and Intel processors. For gaming, the AMD won out, despite the lower ghz (2.2 compared to 3.4!). Intel seems to be better at video rendering and multitasking. Also, Intel uses up a lot of power when it's idling. I think I'm going with the AMD.

[$cirisme]

Clockspeed doesn't usually mean much in performance. (at least, in this context) What matters is how much work can get done in each tick of the clock. Intel's clocks
run faster, but they don't get much work done. AMD's clocks run slower (as you saw, in some cases, 1.2gigahertz slower) but get more work done, hence the discrepancy.

The idea that clockspeed makes a difference in over-all performance is purely a marketing invention.

[$cirisme]

All that said, I'm a huge AMD fan. Especially when it comes to server chips (sadly, Tweb runs Xeon, iirc), multi-cores and 64-bit. Hands down, I would always choose an AMD chip over an Intel chip except maybe in the laptop market. But even there, the Turion is providing some really interesting competition to Centrino.

[ice_eagle]

Yo. I've decided to build my own computer for games for around $600. However, I am stuck now. What magazines and such seem to recommend is the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and up. I have a 3200+ Venice in my sights ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535 ). However, it is only a 2.0 ghz processor. For only $20 more I could be getting an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0 ghz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116198 ). And for some reason, as the price gets steeper with AMDs, the ghz barely changes. Is there something about AMD that makes it better despite the ghz problem?

I'm not big into games, but my computer does have the AMD 64 3200+ in it. I like it, and it seemed to work well for the games I played (and everything else, for that matter). If you want to save money, though, get a 32-bit AMD processor. 64-bit computing is not common enough to merit the extra expense at the moment, and you can get a great 32-bit AMD processor for the same price or much cheaper (for example, I just saw a 2.0 GHz Sempron on Newegg for $80). If you get an AMD-64 and run ordinary Windows or Linux on it, you will be using the processor in 32-bit mode, which makes it behave just like a 32-bit processor. Because I am not a gamer, you may want to find out from other gamers if the 32-bit processor is good enough. I think some processors have graphics-related functions built in, so it is possible that the 64-bit processor will provide much better performance. If you have extra money to blow, though, you may as well get a 64-bit processor. It may come in handy some day.

Unless you really, really want to build your own computer, I think you should probably buy one from a manufacturer. If you're willing to pay $600 for a computer, you should look at some of the eMachines out there. Here's a link to one:
http://www.emachines.com/products/pr...tml?prod=T6420

It looks good on paper, at least. It has a AMD-64 3400+ with 1 GB RAM. Not bad for $549. It's very hard to beat that price for those specs, unless you have an underground source for parts and a slave to build the thing for you. By the time you buy the case, motherboard, processor, RAM, power supply, monitor, and input devices, you will have met your limit. And then you have to put the machine together. If that takes too long, your labor costs (your time is valuable, you know) will drive the cost of the machine over the limit. If building computers is something that really interests you, I guess your labor cost is not all that significant, though.

[Jezz]

Yo. I've decided to build my own computer for games for around $600. However, I am stuck now. What magazines and such seem to recommend is the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ and up. I have a 3200+ Venice in my sights ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535 ). However, it is only a 2.0 ghz processor. For only $20 more I could be getting an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0 ghz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116198 ). And for some reason, as the price gets steeper with AMDs, the ghz barely changes. Is there something about AMD that makes it better despite the ghz problem?

Hey Jawa,

The short answer to your question is "yes". As cirisme has pointed out, the Athlon gets more done per clock than the Intel.

Also remember that the Athlon's bus (ie, the speed it communicates to the outside world) is 1 GHz, vs about 400 MHz (IIRC) for the Pentium. It doesn't do much good having a fast processor if it spends a whole lot of time waiting to talk to the outside world. The Athlon's higher bus speed is a big reason for its higher performance (despite lower CPU speed).

Also, the Athlon is 64 bit. If any applications come out that are optimised for 64 bit, it will run even faster. A 32 bit Pentium won't see it for dust....

Having said that, unless you are a hard-core gamer (I used to be, but am not anymore - I only got an Athlon because it was cheap and good value for money), probably either will be ok.

Hope that helps.

[EvoUK]

I can't believe this- I was just going to start a thread asking about it!

I know squat about hardware etc- but my 'puter geek housemate is saying something about AMD being slower but equivilent to intels of a faster speed or something. I'm looking, and due to cash flow problems am going for a

AMD Sempron 3000+ (SoA) (2.17ghz) CPU OEM

So it says 2.17 ghz- but apparently it's equivilent to a 3ghz intel or something. Is this true?

At the moment I'm running a AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 1.1 GHz- what intel is this equivilent to? Most games have on the back of the box descriptions for intel- and I'm no sure what the equivilent is.

[Sheepdog]

I can't believe this- I was just going to start a thread asking about it!

I know squat about hardware etc- but my 'puter geek housemate is saying something about AMD being slower but equivilent to intels of a faster speed or something. I'm looking, and due to cash flow problems am going for a

AMD Sempron 3000+ (SoA) (2.17ghz) CPU OEM

So it says 2.17 ghz- but apparently it's equivilent to a 3ghz intel or something. Is this true?

At the moment I'm running a AMD Athlon™ Processor 1.1 GHz- what intel is this equivilent to? Most games have on the back of the box descriptions for intel- and I'm no sure what the equivilent is.

i don't think you start getting the discrephencies until Athlon XP, 64 etc. IIRC the original Athlons stack up closer to their Intel equivalents.

of course you still get a little bit of better performance than a Pentium at 1.1, but it wouldn't be so pronounced... XP's and 64's are labelled based on their Pentium equivalents! (e.g. a 3200+ should be slightly faster than a Pentium 4 3.2GHz)

[hopelessromance]

AMD!
Especially if it's for games.
However I'm impartial to it anyway so I'm a little biased.
I was sooo dissappointed when I read about Mac putting an Intel Proccessor in their G5 and their PowerBook. Grrr.
But AMD is the way to go for games. Had you said word proccessing I probably would have said otherwise

[Jawa Man]

Thanks homies, I now have bought the AMD. I am going to be building this sucker. One of my suitemates has an XPS and the computer I'm building will be nearly as good, and for less than half the cost. Thanks guys. I can't wait to play Rome Total War completely maxed out!