Poll on Athlon vs Intel

the k5 i once had left me hating AMD for years, but thier products have evolved into something better than the best intel designs in the the last year or so.

What would be a more accurate time? It seems like the past 3 years should be a good enough time to show a trend that is important. If you want to look at ancient history, the pentium rocks and 3dfx is king of graphics. Things change.

Besides, I was merely pointing out that upgrading is no longer a given with AMD interfaces.

Like I said, I've been out of the game for years. the last PC that I built was my AthlonXP 2400+ with GeForce 4 Ti4200 (in Dec. 2002).

AMD hasn't abandoned those sockets though. Chips are still being made for them. Though the 939 or 940 (whatever the diff is), would be my choice over the 754, which they may only be making budget chips for.

And is it just me, but does AMD seem to make much better heatsink clips? Somehow I have this thought that Intel clips are almost scary to clamp down. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to crush the CPU right through the motherboard with the pressure on some of those.

E-prom, ZIF, Socket, Slot, Pga

Socket Types

Each range of CPU fits into a specific socket on your motherboard. motherboards are design with one socket type and cannot be made to take another.

The table below identifies all the major CPU interfaces from the time of Intel's Socket 1, the first "OverDrive" socket used by Intel's 486 processor in the early 1990s:

This does not take into account for
the earlier 286 & 386 integrated cpu's with & without Math co-processors.
Take a look HERE for the really old stuff

I was trying to find out when Socket A first came out, couldn't find an exact date, but one of the early 1.1ghz Athlons for the "new" Socket A was June 5th 2000. So the Socket A had over a 5 year life span. This should be considered amazing for the PC industry. I mean, only Windows ME was out, and Win2000, and the Athlon was competing with Intel P3s. And now AMD just finished shipping out their last, what, 3200+? Or 3400+? Whatever their last chip was. While in the meantime Intel changed 32bit sockets 2 or 3 more times.

This tidbit has naught to do with which maker is better or worse, but I just find it interresting that AMD was able to sqeeze life out of that socket for so long as their primary 32bit socket. I bought a 3200+ Athlon 2 or 3 months ago, for a screaming deal. That was just about when AMD was going to stop producing chips for it, and suddenly, almost over night, the CPU I just bought was about $80 more, and climbing still.

Anyhoo, my "abandoned" comment was not towards Socket A, but the 754. Which we thought was going to fizzle out, until AMD made some budget chips for it, which kept it alive as a budget buy.

Socrates - good info there. Your upper quote shows a Socket 940 as the Athlon-fx. But your lower quote doesn't have info on it. And yet the description of the Socket 939 says that it accepts the FX versions which were originally the 940 and 754. I didn't know the 754 was for fx CPUs.

Now I just wonder if AMD can keep the 939 going for another 5 years. We'll see...

A better poll would be processor vs processor.

I'm a techie no doubt, but foremost, I'm a consumer and I don't care which company makes what, only what product is the best for my needs.

While I believe that AMD has a superior processor for workstations and servers, I'd take a Pentium M over a Turion anyday. It's all about what works best for you, vote with your dollars. I feel disdain for any person that gets sucked into brand loyalty and is too narrow sighted for their own good.

It's hard not to have brand loyalty when there is only two brands and you don't like one of them!

It's different if someone were to say, I ONLY buy Epson printers, or they ONLY buy Coolermaster cases or Antec power supplies. Cause there is a lot more choices out there. And good choices.

And let's face it, a lot of people stick with AMD because they are the underdog. If they ever went out of business and Intel was able to complete a monopoly. Ouch.

Go Cyrix!.. I mean Transmeta... Wait, I mean Via!

oh christ, not transmeta. don't even get me started. i have had the unfourtunate displeasure of using one of thier crusoe 5900 cpus in a tablet PC. my pocket-sized graphing calculator has more computing power than that machine did. does transmeta make any good products, or is the crusoe tragically thier best?

Nope

They have small move upward.............

Transmeta™ Efficeon™ TM8800 Processor

It seems at there best it's 4x agp.
Are thety related to Cyrex?

I'll take my PIC chip any day...

My watch has more power

Thank you PanicX someone finally said it.

Im not even going to argue one way or the other, as it seems this debate always comes up (but i bet you could guess who i would argue for)

Sean

And everybody knows, AMD is best for your needs...


haha, just kidding, really. I take the 5th

Very nicely done

well, i hope transmeta learned from the crusoe fiasco. because i'll eventually encounter one of thier products again. thank god they stopped making x86 chips for standard sockets, but thier OEM buyers are still crappier than ever ***ahem*** COMPAQ

You said the "C" word. Where's a censor when you need one?

COMPAQ

Realy can't beat the price/performance of a 3000+ Venice, but a 630 is close in most and better in some benchmarks. Overclocking only thightens up its loses and increases it's leads.

The problems with AMD is only now that 939 is on it's way out (M2 will be here as seen as they get it fixed) do thay release budget CPUs for the socket(and now only to OEMs.)

Compare to Intel you can get a 326 Celly for about half the price of a 3000+, and in a socket that will be Intels best for years. Or even a 820 Pentium D, way less than a 3800+ X2.

Imagin, Intel is the budget leader.
BTW____________
I have two LGA775 rigs and one Athlon 64 rig(But two 3200+CPUs for it, a Winnie and a Vinnie.) Also a lot of old K-6-2s and Pentiums in my junk piles. No votes from me.