Poll on Athlon vs Intel

Do you like Athlon or Intel Better

  • Athlon

    Votes: 27 90.0%

  • Intel

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
Rick does indeed work for the evil empire, but if any "beans" are spilled from his plate, black suits in black vans with black tinted windows will come to his house and do horrible things to him. They may even take his PC away. His every move is monitored and recorded.....
 
Yah, that's something like I thought. I'm just a little curious. Something is bound to leak out by the time AMD fixes (seems there are some problems) and releases M2. A little rain on the parade.
 
Hopefully this newfangled M2 stuff won't be as expensive as the dual cores and FX's, Opteron stuff. Costing us lowly blue-collars upwards of a grand to get one.
 
The M2 will just be a socket, it won't have a price. On the other hand, there will different CPUs for it, from low-end (Sempron) to high-end (Athlon64-FX,etc.) so the prices will probably be the same.
 
Well the poll is over guys, thanks for your support. I think that the majority of people voted for athlon (hahaha). See yah round.
 
Didou said:
The M2 will just be a socket, it won't have a price. On the other hand, there will different CPUs for it, from low-end (Sempron) to high-end (Athlon64-FX,etc.) so the prices will probably be the same.
Click to expand...

I have a M2 mobo, but it came without the socket...Asrock Dual Sata2.

I realy don't think we will see Sempron for M2 untill it's slated for death. Now M2 comming, 939 Semprons are comming. AMD is not for us blue coller guys now they own the high end. Glad they are here, imagin Intel without them. Might be worse than Microsoft.

EDIT
I'm very wrong about the Semproms
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2587
 
wow only 3 or 4 months to go and we can get the M2 4000+ Orleans with DDR2.

One thing I wish AMD would have tried harder to get those core clock speeds up. It's kind of depressing to buy a new Athlon 64 4000+ and learn it runs at a ho-hum 2.4ghz. It's fast, yes, but our Intel friends actually ARE getting the 3ghz and 4ghz core speeds.
But then again, hand it to AMD to crank the speeds out of much less clock speed.
Or then my 32bit Athlon 3200+ running at 2.2ghz. Now I am debating to OC or not.
 
Vigilante said:
wow only 3 or 4 months to go and we can get the M2 4000+ Orleans with DDR2.

One thing I wish AMD would have tried harder to get those core clock speeds up. It's kind of depressing to buy a new Athlon 64 4000+ and learn it runs at a ho-hum 2.4ghz. It's fast, yes, but our Intel friends actually ARE getting the 3ghz and 4ghz core speeds.
But then again, hand it to AMD to crank the speeds out of much less clock speed.
Or then my 32bit Athlon 3200+ running at 2.2ghz. Now I am debating to OC or not.
Click to expand...

Conroe is going to be a low-clocked CPU as well. But it is getting about 30-50% more performance per MHz than current P4 processors at the same clock speeds.

It seems like the emphasis is no longer GHz, but how fast it actually is. Which can be kind of good I suppose, since your average consumer sees a budget CPU at the same speed and can't imagine why it is slower... But they really need to figure out a standarized rating system.
 
Not AMD's number system, how many 3200+ are there? Thay don't even write the core on the box so you need to understand the numbers on the CPU. Even the week numbers make a difference. I don't have a clue how thay could factor in speed, cache, socket, cores...on and on. I liked it when it was just speed, and product line. Intel's getting messy too.

I think when branch prediction is correct 90% of the time, my 4 ghz+ prescott is hard to beat. Smoth in windows even multitasking, doing things that make my AMD lag. But in games things are much different.

Sure hope that conroe clocks are not 30-50% slower. Yonah seems clock to clock with X2.

3ghz, sweet. Still no sight of a i975 mobo.
 
A Detailed Comparison of Intel and AMD Processors

Borrowed From : overclock.net By The_Manual
Submited:06-26-05

This guide is not biased for either Intel or AMD. Before I start giving out all the details know this fact. AMD at this current moment in time are better for games than Intel and Intel are better for multi-tasking than AMD. This will all be explained later in the guide.

First, Intel Processors (mainly looking at the 5xx and 6xx series)

Intel Processors are currently better at multi-tasking than AMD processors this is because of certain technologies and features in their CPU’s.
INTEL

Intel’s HyperThreading technology (HT technology)

This is probably one of Intel’s best things that they have done for their higher end CPU’s.

Hyper-Threading is actually a way of fooling the operating system into thinking it's hooked up to two CPU's by making a single chip operate like two separate ones, it does offer some benefits but not across the board.
Running programs that support independent simultaneous threads, the operating system not knowing any better allows the threads to run independently on both CPU's even though there is only one physical processor, in some applications there could be performance gains up to 25%, but at the same time enabling HT will make others lag. This performance gain is seen the most in multi-tasking applications.


Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3)

SSE3 are additions to the SIMD (single instruction multiple data) capabilities of a processor. SIMD processing is based on the idea that sometimes processors must take large amounts of data and perform similar operations across the entire set. This works effectively with things like audio, video processing and multi-tasking. SIMD processing has also largely overshadowed the use of the x87 floating point unit on x86 processors. AMD now have SSE3 as it was traded with Intel for AMD64 which has become Intel EM64T.


A large amount of Level 2 Cache

Intel processors have a large amount of level 2 cache. Level 2 cache is memory in the processor which is very fast. When you load up a program the processor starts looking for the data. It first checks the Level 1 cache to see if it is there, if it is not there then it checks the level 2 cache, then (if you have any) the level 3 cache. If it does not find it in there then it checks the system memory (RAM) for it. The CPU cache is much faster than the system RAM so having more cache is a big advantage for speed.

Intel 5xx series processors have 1024kb of L2 cache and 16kb L1 cache (12kb of trace level 1 cache also). Intel 6xx series processors have 2048kb of L2 cache and the same amount of L1 cache as the 5xx series. The Intel dual core 8xx series have double the amount of cache as the 5xx series as there are 2 cores.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are the main features of the Intel processors. Now onto Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors.


AMD processors are better at gaming than Intel processors this is also because of certain technologies and features in their CPU’s


AMD

AMD 3DNow technology

3DNow significantly enhances floating-point-intensive, 3D graphics and multimedia performance. Benefits of 3DNow! technology include leading-edge 3D performance, more realistic and lifelike 3D imaging and graphics, big screen sound and video, and the ultimate Internet experience. 3DNow! technology is a group of instructions that open the traditional processing bottlenecks for floating-point-intensive 3D and multimedia applications. With 3DNow! technology users can implement more powerful hardware and software solutions to enable a richer visual computing experience.


Operations per clock cycle

Now this is very important. This improves AMD’s power everywhere not just on gaming.

Most people think hang on how comes an AMD FX55 CPU beats a Pentium 4 3.8GHz CPU? Well it’s not all about CPU speeds anymore; something more complex determines the power of a processor.

AMD processors do more operations per clock cycle than Intel processors.

Currently AMD processors do 9 operations per clock cycle whereas Intel only do 6.

Here are some examples:

The 4 candidates are

Intel Pentium 4 570 (3.8GHz)

Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz)

AMD FX55 (2.6GHz)

AMD 64 4000+ (2.4GHz)


The 570. 3.8 x 6 = 22.8 operations
The 560. 3.6 x 6 = 21.6 operations
The FX55. 2.6 x 9 = 23.4 operations
The 4000+. 2.4 x 9 = 21.6 operations


Out of these 4 the AMD FX55 wins even though it is running at a lower speed than the Intel 570. The Intel may be running at a faster speed but the AMD is doing more work in total even though its slower.


Now AMD also have AMD 64 technology but at the time of writing at this guide there are no 64 bit games and it offers only a limited advantage.


Also Note:

AMD Athlon XP’s have 3 X86 decoders, 3 floating-point pipelines, and 3 integer pipelines. Intel’s Pentium 4 has only 1 X86 decoder, 2 floating-point pipelines and 4 integer pipelines. This leads to AMD being able to decode more instructions than Intel at the same time, and being able to perform floating-point operations quicker than Intel.

Even though AMD manages to perform more operations than Intel in one clock cycle, Intel manages to do their operations quicker. This is because of their pipeline architecture. AMD’s pipeline is only 10 stages long. This means that because the stages in the pipeline have to do more work, they can’t run very fast. Now, with Intel, their processors have a 20 stage pipeline (Prescott core processors have 31 stages). This means that the processor can run at a higher clock speed, because less work is done in each stage of the pipeline.


AMD HyperTransport technology

First of all I know that some people confuse this with Intel’s HT technology. They are actually 2 different things that are not related. HT technology is for Intel processors and it splits them up into 2 virtual CPU’s. HyperTransport technology is nothing like that. It is the way of sending data in AMD computers.

AMD 64 processors have something called hyper-transport. They have no Northbridge* or Southbridge* and this allows the RAM to be directly connected to the CPU. Due to this data does not need to go to the Northbridge. It goes straight to the CPU. This is called a Hyper Transport tunnel. There is also something called the I/O hub. This is like the Southbridge in Intel computers. It manages all of the input/output devices, and ports. HyperTransport allows higher bus speeds of 800MHz (1600MHz effective, only socket 754) and 1000MHz (2000MHz effective, socket 939) on AMD computers. The effective speed is double that of the speed it actually runs at because it's bidirectional.

* Note: Please note that the statement does not infer that the Northbridge and Southbridge are not present on an Athlon 64 motherboard. The statement simply means the Northbridge is not a factor of CPU/RAM information flow. AMD's on-die memory controller cuts down the system bottlenecks of traditional CPU-Northbridge-RAM pipelines.
Click to expand...
 
Conclusion

Conclusion
Intel has more sophisticated technology to deal with multi-tasking at this moment in time. However that will change soon. AMD traded its AMD 64 technology with Intel in exchange for Intel’s SSE3 extensions. This means that AMD will be able to make more of a foothold in the multi-tasking market. Intel do now have AMD’s 64 technology but that will not help them in gaming a lot for the time being (Intel’s version is called EM64T). Another problem for Intel is its HT technology. Dual cores are coming out soon and then you have 2 physical CPU’s. HT will no longer be needed and Intel will lose more of a foothold there. AMD is better at gaming because of their AMD 3DNow technology which improves gaming performance. Also the amount of operations per clock cycle that they do is more effective than Intel’s so they don’t need to run as fast as Intel CPU’s to do as much work as them. Intel CPU’s have a large amount of cache which helps them in multi-tasking and also works quite well in gaming making them close in on AMD. AMD hyper transport also allows higher bus speeds than the Intel CPU’s so more data is able to be sent/received quicker.



AMD also have a better architecture than their Intel counterparts, the pipelines on the Intel CPU’s are longer than that on AMD CPU’s, this means that the latency of the Intel CPU’s is greater than that of AMD CPU’s. Intel Northwood’s have a 23 stage pipeline architecture whereas the Prescott’s have a 31 stage architecture, this means that the Prescott’s actually have a higher latency than the Northwood’s. However after 3.8GHz then Prescott’s become more efficient and run much faster than the Northwoods.


Intel and AMD temperature reducing technologies

Note: These 2 technologies are Intel’s and AMD ways of keep processors cooler and more efficient when they are doing very little or nothing. I will only briefly mention these though.


Intel SpeedStep Technology

Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® technology enables dynamic switching of the voltage and frequency between two performance modes based on CPU demand. The processor also features a new ultra low power alert state called Deeper Sleep, which enables the processor to retain critical data at very low voltages and minimizes power dissipation when the processor is not active.

This comes in 2 forms, called TM1 and TM2.

Thermal Monitor 1 inserts idle clock cycles in to the CPU to attempt to cool it down, this happens after a set temperature and this will reduce the amount of the data that your CPU can process.

Thermal Monitor 2 drops your CPU’s multiplier and lowers the vcore to drop temps even further, this will obviously reduce the speed of the CPU but does lower temps a lot.


AMD Cool N’Quiet

AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet™ technology controls your system’s level of processor performance automatically, adjusting the operating frequency and voltage up to 30 times per second, according to the task at hand. When an application does not require full performance, significant amounts of power can be saved. However, the processor can respond to increased workloads, allowing the system to deliver a responsive and rewarding computing experience. The only difference the user will observe with most applications is that the system will run cooler and quieter. Performance is designed to still be responsive, with maximum processor performance being delivered when required, and automatic power savings when possible.

Note: If you have this running then I would recommend turning it off.


A bit more about the cache

In the main part of the guide I talked about the cache in Intel processors. This time I will talk about it in general.

Right first the Level 1 cache.

L1 cache is a small piece of very fast memory that's on the CPU chip itself. It sits between the CPU registers and the L2 cache. Typically L1 cache has a lower latency than L2 cache. This makes it more expensive to produce so we don’t see a large amount of it in CPU’s today.

Right now onto Level 2 cache.

L2 cache is bigger than L1 cache. It has a higher latency than the L1 cache making it cheaper to produce so we do see a nice size of it in CPU’s today. 128KB, 256KB, 512KB, 1024KB and 2048KB are the most common sizes to see in desktop processors.

Now some people may have heard of level 3 cache. It is quite rare in the desktop processors. The Intel Extreme Edition processors have 2MB of it. I don’t know a lot about it but here is what I do know.

Level 3 cache is extra cache built into motherboards (on Itanium and older processors) between the microprocessor and the main memory. It can come in various sizes.
The L3 cache on the newer CPU's like the P4 EE is on the actual chip.
It is usually used in server processors. The Intel Xeon’s have 9MB of L3 cache in them and you can get 4 Xeons in 1 system so you have 36MB of L3 cache!!!



Let’s take a look at some examples of the amount of cache in various cores.

AMD cores first.

ClawHammer: 1024KB L2 cache/512KB L2 cache, 64KB L1 Data Cache, 64KB L1 Code Cache.

Newcastle: 512KB L2 cache, 64KB L1 Data Cache, 64KB L1 Code Cache

Sledgehammer: 1024KB L2 cache, 64KB L1 Data Cache, 64KB L1 Code Cache

Winchester: 512KB L2 cache, 64KB L1 Data Cache, 64KB L1 Code Cache

Paris: 256KB L2 cache, 64KB L1 Data Cache, 64KB L1 Code Cache

Manchester: 512KB L2 cache (x2), 64KB L1 Data Cache (x2), 64KB L1 Code Cache (x2)

Toledo: 1024KB L2 cache (x2), 64KB L1 Data Cache (x2), 64KB L1 Code Cache (x2)


Now onto Intel cores.

Northwood: Either 128KB, 256KB or 512KB L2 cache, 16KB L1 cache, 12kb of trace L1 cache

Prescott: Either 256KB, 1024KB or 2048KB L2 cache, 16KB L1 cache, 12kb of trace L1 cache

Dothan: 2048KB L2 cache, 32KB+32KB L1 cache (code)

Smithfield: 1024KB L2 cache (x2), 16KB L1 cache, 12kb of trace L1 cache (x2)

Dual Cores

When I wrote this guide there were no dual cores CPU's out for the desktop, by request I will add some information on them now.

Dual core means 2 CPU's on one die. This would theoretically give you twice the performance of a single core chip, however there is currently little software that can take advantage of the second CPU. There are some programs that benefit like Folding@home. Intel and AMD both have dual core processors available for the desktop. AMD's are called x2 and Intel's are called Pentium D's. There are some problems though, the amount of data that can be sent out of these CPU’s is technically less than what can be processed I suppose, so they will be bottlenecked by the FSB. There will be larger amount of heat produced as well which will limit their overclocking ability.



If you are buying a CPU take into account all of this, and know this: if you are after a superb gaming experience go AMD but if you are after heavy multi tasking like video editing then Intel is they way to go for you.
Click to expand...
.................................................. .............................
That concludes this guide.

Special thanks to Xavier1421.
 
Cool info.

I just have one question; why does he say to turn off AMD Cool N'Quiet? It sounded like he was praising it.
I suppose, though, if you have aftermarket cooling and you're not worried about power consumption, there is no need to have it on.
 
Intel=speed x 6
AMD=speed x 9

Wish it was so simple, if it was a 2.4ghz AMD would ALWAYS beat a 570, but it's not so. I think he means in games. The long pipeline pays well when branch prediction is right. Hurts games and work well in raw number crunching.

A short read on pipelineing and branch prediction.
http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~downeyt/cop3402/pipeline.html
 
yeah, i was rather disappointed with how intel's stab at a longer pipeline went (34 stage prescott/all since) compared to the 20 stage northwood.
 
Alittle more...tho

I didn't want to clog the post.

xls cpu spec sheet
Had to double rar & zip bag it to upload at 98kb
but well worth a look.
 
Do you also want a debate ;)

OK, I'm gonna start :

AMD, AMD, AMD!

Why?

-In my experience, AMD does NOT crash and Intel DOES. (3 different systems of each CPUs)
-I've been told that there are more design errors with Intel CPUs.
-Intel is the most popular.
-AMD is cheaper for the same performance.
-I don't like Intel.

As simple as that.

Now I've finished. Nothing here is scientifically proved but is what -I- found while using both systems.
 
DragonMaster said:
AMD does NOT crash and Intel DOES.
Click to expand...

Don't blame the CPU, blame Windows, blame the modo, or blame the memory(maybe user too?). That isn't Intels fault, their chipsets and cpus are stable, better than any other.
 
Bottom line: AMD gives screaming gaming performance when compared to Intel. My FX-57 wins hands down from an Intel EE any day :grinthumb
Also, for apps, the X2 is far better than the Intel Pentium HT or D (IMO).
 
I know a little about that, cheak out my profile. I have another rig not there, a P5P800 with a 530j at 4ghz(kids gamer/HTPC). About the same in games as my 2.6ghz Venice, but blows it away in most other things. AMD is for good gaming, Intels is a awesome encoder. Holds true with the FX/EE comparison too. Both cost too much, price/performance is real bad. The Venice is easy to cool, Prescotts or hard to cool but I did it. They didn't get that fast without a blue screen eather, but now I don't get them any more. I'm on my 540 rig now, it's folding (as always) it only gets restarted to install things. Most stable comp. I ever had.
 
SOcRatEs said:
I didn't want to clog the post.

xls cpu spec sheet
Had to double rar & zip bag it to upload at 98kb
but well worth a look.
Click to expand...

Hey mate.

I can`t get the zip file to extract. I keep getting an error that says "no files to extract"

Regards Howard :)
 
apples and oranges

Which is better- Lincoln or Cadillac? BMW or Mercedes? CNN or Fox? Asphalt or concrete?

What YOU like is what's best.

See? I've settled the whole thing. We can all go home and watch TV! :angel:
 
Don't blame the CPU, blame Windows, blame the mobo, or blame the memory(maybe user too?). That isn't Intels fault, their chipsets and cpus are stable, better than any other.
Reply With Quote
Click to expand...

I already blamed every of those, it still crashes.

I tried 4 mobos,
reinstalling Windows 5000 times,
EliteMT, MT, NEC, CuBIG and Kingston RAM(Maybe 10 sticks),
different HDDs, still crashes.
Tried MDK Linux, Win98 SE and Win2k, crashes.

Chipsets are 440BX and VIA 113Z.
I've also been told that their chipsets were cheesy.
I used Pentium II, Celeron and Pentium III, all of them crash.
I sometimes use Pentium 4 and it's slow and crashing.

BUT, all of my Pentium I non-MMX are OK.

While my 2x K6-2 400MHz with VIA MVP3 and the other with an ALi chipset are NOT crashing, also my Athlon XP 2000 (KT266), an Athlon XP 1600(KT266) I know and my AMD DX4-100 are NOT crashing.

And the same "bad working" memory sticks, PSUs, and HDDs used with the Pentium I to III are OK with the K6-2 ones.

Lincoln or Cadillac? Can't drive.
BMW or Mercedes? Can't drive.
CNN or Fox? Not in the 'states.
Asphalt or concrete? In winter, if you want to be able to walk, I say asphalt.
AMD or Intel? I compared, AMD
Sony or Panasonic? Panasonic
ATi or nVidia? I'll have to try something better than an Xpert 98.
Duracell or Energizer? None, rechargeable. If not, Panasonic.
MacOS or Windows? Windows
Windows or Linux? Linux
hp or Lexmark? hp
Lexmark or Epson? Lexmark
hp or Canon? Canon
(Local) Bell or Videotron? Bell
(Local) Rogers or Videotron? Rogers

and the list goes on.
 
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