AMD or Intel?: Part Deux!

[Guru]

Still prefer intel myself but here is what they had to say!

http://www.viperlair.com/articles/editorials/cpu/amdvsintel2.shtml

[Wombat]

Looks like a pretty worthless review, judging from the first comparison:

One thing you'll have to take into perspective is although the 2400+ appears to be as fast, but cooler, it isn't really. The 2400+ is actually a 2GHz part. People who follow AMD will already know this, but I thought it'd be a good idea to remind a few of you. Therefore, although AMD has made improvements to their heat output, the winner is still Intel. Winner = Intel

How is the actual clock speed of the AMD chip worth anything at all? Maybe if they compared performance/watt, but they didn't.

Intel always wins or ties in this review. When AMD <B>does</B> win, it's labelled TBD. This guy already knew who would "win," regardless of the data.

[Nuno]

What bugs me is that these days anyone can write 2 lines of worthless crap, benchmarking cpu´s with sandra and pcmark and using "sent" results, and call the whole stuff an "article". How pathetic.

[rugger]

Hmmm,

Despite AMD chips being slower than P4 chips in many tasks, reviews seem to missing one of the main points:

AMD chips are so stupidly cheap for the performance you do get. (which is not much less than Intel chips) I really mean that. The Athlon XP are so cheap its almost criminal.

AMD prices: (retail, boxed with fan, to be fair with intel prices)
$79 AU for Duron 1300
$169 AU for an Athlon XP2000.
$309 AU for an Athlon XP2200.

Intel prices: (retail, boxed with fan, as always)
$109 AU for Intel P4 Celeron 1700Mhz
$329 AU for Intel P4 2000 Mhz
$385 AU for Intel P4 2400 Mhz (533 Mhz version)

CPU prices, especially on the AMD side, are rediculously cheap compared to even just a couple of years ago (prices started at $150 AU back then)

AMD is going to get itself into trouble for preditory priceing unless they up their prices. Especially for the low to mid range Athlon XPs.

[dsp]

Wombat,

Isn't the actual clock speed how wattage is calculated, but I do agree with you that this should either have been a tie or a slight win for AMD. I also wonder why he uploaded the article when it wasn't finished as the results aren't all done by him alone (as he mentioned). But one has to remember that this site is not as big as many others, and as such we don't get the latest CPU's unless we buy them (thus the reader submitted 2400+ scores).

Nuno,

I hope that you don't feel that way about all our reviews (I write for this site). Anyway did you read the Benchmarking - Why article?

Rugger,

Quick question for you, how much is the Athlon 2400+ where you are? I agree that the lower end of the scale definitly is for AMD (which is why I've got a Athlon 1700+ for very little money). But here in my city the price difference between the 2400+ and the 2.4 is very little ($20 Canadian - $335 to $355).

Sincerely,
dsp@viperlair.com

[Dr Mordrid]

Lets also not forget that with a lot of new multimedia software (Uleads for example) there is SSE2 and HT support, which Athlons don't provide.

This will be quite limiting on AMD systems until the Hammers arrive for users of MSPro 7, DVD Workshop Pro and other upcoming (March) apps with support for these features, and Ulead's not the only one coming out with support for 'em.

Dr. Mordrid

[rugger]

dsp,

I am about to eat my foot

Athlon XP 2400+ is 409 boxed with CPU/heatsink

I guess intel is definitely better value at this product point.

[Nuno]

DSP:
Of course not, but you have to agree (even if you can´t say so in public) that this "article" is completly void of content, could have been done in 5 minutes, and represents a negligible amount of work and research on the matter.

I don´t even went into the subject of wich cpu is better now; it´s only the quality of the "article" I´m talking about. It remembers me of some magazines that number after number repeats the same old mambo-jambo and why so many hardware entusiasts stoped buying them and reading high-quality and informed on-line reviews.

But it´s only my opinion.

[Dogbert]

Top part always costs a premium.
Check the 3rd best here in Israel:

Athlon XP 2100: $ 131
Pentium 4 2.0 400 FSB: $ 206

That's about 50% more I'd say...

Besides, the Athlon has 3Dnow/pro which isn't all that bad compared with SSE/2.

[Wombat]

Isn't the actual clock speed how wattage is calculated

Only relative to another processor that was built with the same technology. It means almost nothing here.

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Dogbert
Besides, the Athlon has 3Dnow/pro which isn't all that bad compared with SSE/2.

Fair enough, except almost no-one supports it.

However, it's worth noting that the Athlon's FPU (yes, the standard x87 unit) is about as fast as the SSE2 unit on the P4 (or at least Willamette), and needs less sophisticated scheduling. At least according to this guy, who knows a lot more than I do: http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/cpujihad.shtml (Find the 'Willamette' section, and read the last 'Update' paragraph.)

[Technoid]

I think its funny that INTEL is now using the "design pathways" it detested erlier....

Cyrix used insane MHZ to compensate for bad IPC (a 200MHz Cyrix could almost reach P133 performance)

AMD introduced 3DNOW as a way to get more performance out of the K6-2.

Intel at the time said that "REAL" cpu's didn't need recompiled software to shine

[Nuno]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Dogbert
Besides, the Athlon has 3Dnow/pro which isn't all that bad compared with SSE/2.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Fair enough, except almost no-one supports it.

3dnow "pro" is SSE as found originally on the PentiumIII. So any SSE enhanced app will take advantage of Athlon XP. SSE2 is nice too, but few software is heavily optimized for it.

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Nuno
3dnow "pro" is SSE as found originally on the PentiumIII.

D'oh! I knew that...

[Byock]

Sorry, I thought the article was skimping on Info too.