AMD vs Intel

AMD has a better price point in some places, I like my AMD Phenom laptop since it was cheap and cool running and still fast enough to work things out well.

That said a good i5 or i7 will usually come out ahead now a days, it's sad that AMD has really not been able to keep up with Intel. Even the C2D's blew away most of the AMD's and the Phenom II line was their only real competition for a while.

I remember the AM64 day's back when AMD had the crown in most of the market; it's a shame Intel really ripped them off back then with deceitful strategies. While I'm running an Intel chip now for it's price/performance ration It would be nice to see AMD come back and give some good competition to Intel.

Clock per clock some of the newer ones don't do as well, but they do clock up pretty easily and hitting higher speeds isn't exactly unfeasible. I'm just going to wait until my C2D bites the dust and hopefully AMD will have something worth getting or at least capable of bringing down Intel's prices.

 

I've been strictly AMD ever since my one and only Intel build blew up on me, that said I don't tend to overclock my processors. Most of the heavy duty stuff I do is 3D rendering and gaming so GPU is far more important for me.

While I know nowadays Intel is a fair bit ahead of most AMD processors I just could never justify spending that much for what is ultimately a fairly inconsequential performance boost, especially as I rebuild my PCs on a fairly frequent basis anyway.

I know this isn't really a GPU thread but I actually prefer Nvidia over ATI for graphics but again I think this is more just a prejudice carried over from the Intel build of doom.

 

It seems to me that hardware today is so ridiculously powerful that there is no difference in what you buy. It's simply not about speed anymore. Not of the CPU, anyway. I mean, my CPU is running almost exclusively underclocked. I have two virtual machines running, music or video playing, web pages loading, etc. and my CPU still automatically falls down to 1.15GHZ. Maybe it would be different if I was in video editing or gaming more, but then I would need a GPU, not CPU (not that much). The only thing that is a noticeable bottleneck in my case is the HDD, which I will address by using an SSD.

I think people react too much to numbers and commercials. Today, average is more than enough for almost anyone, but still everybody wants the best, even if it is hotter, louder, bulkier, uses more energy and so on.

All that said, I was always pro-AMD, but I now have a, Intel CPU. However, the reason is that a huge majority of laptops (which I was buying a few months back) are with Intel and it is far easier to find all other features you want with Intel, just because of the number of models.

 

AMD from a performance per dollar perspective wins hands down. Intel and AMD are aiming for two different things in terms of architecture Intel is going for higher per core performance while AMD is going for better multi-threaded performance and there are a number of bench marks that reflect that.

Now on to AMD/ATI v. Nvidia. AMD/ATI for years hardware wise has been ahead of Nvidia, they used GDDR4/5 before Nvidia did, they integrated a lot more stream processors before Nvidia did and on their dual GPU solutions they used an internal PCI-E bridging chip while Nvidia was using an internal SLI bridge when dual GPU cards first appeared. The only thing that is holding back AMD/ATI is that can't produce good drivers.

 

Back in "the day" I remember seeing a fault-tolerance comparison of AMD vs Intel chips. They removed heatsinks of various processors as they were running to see how long they would last. The Intel processors would scale down until the computer just turned off; the AMD ones literally went up in smoke and were damaged.

I don't know how different things are now, but AMD still strikes me as the cheap knockoff. They did invent the 64-bit architecture Intel is now using, so maybe it's a whole different ballgame.

 

Last computer I built was Intel, but this one is AMD. Can't say I've noticed much difference either way. (except Skyrim crashes on this amd -.-)

 

I built an AMD Phenom 965 BE machine, and it was just fine. Now that I have more money available though, I rebuilt with the Core i7 2600K.

In my limited experience, no negative experiences with AMD products except my motherboard was kind of trashy on that machine. But my lesson on that wasn't "don't buy AMD," it was "don't try to spend less than $100 on a mainboard and think you're getting a good deal."

AMD products are good value in my opinion, and as I'm upgrading in the future, I will give them a fair chance while I'm considering.

 

I have a 2500k system and even though it may be questionable how much performance gain there is with the latest Intel CPUs, Intel has better core-to-core performance. I do lots of demanding music production work and the 2500k barely breaks a sweat. AMD is best for those with budget in mind and if you're just gaming/doing general stuff.

My RAM cries though, hahaha. With only 4gb right now, I plan on upgrading to 16gb soon.

 

I find price : performance ratio of AMD excellent, also without AMD Intel would have a Monopoly. Although Intel has a lead on the maximum possible performance, AMD is great for most uses.

I think Intel improved lately, but for the longest while Intel onboard GPUs were nothing short of garbage*. Bargain bin ATI or nVidia GPUs bundled with AMD processors outperformed Intel's offering

* Intel's i810/815 platform was an embarrassment. Apparently they tried selling this as a standalone GPU. It can't handle VESA modes above 640x480x16 colour!

GMA 910/915 is known for "Vista Capable" debacle. Somehow Intel pressured Microsoft to let this chip qualify, even though it could not run WDDM drivers, and thus couldn't run Aero, and half the features in Vista. I think Intel must of had warehouses full of this chip. It popped up years later in Celeron-M based Netbooks.

GMA 945/950 is the functional BARE MINIMUM that DOES support WDDM. Of all GPUS ever made it's the crappiest one that can run Aero.

GMA 500 was bundled with Z series Atom chips and although the hardware specs of the PowerVR core are respectable, it has crappy drivers for XP, Vista/7, and Linux!

Intel bullied other GPU makers from bundling with Atom chips so they could keep anemic GMA945/950 sales going YEARS after it should have been buried. I'm surprised ION saw the light of day.

Intel has also pushed a lot of marketing nonsense:
-People thought Centrino was a processor. All it was was Pentium M (or better) + intel wireless + intel chipset!

-Pentium 4 pushed CPU clock speed over actual performance. What I call the "spaceheater 4" performed worse than AMD chips at lower clock rate, and heated up the room. They then shoved this monstrosity (actual desktop P4's!) into laptops.

 

I've heard (and somewhat experienced) that AMD chips run hotter than comparable Intels, which makes overclocking a limited and risky endeavor. But as the OP said, they can sometimes give better stock performance for the same price, which is attractive to somebody looking for a competitive (if not über) computer for cheap.

My current PC has an Intel core i5. No problems so far.

 

Eh, It depends on the processor's.

If your talking older AM64 v P4, then heck no and my phenomII laptop actually runs pretty smoothly however it's still a larger older quad so it makes some heat. I bet the newer smaller intels make less, but not much.

The main difference is that the higher end intels just blow away the higher end AMD's, but considering that they can cost well over 2x the price I don't think it's that bad.

The AMD's don't clock too badly, but the FX series in general has been pretty disappointing clock per clock so yes they can hit a upper temp limit pretty easily but that isn't hard to do with anything.

Intel doesn't make shabby cpu's in general though, fairly sound things either way but the chip is what makes the difference more than the mfg.