I was just wondering what you guys thought of Intel vs. AMD?

I personally have nothing against the AMD chips, I just always end up getting an Intel one.

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Manu Narayan

I have used Intel and AMD. Currently, I have 3 systems, one AMD T-Bird 750, one Intel Celery 366 o/c to 550, and one AMD K6-2 350. All are reliable and stable. I prefer AMD due to my personal bias against Intel trying to put AMD and Cyrix out of business in the early '90's with their goofy lawsuit (it ranked right up there with RAMBUS' suit against the memory world).

That T-Bird 750 and ABIT KT7Raid w/IBM Deskstar 75 hard drive make for one awfully fast system :cool :cool :cool

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Uh, what country is this??

Thanks for the input!

Right now at home I am running a PII400, and was looking to get a new mobo in the next few months. So I've been debating between around 1 gig, but not sure if I shoudl go Intel or AMD.

Any suggestions? I've heard that luck with over clocking is better on the Intel chips, any truth to that?

Anyone know about the dual chipsets for AMD? I know those are fairly new, but I may consider a dual proc system.

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Manu Narayan

If you were a power user, than running Photoshop on a P2-400 would become unbearable. Powerusers are people to me, that use the machine's power all day long, so its always making hard drive grinding noises, and they spend most of the day looking around for the operation to finish. I'm not saying the Duron is useless, for gaming it rocks! I think its the perfect choice for people that surf, mp3, email, game, and maybe use MS Office... unfortunately with my work, I'm usually twiddling my thumbs on this slow p3-800 384mb... I'm looking into an Athlon 1.2ghz to OC to like 1.4, 512mb ram (a whopping $120) IBM Deskstar HD (fastest IDE HD around), and maybe a GeForce 3 or a GF 2 Ultra (which are dropping in price rapidly, now around $230)

I do hear grinding noises all the time, and it is unbearable. The 256 ram is whats let me delay this long.

Video rendering takes hours on hours for a few minute clip.

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Manu Narayan

Manu, if you consider yourself a power user, go with the AMD Athlon. But, I'd hold off for a little while yet. AMD just released a new core for the Athlon for mobile systems. Cooler running and adjusts power consumption to the task at hand (hence thier affiliation with the folks at Transmeta).

If you are wondering what a mobile chip has to do with your needs, well here it is: a desktop version of this chip is due out soon also. AMD says this chip core provides a 3-10% boost in performance over the T-bird 133MHz core.

Also, SiS has a new chipset coming out that actually performs as good as the AMD 760 chipset, for less $$$. Most of mobo manufacturers are really excited about this chipset because this performance comes from a chipset that is using drivers still in beta testing.

The CPU market is going to get really interesting in the coming ,months with the P4 maturing and getting software that it can actually run. But, AMD isn't taking a vaction, either.

If you have to get a system now, I'd suggest the following:

AMD T-Bird at whatever clock speed you wish as long as it has a 133MHz (266) core. For the mobo, get the ABIT KT7A (raid version if you want) with VIA's KT133A chipset.

The 266mhz chipset and DDR ram are slightly better, but, more expensive also.

Using the above parts will get you within 5% or better of the DDR systems. For a good read go to www.anandtech.com. (http://www.anandtech.com.) They have some really good articles regarding this setup.

74Mav's AMD chipset ratings:

AMD760: *****

VIA KT133A: **** (better bang for the buck than VIA's KT266

VIA KT266: ***1/2

ALi Majik1: **1/2 (runs like it's constipated in some apps, and a bat out of hell in others)


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Uh, what country is this??

Wow, thanks man, very informative post.

First I gotta work out car finacing, then computer :P

So it will be a few months probably. And I will wait for bigger cuts (intel has july cuts planned so im sure adm does too)

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Manu Narayan

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1386&p=3

FYI. It's what I was talking about with the KT133A performance vs. KT266

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Uh, what country is this??

I have the exact system that 74Mav is talking about... it is nice.

1G Athlon T-bird, Abit KT7A, 256M PC-133 RAM, GeForce2MX, Sound card TBA, etc.

I don't like Intel for a number of reasons, but on a practical level, the AMD usually outperforms the equivalent Intel chip by a considerable margin, and for less money.

I would strongly suggest AMD's Duron line-up if you're not a real power user. A Duron 800 sells for about $50-60, the Iwill KK-266 goes for about $115, and a 256mb PC133 goes for about $75. For about $250 you can make your machine a killer.
I'd only suggest the Athlon if you will really be doing some heavy crunching, such as Photoshop, Premiere, and OpenGL and 3d Graphic programs.
The Durons can easily be overclocked with the motherboard safely to 1Ghz just fooling with small voltage, clock, and memory increasements.

I am a 'power' user for the most part.

I do lots of 'multitasking' and a fair amount of photoshop work, and am getitng into video editing, so some premiere junk.

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Manu Narayan

74Mav sounds on top of things...just take things that you read at AnAnd with a grain of salt for your own sake.

AMD!