AMD vs Intel...NOT A FLAME WAR!

Ok, i plan on upgrading my current system this summer and by then i will have enough money to do almost anything i want/need. Intel has been way out of my price range untill now and was wondering what i should get. I do alot of gaming, some listening to music, and burning cds. I know i need a new vid card(9800xt is the idea). I was looking at adding a rad 1 or 0 config and adding another wd 80gb se hdd. I don't know what i should do when it comes to mobo/proc/heatsink choice. I kinda want to go dual, but have no clue which kind of system i should go with. And in the case i don't gain quite enough for dual, what kind of single proc setup should i go with? What would prices be on those kinds of setups? i want to go high end(not uber high, but high end wouldn't need to upgrade for a few years) thanks in advance, please don't turn this into a flame war against amd or intel

The A64 has my vote.

Get some BH5 if you can find it or atleast CH5. Instead of a 98XT get a pro. Not only will it save you cash, but it could allow you to get more RAM. Plus Pros go well beyond XT speeds

As for the cooling always buy Thermalright if your goin air cooling. I think they just released a new cooler for 64s. I believe its called SLK948.

Yeah, I'd vote AMD currently as well. I seem to remember a very similar post to this just a little while ago.....

If your building it this summer the possabilty could be either way as things are changing on both sides right now.

AMD- 64 bit option.
Expandability for future 64-bit applications, but by that time the processors will have changed format, infact a new pin set is coming this late summer I believe. These are less expensive to build, procs are comparible at times but hardware is cheaper. Some will say that these are better for big media projects also. AMD's throw off more heat than Pentiums though. These are supposed to be single task monsters from what I read~ What is important to understand is that although it is 64-bit. Programs only use 32 right now, and relatively near future. The 64-bit allows for slightly higher memory bandwidth too.

Pentium 4 Pentium 'C' chips
The new 'E' chips are just not conventional in my eyes....yet. They are Hot, Energy suckers and have not shown ANY benifit to 'C' chips beyond crunching SETI or Folding (due to 1 meg cache, which is actualy available on the Extreme Edition 'C' chips). These are stable chips. They have been around, and have been killed so we know the limits. Pentiums Cons are Price, and socket age. They are more expensive on the whole, and this socket set (478) is proly on it's way out. Here are the goodies though. They O/C like mofos (2.6c's will see 4Ghz with right set-up), you get Hyper-Threading (Seamless multi-program tasking) dual channel memory (efectively double memory bandwidth), and lower heat than competators. On the last point, I use a stock HSF to o/c a 2.8-->3.3 and get good temps. A good air system gets you a long way with a Pentium set-up. Also one should note that Pentium is releasing a new form factor this summer. BTX. If you haven't looked into this, do it. SOMEONE finaly pulled their friggin brains together and designed a form factor that uses physics to its advantage with the RAM and CPU down low and in front where the fresh, cold air is.

For both we have DDR II coming~ more bandwidth with stable timings, and lord knows what else will be here in the next 2 months. AMD might shock us with something new, Pentium might do the same with a chip thats NOT a failure..lol.

I was an AMD guy, they are stable as hell, and work horses. But I wanted flexability and the ease of quick o/c'n, and at the time Pent was the only one with 800fsb that caught me.

Ultimately keep eyes and ears open for your own opinion. If your a multi-tasking O/C'er, go P4C, not even AMD'ers can argue with that, not if they are honest with themselves. But that is the current situation, I can't stress enough of what this year hold in changes for our community. No one knows. I hope this helped.

Single Processor: Athlon64
Dual Processor: Athlon MP, or dual XP's with a bit of conductive paint.

So, i think you voted Pentium. I was thinking that. But should i hold out on everything untill summer comes to find out what the manufactures have in store? I hate that with computers somthing new comes out every 3 months and you are almost out of date. If i go pentium, where could i get one of those Extreme Edition C chips? I might as well go ahead and look for the things i can find now just to get a price to look forward to. Also, would a single Pentium 2.8 or Dual AMD MP 2800 (is there anythign faster?) be faster? They both will probably be the same speed and i am guessing the same multi-tasking abilities.

I would DEFINITELY take dual over single, you're gaming. Gaming + AMD = win

Dual + anyone = win

You can't go wrong. I don't know if you can run Xp processors in dual, I thought you could. There's no way hyper-threading technology would compare to two equally-matched processors.

um....HT doesn't make it THAT much better in multi tasking...it's still not a dual processor. And benchmarks show scores are either a tad faster/same speed or slower. I have no problem running prime and gaming at the same time on my XP2400.

I don't think DDRII will be that important for AMD processors. Take the A64 and FX. Even though A64 runs memory in single channel, it's not that much slower than the FX that runs memory in dual channel. Sure DDRII will probably be faster, but the benefits are pretty superficial, like going from AGP4X to 8X. You'll see the difference in Sandra memory benchmarks, but real world gains aren't that significant. But for P4, they probably could use the extra bandwidth, seeing how single channel memory causes quite a performance drop.

If you are going for dual processors(because you are running applications that benfit from it), go for the low end Opterons.

Otherwise A64 3200 with 1 MB cache is probably the best choice for now, especially for gaming. It's caught up with the P4 in encoding too.

Of course, P4 is still a good choice, but it's not x86-64. A lot of ppl with 2.4c/2.6c/2.8c are getting good OCs out of it.

And then there's the mobile AthlonXP 2500. Check out the thread on that..ppl are getting 2.6/2.7 on water. It's not as good as P4 @ 3.4 but it's so close, the difference is negligible. So you could get one of these and OC it. And it's priced about $100 less than a P4.

The only processors not to get is the FX/P4EE/Prescott.

Dual procs won't help that much in most games unless they are optimized for SMP.

Like was said, summer is a long ways off and right now Intel and AMD is fairly equal if you look at the big picture. By summer, both platforms will have new chipsets available.

The Intel Prescott is probably not the best choice right now, but with the new stepping available in May and a new socket-T CPU, who knows, the tide might turn.

You will have more people in this section tell you AMD because more AMD fans hang out here bashing Intel and trying to recruit. If you want more Intel opinions, go to the Intel section.

I noticed that three of the people that posted just told you to get an AMD without providing any real reason for doing so... hmmmm.

I will tell you this... you don't need the P-4EE or the FX51, they are both way too expensive and don't provide enough performance boost to justify the cost.

Video cards are another one of those things that will have changed by summer too. My advice is to just keep reading and researching as time goes on. In the meantime, you could always upgrade a couple things that can be migrated to your new system.

batboy, this is the main cpu section... not the amd section.

if you're gaming and burning (like you said you will be doing) then save your money and go amd64. they beat the p4 in pretty much every gaming benchmark. if you're encoding and ripping lots then go intel. intel still smokes amd at encoding. my friends centrino 1.6ghz laptop smokes my rig at xvid encoding. i was gettin 20fps while he was up at 25fps. as for gaming he only has a ti4200 in the laptop so i can't really compare. all my other friends have amd rigs so that's about it for my input.

i'd say the temp difference isn't as significant as people have said here. especially once you start overclocking.

suffice to say that either way you go you'll get a super fast computer so just pick the one that suits your needs most.

You could argue P4 and A64 are pretty equal on average. But A64 is a tad better for gaming. And x86-64 is just a bonus that translate to better performance when 64 bit software is ready.

There's always fanboys that post their choice without giving a good reason, regardless of which side they're on. I could name some Intel fanboys who posted in other threads you want.

Waiting is probably the best because you'll get better choices and there may be price cuts.

If you want gaming performance now...get a video card for now. XP2000 with a Radeon 9800 should be good enough. 9800XT isn't worth it but it's your money so you can do what you want.

I think it is basically boils down to a matter of preference or who you listen too. If one company's processor was that much better, and everyone agreed it was better, than the other company would be out of business. BUT both AMD and INTEL are growing companies for some reason. SO best thing to do is research and decide for yourself.

You might want to consider an amd xp mobile 2500, they overclock greatly, some people here even got them to 2.8.
With a NF7 or a DFI and with some BH-5 or CH-5 memory you shouldn't have problem.

You can't beat the performance/price ratio of that combo.

If you want cheap ch-5, you might want to look at these
Buffalo PC3200. They are available in 256 or 512 stick version.

http://www.tblmemory.com/shop/view_product.php?product=DD4002-512/WC

or if you prefer twinmos
http://www.palmtreepc.com/winbond.htm.

I ordered myself a mobile 2500 and some Buffalo CH-5...some fun is expected

You would be better off with BH6. Mushkin's 222 special uses BH6. You can get that stuff at newegg.

A64 and Pent4 are even. Only reason why I suggested A64 is becuse AMD will be supporting it for the next 4 years or so. Intel is pushing hard to phase out its lineup.

Just wondering..are the mobile 2500s locked?

No they are not locked AFAIK

if i do anything i am going BIG, not just a mobile 2500 or anything, i would go big time, best amd or best pentium, or great dual pentium or amd...what is the top of the line AMD single, what is the top of the line Intel, what is TOTL smp AMD/Intel?

You can keep your current motherboard if you went for the mobile 2500, and just turn up the multiplier.

If you are expecting a huge difference between XP2000 and a Athlon64 3400/ P4 3.4..well sure you'll get about over 70% increase in speed, but the cost isn't justifiable(need new mobo, RAM, proc)..unless you have some money to play with. Going with the mobileXP2500 @ 2.6 will get you something similar to a A64 2800/P4 3000 at least. And you have more money for other stuff like a DVD burner or a ATI AIW 9800 Pro.

i will havew money, that is why i plan to do this over the summer as i am saving 80 a week for this and my rc(50/50 for each) untill summer and will go all out on everything, but i need you guys to tell me what kind of proc. setup i should go with, dual/single...amd/intel, top of the line everything!

Top of the line SINGLE processor = FX51/P4EE+9800XT.....of course, they're pretty bad choices when you look at the price

A more realistic choice is a A64 3200/P4 2.8c + 9800Pro. I've given reasons for choosing A64 in my earlier replies.

If you want dual processors and top of the line, go with Opterons248s. If you are realistic, you should consider dual Athlon MP 2800. But you won't be getting x86-64, and your gaming performance won't increase.

A cheap way to get dual processors would be just getting two XP1800/XP2500 and modding them. They cost $50/$100 a piece, so it's pretty good when you OC them.

FYI, Dream Gaming System
And Dream Workstation System