Intel P4 vs AMD

Not sure if gadillion is a word but it sounds awful fast!

 

Theonejrs
I was thinking more along the lines of a middle of the road XPS. From the ad you so kindly supplied, they start at $999 including a 19 inch flat screen LCD monitor. That AMD Polywell I mentioned earlier was well over $4000. So, high end AMDs aren't cheap either.

Most of the computer labs and businesses I've been in have the P4 systems. I really don't see why, because the cheaper Celeron processors do just as well in that environment. A smart office manager would go with the most cost effective sytem for what is needed. In most instances that would be Celeron systems working off a server.

As for reliability, I suspect a lot of returns are just because people changed their minds or did some minor damage to the system. I've seen some computer illiterates mess up a PC and then say it's the PC's fault. The components that make up the Dells are those that make up Gateway and the other manufactured PCs, both AMD and Intel platforms. The parts come from various vendors. I remember the original optical drives on my Dell were Samsung and the hard drive a Western Digital. I suspect manufacturers go where they can get the best prices with equipment that meet at least decent quality specs.

We had one Dell that got spiked by lightning. All the electronics in the house were shot. The Dell only needed to be reformatted and the modem replaced. That was over a year ago and it's still ticking. They suggest you not touch circuit boards due to static electricity in the body. Go figure. Other PCs are as good as the Dells. The catch is that Dell, even with the higher end products still manages to maintain a price edge against competitors on comparable equipment.

On the build I'm doing, I've had a few family functions going on and I neglected to get some parts ordered. I had to wait on the mobo and case so I could measure for the Zalman cooler. Once I got that done I decided not to rob the video card from the Dell. I decided to go with the ATI Radeon X850 Pro. I finally got the last of the parts ordered this week, so hopefully, sometime over the weekend following this one, I'll get around to finishing the project. Once I get it tuned up, I'll post the benches.

Baltekmi
You were half right. Sophocles PC will outperform the PC that crowy mentioned. The Intell dual core isn't a total washout, the 950 can easily beat most of the single core processors including theonejrs' OC(ed) Presscott. It'll beat the Northwood I'm building as well. I'm claiming no superiority there. Comparing decent dual cores to single cores is like the apples and oranges deal.

Crowy
Take the awards with a grain of salt. They go with good advertisers as well as decent equipment. Not to say the XPS isn't a good PC, it is. However, PC World just selected AMD systems as the top 5 performance systems in the April issue. As I noted earlier, PC World stated the AMDs beat the 950 Intel by 23% on the bench tests. That's a significant margin.

Crowy and Baltekmi
We're allowed our personal opinions as long as we state them as such. However, we should try to stick to substantiated info instead of resorting to personal attacks. We've been there and that doesn't work too well. I'm no mod, so that's your guys call. Mods chastise or ban members for such activities and sometimes close down threads.

Baltekmi
Compress the file and send as a zip or rar file. It will still be .exe when opened.

Also try to remember we have children visiting the thread on occasion. They can sometimes be trying.

 

aabbccdd
One of AMDs best new processors is the 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-60 dual core.

 

@brobear,
Just having a bit of fun,no harm intended.

 

crowy
Possibly not intended, but "it" happens. The thread was intended as a place for discussing custom PCs as well as AMD and Intel comparisons. If necessary, the opening of the thread can be modified to fit the way the thread has grown. Though some people enjoy word games and challenges, it doesn't really have a place here. Good humored joking is one thing, but being antagonistic is going a bit too far. You're welcome to participate in the thread, it's not private. Just try to adhere to simple ground rules such as being civil.

 

This makes the intels look a bit sick:

 

It looks good on graphs, but in the real world the differences aren't quite as noticable. Enough that if I was doing a custom build for a performance PC, I'd go with an AMD. In buying a reasonably priced retail PC, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. AMD is king of the hill, but how many AMD processors will the Intel 955 outperform in stock configuration? Another thing to look at is the market share of these high end processors. The vast majority of PCs sold are the mid to low end systems. Unless you're moving in an elite circle, you don't see too many high end XPS Dells or the highend Alienware, or Polywells, or ...

 

In a separate thread I'm now looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835106069 for the CPU Cooler. Obviously being a UK resident I can't get it from here, but that's what I'm interested in.

The 3700+ is practically a midrange CPU in terms of overall performance. The X2 4800+ and FX-60 stit at the top of the performance charts, with the Intel Pentium D's lagging behind.

 

Note the chart crowy provided. It shows lower scores than those acheived by the systems used by PC World. They do show the same pecking order though. The Intel Extremes do better than the D series. PC World had an FX-60 with a Worldbench score of 141. The Intel 955 had a score of 109.

Crowy,
When you supply charts or other info, you need to give us the source.

 

Sammorriss
The Zalman line has some similar coolers and they have sales in the UK. I prefer the Zalman myself. http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/intelcooling/cnps9500-led I got the 7700 for my latest project. Here's a red LED version. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118221&ATT=35-118-221&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r They have less expensive models. The Fatal1Ty is more high performance oriented. There are smaller ones with blue LEDs. http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/intelcooling/cnps7000b

 

crowy

That Dell XPS is over priced for a system that has less than $2500 in parts. I also read Tomshardware everyday and I somehow missed that article, could you post the link to it?

 

@Sophocles,
heres the link:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/awards/en/awards?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~pbar=true
@Brobear,
heres the link:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/amd athlon 64 fx60_010906100124/10505.png

 

@Sophocles,
I agree it is overpriced.
However for people that are'nt too computer savvy,having the peace of mind of a manufacturers warranty might justify the extra cost?

 

People who aren't too computer savvy won't be spending over $4000 on a Dell to get a 1 or two year warranty.

My home built has a better warranty since each part has its own warranty: 5 years hard drive, 3 years CPU, lifteime memory, 2 years on vid card, 3 years power supply and so on.

To top it off my system will out bench the fastest of those Dells. Home builts are better than commercial built rigs and if and individual is uncomfortable with building it themselves, there is always someone who lives nearby who is in the business of building fast computers for a living.

In regards to being a speed freak! Guilty as charged but not just for the sake of saying I have a fast machine. All that speed translates into real world benefits as well. More frame for games and significantly shorter encode times just to name two.

 

@Sophocles,
Point taken.
Encoding times are the one thing that my box is a bit ordinary with.
My system is one I built myself AMD1700+ thoroughbred @1667mhz, 384meg sdram, k7s5a mainboard running honeyx bios, 120gb 7200 rpm seagate barracuda,40gb seagate barracuda 7200 rpm and geforce4 mx440 64mb graphics.Onboard sound does the job.

 

This is IHoe,s(senior members setup):: Dell G4 XPS HT Extreme Edition, 3.73Ghz,1066FSB, 2Gigs of DDR2 SDRAM @ 533MHZ, 2 160Gig HD RAID 0, 256mb Radeon X850 XT PE, 24" Dell 2405FPW UltraSharp wide screen digital monitor, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS THX, 16x DVD Rom,16x DVD+-R/W DL (Philips DVD8631), Kliptsch Pro Meida 5.1 THX (500 Watts), 100Gig Maxtor OneTouchII External HD, 52"RCA HDTV, Epson Stylus Photo R320 printer for inkjet hub printable DVDs! HP Scanjet 4850 to scan original disks!
Sounds nice.

 

For £1001 ($1739 directly) I'm looking at:
X2 4200+ with Turbo cooler
A8N-SLI premium
2GB Corsair XMS3200
36GB raptor, 250GB NCQ barracuda
512MB X1900XT
580W Hiper Type R Black UV
NZXT Classic case
Dual layer dvd writer, dvd rom, FDD, memory car dreader and aerocool panel all in silver
LED case fans

That'll get relatively near any Dell XPS rig, and for half the price!
www.aria.co.uk for the english.

 

@sammorris,
When you get the new one,can I have your old one!!??

 

Sophocles,
just looking at your si sandra benchmarks.
I see reference cpu1 but what is the current cpu?
Or did I miss something?

 

Sorry, my bad.
just spotted it!