Intel P4 vs AMD

64026402,

1GB of rambus ram is what made my Dell Precision 420 such a great performing computer. 2 slot 1 P-III 1GB CPUs helped and it was very fast too. I bought it from ElecTro Rents for $165 in 2004 as a single CPU 733. It was extremely well made and had internal and external SCSI, 133MHz bus, a 4x AGP slot and the optional Raid card. It ran rings around any other P-III I ever saw. It had a stiff price tag of right at $5000 (USD) when it was new in 2000 and weighed in at just over 50 Lbs.

theonejrs

 

Well I borrowed an old Dimension XPS700r when my system was being repaired a few weeks back, and it seemed pretty slow to me (I mean it obvious would trying to run Windows XP Pro off a 1999 13GB Seagate Medallist - not the drive that came with the PC) but to be honest performance was pretty good for such an old machine.

 

The Dell 420 was a workstation with a full server board. It was much faster than an XPS or any standard sdram system.
The dual Pentium server boards were even faster when they switched to dual channel DDR.
Last time I checked they were up to dual 1.4 p3 with dual chanel ddr.
They stopped pushing the speed up because the P4s were looking pretty bad next to them even in Xeon form.
They were very popular for a lot longer than they were designed for.

 

In other words, designed obsolescence gone astray.

 

That's a real shame, because the Pentium III (well the late tualatin core anyway) was a really good processor and it deserved to be developed further. In truth it was better than the P4 Willamette and only when the Northwood series came out at something like 1.7Ghz were improvements really seen on the P3. No wonder they stopped developing them. With good coolers and overclocking, I wonder how far you could get a dual P3 setup to perform?I reckon it's a sure bet faster than a fair few budget CPUS on the market today, and that's technology from 4 years ago!

 

grrr, I hate when Afterdawn double posts, it happens all the time!

 

64026402 & all,
I didn't own a computer from 98 until 03 as I had just lost interest in them and everything you bought back then was so expensive. In late 03 I bought a Dell Optiplex G-1, 350 P-II Desktop w/256MB of PC100 sdram. It was slower than the Pentium 166 I had previously owned 5 years earlier. Maybe not in CPU speed, but in function. I very quickly learned that by using a router, I could eliminate the ISP software which made it boot a lot faster. None of that SBC Yahoo crap for me. The best thing I can say about that machine is that it made a great monitor stand. Within a few months I bought the Precision.

The highest speed I can remember for a P-III, slot 1 is 1.4GHz. I tried to find a matching pair for the 420 but no luck.

After the Precision, I got a Dell Dimension 3000, (CPU only) fairly cheap. It had a 2.8/533 P4 and 512MB of PC2700 Ram. I expected a lot more from it than it delivered. I bought a P4 3.0/800 for it and was very disappointed in the overall performance. It had no AGP slot so that's how I wound up with the XFX card. I wound up selling it after a rew months with the original configuration and then built this one. At last I have what I expected when I bought the 3000.

I've tweaked it a bit, with lots of help from you guys and right now it's running rock steady at 3.50 I will probably put the AGP FX 5200 card in it soon, but it's a BTH card so I don't know. Never had good luck with their stuff. I am definately Nvidia all the way as I have always had issues with ATi. The last on was a Radeon 9000 AGP. The bios would see it, XP would see it but the install software that came with it didn't. I went to ATi with the problem but they were not able to resolve the problem and eventually gave me my money back. I won't say that this was my last ATi video card because you never know what will come in the future or how good it will be!

theonejrs

 

Yay thats two votes against ati...anyone else?

Nividia rulz....ati droolz.....he he he


Hmmm....lets get a demonstrating going out front of ati hq...maybe they will change....he he he:>

 

two out of how many?

 

Im working on damit.....lol. I got three cause my buddy had a radeon extasy and returned it in a metter of three hrs..lol. Hmmm....damn me thinks you just love ati dont ye? Yeah second wife maybe? ROFLMAO!

Nah my wife or ahem....future wife says I should marry the computer instead. Shes Im on it more than her...roflmao.!

 

ozzy214

Do you really want to bring up the ATI bit again? And you've chosen the guy that you've just hassled because of a mistake in labeling DDR to DDR2 as an ally (nothing personal Theonejrs. LOL). I've owned more Nvidia cards over time than I have ATI but this time I chose an ATI because at the time it was the all around best card and ATI's reproduce color and detail a bit better than Nvidia cards.

Last year I was still using my 2.8 P4 Northwood@3.149 GHZ, an AMD 2500+ overclocked to a 3200+ on my wifes machine, and before that I was using a PIII 1 ghz. Today I'm using an AMD Venice core 3500+ and soon probably an AMD X2 4400+. The point is that I don't owe an allegiance to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or ATI, I simply buy what's best and most reasonable at the time. If Intel should drop a bomb on AMD and release a 4 core CPU tomorrow and AMD gets caught with their pants down then that's their problem and I'll buy Intel.

If you guys want to be a fan of either company then go for it but don't make blanket statements that one is more trouble than another because you experienced problems with it unless you're certain that a significant number of people are also experiencing the same problem, to do otherwise is to confess to ignorance.

 

Sophocles,

So you caught that little dig, did you? Hey, it's all in good fun. I did however say "I won't say that this was my last ATi video card because you never know what will come up in the future or how good it will be! I like to keep my options open." Some companies that made junk years ago now make good stuff so you never know. Witness SiS, Genoa and Cardinal. SiS is the only one still around because they took the long road and fixed their problems. I just have had very good luck with Nvidia over the years and they have the easiest setup on the planet.

I am so ashamed!

theonejrs

 

I couldn't have said it better myself Sophocles. ATI has proven to be a good product by their market shares. They wouldn't stay up if the product is crap. Simply put, the consumers hold ATI in esteem, me included. As I said before, I consider ATI Radeon and nVidia, both, as good graphics cards. Whoever has the latest advancement is usually the "king of the hill". An individual can say, "I don't know enough to get it to work properly" or something along those lines. On this thread, all I've heard is childish obscenities with no technical reasons as to why it wouldn't work. Ozzy has already admitted he was defeated by the situation and gave up. theonejrs, just mentioned a few didn't work for him, nothing as to why. Luckily the nVidia card was compatible with Ozzy's system from default or he could have ended up with a similar situation as with the ATI. If theonejrs supplied technical info as to why an ATI card wouldn't work with a particular system, i.e. what the conflicts were, then I might understand his complaint. Just giving blanket statements is for people who don't understand what's happening.

 

I like Nvidia as much as the next guy but if you think they are easier to setup than an ATI card you haven't been around very long.
Nvidia has often caused boot problems, setup problems, BSOD problems, conflict problems ect...
This is an excepted side effect of chasing the outer edge of performance. But they have been overall more stable in recent years.

I have yet to have any such problems with any ATI card. Only the inexperienced generally have difficulties that I have noticed.
They continue to develope top notch technology but don't usually push the hardware as hard right out of the box.

 

Nvidia for me, my All-in-wonder card had serious issues with the TV input (sound seriously ahead of video). Thats not the same thing as a dedicated video card, but thats brand loyalty such as Intel vs. AMD (the original topic of this thread). I built a Intel because it was cheapest at the time and more familiar with Intel products at the time. Now I know better, next build would be AMD (am jealous of friend's new HP Pavilion with AMD X2 3800 as stock, I just have to do better than something mass produced in a box

 

Any custom builder worth a hill of beans should be able to build something better than "out of the box" with both Intel and AMD. That is unless the box is something like the "designer" PCs from companies like Alienware. Take a look at that one, they build "designer" PCs with both Intel and AMD processors. Usually "out of the Box" is referring to the stock PCs from the usual manufacturers like HP, Sony, Gateway, Dell, and the like with mobos and BIOS that don't lend themselves to custom applications.

 

Donald

Since that was following a post of mine, I guess you were referring to something you thought I said. I don't remember saying anything about the difficulty levels of using either brand of component. I only mentioned in Ozzy's case nVidia appeared to match his application better than ATI with his configuration. There was never any definitive reason as to why the nVidia worked for him as opposed to the ATI Radeon card. The company that makes the board also supplies their own Radeon cards. So they don't seem to think Radeon is "crap". They supply both Radeon and nVidia cards.

 

BroBear,

I'm not condeming ATi and it was not my intention to start ozzy up again as I do not agree with his position. I happen to agree with yours! No where have I said that they were junk or to be avoided As I have stated in this forum that I have had some problems with ATi cards in the past and I tend to avoid them for this reason. Mostly driver and install software problems. There are a million possible reasons why I had the problems I had. The only one I know for a fact that was most likely some sort of component conflict was that last particular ATi AGP card. The people from ATi tried to resolve this problem and stated finally that they felt that some piece of installed hardware may be causing the card not to show up in their install program as I kept getting a message telling me that there was "no compatable hardware found," effectively canceling the installation! I know full well that hardware conflicts can happen from a previous experience I had years ago while repairing a Gateway 2000 486. This one drove me crazy! I went so far as to come back the next day with another complete Gateway I borrowed from a friend, the exact same model as the one I was working on and swapped everything in it until it worked properly. This particular Cardinal video card, which turned out to be the culprit worked just fine except thay when you restored files from Central Point backup, the computer installed the folders but they were empty. When I swapped the video card, the problem went away! I called Gateway to request a new video card under warranty. Gateway told me that this was impossible and finally after a whole lot of argument from me they begrudgingly sent a new Cardinal card (and a hefty credit card charge of $347.00). The replacenment worked perfectly including the restore from Central Point Backup.

I have no complaint or axe to grind with ATi. They gave me their time and effort to try to resolve the problem. Several hours were spent on the phone and I got the distinct impression that they were as frustrated as I was. They sent me a brand new card and a URL to download the latest drivers. When it too didn't work, I took it out and installed it on my landlords AMD 2600+ computer where it installed and worked just fine. ATi had me send them both cards and a copy of the invoice and issued me a check for my original purchase plus shipping. I also got a letter a few weeks later asking me to document the problem and their tech people's efforts to resolve it, which I did.

Most people tend to stay with what works well for them and for me, thats Nvidia. It doesn't mean that I think Nvidia is the best. I don't knock other manufacturers products unless I hear about a lot of other people with the same valid complaints. In the DVD forum right here in Afterdawn I condemmed BTC 16x DVD Rom drives as junk and advised people to avoid them. I bought one and it lasted all of a couple of hours. Fry's replaced it and it too went south. Fry's refused to replace it again and refused to take it back (a policy recently changed) and refered me to the manufacturer. Problem was that BTC had no US support, only sales. Sales sent me a URL to download the latest firmware update. When this didn't work I e-mailed sales again and was ignored. I haven't gotten a response to this day. Judging by the many responses I got from this post (all negative) I would say that I was justified in calling this product junk!

Years ago we had these sort of problems mainly because manufacturers in an attempt to make their product do more or be superior to other like products used memory areas (undocumented memory) outside of the bounds of windows. I don't think that this is done anymore, but who knows.

Sincerely,
theonejrs

 

My post was not referring to you brobear.

 

Didn't say it was. You just made the point again, don't condemn without knowing what the problem is. There's the user, software, and hardware with a multitude of possibilities for problems to creep in. It's not good to condemn any without knowing exactly what the cause is.