Intel P4 vs AMD

Naturally the Centrino is going to be more because it is a select Intel platform for the best battery life and connectivity. As I pointed out before, one can usually get a cheaper Pentium M model of the same brand. For me, the jury is out till some of the dual core AMD and Intel laptops start hitting the market.

Dell is already selling some of their high end packages with the duo core Pentium M(s). They're high end and have extra RAM and faster FSB. They're running about $2000+. I was looking at some decently equipped laptops at office depot and they were $1000+ for single core systems without the extra goodies on the new duo core systems.

 

My dad's laptop runs a Dothan Celeron M 360 (1400-400) and to be honest it's battery life is far from remarkable. It will do a little bit over 2 hours when merely browsing the net, if that. Seems poor for a computrer that isn't famed for processing power. I still like it, but it could do better.

 

Take a look at the Anandtech article Donald was talking about and research Centrino. The technology has improved as well as the power conservation. I'm not going to buy new tech right away because it usually comes down pretty fast. I'm still thinking about a laptop and the wife would like to have one for use with her small apps and photos. She's uncomforatable with my old "clunker" for some reason. If Intel keeps up the good work and the prices lower a bit, it may be a Centrino Duo Core.

 

I would go with the centrino if you want decent performance do the the centrino chip 1mb cache and low voltage and power consumption. Plus it has the builtin wi-fi chipset as well. Plus it has support for DDR-2. If you are into moble gaming then you may want to consider the pentium 4's even though I wouldn't because those suckers get extremely hot- hence the fact that the laptops that contain them are so damn big to accomadate the fans. I am not sure with the AMD Turions right now but I know overall they do not have the battery life of Centrino's and they don't have DDR-2 support.

 

For a laptop I would stick with the Dual Centrino for all around quality and low power consumption but if I had to go with a single core for gaming it wouldn't be the P4. The AMD 3500 would be perfect for a laptop gaming system. It will help your video car push more frames per second than the P4 does which is better for gaming and it consumes less energy than a P4 does even at full power. AMD has the cool and quiet feature which can be optionally turned on for even lower power consumption and extended battery time and turned off for gaming.

 

Sophocles

Did you reach 2.9 yet?

 

No, and it's not going to happen without some modifications. At 2.8 the heat rises quickly to 54 degrees Celsius and then the system crashes when I run an encoding application. At 2.75 it runs good but only at CAS 3 memory settings and it won't complete an encode. I think the problem is that the chip set is overheating which was a problem with the A8N-SLI Deluxe boards. It runs pretty solidly at 2.7 Ghz with memory timings of 2-3-2-7 1T. Some people are hitting 2.9 and a few even 3.0 with water cooling but that's not an option.

There are still settings that I haven't tried but until I can cool down the chip set, I don't think that it's time well spent for now, or at least until I can do a little moding to cool it down. Another concern is that my 500 watt power supply might also be chocking a bit. I think that the chip and memory is willing but not the chip set and maybe the power supply.

If you guys have noticed, the 939 Opteron's are being discontinued and are getting harder to find. Now why is that, they're selling great? Coincidently about the same time the new FX60 has just been released, a dual core AMD running at 2.6 Ghz that sells at newegg for $1279.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103608

I'm betting that the Opteron's 165,170, and 175 have been discontinued to make way for the FX 60. No one would pay $1279 for a chip that can be had for a little over %300. They're exactly the same chip in design. Same core and same cache and different core names for technical naming purposes only. The benefit of the Opteron is better silicon and binning only but otherwise it's a Toledo. I have nothing to complain about because I have a faster than stock FX60 right now for under $500.

I'm not giving up but I'm not going to spend more money on it for now either. On Sunday I almost dropped $900 for a VapoChill think that I could hit 3.2 Ghz but fortunately sanity arrived just in time to stop me. LOL

 

And I just want to spend around $1500 bucks for a new system.

I found this article the other day after you mentioned the FX60 chip. Since I am no expert on AMD what's your take on it?


http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28152

Even though I stated that I was going to wait, the need for speed is biting me in the butt and I want to make sure I get the right mix the first time. I don’t need to re-invent the wheel, I just want it to go faster then anyone elses, within budget of course! <G>

 

The FX 60 is slower if you're only counting single cores because the FX57 runs at 2.8 Ghz and the Fx 60 at 2.6 Ghz. The FX57 uses the San Diego core and the FX 60 uses the Toledo core which is really two San Diego cores on the same die and optimized for dual core. Since most games are single threaded the FX 57 is going to push more frames per second but only on single threaded games. When games become smp (multi threaded)ready over the next year then the FX 60 is going to walk all over the FX 57.

I do more encoding than gaming and dual core clearly wins there as well. What I found curious is that the ATI dual Crossfires out performed the Nvidia 7800 GTX's because the 512 meg cards crashed. I'm not worried because my CPU is the same as the FX 60 but clocked much closer to the FX 57. In short my system is faster than a stock FX 60 and maybe even an overclocked but certainly equal to it.

If you're looking for a fast system then I strongly recommend that you onsider an Opteron 170 before they become inpossible to find and some high quality OCZ or Corsair memory.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227066

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145596

I went for low latency over total bandwidth but both of those are the memory that's hitting the top speeds.

 

A little bragging from Donald and a few Bloody Caesars and out pops the plastic and home comes the Vapochill. LOL Then if the wife knows what happened, Sophocles receives bloody hell. LOL

Sophocles, just start putting your stash together. You're so close to that mystical number, [bold]"3"[/bold]. Besides, Scubabud is willing to break the bank for just a high performance system without the "fluids". You're too nice a guy not to help him set up and time it, and then there goes the "king of the hill" position.

Back on "Planet Dirt", I found truth in your words on processing times with my improved "Clunker". You remember, the old Northwood (on a 3 year old platform with a tiny 512KB cache) that is in the league with a shiny new FX57. Skeleton Key was a larger than average DVD with a segmented structure that I noticed slows down encodes. Well, I did an easy one, Constantine, at about 6.6GB. 3 passes with full disc and it came in at 153 minutes. 2.5 hours for a full length movie at 3 passes isn't bad for an antiquated single core running stock. I encode, surf, and do other tasks and sometimes the PC is really loaded for long periods and doesn't get shut down for days. No smoking and it would have overheated by now if it was going to. Batching with RB/CCE is one of the heavier loads a person can inflict on a system. So, you're right, the times go up and down. I'm hoping this will be closer to the average though.

LOL You're talking about flying with a record breaking system and here I am playing in the dirt. LOL I'll be riding a better cycle this year, Harley or not.

 

Sophocles,

Did you put the Opteron in your old MB or did you buy a new board for it? The one I'm looking at from Newegg/Asus is the new fanless design with the integrated interconnected chip coolers and heat pipes. The one I want is an ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard at $245 (USD). Am I making the right choice as there are several less expensive SLI motherboards available from Asus. I only want to do this once and I want to do it right.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131568 Please let me know what you think as I may do the motherboard, CPU and memory now and then add the goodies later.

Sincerely,

theonejrs

 

To All,

Well, the jury is in! Installed the Zalman 9500 cooler today (thank you Sophocles) and the results are great. I oc'd to 20% (3.60) and ran the burn in with the CPU at 100%. It saw 63C once during the test. The rest of the test it ran 61 - 62C. Encoded a DVD and it got up to 58C. Idles at 47C with a case temp of 36C. That's considerably better than it ran at 3.0! I was told by several people to remove the MB to install it but I removed the power supply instead. This gave me more than enough room and I didn't have to disconnect anything. I didn't bother with the fan control as it is quieter than the stock Intel even running at 2500 rpm. I may use the fan control to quiet the 120mm case fan and see what that does to the CPU temps. That fan is what makes most of the noise anyway Word of caution here. If you buy one and ever have to move the computer, lay it on it's side and carry it with the MB down. This thing is fairly heavy and could rip the socket right off of the MB bouncing around.

Computer is stable as a rock at 3.60. FSB is 960 with the memory running at 320. I would be interested in any suggestions you may have to improve my setup. Once again, I thank all of you who gave me advice on purchasing this CPU cooler. I can say that I would highly recomend it to anyone having heat problems.

Sincerely,
theonejrs

 

You're getting some good parts in inventory. I'm waiting to see that top of the line build you have in mind.

 

i dont know why i am still subscribed to this thread, its really filling up my inbox.

but overall, my opinion is that AMD for gaming, Intel for multi-tasking.

 

I haven't written Intel off yet, but they aren't even the best for multi-tasking. The dual core AMDs are whipping them everywhere but in the mobiles for now.

 

i see...
any comments on my new sig.

Wouldnt AMD have its own version of the Intel Celeron anyway, cause the yhave all the different versions, just like intel does they have stuff like the sempron and all thos different modesl huh... (i wouldnt know, pentium 4 user myself cause cant afford an AMD processor)

 

Prices have been comparable, but AMD has been raising theirs, especially on the high end processors. You can get comparable systems now for about the same price. Both have items for different market segments from budget to high end custom. There's a difference in architecture between AMD and Intel and that's what's giving AMD the current advantage. For the average user, the difference isn't really enough to notice. However, if AMD keeps forging ahead, Intel is going to start losing more of it's market share.

 

Was there something about a new sig? What could it have been? LOL More colorful, but does it fit in with the name?

 

kens my favourite street fighter character cause alien13 already coined akuma (the dark character)...

thanx for the info about AMD, but isnt intel used by all the major computer manufacturers aside from compaq... i would thinkg that would keep it in the market for a long time to come unless AMD superseeds Intel hands down and all the computer manufacturers are going to swithc.

besides all operating systems execpt for windows (in some ways) are framework specific so there is not really anything holding back control of the marked for AMD, if anything i think they should be in the position that intel is now, they make better processors than intel. in my opinion they are faster, very reliable/stable and can be overclocked to high measures when they are starting to become obsolete.

just my 2C

 

Well, you have HP and Compaq tied together, there you have a sizable company selling AMD systems. Apple had AMD processors in their Mini PCs. Gateway is selling the AMD systems as well, both desktop and laptop. AMD has a much more formidable position in the market than a few years ago. Intel still holds the lions share of the market. I suspect mainly because it's been into PC systems so long and has been more visible than it's competitors. Most consumers are familiar with "Intel Inside", but are just learning about AMD.