Intel vs. AMD

Even the Opteron 185 ($415) doesn't compare to the e6400 ($220). Prices are Newegg. The opty costs about twice as much for less performance. As far as that goes, I can crank a 4400 up to 2.7 with ease without stressing it and getting unstable. As for board costs, obviously nobody looked at the A8n32 for the 939. Sticker Shock. There's a bunch there, but it's not cheap. Most people don't use it because of the cost. Most go with the less expensive, but lesser quality A8n. Before anyone jumps, look at the 8 phase power management. The more expensive boards for enthusiasts using Conroe also have the better power management (and cost more). That means when they crank it up, they don't melt the solder. Back to comparing, I don't see any of the AMDs being a better price for performance. To try to compare they cost more in parts. You might be able to use some of the old tech parts from a previous build, but you had to buy those parts at some time. Building from scratch, it's been proven over and over the past few months that Conroe is the winner.

P4? Grunt machine for office use. I had a 3.6GHz system before I built my newer PC. They do things okay, one thing at a time. They're not very good at multitasking compared to any dual core. Also, the dual cores are faster. Gettin work done is what counts, not just a speed count in MHz or GHz.

 

Theonejrs
Your 940 is only slightly better than the worst dual cores Intel made, the 800s. Those were all Intel could come up with on the Netburst architecture. Looking back, we know Intel was working on Core 2 Duo and the Netburst dual cores were just something to keep Intel on the market till they could do better. Would I buy a Netburst dual core? Not on a bet. They may do CAD and video, but so will a P4. AMD dual cores will smoke the Intel Netburst processors. Conroe smokes the AMDs except for the FX62 beating a e6400 at stock and look at the cost difference. So, except for trying to save some bucks with your old parts, you'd be better served going with the new tech. Leave your old system together for whatever it can do and build a new system and get your money's worth.

 

Well I guess I find my loud-mouthed ass being royally handed to me. I had seen some other benchmarks where the e6300 matched with a 4200+. I think they have since then updated the THG processor charts with better optimized mobo drivers and whatnot.

I am deeply impressed and I can now truly realize the power of BigDKs e6600 build. I thought I had done my research and gotten my facts straight. Back to the books.

Thanks for the butt-kicking

 

Estuansis,

No butt kicking intended, just a passing along of knowlege. I can show you places and records where the D-940 will whip the Conroes butt running at a claimed 5GHz, on an Intel MB no less. He's got to be using a vapochil or liquid nitrogen to do that. Since air is pretty much the norm around here I just stick with those results and go by them. I saw a claimed world record where a D-940 finished second at 4.87GHz to a Conroe that was running at 5.12GHz on the top Asus MB. I guess I just don't understand bench racing! If it isn't stable enough to run benches or in some cases even boot, why brag! I mean I could turn mine up to that level and it would crash imediately, but to me that doesn't mean it runs at 5GHz!

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Happy Holidays,
theone

 

PacMan777,

I didn't even think to get a link. I was too busy LMAO to even think about it. I wasn't presenting it here as a claim (I'm not that nuts!) but just making a point of all the BS out there when it comes to benchmarks. Very few Forums are as honest as we are here. I suspect that's because some of the more knowlegable and respected members here would have them for breakfast with claims like that!! LOL!!!

I hope you didn't think that I actually believed it!!!ROFL!!! Maybe.... if you filled the whole case with liquid nitrogen like the one they filled with oil!!LOL!! Better yet, how bout oil and liquid nitrogen. The fans could stir up a lot of bubbles and with the LEDs it would look cool (pun intended)?? Strike that!! Bubbles don't transfer heat very well! LOL!!! I better quit before I do myself some harm laughing!

Happy Holidays and Ho Ho HO (pun intended)
theone

 

Note even then, not with a Netburst processor. It would get freezer burn and die. You're right, some of those benchracing claims are funny.

You honkin your own yule tide horn?

 

PacMan777,

Nope!! With my memory, I'm lucky that I know anything! There are some "folks" here who would take you over the river and through the woodshed!

If you mean the tree? Guilty!!! LOL!!!

Happy Holidays,
theone

 

Theonejrs

Honken again? They might, but with you not knowing what I know, you wouldn't know who would you?

I'll let you in on what isn't a secret. I can build my own PCs. I know my way around the BIOS with both AMD and Intel platforms. I can OC and tweak a system to get the most out of it, without frying the parts. I know what's important about a motherboard and I can choose a good case for venting and PSU with 2 or 3 rails and big enough to carry the load. I try to stay up to date so I know what is happening with the processors.

Here's something I haven't noticed anyone point out or maybe I missed it. Excuse me for repeating if I do. 512MB sticks of RAM are faster than 1GB. Programming benefits from more RAM. If you want to do better with benching use the smaller sticks. For work like video encoding use the larger. In the real world it don't make that much difference, you want good RAM and enough to run the system right. Even using the right thermal compound makes a difference. That should let you know I know something about OCing a PC. The other part of it is selecting the right parts to work best together and taking the time to do it right. The first settings can be done fast, but to fine tune takes a while. Burn in time and then running tests, using the system, and rebooting each time you want in the BIOS.

CPUs are funny, if you don't get one from the same batch, one from the same model can be different and OC better or worse. You all know those programs that let you OC in the OS don't do the job like doing it manual.

Don't let the "Newbie" fool you. I'm not a "Newb" with PCs. I realize I still got a lot to learn. I'm on vacation and have time to kill, so I thought I'd check out some forums. I saw the Intel vs AMD threads and thought I'd look them over. So far it's a rehash of what you find most places. Everybody waiting for something new. The threads read like a bad history lesson with people bragging on their PC and knocking the other guy. More attitudes than proving true skill and helping. There was the occasional times when a few took time to help somebody, but most of it was "mine is better" or "I know more and you're all wrong". The rest of the material has been chat and disagreeing and butt patting. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

The past year in review. AMD lead into the summer, AMD and Intel switched to DDR2, and Conroe took and held the lead from summer till now. AMD has the more refined system with the proven HT. Intel has the "brute" Core 2 Duo with the shared cache. That's the big news. There was GPU development and ATI and AMD merged. That's sort of the lesser news. ATI and nVidia are keeping the rivalry closer than Intel and AMD. Of course the RAM development has been interesting, but other than the change, which happens periodically it was no big deal. It wasn't that long ago we were using PC 133. The whole leap from then to now is a big deal. There's the summary in one paragraph.

 

BTW guys that Opteron 185 is 349.00 NOT 414.00

 

Depends on where you look. Did you see the TigerDirect ad? TD has it for that price and with shipping it comes to about $363. I didn't see any of the other vendors below $400 and some were $500. Not to worry though, the Tiger is making his money back on the other processors. Note how high above the lowest prices of the Conroes to be found. Either TD got a better deal or they're doing inventory reduction. Grab em while they're hot.

The E6400 can be had for $217 and the E6600 for $308 (retail box, including shipping). Still lower than the Opty 185. The E6400 bests it at OC and the E6600 beats it all around. Everybody should check out PriceGrabber and BizRate for best prices. You may not want to deal with vendors with a low rep.

 

yeah thats where i got it Tiger Direct 349.00 plus 12.99 for shipping and NO tax

 

I do not disagree with you. There are so many options as to build a great computer with the older tech. I am only saying that moving into a conroe or the soon to be new Amd, you are going to have to change to the next gen of computer parts..etc.
As far as I am concerened, My p4 still rocks all the games my grandson can play. But That will certainly come to an end really soon.

 

TO ALL!!!
INCLUDiNG THEONE...lol
Have a great christmas and a happy new year. And may everyone be safe.

Best wishes to all.

 

PacMan777,

Who do? You Do? Know who?

Nah, I'm not like that at all. Just from your posts I can tell that you are a newbie in name only. Especially by some of your answers!

Me, I've been messing with computers for over 20 years. I built over 200 of them in the late 80s to the mid 90s. That was back in the day when build took on a totally different meaning than it does today! Got burned out on them a while back and got rid of them all. Came back to computing in 03. By late 04, everything was changing so fast. We now had dual cores, fast video in SLI. A real Intel vs AMD war. I didn't get into overclocking until I joined AD in 05. I had a Dell 3000 then. I met up with a bunch of folks who really knew thier stuff. I learned quite a bit from them. I sold the Dell to my neighbor and used the money to built my first computer in about 5 years, A socket 478 3.0/800 P4 that I managed to OC 30% to 3.94. Believe me when I say I had lots of help in getting it there. Saddly some of those nice folks are no longer on AD but I still see them on one of the other forums I belong to.

I know you want to know why I built a D-940 instead of an AMD. At the time, everything came along on sale just right and my money was close. In other words it suited my needs and resources at the same time. Eventually I want to do an Opteron 185, again not the highest tech. I don't know zilch about AMDs, at least nothing past the Athlon XP.

I want to learn. The Conroe is going to be around for a while so I want to do the last of the great socket 939s while I still can. I have everything but the MB and CPU without taking my present system apart. I figure I'll build it with what I have and improve on it as time goes by. By the time I'm ready, there will be plenty of inexpensive Conroes available.

By the way, you are right about a lot of forums. And you're right about nothing to talk about. There doesn't seem to be much interest in the Quad-Cores because most of us wouldn't be able to afford it anyway, so why bother. It's hard to get excited over something you can't have, escpecially when the Conroes are so cheap!

I agree with you 100% about the 4 sticks of 512 for 2 GB. Of course I'd rather have 4 sticks of 1GB. TigerDirect has Ultra 1GB PC3200 which is decent memory, on sale for $39 (rebate deal) but you can only buy one per household. If they would make it say 2 for $79 I'd buy a pair and maybe next sale, buy another pair. With the 4 512s it has improved my folding (Folding at Home) in the last couple of weeks since I installed the 2 new sticks of XMS, a good bit.

Anyway, I'm gonna mosey out of here and get some work done. Here's wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.

Happy Holidays,
theone

 

aabbccdd
I noticed from other threads and articles from sites such as Tomshardware that some of the better binnings of the Opteron 170 were the best in performance for the money. I don't know if that stepping is still available. The 185 is naturally better at stock, but has a lower overhead for OCing if like the other higher end processors. How far have you gone with yours or do you leave it at stock settings? The good 170s were beating some of the 175s. Even with the superior opterons, it looks like some are better than others. Anybody see that and have any specs on how far an OCed 170 went compared to a OCed 185? Big price difference.

 

i OC(ed) it with the Asus Ai Booster to 2.875 GHz and when i was playing Ghost Recon online the game was crashing but my temps were fine. so i put it back to stock and haven't tryed doing anything else.

i really don't know what settings or how to OC it in the BIOs which is the ONLY right way to OC .so if anyone wants to PM me on a step by step guide on how to do it i will give it a shot.thanks

 

Theonejrs
I was talking about performance RAM for the OCing. C2 with low timing and larger heatspreaders. Plus you only need 1 or 2 for benching.

With building what you call the last of the great 939s, you'll find the job not much different than building the newest of the great Intel processors (or any other for that matter). About the only difference is in the BIOS dealing with the HT. You end up with 2 multipliers instead of just the one with Intel. If not familiar that is tricky, most don't list the HT multiplier as such in the BIOS.

For most midrange AMDs, the multiplier for the clockspeed, when locked at the top, is good to go about 15% OC (without messing with the HT multiplier. You want to stay between 1700 and 2200.) For many you'll find that is where your true stability lies. You can go higher and without testing properly think you're doing good. When testing for errors Prime95 will sometimes show errors when you use the HT multiplier to go faster. There it won't bother most people. You can encode and do a lot of things stable. I had a 2.4GHz AMD processor over 2.8GHz stable except for Prime95 computation errors. It gave a message the software was looking for one figure and the PC was listing another. It's recommend not folding for the different science and medical research projects unless your system can meet the true stability tests (not just not crashing or overheating, but not making computation errors).

What I'm saying is it's not a big deal to build a AMD, unless you want to build one to say you did it. I've done both and unless AMD comes out with something better, I'll build a Core 2 Duo. If money and PC parts were only free. LOL

Here's some info for you and Baltekmi. When you take the DDR RAM you're using in your Intel and put it in an AMD, your timings may be different. Some RAM will boot at C2 in a Intel and C3 in a AMD system. Notice the better 939 setups are using PC3500 or faster with Cas 2 and tight timing. The performance RAM is also better for obvious reasons than the regular RAM. So for the better build, you can keep pouring dollars into a AMD, just like you can a new Intel. So build a AMD if you want to go down memory lane, but if AMD don't do better, build a Conroe for the better PC for the money.

If you want to use DDR RAM you have, it may or may not be the best for the build, but you can save a few dollars. You should be able to use the PSU, drives, case, and other parts. You might get away with just a motherboard and CPU. Most people have the PC 3200 RAM on older PCs and few have the performance RAM. So expect to take a hit in the memory department compared to what some of the other forum members are using. Notice aabbccdd is using PC 3500 with his. Others are using even faster. It won't kill you, but you lose all the bragging rights. LOL In the end you can get a decent PC. Using AMD can be okay for a upgrade build when you have a bunch of parts. One question though, would you want to build a opty 185 with budget RAM and a average board? If you start pumping in dollars there, you might as well buy the DDR2 and get a Conroe.

 

I'll see if I can round up the one I found. It's been a while, so I don't know if I can find it again or if it's still available. It was about 80 pages. The guy wrote a book. With the 185 you're still better off than a lot at stock settings. Think how much better at 10% (or better) with it stable. Usually 10% is an easy mark for most AMDs. I'm not familiar with OCing the 185 though. It used to be too expensive and the 170 and 175 were good for OCing at a lower cost. I noticed you got a good board to build with. The 8 phase power management makes a lot of difference.

 

And to all a good night.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas. Well almost anyway.