"After reading the round-by-round account of our dual-core desktop CPU prizefight, it should come as no shock that AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips are the runaway victors here, laying out the Intel Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition 840 chips pins up. If we had to call out one chip, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is an outstanding bargain given the competition, but as our results show, any AMD dual-core CPU will serve you better than its similarly priced Intel equivalent."
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Member since:2005-07-06
I'm a hardware reviewer by profession ... and sorry, but you're wrong.
That whole "Intel is more reliable and stable than AMD" is a long-gone myth that came to life in the days of the early Athlon when VIA was more or less the only chipset maker. NVIDIA's nForce chipsets, while usually suffering from one or two noticeable bugs in the first revision, are very stable and very fast in the rehash releases.
When comparing the performance of the Intel platform to anything else, you don't want to be using anything but NVIDIA chipsets. Sorry, but that's just the case. Intel's chipsets might give you a feeling of greater stability, but they're not exactly the fastest of the bunch. Last time I checked, they weren't even in the top 3 in terms of performance (i955X vs. nForce 4 for Intel vs. some VIA one vs. an SiS one).
If you compared equivalent P4 vs. Athlon 64 systems, there's no chance in hell that the Pentium 4 won anything but benchmarks that have been specifically optimized in the P4's favour -- unless you botched the benchmarks intentionally or due to ignorance. If you look at DriverHeaven's Photoshop results, the Task Manager screenshots are extremely suspicious to me. Regardless of the architecture, the two CPU graphs should look more or less the same -- unless one of the systems had a (dis)advantage.
Member since:"the Task Manager screenshots are extremely suspicious to me"
Yes, for one thing the OS and application footprint are anything but the same.
The Intel system has virtual memory commit of 828 MB (nearly all of which is working set) with a process count of 37. The AMD box, however, has a vm commit of 262 MB (all of which is working set) and a process count of 25. VM usage graph would seem to indicate that these system are running very different workloads. If I had to guess, the screenshots were manufactured (the Intel shot looks like a benchmark session, SiSoft to be exact, while the AMD looks like cpustress).
Member since:@ Linux Is Poo
I'm a hardware reviewer by profession ...
What does that mean? That you are automaticaly the ultimate authority on hardware?
Well, I am a computer builder and technician by proffesion and my job involves a little more than hooking up a mobo and running a few benchmarks for 5 minutes.
I'm responsible for computers that are meant to be running stably and reliably 7-24 all year long.
So forgive me if I don't immediately drop on my knees and bowe to you.
That whole "Intel is more reliable and stable than AMD" is a long-gone myth that came to life in the days of the early Athlon when VIA was more or less the only chipset maker. NVIDIA's nForce chipsets, while usually suffering from one or two noticeable bugs in the first revision, are very stable and very fast in the rehash releases.
You prove my point exactly here.
When I deliver a system to a client's office I can't tell them "Oh sir, sorry, but we'll have to wait a few month for this mobo to run stably after a few BIOS updates. So for now just hit the reset button when the box locks up to restart it and pray that your files are not corrupted when it boots up again"
I don't have to worry about anything like that when I use Intel chipset on a quality mobo. I know I'll get stability and a reliable system.
If you compared equivalent P4 vs. Athlon 64 systems, there's no chance in hell that the Pentium 4 won anything but benchmarks that have been specifically optimized in the P4's favour -- unless you botched the benchmarks intentionally or due to ignorance. If you look at DriverHeaven's Photoshop results, the Task Manager screenshots are extremely suspicious to me. Regardless of the architecture, the two CPU graphs should look more or less the same -- unless one of the systems had a (dis)advantage.
Well, I don't care about the DriverHeaven's Photoshop benchmarks, although in this case I agree with them because I was able to verify the benchmark myself.
As a matter of fact, my P4 2.4Gz with hyperthreading scored quite a bit better than a brand new AMD64 3500+ system I was just setting up for a client.
I just don't agree with the article and the benchmarks listed because they are so heavily skewed toward AMD and I know from my own experience that in reality the perfomance differences are a lot more balanced between the two cpu's depending on what apps, and under what conditions you run them.
Member since:2005-09-04
Member since:2005-07-06
well good point about the chipset, but when tou compare costs you most take power consumption in to account (last time i checked power was not free) and who wins ther?
In terms of power consumption, it looks like AMD has a good advantage:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/cual_core_athlon-19.html
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-07
Could it be that these Photoshop filters use instruction sets like SEE/SEE2?
SSE and SSE2 are supported on all Athlon 64 chips. SSE3 is supported on all dual cores and single cores since Venice.
Benchmarks have been rigged in the past by looking for GenuineIntel rather than checking the appropriate CPUID bit to determine whether these extensions are available.
Member since:
First of all they tested on crappy Nvidia chipset board instead on real Intel chipset.
Over the years as a computer tech I've seen it again and again that Intel has the best chipsets. None of the Via, Nvidia, or SiS (shudder) ever exhibit the same stability and reliability as Intel chipsets.
They obviously didn't know what they were doing.
I've done my own benchmarks with Photoshop and Intel beats AMD easily.
You can run your own if you don't believe it.
Here http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/dualcoreintel/photoshop.htm
is an Intel D820 review and the benchmark script can be downloaded from there too.
I've stopped using AMD thanks to crappy Via hardware back in 2001 after seeing time and time again that although the AMD cpu's are fine the chipsets are usualy not.
And even this year when working on a few AMD64 machines I've seen Windows XP throw error messages that I've never seen on Intel based hardware.
All these reviews and wild claims how AMD is so much better than Intel will not convince me since I've seen the opposite with my own eyes.
Besides, the D820 is a real bargain compared to even the cheapest AMD X2 and when coupled with a quality Intel chipset based mobo (like the Asus P5LD2) then you have a rock solid and super stable system.
On the other hand, competition is good. At least AMD keeps Intel prices in check.