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This has been a long debate with me. I have heard people saying that Pentiums are the fastest chip out but I have heard more people say that the Athlons are a lot faster but do get hot due to the very thin wiring and the electrons have a higher probability of hitting the side of the wire and generating this heat.
I was wondering what others thought.
I have an AMD Athlon (TB) 950MHz oc'ed to 1.1GHz. I've ran it for almost a year now and it still runs just fine. Nice and stable. Just from my use and building systems. Pentiums are good for workstations and servers. Athlons are better at playing games and handle graphics better. To each his own. It's all about personal choice. One note: My cousin has a machine similar in build to mine. Except he has a 1.3GHz pentium. My puter ran circles around his in everything except MS Office XP when I ran Windows. As well, now that I have ditched Office XP and Windows XP Pro for Linux (Mandrake) and Openoffice. My puter runs about 1/3 faster under Tux.
Just my $.02 worth.
I'm using an Athlon 600 for 2 years. And there isn't any problem.
AMD processors are powerfull and with lower prices than Intel's.
And there is no identification numbers in there...
I also have an Athlon 600 and its severed me well the last 2 1/2 years. The p4's and athlon xp's are both good chips, just pick one and don’t look back.
I used to sell the buggers...kinda, I sold computers anyway for Gateway NOW THEY ARE BUSTED HAHAHAHA [not my *favourite* job in the world...] so I frequently had to answer this one; personally I would just agree with Apocalypse [although I am too rubbish to know yet how to 'quote'!] and say it is a matter of choice; he indicated the benefits of each perfectly! Sometimes obviously when upgrades come out one will be on the market faster than the other but that's no plus, they're usually fuXored anyway for efficiency of release. Nevertheless it manages to win people over...some people just *gotta* be top of the range...
XXX
All the current Pentium & Athlon chips generate a lot of heat. Any current motherboard will be checking for the CPU temperature & fan speed, and will shut down if something goes wrong (stops your CPU from being fried!). This is why overclocking is pretty safe on Athlon chips (Pentiums are usually less happy about this).
Depends on what you mean by speed - what sort of benchmarks are you using?
The core clock speed of the CPU is meaningless as far as I am concerned - I want to know how fast it runs my favourite applications!
Intel/MS do have some sort of understanding, so you can expect MS software to run 'faster' on an Intel chip. However Athlon are more in touch with the games industry, and design their chips to provide special instructions to accelerate 3D performance, which is used by most 3D games.
in my experience, and from reading reviews, the athlon xp outperforms the pentium on all the media, while the p4 is good for business and apps and cpu-intensive stuff like brute forcers. the really big difference is in price. The athlon xp's actual speeds aren't that impressive, but they outperform much 'faster' p4s (i think it's because athlon xps have a bigger L1/L2 cache). I'm currently running a 1.6 ghz p4, but if i could go back, i'd get an athlon xp: MUCH cheaper :)
hope that helps
Hey, AMD all the way.
definitely. amd rocks.
I personally like AMD chips better, but you really have to make sure they are well cooled, otherwise, you could be looking at a serious problem. :) I have a dual-cpu fan with the thermal gel, 2 case fans, and of course, the power supply fan. My AMD Slot A 900mhz has been running for about 2 months now with no probs whatsoever. :) Hope this helps!
Yeah It helps alot, I am actually running an AMD Athlon 1.2GHz and I have had that for over 6 Months now and there has been no problems and the one before that was an Athlon I think.
Thanx people :)
With reference to KissCools comment about CPU indentification numbers (which Pentiums have and AMD do not), this is not a problem, as you can disable the processor ID 'feature' in the BIOS settings on most motherboards. Don't you just love the use of the word 'feature' :D By default, it is turned on, so good idea to get in there and disable it if you are running a p3/p4.
I only trust in AMD chips, I got an Athlon 1 Ghz and I never would buy an processor of an
another manufactor because AMD builds my processors in my hometown :D
AMD Athlon (XP+) and Intel P4's are both fast and reliable chips. Both tend to generate a lot of heat (AMD more then P4) Therefor cooling is one of the most important things. Cyrix/IBM cpu's for instance were trouble makers at that point. btw for all cyrix chip owners: http://wauug.erols.com/~balsa/linux/cyrix/ has info on how to optimize your cyrix cpu in Linux, it also contains usefull general information.
A little tutorial on cooling (source:http://wauug.erols.com/~balsa/linux/cyrix/)
CPU FAN
A small marking on the side of the fan indicates the direction of vertical and horizontal air flow. The vertical air flow is always downwards, and the horizontal air flow should be directed to the on-board voltage regulator heatsinks. The fan can always be unscrewed and rotated to obtain the correct air flow. Note the pass-through power connector.
SILICON THERMAL COMPOUND
The need to use silicon thermal compound arises from the fact that metal surfaces are not perfectly flat i.e. a very thin air gap exists between the CPU top metal cover and the heatsink. The problem is that air, short of total vacuum, is one of the best heat insulators. This is clearly undesirable.
Silicon thermal compound is a white paste which you can find at most Radio Shack stores in small tubes of 10g, for less than $2. Silicon paste by itself is not a good heat conductor; the addition of Zinc oxide powder provides it with the desired thermal conducting characteristics, and also gives the paste its white color. You should use as little paste as possible to evenly cover the CPU's top metal surface with a thin layer.
A much neater solution is a grey polymer found on the underside of some CPU heatsinks (e.g. Cyrix labeled heatsinks), in the form of a very thin 38x38mm (1.5x1.5") square . This heat conducting polymer molds itself to the CPU top cover, hence eliminating any air bubbles and providing a nearly perfect heat junction. It also avoids messing with the silicon paste. If your heatsink has this polymer, do not use silicon compound.
I am a intel user P111 AND P4
AMD is faster due to its larger L1 cache
My speed solution was to cool my cpu and northbridge chips right down
and to use plenty of ram
Mike
Ya think the CPU brand is a headache.. try susing out Motherboards..
I'm specing my upgrade now.. chosen the AMD XP 2000 , but the Mobo .. ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte.
dunno yet.. tomorrow..
Cheers