Which CPU Is Better? AMD Or Intel

[Shadow X 0]

Well, Intel is the most popular around the world, plus they have lots of featues and products, so I think Intel is the safest choice in cpus.

[Killer008r 0]

Is it really the most popular around the world? Right now most Compaq's and E'machienes are running on AMD processors so they can sell their computers for a little bit cheaper then the rest of the company. Most people with custom computers use AMD because not only are they usually more reliable, but they are cheaper, and run the same/better than Intel processors. Intel Does not have alot of features, they just came out with a 64 bit processor for the first time almost 2 years ago, while AMD has had it since 01-02. Right now most Intel Mobos' don't have a fast PCIE buss slot, which for most gamers, video editors, and modelers need. I for one am an Intel hater because the last couple intel's that I owned were completly unreliable. Intel has to learn how to create a processor that dosen't heat up so quickly, I have one fan on my AMD and its runny at under room temp.

[TPW 0]

In my opinion go with the Intel. I have seen more problems with AMD based systems. Then again remember that opinions are like a**holes, eveerybody has one and a lot of them are full of #@$#. TPW

[GameUltra 0]

Here's my assesment:

I really think it depends on the CPU you are buying from each brand, from experiance, I have found the Intel Xeon to blow every AMD away in gaming and bussiness-style applications.

However, the Xeons are pretty expensive, and aren't used very often in PC's you can buy from a manufacturer like Dell or IBM. They usually seem to use Intel Pentium 4 processors.

But other than the Xeon AMD's seem to blow Intel away in speed, however they aren't very stable or a very good deal, I've had quite a few AMD's set on fire from running mediocre tasks, no Intel-based CPU has yet to date ever became a candle stick on me to date.

 

So in short I'd definatley go with Intel, just make sure you get the Xeon if you're willing to spend the dough.

[kam1405241509 0]

Well if you go the Tomshardware.com forums/community , almost all ppl will flame the hell out of INTEL and advice you with an AMD

but since they are almost all GAMERS .. it's normal they tell u so since AMDs really shows more FPS / Performance in GAMES .

 

I don't think it's that alone. I've met many people who are anti-this-or-that for no good reason at all, besides that it may be 'cool' to be outside the masses or something ,or perhaps they like bashing/moaning, I dunno! Personally I couldn't care less about which company my CPU is designed by, whether intel or AMD, I only care about which is the best performing for my tasks at my price range, and for that AMD has won me over since the Athon Tbird days .. though I don't claim any loyalty either way, it's simply from doing benches etc myself since I usually have access to both types at work/etc!

 

I personaly own AN AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and a 3000+

It's very very good .

but As times go by you realize the fact .. for me as a gamer and 3d modeller . AMD is perfect for gaming rigs

however for renderings and office work , Intel shows to be better in benchmarks .

so scale your needs and see whats the right one for you, in the end it's not going to be A FATAL performance increase or decrease .....

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He he, for word processing type things, my 586 is just fine, if I don't have a flight sim running in the background ;-). So I don't really care what CPU it is for that task, and don't base my decision on those benches, sorry.

 

But I do run a lot of ray-tracers, so I am very interested in your views, cryptonx. Can you show me some benches, please (independent or your own, I don't mind .. just some figures will do plus some info on the test itself so I can do them here)? What apps do you run, or is it your own code, and if so what compilers/options are you using at the moment?

 

I agree that AMD lagged in some benches like video encoding up until a few months ago, but now with SSE3, they seem to be matching of beating intel at every benchmark. Video isn't as important to me ... mainly I need brute computation power, and for me AMD seems the winner for many years now for an affordable desktop (ignoring damn expensive IA64 setups!).

 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

shows that AMD wins every productivity test, from office to photoshop, and every video encoding test, which is something Intel used to dominate thanks to SSE3 optimised apps. The test is basically A64FX vs P4EE .. gaming type chips .. but FXs are just unlocked/fast Opterons 1xx's! They also test the X2 procs which seem to do well also. That last URL is on 3D workstation apps, and Intel's EE proc seems to be not that different to AMD's FX (ignore the X2 60% lead in Cinebench .. I'll talk about that next!).

 

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=672&pid=2574

is an X2 review, but also includes Opteron 275 & Pentium D CPUs. In raytracing & rendering Cinebench tasks (the 1st two figs) when optimised for TWO threads (X2) it's 21% faster than the EE which is faster than the PentiumD, and when running FOUR threads (275) it's about twice as fast! And these aren't even AMD's best CPUs at the moment!!

 

Finally, sorry I repeat this, but Intel's 64-bit implementation sucks at the moment, and their dual-cores are only for their desktop CPUs, not their rendering/workstation/pro CPUs ... so to me AMD is miles ahead in the pro field of CPUs ... and also in the gaming/home field. Dual-core is obviously important in rendering (as shown in the URLs above) since it's an inherently parallel computation.

[kam1405241509 0]

But other than the Xeon AMD's seem to blow Intel away in speed, however they aren't very stable or a very good deal, I've had quite a few AMD's set on fire from running mediocre tasks, no Intel-based CPU has yet to date ever became a candle stick on me to date.

 

Sorry I'm repeating again ... both AMD & Intel chips don't burn up since both have protection circuits and sensor diodes on the chip. Intel high-end CPUs run very hot due to the long-pipeline/high-clockrate design decision which intel have now backed down on and are going back to the shorter-pipeline design again next year.

 

To avoid stability/heat problems on either AMD or Intel machines, it's very simple .. just read/remember some school-level thermodynamics chapters, follow common sense, buy some thermal sensors, buy/make decent cooling parts and make sure you know all the thermal specs/limits of all your components.. no big deal :-).

 

I've also had problems, BTW, both happened to be in intel systems but that had NOTHING to do with it. They were all HDD failures due to avoidable dumbness/laziness on my part:

 

1. a long long time ago I asked an engineering friend stoopeedly presuming he'd know more than me (he did, but only the theory, so I should've just read everything necessary myself anyway, or found someone with previous practical experience on this specific issue!) to help with an HDD problem and he shorted it (still, at least I now know never to let any one else near my main machine ;-) .. DIY everything rather than delegating & then fixing the ensuing errors, it's much less stressful in the long term!)

 

2. the weather was getting hotter and I knew I didn't have enough fans, so I asked for some several times but eventually gave up asking, and er they never got ordered (another lesson in that if you want something done do it all yourself rather than wasting time asking people all the time .. other people will often forget to do trivial things like this .. but the resulting damage isn't trivial at all!). Then someone turned up the heating on what was a very hot day!! No biggie since I didn't lose any data, but it was such a waste of money etc (I hate wasting money/time/etc .. it's so silly, you know?) to sort it all out afterwards! I now do all my work on my own machines and have very decent cooling in it :-). At work, if I want a machine on 'their' (our!!) network, I have to give them admin rights to my machine, and in some cases must give up admin rights on it (some of my colleagues aren't allowed to install software on their machines .. a problem considering we develop software in a CS lab .. doh!!).

 

3. had another HDD failure from what turned out to be a totally crap HDD (dodgy uDrv)!

 

I've never had problems with machines I directly control .. but unfortunately in a workplace 'they' usually don't like to give people full control unless you sign up for admin tasks etc! Best thing is to make sure you have all you main stuff (work or play etc) under your full control (my serious work machines are not on my workplace's LAN .. though I do need some data off the LAN for work I get that off another machine .. anyway!!), and make sure you learn enough to both set it up and maintain it wrt admin chores. Best to learn it when you take a holiday or on evenings/weekends etc.

 

I know this sounds like a hassle to some people but once you've learnt the basics, you don't have to reread much new stuff & after a while it's very easy once you get used to the terminology etc. Also, once you design a decent setup, you don't have to do any extra work for it ... ideally you should do an automatic nightly incremental backup so then you'll never lose much even if there was some failure etc. If you do everything yourself, you have full control and can do anything you want .. the ideal system YOU want without having to beg for permissions or make silly compromises etc. The worst thing is being constrained by other people, or by greedy corporations, etc. Er, but that's another topic ;-).

 

Here's my assesment:

I really think it depends on the CPU you are buying from each brand, from experiance, I have found the Intel Xeon to blow every AMD away in gaming and bussiness-style applications.

However, the Xeons are pretty expensive, and aren't used very often in PC's you can buy from a manufacturer like Dell or IBM.  They usually seem to use Intel Pentium 4 processors.

 

So in short I'd definatley go with Intel, just make sure you get the Xeon if you're willing to spend the dough.

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He he, you must be kidding, right? AMD completely domintates the high-end x86 field in performance. You'd go for AMD not intel if you follow the masses without understanding the underlying computer architectural issues or unless you really want intel for brand/support/etc .. ie. for non-performance reasons!

 

https://tweakers.net/reviews/442/5/dual-xeon-dual-opteron-en-quad-opteron-serververgelijking-benchmark-details-en-apachebench-scores.html shows the NUMA/bandwidth advantages (that I mentioned earlier) in numbers. As you can see (use babelfish to translate, BTW, or just look at the figs) the dual opterons are about TWICE the performance of the dual Xeons in ApacheBench. It gets even more crazy at quad levels and beyond. AMD architecture is designed to scale for enterprise servers, Intel's current design isn't meant for this.

[kam1405241509 0]

Well, Intel is the most popular around the world, plus they have lots of featues and products, so I think Intel is the safest choice in cpus.

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He he, Intel are number1 overall since they sold loads over the years. But look at recent/new CPU sales on a month-by-month basis and AMD is actually winning more often (recently)! AMD are so popular now they actually had recent stock problems in keeping up with the recent demand!

 

Anyway, popularity isn't a very logical reasoning ... lemmings love to jump off cliffs, noone used to get fired for buying IBM but now their PCs are sold by the more efficient Chinese company, Lenovo, beat-em-ups were the most popular games in the charts but for longetivity you can't beat a good RPG, STDs/AIDS are very 'popular' in Africa, slavery used to be very popular, etc ... you get the idea!!

 

They may have more products, but if they are all underperforming, who cares! The world's first/only board with FOUR PCI-Express-Graphics slots is an AMD/NV based one ... intel boards definitely don't have more features these days, at least not the features important to me .. performance!!

 

Safest choice .. mm .. I'd feel pretty depressed if I'd bought an intel setup and then got to see a decent AMD setup .. big mistake if you are after FPU performance IMHO!

[sujith 0]

if you are considering for an upgrade then AMD is the best,i am using an AMD 64 3000+ if you are looking for perfomence to value then AMD is goodit performs well in gamesit has built in support aganist viruses(with SP2)AMD rocks

[the empty calorie 0]

Okay. I have used intel processors dating back to the 8088. My 8088 machine (an IBM PC-5150) Hasn't had a burnt chip. Nor has my 486, Pentium-S, or any Intel processor I've had. I've had a few AMDs and Cyrixes as well...The AMDs would be lucky still be running 3 years after their purchase. The Cyrixes lasted close to 6 or 7. Not a single Intel chip has died on me. Nor has a Motorola, Zilog, IBM, or a MOS chip. When I buy or build a computer, I expect it to last a while. Intel has always managed to please me there. Oh, and by the way, AMD processors have at least twice as many errors per clock cycle as intel processors.

[cryptonx 0]

AT Kam ,Sorry for the delayed reply , anyways to be honest I've NOT run specific benchmarks or coded anything , I just compared two systems rendering the same scene , While I know this is not a FAIR benchmark yet It was the only thing avaialble to me at my office .My office( the office I work at ) is strictly an Architectural One , when I first came to it , it was really outdated , using versions of 3D Studio 4 ( DOS ) and Autocad 14 !! ( which I can't really tell how much dozens of years old are they , I am just 22 ) .anyways for me I am Using 3Ds Max 7.5 and Vray 1.46 Advanced , so typicaly when I showed some of my works to my boss , he was convinced he needs an update ( I know I kept laughing for days ) .anyways he let me be the technical advisor for upgrading and buying 12 diffrent PCs .However the price budget wasn't very UNLIMITED so the choice of getting branded pcs or workstations etc etc were close to NONE .so before I go buy everything I wanted , I wanted to make sure what's gonna be suitable for CHEAP rendering machines , ie we don't render really high quality stuff , IE using the MAXs built in scanline renders for some architectural models walkthroughs , it the time consumption that really pissed me off ,, ie for a not so very detailed scenes ... say 15 high quality villas in a semi populated small area ... takes 2 -3 days to render 1200 frames . So the first system I bought was a Pentium IV 3.0 ghz ( LGA , I think, I am not very experinced with INTEL models ) . 2048 MB Of rams ( kingston value ones ) Geforce 6200 256 DDR ( not gt ) etc etcThe 2nd one was almost identical to my pc ( PIV 3.0 ghz - 1024 Rams -660 256 PCI-E) so I ran 3 test scenes on my pc again : AMD ATHLON 64 3000+1024 DDR Ram (Kingstone ) DDR400Geforce 6600 256 DDR AGP 8Xfirst some simple renders , really didn't show any diffrence ... they were 0.001 seconds diffrences .now for some advanced lightning test , that INTEL system used to finish faster by a mere 5 - 12 seconds in each scene .Altho I know my AMD is running at 2.01 while the intel one running at 3.0ghz , but I expcted more ... IE from looking at bechmarks .. the Athlon 64 3000+ beats even the PIV 3.2 in many applications .this might be why I think INTELs are faster for rendering , like I said it's not really a profisional benchmark or even an amatuer one , it's just a simple test .I would like to see how I could reach that speed without OCing as I heard there are some Few AMD patches for rendering applications one more thing since your into raytracing and renderings , I would like to ask what would mainly decrease my rendering time ?a decent Processor ? or a HIGH end gfx card such as the Quadro or the FireGL series ?since a few of my friends told me that a high end graphics card would only matter in viewports not in the final render , is that true ?thanks .

[unimatrix 0]

 

If you are going to be using programs such as 3ds Max, then I would suggest getting yourself a nice 3d card to go with it. You will need it for rendering, unless of course you are a very patient person!

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Actually the video card has nothing to do with rendering, only with the program running. The more video ram, the faster things will select on screen and move around and the larger number of ploy's that can be display. Some packages will offer a sample render function that uses the vid card for a quick and dirty rendering without all the features. (I havn't touched Max since 2.5)

 

However, rendering frames of actually has to do with CPU and RAM. Most of the newer rendering engines are tuned for Intel chips, with exception to Mental Ray, which is tuned to Linux and AMD 64.

 

Your better off with a lesser video card and more raw Ghz and you really will not see large performance boost from a 64-bit processor until the code has been optimized for 64-bit and you double the ram on your system. If you were using 2GB on a 32-bit system, you'd better have 4GB to see a good increase in the rendering times.

 

Vid card helps run the program & display windows, CPU & RAM effect render times.

====================================

 

I am not sold on AMD 64 for most users. Unless you have performance tuned apps for a 64-bit platform, or playing lots of games, all your regular 32-bit apps on the Amd 64 system are going to be noticably slower. We had the same problem with Sun Workstations. We had all 32-Bit workstations to run applications and 64-bit servers to crunch numbers.

 

AMD is enjoying sucess because they are not intel and the Pro-Linux and "elite" crowd have something against who ever the leader of pack might be, whether it's microsoft, Intel, Dell, whomever. If Firefox was the number one browser, these people would be looking for something else to support and switch too like Opera.

 

Personally I've had many more problems with heat and compatiablity issues with AMD systems over the years.

 

I have been around 64-bit systems for a lot of years now, and there are areas where 64-bit shines, but for most users, even gamers, I'm not really sure how much the 64-bit really buys you.

[cryptonx 0]

hey Unimatrix Thanks for the excellent feedback , I don't really need any more POWER in viewing and navigating into viewports and max itself , I need more power RENDERING .I don't use my PC at the office , they are running on P4 3.0 ~ 3.2 ghz 32bits ... with 2 GB os ram or just 1 .But still they take an awfull long time to render ... I am thinking of Dual Prcoessors and such .I agree about the whole SUPPORT thing , yes I loved the idea of AMD in the begining because of the ANTI-intel thing and to be honest the price , amd systems seems to be at least a bit cheaper than intels but you passed something really serious uni , BENCHMARKs ... on benchmarks , AMD 64 really does shine , for example my 2.01 ghz processor code named ( 3000+ ) is about 10% faster than a PV 3.0 and a PIV 3.2 and in some cases , faster than the extreme edition as well.. which costs almost 3x the price of my processor , not to mention that the 3.0-3.2 are still more expensive than mine .as for the whole 64bit < well I didnt buy it and I knew it's not going to differ any much , but I wanted a new AMD processor , and since they are all 64 equipped unlike INTEL ( yet , I know there are 64 intels now )sO I didn't mind the extra 32bit .I've even installed Windows XP x64 , but I really didn't see any diffrence in performance ... at least to me or the usual everydays programmes even games showed similar scorse ... 3dmark and nBench showed much better results ,but I don't really care .I went back to 32 bit when I found some of my beloved application didn't really work as well as some hardware issues with creative sound cards ..I have nothing against intel or amd , infact my previous PCs were always intel ... 386 - 486 - Pentium 100mhz - Pentium 3 1.0 ghz but I always wanted to try AMD , and I got the chance too and honsetly My pc now is almost 1 year old , I NEVER faced a Heat propblem ( processor idle temp. 34 c --- max i ever saw was 68 c ) the PIV at the office reaches 83 and more even when the A/C is on .so I am enjoying my experience with AMD so far , the only thing I hate is that after one month of my purchase ,they produced the socket 954 AMD64s lines and they gave away a half life 2 silver copy with it ! hehethanks again for your time and information

[twitch 0]

The new AMD dual core processor looks cool. I would personally go for AMD, as it is best suited to Web Design. Although PowerMac's are the designer's best friend, the next best thing is AMD. As said before, Intel is better for business people and those on the run.

[kam1405241509 0]

one more thing since your into raytracing and renderings , I would like to ask what would mainly decrease my rendering time ?

 

a decent Processor ? or a HIGH end gfx card such as the Quadro or the FireGL series ?

 

since a few of my friends told me that a high end graphics card would only matter in viewports not in the final render , is that true ?

thanks .

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Actually the video card has nothing to do with rendering, only with the program running.  The more video ram, the faster things will select on screen and move around and the larger number of ploy's that can be display.  Some packages will offer a sample render function that uses the vid card for a quick and dirty rendering without all the features.  (I havn't touched Max since 2.5) 

 

A commercial rendering app normally involves only the CPU/RAM, yes, but still there are a few different options available:

 

1. Expensive opteron ccNUMA machine

 

2. Cheap network cluster .. setup network rendering in your apps (to use those 12 PCs when they're not being used ;-)).

 

3. Not quite there yet, both the hardware & the software, but it's worth keeping an eye out on these .. several recent academic ray tracers make use of programmable GPUs that support certain shader languages .. but I found they weren't any faster than a fast x86 though!

 

4. Expensive custom hardware .. there are also commercial rendering hardware accelerators (e.g. from ART in the UK). These are PCI-X cards with 8 of their AR350 processors, and you need to recompile code to use their libs though they did write a RenderMan interface & 3dsMax/Maya plug-ins :-)) ... literally ONE PCI-X can shrink rendering times from HOURS to MINUTES. Their hardware can accelerate ray-tracing, radiosity & more :-).

 

 

 

However, rendering frames of actually has to do with CPU and RAM.  Most of the newer rendering engines are tuned for Intel chips, with exception to Mental Ray, which is tuned to Linux and AMD 64. 

 

Your better off with a lesser video card and more raw Ghz and you really will not see large performance boost from a 64-bit processor until the code has been optimized for 64-bit and you double the ram on your system.  If you were using 2GB on a 32-bit system, you'd better have 4GB to see a good increase in the rendering times. 

 

I still think it's nonsense that intel is faster than AMD CPUs based on apps being optimised that way .. I compile code using INTEL's compiler for my AMD CPU .. and it's faster than GNU compilers when you set SSE3 optimisation flags etc!

 

AMD's high-end architecture allows you to scale the number of CPUs & the RAM. This IS important in rendering .. but would cost boatloads of cash :-(. It allows for 25GB/sec bandwidth when running across 4 CPUs .. and with 4GB DIMMs that'd be 64GB of system RAM!! But that's not relevant here due to the ridiculous cost of it all .. at the moment ;-).

 

I agree though ... there's far too much playground antics amongst users & manufacturers/vendors! I couldn't care less whether intel or AMD were on top, but personally I've found that whenever I'm up for a new machine, that AMD seemed to be faster (having tried out both in my workplace with my benches, apps & code).

 

Oh, and also the OS, drivers AND most importantly the apps must be compiled to support 64-bit ... this is why you didn't find any difference in games .. most commercial games/apps are still 32-bit .. I'd still recommend AMD for having a better 64-bit implementation (I read recently that Intel are finally going to support all the AMD64 instructions now) and multi-core design (crossbar-switch, integrated memory controller etc), so it's a better investment in the platform for when the software eventually catches up (unless you use a lot of opensource apps or your own apps ;-)). I'm sure Intel will catch up eventually .. though AMD has recently revealed its plans for the future too, and obviously they are going to try to keep ahead.

 

Anyway, competition is good .. for both camps ;-).

[ArmTheMob 0]

I'm not going to read through all five pages but there is no better. It all depends on price vs performance and you have to compare too much. Intel wins some and AMD wins some. It all depends on what you are using and how your computer is configured.