Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel (More info?)
AJ wrote:
>> First of all, look at the newsgroups listings, it includes
>> comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips, not just comp.sys.intel. Second of
>> all, AMD is /on-topic/ in csi.
>
> The casual observer would not assume such but rather the opposite.
>
>> The newsgroup was never simply about Intel processors
>> alone.
>
> Which seems weird to me gven the group name.
I believe that the /cs.intel/ group has been around longer than
/csiph.chips/ group, by maybe a couple of years. I don't have the exact
dates about when each was started though. I can recall CSI being here for
quite a lot of years, but not CSIPHC; well now, CSIPHC has also now been
here for quite a number of years, but there was a time when I didn't used to
think of both of these as being old newsgroups.
The CSIPH hieararchy was probably started when PC's started becoming much
more complicated and mix'n'match than they originally were. All of a sudden
people were putting in aftermarket video cards, buying systems from vendors
other than IBM, etc.
>> It was about Intel and compatible processors, and peripherals.
>
> Seems like csipc and csi are redundant then. That's probably why the
> crossposting occurred to begin with. I wonder if that's a common
> problem between the 2 groups.
Yeah, to an extent, they are redundant. But that's not unusual in Usenet.
People often start newsgroups feeling specialization is needed, when
possibly the differentiation is not that necessary. For example, I have
never understood why there are separate newsgroups for networking for
different Microsoft Windows versions (i.e. Win95, Win98, Win2K, WinXP,
etc.). Sure each has its own peculiarity, but I don't think it requires a
separate newsgroup for each.
> Well beyond the research is the product evals, tooling etc. Easier to
> pick one and go with it.
What's the difference in tooling between them? They both use the same
motherboard form factors, same cases, same peripherals. Same software, same
OS. Same screws, power connectors, etc. Basically, a PC is a PC.
Product evals are available from the same set of websites that you get your
Intel product evals from.
>> I'm surprised you don't do at least some research before putting
>> together even Intel systems.
>
> I do a lot actually.
Then what sort of time are you saving if you choose Intel by default vs.
also looking at AMD? You're already doing some research.
>> The only time you
>> won't need to worry about any of that is when you're buying ready-made
>> systems,
>> where you only need to research that particular make/model of system. If
>> you're going to buy ready-made systems, then there is no difference
>> whether
>> you buy Intel or AMD.
>
> Why you assume I don't do that, perplexes me.
Because you said that you're building your own systems for yourself and
friends and family rather than buying from ready-made.
>> So anytime somebody points out the problems in Intel systems, they
>> are bashing? I thought you /really/ wanted to know, but seems all you
>> want to know is what you already believe.
>
> I don't think it's something that most will encounter so I thought
> you over- emphasized it.
You can say that about most kinds of computer problems. Sometimes they'll
show up, sometimes they won't.
However, as for the 4.0Ghz Pentium 4 being non-existent, that's something
that definitely everyone is going to experience.
>> The only way I am bashing is if you can refute whatever I just told
>> you, because I just gave you well-known _recent_ examples. I could go
>> even
>> further back and bring up examples from one, two, or three years
>> ago, or even further back; but there's no point in doing that, the recent
>> ones should be sufficient.
>
> Whaddaya wanna bet my new PC will still be running (or runnable) 10
> years from now (the CPU/chipset/MB)?
About the same as my AMD system. Sure it can be running, but why would you
want it to? I reactivated a AMD 486 systems which I was running as a Linux
firewall. But then I bought a broadband router a couple of years ago, and
the 486 gathered dust again.
>> Get out of here, you aren't even going to be personally running most
>> of those systems yourself.
>
> But I'll be babysitting them as needed.
Babysitting the systems aren't the same as dealing with them everyday. I
babysit quite a number of systems for various friends and relatives.
Sometimes they call me with a problem that, when I get there it stops
misbehaving. Or sometimes I might find a problem, on their system which can
be fixed, but I was never notified because the person just never knew it
could be fixed, except for the fact that I just so happened to be there and
noticed it myself.
Eventually, they're just going to find that the system from a few years ago
is just too slow, and they're going to need an upgrade. So yes, a system can
have a long life, but it's just not worth bothering with it after a certain
number of years. A friend of mine had an Athlon-700 Slot-A system (the
earliest Athlons ever), which he gave to his niece after he himself
upgraded. His niece ran that until just earlier this year, when she herself
upgraded to a new system. The Athlon 700 is still running, they have some
nebulous plans to use it as second computer for this niece's mother to learn
how to use computers, but it's likely not even going to be turned on
anymore -- just too slow nowadays.
> Nah, I'll know about it. I'm the support person for them.
As I said, unless you're actually living with it, you're not going to know
every little problem that the system will have from time to time.
>> Along the way, it became an AMD 486DX2-66, then a Cyrix 6x86-133, an
>> AMD K6/3-450, a Duron 700, an Athlon 1.0Ghz, and now an Athlon XP-1900+.
>
> It sounds like you mean that the same PC case has had a number of
> parts in it over time. Case != PC.
No, even the case itself has been upgraded a few times, but not always. But
something major from the previous system is always carried over that ties it
to the previous system. Hard drives, ram, processor, motherboard, whatever.
For example, upgrading from a 386 to a 486 would've required a new
motherboard and processor, but you could carry the RAM forward, the hard
drives forward, most of the ISA and VLB peripheral cards, etc. Then over the
years as you're running the 486, you might consider upgrading the RAM and
HDs.
Then when you get into the Socket-7/Pentium/Cx6x86/K6 generation, the
Baby-AT motherboard and case will have to give way to the ATX types. You
might still have a few ISA peripherals that you could initially carry over
because they will provide you with a few legacy ISA slots, but these will
eventually disappear too. The VLB video will give way to PCI and then
eventually AGP video.
The MFM hard drives will give way to IDE. The IDE-ATA hard drives will
evolve from PIO to DMA to UDMA, but had basically kept the same connectors
over those generations until recently with SATA.
Then eventually you might find yourself upgrading the power supply for the
latest processors. The Socket-7 processors might stay with the same
connectors, but you might need new voltages for the newest processors. You
might want to upgrade from a non-AGP board to one with the AGP slot; most
everything will be carried over from one board to the next, except for the
video card, afterall, that's why you upgraded the board to AGP. You will
find yourself upgrading from FP-RAM to EDO-RAM to SDRAM, each may require a
new motherboard, but you can keep the processor and other stuff.
Then into the 7th gen processors, you might find yourself upgrading your
processors but keeping the motherboard the same. Or you might find yourself
upgrading your motherboard but keeping the processor the same. There would
be an upgrade from SDRAM to DDR that came and went. Maybe you might upgrade
the motherboard just to use the latest speed of DDR. Or maybe you might
upgrade the motherboard because you want to use the latest processor with
latest FSB speed. Or perhaps you might need to go from AGP 2X to 4X to 8X;
the transition between 2X and 4X AGP might have involved buying a new video
card simply because the old one didn't support the latest voltage, and
therefore the slots were designed to prevent older AGP cards from fitting
in.
You can see how with all of these step-by-step transitions you can keep
large portions of the hardware the same, while still doing major hardware
upgrades, and how an original 386 turns into an Athlon XP (or perhaps an
Pentium 4?).
>>> To an AMDer. To get one to MOVE from one to the other is the issue
>>> in my case and not just starting from scratch and being at the
>>> AMD/Intel decision crossroads.
>>
>> What exactly is your problem? Moving from Intel to AMD is dead
>> simple.
>
> My point is that I have no reason to move. And I don't have to learn
> how to setup the fan control curves again, or how to update the BIOS
> again,
> or where to get the updates etc (from 3 vendors in AMD's case no doubt).
I don't know what you mean by "fan control curves". I'll just assume that
you have some kind of a manually adjustable fan system. If that's the case,
then of course you'll need to relearn the curves when you upgrade even
within Intel systems. The curves required for a Pentium 3 would be very
different from those for a Pentium 4. Even within a Pentium 4 to Pentium 4
upgrade, you might need to recalibrate, as a Prescott would have extremely
odd heating patterns compared to Northwood or Willamette.
As for BIOS upgrades, you can't ever get them from Intel. You always have to
find them at the motherboard manufacturer (Asus, ECS, Gigabyte, etc.) or the
OEM (HPaq, Gateway, etc.) system builder website. Those are exactly where
you find AMD BIOS upgrades too. Upgrading the BIOS is no different than on
Intel systems, same sort of utilities. AMD's are just PC's afterall, exactly
the same as Intel. They conform to the exact same specifications as Intel
systems, and their parts are made by the same people who make parts for
Intel systems. This is not like going from PC to Macintosh, this is just
going from PC to PC.
> I'm considering the surrounding issues as more important: support,
> training, vendor liason, etc. I have an "investment" in Intel at this time
> and
> no one is asking me or paying me to build them an AMD system. So I really
> have
> no reason to look at AMD at this time as I am "a happy camper" for now.
Your support and training are exactly the same between an Intel and AMD
system, they run the exact same operating systems. And as for vendor liason,
you're not buying a multi-million dollar server, you're building stuff off
the shelf from various computer stores. These computer stores remain exactly
the same regardless of whether you're building Intel or AMD.
And as for people not asking you to build them an AMD system, of course they
aren't. They're asking *you* to build a PC for them, and *you* have no
intention of giving them the choice of going for an AMD system. Do you
seriously think your dependent friends are going to know anything beyond
what you know and ask you to build them something different?
As for being a "happy camper" simply means that you haven't explored all of
your choices available to you. You wouldn't worry too much about whether you
outfit a PC with an Ethernet card from Dlink or Netgear or something else;
you would just consider this a choice, and go based on price or performance.
Same thing goes for video cards, you'd have no trouble putting an Nvidia or
ATI card. You don't care what brand of printer you get (Epson, Lexmark,
etc.). Nobody is a "happy camper" in these arenas, nobody bothers to be,
they'd lose out on too many good deals.
Yousuf Khan
AJ wrote:
>> First of all, look at the newsgroups listings, it includes
>> comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips, not just comp.sys.intel. Second of
>> all, AMD is /on-topic/ in csi.
>
> The casual observer would not assume such but rather the opposite.
>
>> The newsgroup was never simply about Intel processors
>> alone.
>
> Which seems weird to me gven the group name.
I believe that the /cs.intel/ group has been around longer than
/csiph.chips/ group, by maybe a couple of years. I don't have the exact
dates about when each was started though. I can recall CSI being here for
quite a lot of years, but not CSIPHC; well now, CSIPHC has also now been
here for quite a number of years, but there was a time when I didn't used to
think of both of these as being old newsgroups.
The CSIPH hieararchy was probably started when PC's started becoming much
more complicated and mix'n'match than they originally were. All of a sudden
people were putting in aftermarket video cards, buying systems from vendors
other than IBM, etc.
>> It was about Intel and compatible processors, and peripherals.
>
> Seems like csipc and csi are redundant then. That's probably why the
> crossposting occurred to begin with. I wonder if that's a common
> problem between the 2 groups.
Yeah, to an extent, they are redundant. But that's not unusual in Usenet.
People often start newsgroups feeling specialization is needed, when
possibly the differentiation is not that necessary. For example, I have
never understood why there are separate newsgroups for networking for
different Microsoft Windows versions (i.e. Win95, Win98, Win2K, WinXP,
etc.). Sure each has its own peculiarity, but I don't think it requires a
separate newsgroup for each.
> Well beyond the research is the product evals, tooling etc. Easier to
> pick one and go with it.
What's the difference in tooling between them? They both use the same
motherboard form factors, same cases, same peripherals. Same software, same
OS. Same screws, power connectors, etc. Basically, a PC is a PC.
Product evals are available from the same set of websites that you get your
Intel product evals from.
>> I'm surprised you don't do at least some research before putting
>> together even Intel systems.
>
> I do a lot actually.
Then what sort of time are you saving if you choose Intel by default vs.
also looking at AMD? You're already doing some research.
>> The only time you
>> won't need to worry about any of that is when you're buying ready-made
>> systems,
>> where you only need to research that particular make/model of system. If
>> you're going to buy ready-made systems, then there is no difference
>> whether
>> you buy Intel or AMD.
>
> Why you assume I don't do that, perplexes me.
Because you said that you're building your own systems for yourself and
friends and family rather than buying from ready-made.
>> So anytime somebody points out the problems in Intel systems, they
>> are bashing? I thought you /really/ wanted to know, but seems all you
>> want to know is what you already believe.
>
> I don't think it's something that most will encounter so I thought
> you over- emphasized it.
You can say that about most kinds of computer problems. Sometimes they'll
show up, sometimes they won't.
However, as for the 4.0Ghz Pentium 4 being non-existent, that's something
that definitely everyone is going to experience.
>> The only way I am bashing is if you can refute whatever I just told
>> you, because I just gave you well-known _recent_ examples. I could go
>> even
>> further back and bring up examples from one, two, or three years
>> ago, or even further back; but there's no point in doing that, the recent
>> ones should be sufficient.
>
> Whaddaya wanna bet my new PC will still be running (or runnable) 10
> years from now (the CPU/chipset/MB)?
About the same as my AMD system. Sure it can be running, but why would you
want it to? I reactivated a AMD 486 systems which I was running as a Linux
firewall. But then I bought a broadband router a couple of years ago, and
the 486 gathered dust again.
>> Get out of here, you aren't even going to be personally running most
>> of those systems yourself.
>
> But I'll be babysitting them as needed.
Babysitting the systems aren't the same as dealing with them everyday. I
babysit quite a number of systems for various friends and relatives.
Sometimes they call me with a problem that, when I get there it stops
misbehaving. Or sometimes I might find a problem, on their system which can
be fixed, but I was never notified because the person just never knew it
could be fixed, except for the fact that I just so happened to be there and
noticed it myself.
Eventually, they're just going to find that the system from a few years ago
is just too slow, and they're going to need an upgrade. So yes, a system can
have a long life, but it's just not worth bothering with it after a certain
number of years. A friend of mine had an Athlon-700 Slot-A system (the
earliest Athlons ever), which he gave to his niece after he himself
upgraded. His niece ran that until just earlier this year, when she herself
upgraded to a new system. The Athlon 700 is still running, they have some
nebulous plans to use it as second computer for this niece's mother to learn
how to use computers, but it's likely not even going to be turned on
anymore -- just too slow nowadays.
> Nah, I'll know about it. I'm the support person for them.
As I said, unless you're actually living with it, you're not going to know
every little problem that the system will have from time to time.
>> Along the way, it became an AMD 486DX2-66, then a Cyrix 6x86-133, an
>> AMD K6/3-450, a Duron 700, an Athlon 1.0Ghz, and now an Athlon XP-1900+.
>
> It sounds like you mean that the same PC case has had a number of
> parts in it over time. Case != PC.
No, even the case itself has been upgraded a few times, but not always. But
something major from the previous system is always carried over that ties it
to the previous system. Hard drives, ram, processor, motherboard, whatever.
For example, upgrading from a 386 to a 486 would've required a new
motherboard and processor, but you could carry the RAM forward, the hard
drives forward, most of the ISA and VLB peripheral cards, etc. Then over the
years as you're running the 486, you might consider upgrading the RAM and
HDs.
Then when you get into the Socket-7/Pentium/Cx6x86/K6 generation, the
Baby-AT motherboard and case will have to give way to the ATX types. You
might still have a few ISA peripherals that you could initially carry over
because they will provide you with a few legacy ISA slots, but these will
eventually disappear too. The VLB video will give way to PCI and then
eventually AGP video.
The MFM hard drives will give way to IDE. The IDE-ATA hard drives will
evolve from PIO to DMA to UDMA, but had basically kept the same connectors
over those generations until recently with SATA.
Then eventually you might find yourself upgrading the power supply for the
latest processors. The Socket-7 processors might stay with the same
connectors, but you might need new voltages for the newest processors. You
might want to upgrade from a non-AGP board to one with the AGP slot; most
everything will be carried over from one board to the next, except for the
video card, afterall, that's why you upgraded the board to AGP. You will
find yourself upgrading from FP-RAM to EDO-RAM to SDRAM, each may require a
new motherboard, but you can keep the processor and other stuff.
Then into the 7th gen processors, you might find yourself upgrading your
processors but keeping the motherboard the same. Or you might find yourself
upgrading your motherboard but keeping the processor the same. There would
be an upgrade from SDRAM to DDR that came and went. Maybe you might upgrade
the motherboard just to use the latest speed of DDR. Or maybe you might
upgrade the motherboard because you want to use the latest processor with
latest FSB speed. Or perhaps you might need to go from AGP 2X to 4X to 8X;
the transition between 2X and 4X AGP might have involved buying a new video
card simply because the old one didn't support the latest voltage, and
therefore the slots were designed to prevent older AGP cards from fitting
in.
You can see how with all of these step-by-step transitions you can keep
large portions of the hardware the same, while still doing major hardware
upgrades, and how an original 386 turns into an Athlon XP (or perhaps an
Pentium 4?).
>>> To an AMDer. To get one to MOVE from one to the other is the issue
>>> in my case and not just starting from scratch and being at the
>>> AMD/Intel decision crossroads.
>>
>> What exactly is your problem? Moving from Intel to AMD is dead
>> simple.
>
> My point is that I have no reason to move. And I don't have to learn
> how to setup the fan control curves again, or how to update the BIOS
> again,
> or where to get the updates etc (from 3 vendors in AMD's case no doubt).
I don't know what you mean by "fan control curves". I'll just assume that
you have some kind of a manually adjustable fan system. If that's the case,
then of course you'll need to relearn the curves when you upgrade even
within Intel systems. The curves required for a Pentium 3 would be very
different from those for a Pentium 4. Even within a Pentium 4 to Pentium 4
upgrade, you might need to recalibrate, as a Prescott would have extremely
odd heating patterns compared to Northwood or Willamette.
As for BIOS upgrades, you can't ever get them from Intel. You always have to
find them at the motherboard manufacturer (Asus, ECS, Gigabyte, etc.) or the
OEM (HPaq, Gateway, etc.) system builder website. Those are exactly where
you find AMD BIOS upgrades too. Upgrading the BIOS is no different than on
Intel systems, same sort of utilities. AMD's are just PC's afterall, exactly
the same as Intel. They conform to the exact same specifications as Intel
systems, and their parts are made by the same people who make parts for
Intel systems. This is not like going from PC to Macintosh, this is just
going from PC to PC.
> I'm considering the surrounding issues as more important: support,
> training, vendor liason, etc. I have an "investment" in Intel at this time
> and
> no one is asking me or paying me to build them an AMD system. So I really
> have
> no reason to look at AMD at this time as I am "a happy camper" for now.
Your support and training are exactly the same between an Intel and AMD
system, they run the exact same operating systems. And as for vendor liason,
you're not buying a multi-million dollar server, you're building stuff off
the shelf from various computer stores. These computer stores remain exactly
the same regardless of whether you're building Intel or AMD.
And as for people not asking you to build them an AMD system, of course they
aren't. They're asking *you* to build a PC for them, and *you* have no
intention of giving them the choice of going for an AMD system. Do you
seriously think your dependent friends are going to know anything beyond
what you know and ask you to build them something different?
As for being a "happy camper" simply means that you haven't explored all of
your choices available to you. You wouldn't worry too much about whether you
outfit a PC with an Ethernet card from Dlink or Netgear or something else;
you would just consider this a choice, and go based on price or performance.
Same thing goes for video cards, you'd have no trouble putting an Nvidia or
ATI card. You don't care what brand of printer you get (Epson, Lexmark,
etc.). Nobody is a "happy camper" in these arenas, nobody bothers to be,
they'd lose out on too many good deals.
Yousuf Khan
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