AMD V.s. Intel (Sorry)

[cloudnyn3]

Can anyone offer an intelligent comparison to the AMD VS INTEL argument?

I have always used Intel everything, and my friend is VERY biased toward AMD. For no reason at all though. He's always used AMD and has no background in IT. That's his basis of why AMD rules over Intel. I actually started out on AMD Athlons when I was about thirteen and found them to be superior to the Intel processors of the time. The only reason I shied away from AMD was because everything I did at work and in school was mainly Intel. Since I've been a systems administrator (Roughly seven years), I think I've only seen end user stuff on AMD setups. I've worked for three large companies, and all of them use forests comprised of Intel hardware. Early on I saw some Opteron based systems, but now its a bit of a joke among us at meetings.

I do not mean to offend anyone by this. I could care less which is better. I'm just looking for an argument with real consistency as to which is better. The general consensus that makes the most sense to me is that:
Intel = Better in most aspects, but (More $$$$$)
AMD = Not as good (Way more cost efficient)

AMD always seems to be missing instruction sets that the Intel processors have, and sometimes I see things that the AMD's have a leg up on with Intel processors.

I've always found my I series processors to be much more reliable, cooler and have more support than the equivalent AMD processors. This is only my personal experience though, I'm not fanboying at all. If I found a much superior AMD I'd probably switch if it was compatible with everything I do on a regular basis.

The way I look at it, is I'm always going to buy the best system I can so I don't have to constantly upgrade. So if I have to spend $1200.00 on a system and use it for a few years, I will. I can understand not everyone can do this though. I'm just interested in seeing which is actually just overall the better hardware.

 

[vmem]

first of all, I think you had it right, AMD Athlon was the only time when AMD had a legitimate advantage over Intel. Since then, Intel used a number of not exactly legal methods to muscle their chips into OEM builds. That, combined with good marketing and a large war-chest of cash, has put Intel ahead of AMD both technologically and marketing wise ever since. In fact, one of the main reasons that AMD still exists today is because of HUGE cash payments Intel have to give AMD each year due to the illegal business practices Intel took earlier on to get a leg up on the competition. However, many have argued that these payments are nowhere near the billions AMD could have potentially made had Intel not made their illegal moves to lock down the market.

I go into the brief history lesson above because it mostly explains why you find Intel processors more reliable, and have instruction sets that AMD lacks. Intel can afford to do more testing, have more relationships with more partners, and out-right buy smaller companies to have a complete portfolio, and as the clear market dominant leader, it is in Intel's best interest to play it safe and release reliable products year after year. Meanwhile, it is in AMD's best interest to try the crazier ideas to see if they can accidentally find a "magical" architecture that will beat Intel again. On the end-user side, AMD isn't much behind, but for most businesses, Intel is the preferred company to shop from (a little more money is worth avoiding possible months or years of agonizing pain down the road).

As far as core architecture goes, AMD's is ancient (hasn't really been updated since 2010/2011), and are waiting on a new design in 2016 called Zen. However, if you don't mind a higher power-bill/less efficiency, AMD's CPUs aren't really much behind Intel for the typical user, and even for gaming they're typically on-par with intel if not slightly ahead in any given cost tier (excluding the higher-end $200+ CPUs). Personally, I don't see anything wrong with using AMD, and in many situations it'll save you some money. But in 2015 specifically, I find AMD to be a little to out-dated, and am unfortunately forced to put up with Intel's price gouging.

 

[Gam3r01]

The easiest way to break it down is like this.
AMD: More, overall weaker cores, however cheaper. Performs better in some multithreaded tasks.
INTEL: Less cores, stronger overall architecture, better gaming experience.

If you have the money to spend intel will offer you more raw performance, but it comes at a premium.
AMD is the better budget option where intel runs performance.

(This is an old copy paste I have, AMD really isnt that competitive budget wise anymore either)

The athlon series of processors was AMD's high point in the x86 market, their thunderbird chips simply dominated the pentium IIIs and IVs (as well as the core 2s). Then the Core "i" series launched (i7) and AMD hasnt taken the performance crown since.

 

[CTurbo]

I am not a fanboy of either, and I have almost always used AMD, but AMD simply cannot compete anymore. Their FX cpu line is 3 years old now and is very outdated. AMD is not even better for a budget. Not "cost efficient" at all. I really wish they would get back to being competitive again.

Good luck getting an intelligent debate here. It will be a flame war soon enough. I don't even know why I bother to answer these threads.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Support and reliability from either AMD or Intel have never been an issue, so for me they are on equal ground there. There have been times, like the Athlon and Athlon XP, where AMD have had the leg up on intel, mainly due to intels P4 not performing as expected and high clock speeds and power consumption were needed to keep competitive. Now AMD are in the boat Intel were in back then, they made a very inefficient cpu design based (FX8xxx/6xxx/4xxx series) around lots of cores and high clock speeds to get the performance. So at the moment, a 50w 2 core intel with hyperthreading can compete with a 125w 6 core amd fx cpu For most tasks, with the exception of some video rendering programs that can fully utillize as many cores as are available. Intels 4 core variants (the i5 and i7) a re superior to pretty much anything amd has to offer, again with the exception of few programs that can use the 8 cores, even then intel's i7 with hyperthreading is still faster. We then go to intels 6 core cpus which AMD has nothing to compete with. The only thing AMD has been able to do is continually drop prices and sell their cpu's for less than they want to, and are competitive that way, with pricing.

Just have a look at this, a comparison of many applications performance, between intel's current mid range quad core i5 and amd's most popular 8 core fx 8350:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1198

I am not a fanboy of either, and I have almost always used AMD, but AMD simply cannot compete anymore. Their FX cpu line is 3 years old now and is very outdated. AMD is not even better for a budget. Not "cost efficient" at all. I really wish they would get back to being competitive again.

Good luck getting an intelligent debate here. It will be a flame war soon enough. I don't even know why I bother to answer these threads.

We answer because there needs to be some voice of reason in between the BS