The real difference between AMD and Intel...

[Killer Carebear]

Hello all...

Now, before I even write the rest of this post, I need to let you all know this: Please keep all responses directed at me. I am not starting this thread as a flaming argument thread. I do not want to know what you are a fanboy of, but want pure statistical information. So please, keep on topic and answer the question to the best of your ability. Thank you.

I want to know if Intel or AMD is better. I know there are a lot of factors to cover, so I will add in some stuff to narrow it down...

On Newegg the Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Quad-Core ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115212&cm_re=i7_extreme-_-19-115-212-_-Product ) is about $1,000. The AMD Phenom II Black Edition Quad-Core ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727&cm_re=phenom_ii_black-_-19-103-727-_-Product ) however is only about $180. That is a radical price difference for seemingly similar products. Why is the Intel so expensive, is there some statistic that I missed, or is it just the nametag people are buying?

Which brand is more reliable/durable/have better quality? Which brand runs cooler? Which brand uses less power? Which brand overclocks better? Etc...

I know this depends a lot on the specific CPU, but try to answer generally for the entire brand.

Overall which one should I buy?

Again I do not want fanboy responses. These are serious questions looking for serious answers.



Thank you in advance for your answers.

 

[ares1214]

Or not at all, you never know.

The "cycle" you mentioned isn't accurate at all IMO, It was only with K8 and Netburst that propelled AMD into the limelight for once. If K10 didn't have that TLB bug and was released around the time when Conroe was released, Intel wouldn't be as comfortable as it is right now.

There could just be the possibility that AMD catch a break and goes on a winning streak while Intel does more NetBursts. 10 years later It might just be AMD whose profit for a quarter is almost Intels revenue for the whole year.

its a lot of "ifs" and "mights" in there, im just saying currently, intel has the high end without much competition, amd has the low end without much competition.

 

[randomizer]

The "cycle" you mentioned isn't accurate at all IMO, It was only with K8 and Netburst that propelled AMD into the limelight for once. If K10 didn't have that TLB bug and was released around the time when Conroe was released, Intel wouldn't be as comfortable as it is right now.

The TLB bug had nothing to do with the success or failure of K10. The only thing it succeeded in doing was generating page hits on news sites.

 

[Timop]

The TLB bug had nothing to do with the success or failure of K10. The only thing it succeeded in doing was generating page hits on news sites.

It did bring down its reputation and gave picky reviewers/Intel fanboys something to complain about.
The fix did decrease performance by abit though.

 

[randomizer]

Yes, the fix was the problem. The problem wasn't the problem. It was kind of like the Pentium FDIV bug; bad if you run into it but you won't run into it. AMD and Intel publish hundreds of errata for every CPU generation, most of which are never fixed.

 

[Timop]

The problem was a problem because AMD's public relations team suck.

Whenever something bad about Nvidia/Intel comes out, they always give out a cleverly written paragraph that pushes the blame to other people and makes you feel bad for Nvidia/Intel, feel like there really isnt a problem and/or the existence problem is perfectly normal.

While with AMD/ATI its like "We do have a problem, and its REALLY BAD. but only 0.005% of the products are affected. Its caused by [insert technical terms], Its perfectly normal and you'll probably never run into it, but if you do youre SCREWED, so were working on a fix as hard as we can that will take out half the performance. Thank you!"

 

[ares1214]

haha, very true :lol:

 

[jimmysmitty]

Those anandtech benchmarks are not indicative of the general performance of the chips, in fact they are the most biased towards intel that you can find.

It's an old argument which others have done to death, but the 1090T beats or equals the 975 in a lot of reviews. Overall I think it's a very little bit slower, but you would be mad to consider the 975 instead of it as the 1090T wins easily in price and power draw levels.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii-x6-1055t-1090t-review/12

Nice cherry picking.

I will say this: In pure performance, unless the app is highly multithreaded and well built for true cores, it doesn't beat a i7 975. It matches a i7 930. Thats easily true. It beats price wise

But put the 1090t up against a 980x and its squashed. So on a core per core, its behind. Hence the reason why their pricing is so low. They priced their CPUs near what the knew it could match/beat. They didn't price it because they want you to be happy. Thats the reason why the HD5970 is $700 unlike the HD4870X2 that hit at $400. When they can, they price it higher.

As for power draw, until AMD gets triple channel DDR3 its not easy to truly compare power draws since most websites use triple channel X58 mobos.

And random is pretty much right. K10s failure was elsewhere in the arch. The TLB bug didn't stop it from reaching the clocks needed. I think the arch itself was just bad and thats why the redesigned it in K10.5.

 

[randomizer]

AMD's public relations team suck.

I will not argue with that.