Author: Matt Taylor
Date: 20:44:48 02/19/03
Go up one level in this thread
On February 19, 2003 at 20:58:20, Charles Worthington wrote: >Yes Matt many people here do exagerate their figures. If the Intel guy says >Intel will produce a 20 GHz cpu next week then the AMD guy will tell you that he >can still clock his 2600 to 20.1GHz....and vice versa. The truth is that they >are both good processors. Is the AMD on par with the Xeon in quality or speed? >No, it isn't. The 2.8 Xeon was tested alongside the AMD 2400MP and clearly >out-scored it. The tests were performed by an independant company who had no >reason to lie. Yes as far as speed goes they can both be clocked up. But people >should try to bear in mind that the AMD and the Xeon are very different products >designed for very different markets. The Zeon is primarily designed for >workstation and server platforms where both speed ans stability are required. >They are high end processors and are priced accordingly. The Athlon is designed >more for use in PC's both single cpu (xp) and dual (Mp). It is a fast processor >for the buck but was not designed to be overclocked to try to match a Xeon. If a >2 GHz cpu was stable at 3 GHz then, trust me, AMD would market it as a 3 GHz. >The bottom line is simple: If you want performance and stability and you can >afford to pay for it buy the Xeon. If you want performance but are on a limited >budget buy the AMD. But_don't_ go out and buy a Yugo and then come back here and >tell me that you are building it to catch the neighbors Ferrari. If the >neighbors Ferrari bothers you that much then buy one too. If you can't afford >one then be happy with the yugo. It will still get you where you are going. > To me trying to compare Intel and AMD is like comparing apples and oranges. >You are comparing a low end home and light business processor against a high end >heavy duty cpu designed specifically for Workstation and server platforms. That >is like comparing a Yugo to a Ferrari. I am not an overclocking advocate. I never have been. Aaron Gordon can attest to that. AMD has silicon that can hit 2.5 GHz right now. Intel can hit 3.6 GHz. Do either plan on releasing? Not yet. It is very profittable to allow users to upgrade every 6 months and purchase every generation of chips. There is far less profit in releasing a 5 GHz CPU right now and skipping all the steps in between. They need a lot of money to fund future design, research, and development efforts. The idea that AMD is inferior to Intel in any way, shape, or form is rather silly. Stability? I can attest to stability. I have 4 AMD boxes and 3 Intel in my room and another AMD box at work. The only one that crashes has a NIC with a buggy driver. Would a Xeon crash if it ran buggy drivers? Yes. I loaned one of my AMD boxes to a friend because his Pentium 4 1.8 GHz broke when he upgraded his video card. The idea that AMD is of inferior quality is silly. AMD was formed 2 years prior to Intel. AMD has been working with the x86 since the days of the 8086 and 186. They used to manufacture CPUs for Intel, and they did so until they decided to clone and improve the 386 -- at which point Intel stopped contracting with them to manufacture Intel CPUs. AMD also used to make chipsets for Intel. The AthlonMP itself is targetted at servers, not workstations. AMD had a big article about a month or two ago hyping the AthlonMP 2400 and how some Russian site used it for their server. All of that is moot anyway since the AthlonMP and AthlonXP are nearly identical as are the Pentium 4 and the Pentium 4 Xeon (any Xeon above 1.5 GHz or so). The only differences involve the ability to run SMP, and -some- CPUs have bigger caches. -Matt
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