main differences between AMD and INTEL?

[95thrifles]

it also depends on setup, it shouldnt but it does, phenom + ATI works better together than i7 + ATI, and i7 + NVidia works better together than phenom + NVidia. There is some amount of coding which is written for its optimised set up

 

[CurlyWhirly]

Given the economic performance of AMD - 11 straight quarters of loss, I'm not hopeful for their future.

It's a wonder that they are still in business

 

[DragonQ]

AND they bought out ATI. Unless they were offered money to take ATI off of the previous owners' hands, I must conclude that they're robbing banks.

 

[PermaBanned]

I don't know where you people get these facts, but in every review, benchmark and video i've seen the 550 BE is equal to or out performs the Core i7.

And overclocking potential is huge. A Phenom II chip currently holds the world record for this generation of cores. 6.5GHz i think it was. Using Liquid Nitrogen, but that's unimportant XD.

 

[DragonQ]

Well I dunno what reviews you've been reading but the PII 955 and i7 920 are only competitors in gaming scenarios. Pretty much everywhere else, the i7 is faster, sometimes significantly.

From what I've seen, their overclocking potential is about the same on average also. Liquid nitrogen overclocking is a nice spectacle but means nothing in the real world.

 

[PermaBanned]

Not at all, the 955 BE (oops, my bad, put 550 BE above) is VERY close to the i7 920, usually surpassing it in real world tests. It has a much higher stock clock speed and as such can overclock quite nicely. Oh, it was 7GHz, not 6.5, although i think they were separate instances.

And on chipsets, the 790FX is basically unmatched. Due to it's integrated 3300 graphics, that work with the system instead of being disabled when you install a new graphics card performance with it is so much better than anything else on the market today.

 

[Rroff]

Not at all, the 955 BE (oops, my bad, put 550 BE above) is VERY close to the i7 920, usually surpassing it in real world tests. It has a much higher stock clock speed and as such can overclock quite nicely. Oh, it was 7GHz, not 6.5, although i think they were separate instances.
.

please don't hold too much to the benchmarks you've seen online for gaming performance... unless you going to run everything at stock clocks... which would be pointless... if your just going to run everything at stock clocks it would be pointless to buy thte i7 anyhow... but don't judge the merits of the CPUs based on that...

In the world of hardware and gaming enthusiasts the i7 will CRUSH the 550 and even the 955 simply won't keep up... clock for clock the i7 is faster and it also has a much higher overclocking potential attainable by your average enthusiast.

And on chipsets, the 790FX is basically unmatched. Due to it's integrated 3300 graphics, that work with the system instead of being disabled when you install a new graphics card performance with it is so much better than anything else on the market today.

Sorry this just made me laugh... the onboard GPU processing power is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the power of your average gaming grade discrete addin GPU... basically it won't be able to help it performance wise in ANY shape or form.

 

[PermaBanned]

please don't hold too much to the benchmarks you've seen online for gaming performance... unless you going to run everything at stock clocks... which would be pointless... if your just going to run everything at stock clocks it would be pointless to buy thte i7 anyhow... but don't judge the merits of the CPUs based on that...

In the world of hardware and gaming enthusiasts the i7 will CRUSH the 550 and even the 955 simply won't keep up... clock for clock the i7 is faster and it also has a much higher overclocking potential attainable by your average enthusiast.

Whether i overclock or not depends on the stock speed. If it's over 3GHz to start with then i'll probably not straight away, but i might later on when it starts being considered slow. It seems a bit of a waste to shorten the life of it and your motherboard just for the sake of a few MHz, that i'm probably not going to notice.

Seriously though, people that have used both are saying that the two chips are equal or that the AMD is better. You're saying that i shouldn't trust benchmarks, i don't. I trust first hand experience. Not the real question here is how did YOU reach the conclusion that the i7 is superior?

Sorry this just made me laugh... the onboard GPU processing power is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the power of your average gaming grade discrete addin GPU... basically it won't be able to help it performance wise in ANY shape or form.

Oh but it does. Not only is it the perfect chipset for casual users, it helps a lot with the other tasks the chipset would have to assist in. It having it's own dedicated core that powerful (which it is, whatever Intel put in their chipsets are a mere drop in the ocean compared to this) is extremely useful in all tasks. If you're going to argue with me that a chipset without it's own graphics chip is better than one with it's own graphics chip then sure, go ahead. I won't stop you. And the fact still stands that it works with an ATI graphics card to increase performance. Now before you start saying it's nothing, it isn't. Because the truth of the matter is, there's two cores helping with the task, rather than just the one. No matter how 'weak' one of them may be, it's still a giant leap over using just one core. In a sense, it's single core vs dual core, and we all know who comes out top there.

 

[Rroff]

Sorry but your off your head...

Theres no way a low power integrated gpu can assist a proper gaming grade GPU in any shape or form in any demanding rendering situation - infact quite the opposite it would hold a high end GPU back in ANY 3D rendering if you forced them to coop. You might wanna not be sucked in by the hype sometimes...

As to the CPU thing - I could quite simply say "people" have told me and it would be as valid as what you've said in reality overclocks where you don't have to adjust the vcore aren't likely to show any increased degredation within the useful life of the chip - and the i7 and core 2 line can manage some fairly impressive overclocks on stock voltage alone.

I'm sorry but in the hands of any enthusiast the i7 will CRUSH the Phenom II - and if your the average every day joe kinda user then it doesn't make much odds which you buy so you might as well go for the cheapest as you won't be getting the most from either chip.

 

[james.miller]

i've been using amd chips for about 10 years now infact the last intel cpu i bought was a 166MHz mmx chip back in the day

main reason is upgrade cost, where as intel change socket every 2 seconds amd do tend to keep with a socket for longer, for example am3 cpu's work in a am2+ motherboard and not only that but where intel have i7 being the enthusiasts choice with i5 being the mainstream choice and now someone above said about i3 where amd have one socket that you can have the latest quad cord all the way down to simple single core chips and with bulldozer coming soon even more upgrade potential

thats not an entirely fair comparison is it? how long has the p965 been around? 3 and a half years and yet it supports 45nm quad cores. yes intel are moving to other boards arrangement and yes they have made a bit of a mess with the ix boards, but didnt amd do exactly the same thing with the 754 and 939 boards?

so no, not really. both parties are guilt of thaty, largely to the same extent.

 

[DragonQ]

Both AMD and Intel have been good regarding sockets for the last 3 or 4 years. Before that, AMD in particular were changing way too much.

At least this new i3/i5/i7/i9 stuff will only span two sockets by the looks of things (well, plus the legacy existing Core 2 socket but that'll be phased out). AMD will certainly have to change sockets for their Bulldozer/Fusion CPUs also. I think 3 or 4 years for a single socket is damn good and pretty much all you can expect from a business whose technology has to change so often.

 

[PermaBanned]

Sorry but your off your head...

Theres no way a low power integrated gpu can assist a proper gaming grade GPU in any shape or form in any demanding rendering situation - infact quite the opposite it would hold a high end GPU back in ANY 3D rendering if you forced them to coop. You might wanna not be sucked in by the hype sometimes...

As to the CPU thing - I could quite simply say "people" have told me and it would be as valid as what you've said in reality overclocks where you don't have to adjust the vcore aren't likely to show any increased degredation within the useful life of the chip - and the i7 and core 2 line can manage some fairly impressive overclocks on stock voltage alone.

I'm sorry but in the hands of any enthusiast the i7 will CRUSH the Phenom II - and if your the average every day joe kinda user then it doesn't make much odds which you buy so you might as well go for the cheapest as you won't be getting the most from either chip.

It's nowhere near as 'low power' as you seem to think it is. All gaming isn't done with the super fastest stuff you know, a decent dual core and a good chipset can run a hell of a lot of games. Seriously, this could run most of today's games by itself pretty well. And if you're not convinced, then take a look at this:

That's OCed to over 1GHz, with the memory running at over 500MHz.

And even at stock speeds, it's about the same as a 3470, maybe a bit better. That can still run most games perfectly well. So use the chipset to run the games, and let your graphics card take care of the heavy stuff and it's a pretty kick ass rig.

And you've been told that the i7 is better, i've been told that the 955 BE is better and there's nothing either of us can do about that.

 

[razer1978]

so you might as well go for the cheapest as you won't be getting the most from either chip.

if your only using the pc for gaming then most of us with quad cores are not getting the most out of our systems as there are very few games that use more than 2 cores at the mo, lets hope this changes very soon

but if your using your system for video or anything else that uses all 4 cores the the i7 will kick the a$$ of everything else being as you have 4 real cores and 4 HT cores to play with well as far as i'm know anyway i'm still to use a chip with HT, i was hoping my laptop would have it being a c2d but it's a cut down version without HT and only 2Mb cache

It's a wonder that they are still in business

that scares the hell out of me, what the computer industry needs is more competition not less, can you Imagen a world without amd? progress will slow as what is there to drive intel forward if amd falls? yes there will still be progress but i can't Imagen it being at the pace it is today, not only that but if amd falls then so does ati as they are owned by amd and that would leave nvidia being the only real option for gamers and you'll more than likely see the same thing happen with progress slowing due to no one pushing things forward, i know intel are making a gpu but going on past attempts i'm not holding my breath on that one but then again who knows let's see how good it is when it come's out, let's hope it's the c2d for the gpu world

i don't care what i have inside my pc as long as it's affordable and gives great performance, bang for buck is king as far as i'm concerned being on a limited budget and a complete inability to save

personally i would like to see nvidia get a licence to make cpu's for desktops then there will be an even bigger push forward and would make things very interesting

So you're saying that an i7 at less than 4Ghz is on average worse for gaming than a Phenom 2 and claiming to not be an AMD fanboy?

The only time I've ever seen a Phenom II beat an i7 for gaming is when it had a significant clockspeed advantage (ie. 3.2ghz p2 vs a stock i920), put them at the same clock and they're either within 1fps of one another due to GPU bottleneck or the i7 is significantly faster.

i was really just going on what i have seen on the forums, there is not a lot of info about the i7 running at stock as why would you it's almost a guarantee that is will run at 3.8GHz+ with almost all being capable of running at 4GHz+

trust me i'm no fan boy as if i had i7 money i would have gone that route and at the time the pII offered the best i could afford

 

[Rroff]

Its barely scraping in 3000 points in 3D Marks 06 - thats barely into nVidia 6800 / ATI x800 territory.

There is no way it can help boost gaming performance on a card like a 4870 or nvidia 200 series... or even a 8800GT or even a 7900GTX or even an x1800 XT.

About the only thing you could do if it was supported was crossfire it with a low end 3x00 card - you'd be better off putting the extra money on a better GPU.

You seem to have missed the point of the "people told me" comment...

I've benchmarked many CPUs as an enthusiast - when your speccing out a multi GPU gaming machine theres no doubt the i7 is the faster - by quite a margin and even the old core 2 quads give the lower Phenom IIs a good kicking its only the 955 that really hangs in at all against them.

And when you come to real world performance - again the i7 with 8 threads completely dominates.

 

[Rroff]

if your only using the pc for gaming then most of us with quad cores are not getting the most out of our systems as there are very few games that use more than 2 cores at the mo

COD4 (and I assume by extension the newer COD games too will) runs noticeably smoother on a quad core over dual, not a huge change in the fps but less dips and stutters.

Mass Effect seems to run smoother on quad core as well - may be linked to the physics.

Theres a few other games as well which aren't themselves particularly multi thread aware but the OS can seperate teh rendering backend and some of the dll related stuff off to other threads so that helps a bit just to keep things smoother.

I think GTA4 also runs a lot smoother on quad core but I've not tried that for myself.

ETQW can use render threading on multi core/gpu systems for a massive boost - good for atleast a 30% increase in framerate along with a much smoother feel.

 

[PermaBanned]

Its barely scraping in 3000 points in 3D Marks 06 - thats barely into nVidia 6800 / ATI x800 territory.

There is no way it can help boost gaming performance on a card like a 4870 or nvidia 200 series... or even a 8800GT or even a 7900GTX or even an x1800 XT.

About the only thing you could do if it was supported was crossfire it with a low end 3x00 card - you'd be better off putting the extra money on a better GPU.

You seem to have missed the point of the "people told me" comment...

I've benchmarked many CPUs as an enthusiast - when your speccing out a multi GPU gaming machine theres no doubt the i7 is the faster - by quite a margin and even the old core 2 quads give the lower Phenom IIs a good kicking its only the 955 that really hangs in at all against them.

And when you come to real world performance - again the i7 with 8 threads completely dominates.

It does help with gaming. It's using two GPUs as opposed to one. It can run most games independantly, as it isn't 'low power'. Most games can be run on machines that are nowhere near today's top of the range. You started this off by saying that the x58 is a better chipset, well it isn't. It doesn't have a dedicated graphics chip in it. The 790FX does. A dedicated graphics chip WILL HELP with performance. You will see a performance increase in using one rather than not using one. I don't see how i could explain this in simpler terms

It works with any ATI graphics card.

I didn't, i commented on it directly. You've been told one thing that you believe, i've been told another and there's nothing either of us can do by slamming furiously on the keyboard to change the others point of view.

Sorry, but you can't argue that a Core 2 Quad could beat the latest Phenom IIs. For one thing, they're like twice as expensive, and for another, THEY PERFORM WORSE. As for the i7, the 955 BE as far as i've seen and heard is equal to or better than in most circumstances than an i7. And even if it wasn't, the difference is a few frames per second. Seriously, like 2 or 3. Nobody can detect that... nobody. AMD chips work better with ATI cards, and Intel chips work better with nVidia cards.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not an AMD fanboy. Hell, i've been running Intel chips all my life (and still am). But i'm telling you what i've heard and what conclusion i've reached. If you want the best performance for the lowest money then go for a Phenom II. If you've got more money than sense then go for the i7.

 

[Rroff]

It does help with gaming. It's using two GPUs as opposed to one. It can run most games independantly, as it isn't 'low power'. Most games can be run on machines that are nowhere near today's top of the range. You started this off by saying that the x58 is a better chipset, well it isn't. It doesn't have a dedicated graphics chip in it. The 790FX does. A dedicated graphics chip WILL HELP with performance. You will see a performance increase in using one rather than not using one. I don't see how i could explain this in simpler terms

It works with any ATI graphics card.

You obviously know nothing about multi GPU rendering techniques, I rest my case.

I didn't, i commented on it directly. You've been told one thing that you believe, i've been told another and there's nothing either of us can do by slamming furiously on the keyboard to change the others point of view.

I see the meaning of my statement still went entirely over your head, again I rest my case.

Sorry, but you can't argue that a Core 2 Quad could beat the latest Phenom IIs. For one thing, they're like twice as expensive, and for another, THEY PERFORM WORSE.

A Q6600 clock for clock on a multi GPU system can still beat a Phenom 920 or 940 in CPU intensive games.

As for the i7, the 955 BE as far as i've seen and heard is equal to or better than in most circumstances than an i7. And even if it wasn't, the difference is a few frames per second. Seriously, like 2 or 3. Nobody can detect that... nobody. AMD chips work better with ATI cards, and Intel chips work better with nVidia cards.

rubbish utter rubbish

Don't get me wrong, i'm not an AMD fanboy. Hell, i've been running Intel chips all my life (and still am). But i'm telling you what i've heard and what conclusion i've reached. If you want the best performance for the lowest money then go for a Phenom II. If you've got more money than sense then go for the i7.

not really bothered if your a fan boy or not, the Phenom IIs are good cost effective CPUs but they simply aren't in the same class as an i7 clock for clock.

 

[PermaBanned]

You obviously know nothing about multi GPU rendering techniques, I rest my case.

I may not be able to put together a graphics card with clay and wire in my back yard, but i understand the basic principle of two cores is better than one. If you're only using one graphics card then the performance will be better on a board with this chipset than one without it. I rest my case.

I see the meaning of my statement still went entirely over your head, again I rest my case.

The meaning of your statement? You said that you had been told that the i7 was better. I don't know who by or in what context, but i was told the opposite.

A Q6600 clock for clock on a multi GPU system can still beat a Phenom 920 or 940 in CPU intensive games.

An AMD Phenom II 940 clock for clock will trounce a Q6600. While a Q6600 vs a phenom II 940 at the same clock speed will not show much of a difference in most apps, the phenom II will probably overclock a lot higher (around 4GHz on air).

rubbish utter rubbish

What? That the 955 will out perform the i7 at some things, especially at higher resolutions? Of course. And that the overall difference between the two when everything's said and done is only really a few frames? Naturally...

not really bothered if your a fan boy or not, the Phenom IIs are good cost effective CPUs but they simply aren't in the same class as an i7 clock for clock.

They're similar enough for it to be pretty much a waste to spend so much more on an i7, then shorten it's life by over clocking it to the same speeds as the 955 BE is at stock.

I'm holding out for the next generation of chips though. i9 vs AMD Fusion/Swift or whatever it's called looks to be a far better battle.

 

[DragonQ]

Since when do two CPUs need to be at the same clock to be compared? Methinks you're stuck in 2001. An i7 at stock beats the 955BE at stock in nearly everything except gaming, where they both perform better with different games, hence the AMD chip being a more sensible and cost-effective choice for gamers. Get over it.

 

[PermaBanned]

You don't, but it's a good way of seeing which one is better designed. Besides, that wasn't even the point. Why overclock when you can stock at a good enough speed for most things at a lower price?