p 4 or athlon processor

[Joe van Raamt]

I am planning on buying an 2,54 ghz hp. I am told that the amd athlon is just as good or better than the p 4, yet the athlon is almost $200 canadian dollars cheaper. Any truth to this?

[Jon Finley · Accepted solution]

Yes. I used to be an INTEL biggot. I've been running both Durons and Athlons for the last 8 months, and with the price difference will NEVER go back!

It appears that the instruction set is VERY tight. I've seen Athlons out perform, faster P4's.

Personal Opinion, but...... I Like them.


Jon

[Rune J. Winje]

The Athlon on the same clock frequency will outperform the P4 significantly. That is why AMD uses the 1800+ designation on their 1535 MHz CPU for instance.

Mainly because of a better architecture where the AMD has 3 full floating point pipelines while the Intel has something like one and a half. Floating point calculations are the main 'number crunchers' in any CPU.

Now, I'm not particularly fond of the scheme, but in most cases it is fairly accurate.

Intel currently have a slight lead in the MHz race, as AMD struggle to keep up.

However the price/performance benefit of AMD is real and significant. For a price-conscious configuration it can't be beaten.

Lastly Intel does have a couple of points worth noticing, especially for use in servers:
* Multiprocessor configurations for more than 2 cpu's (which is the AMD limit)
* Better temperature regulation - meaning the Intel cpu will just slow down if above threshold values, while the AMD's will need to shut off PC power instantly or risk burning out if the cpu-fan is removed or fails during operation. (There's a 'famous' video about this on http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/index.html )


Cheers,
Rune

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Just my 2 ct.
I use AMD cpu's since they came out with the 386/40 processor. Mostly they have had a better performance for the money than the Intel
stuff. Look at ebay or so, what you pay for old AMD cpu's ( K6/2 - 500 etc ).
Better than comparable Intel.
My next upgrade will be AMD again for sure.
IMHO
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Joe van Raamt]

I thank you all for the valuable information I received on my question. I am now sure which one to choose.

[Lance Brown]

Rune,

If you want multiprocessor support, especially for a server, you do not by a PC badged as a server. You buy a real system, like a Sun, IBM, Compaq Alpha, etc.

While AMD and Intel may have faster clock speed, and have better per processor numbers, they still fall short. Intel and AMD got into a speed war and per clock cycle, they do less then the others. Even the PIII is more efficient per cock cycle then the P4. Intel and AMD both made sacrifices for speed. Those are work you clock cycle and more heat. The competition looks at getting more done in one clock cycle, lower power and heat. The competition in some single processor tests rate up to 23% faster with a chip that has a 50% or more handicap in MHz.

A MHz race is for marketing hype and the consumers fall for it. MHz has very little to do with what a chip can accomplish. There is a balancing act between MHz and efficient chip design. If you can create a chip that is efficient per clock cycle and have a decent MHz rating, then you have a strong performer. Designing it for outright MHz speed has hurt them. The 400Mhz FSB is too much. The system is not fast enough to actually use it. On a server with multiple 64-bit 66MHz buses then it useful. In a home system, it is useless. This is one-way that Intel got high MHz ratings. Then they went to 533MHz FSB, probably because they were having problems getting higher clock ratings. They use to release a new chip every quarter, now it???s every other quarter. I knew that they couldn???t sustain it for very long.

Lance

[Patrick Ruane]

I've just watched the video that Rune referenced, wow. I'm an amd fan myself but that's a bit scary. One thing to bear in mind is that they took the fan AND the heatsink off. might have been more useful if they just removed the fan to replicate hardware failure of the fan unit alone (how often does your heatsink fall off?!?).

Personally i've found a single Athlon is fine for my server needs, but then i do tend to use Linux ;)

Patrick.

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22 points from a hat
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[Lance Brown]

Why have multiple servers with only one processor? You can get a fully redundant system with multiple processors. It costs less to run, easier to maintain and uses less room. You can even dynamically change system resources around without a reboot. Need an extra processor, no problem.

Some of the earlier models did not have their heat sinks on very securely. If the system was a tower, the heat sink would be pulled by gravity constantly and, it was not on securely, then it would fall off. A magazine is the first one to actually test the chip cooking; they received a few AMD chips from AMD to test. The heat sinks fell off in the package and a few others were loose. They wondered what would happen if that occurred in a system.

Chips today have thermal protection built-in. The chip will protect itself from that happening.

Another test was done in system that ran the same OS, applications as well as the same video card, amount of RAM, HD, etc. Not only were the results different in the amount of time it took for the Intel and AMD to complete the same task, the file size was different. So while Intel and AMD both are based on the x86 architecture, one of both of them has drifted away from it. Thus resulting in systems that are not compatible with one another.

Lance