Now That Everyone Has Gone Dual Cores, What's The Real Difference Between AMD...

Factual Questions
1

…And Intel Processors? Is one any better than the other for certain purposes?

I recall after buying my first AMD machine that the salesman sold me on this processor because it was “64 bit” and used an analogy that despite the processor speed being slower than the latest Intel HT processor at the time, that Intel’s processors did indeed operate faster, but transferred data in smaller bunches than the AMD.

Is this even true anymore? Or was it ever? Can anyone explain the primary differences between the processors?

2

Well, your salesman was full of shit, but there are certainly differences in performance between Intel and AMD processors, even between two designs with the same clock speed, bit width, core count, and so forth.

Modern processors use all kinds of tricks to efficiently execute programs - they perform instructions in a program out of order and/or in parallel, they pre-execute parts of the program that they think will be called next, they may have different algorithms for determining what part of memory will be used next, and so forth. Processor performance is highly dependent on the processor architects making good decisions about how (and whether) to implement these optimizations.

For quite a while AMD was kicking Intel’s ass, because Intel made some stupid decisions in the design of the Pentium 4, but Intel has more than recovered at this point, and last I heard, AMD was hurting again and resorting to cutting prices to compete with Intel.

The only real way to make a decision, though, is to look at benchmarks of the processors in your price range, and make your decision based on the raw numbers. And unless you are going to playing games or doing scientific computing or something, you’ll never notice a difference anyway. You’d be much better off spending your money on more RAM and a faster hard drive, than going for the fastest processor.

3

When i built my last computer i just looked at benchmarks from the processors i was looking at. The AMD one performed better (in the area i was most interested in) and was cheaper.

4

Thanks Absolute. I just bought a new dual core AMD machine off Ebay and I am wondering what I am getting myself into.

5

Where’s the best place to find those benchmark test results?

I am utterly ignorant of the workings of computers. I want to play modern games, surf the web with my new 10MB download speed, etc.

Here’s the specs on the computer I just bought:

Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ Socket AM2
CPU Fan AMD Original AM2 CPU Fan
Motherboard ECS nVidia GeForce 7050M-M Motherboard
Memory 4GB DDR II 800 Memory 240 Pin (Kingston) 　
Hard Drive Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA II
Optical Drive LG 22X DVD RW + Dual Layer
Video nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI HDTV
Audio Realtek ALC662 6-channel HD Audio
Network Card Onboard 10/100 Network Card
Ports 6 USB 2.0 Ports, 1 Parallel, 1 1394a
Case 1285 Deluxe Black Tower Case
Power Supply 600 Watt Heavy Duty Power Supply
Warranty 1 Year Parts 3 Years Labor Warranty & Life Time Toll Free Support
Assembly Fully Assembled and Tested
I am on another board where the resident computer guru is questioning the network card at only 100 MB. He suggests that I need to upgrade to a 1GB card immediately for online gaming, and also says that the 7500rpm speed of the hard drive is in question and can lag games. He says to spend more $$ on a Raptor HD that is at least 10,000 rpm’s and reccomends 15,000 rpms for online gaming. He also goes on to say that Raptor’s stuff is really expensive.

Am I going to be OK with what the machine comes with for the foreseeable future??

6

Hah! This is, literally, like someone telling you you need to buy a Formula 1 car to go get your groceries.

A 1Gb network card is only going to be useful if you are transferring huge files over your home network (e.g. to other computers in your house) - no consumer internet connection is going to come close to saturating a 100 Mb card, much less a 1Gb one. And online games don’t require bandwidth anyway, latency is what matters, and all cards are pretty much equivalent on that score.

It’s true that the hard drive is usually the biggest bottleneck in the system, but for online games? You mean, like WoW, or like online poker, or something like that? Absolutely a non-issue. If you were playing, say, the latest first-person shooter (e.g. Crysis), a faster hard drive would probably speed up level load times - that’d be about it.

Don’t listen to a word this guy says, he’s completely uninformed. He is as wrong as anyone could possibly be. The computer you’ve got now is already like a NASCAR car - you definitely don’t need anything more for what you’re going to be doing with it.

Hah! I’m still laughing.

7

I disagree with Absolute about the salesman being full of it. It’s hardly a secret that AMD64s crushed P4s despite the P4s having higher clock speeds, which is basically what the salesman explained.

I also disagree with your guru from another form. That dude is smoking rocks. The computer has way bigger performance issues than its hard drive speed or NIC speed. NIC speed is pretty much meaningless since I’m sure you don’t have a gigabit switch. An AMD X2 is pretty old and slow. A Nvidia 9600GT is new and slow. You don’t be running modern stuff on anything but the lowest of settings and upgrading your hard drive or NIC card isn’t going to change that. Honestly, never listen to that guy. The hard drive and NIC thing is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while.

8

My sense was that the salesman said it was because they were 64-bit and could thus use bigger data chunks or some crap like that, and that was indeed bullshit. No one was even running 64-bit consumer applications back in 2003 or whenever this was.

9

Does anyone even buy NICs anymore? Most high end gaming mobos (as in: pretty much anything from EVGA, XFX, ASUS, etc) do some pretty good onboard handling anyway. Hard Drive speed helps loading/saving mostly (yeah, there are a few things it’ll take from the Hard Disk on occasion, but usually nothing notable), games eat RAM like candy for a reason, that’s where all your relevant goes because it doesn’t want to search around your fragmented slow spinning disk to find the stuff.

AMD vs Intel, Intel is winning, the i7 extreme, last I checked, pretty much creamed anything AMD even pretended to sell. As for 64 bit, Intel uses x86-64 architecture nowadays too, and has since… what, mid '04, and even before that a handful could but had the feature hard-locked. In 2003 (as Absolute hinted at) 64 bit wasn’t even used outside of labs and a handful of open source enthusiasts anyway. Besides, doesn’t the application itself have to be modeled specifically to use 64-bit or it defaults to 32-bit handeling even on a 64-bit OS with a x86-64 processor? (I’m actually asking here) Because I don’t think even a lot of modern games bother to implement it.

Edit: Oh yeah, for cards, 9600s and X2s aren’t as great. An X2 is certainly better than a Pentium 4, but Pentium Dual Core is just a step up and usually better. 9600s are only nice if you SLI them, and even then it’s debatable whether you should do that or just shell out for a 9800GT. Even better, save yourself some trouble and SLI two 8800GTs, my friend did and even with the lower series of cards can run Crysis on almost max, granted he overclocked a bit, but still (Crytek, I demand you release another engine NOW, your old one is becoming benchmark proof).

10

Thanks for the replies guys, but honestly for the purposes of my OP, I need more layman terms!

I am a computer idiot. Tell me what I truly need for this system I just bought. Recall that I only paid $400 for it, it’s new and it HAS to be an upgrade over my current system:

Product number
EG134AA
Introduction date
14-Aug-2005
Country/region sold in
United States
Canada
Hardware
Base processor
Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2 GHz
2000 MT/s (Mega Transfers/second)
Socket 939
Chipset
ATI Radeon XPress 200
Motherboard
Manufacturer: ASUS
Motherboard Name: A8AE-LE
HP/Compaq motherboard name: AmberineM-GL6E
Memory
Component Attributes
Memory Installed 1 GB (2 x 512)
Maximum allowed 4 GB* (4 x 1 GB) requires the replacement of the installed 512 MB DIMMs

*Actual available memory may be less
Speed supported PC3200 MB/sec
Type 184 pin, DDR SDRAM
DIMM slots Four
Open DIMM slots Two

Hard drive
200 GB SATA
7200 rpm
16x DVD(+/-)R/RW (+/-)R DL LightScribe drive
must use Double-Layer media discs in order to take advantage of the DL technology
must use LightScribe-enabled media discs and supporting software in order to take advantage of the LightScribe technology
type Attributes
DVD-R DL Write Once 4X
DVD+R DL Write Once 2.4X
DVD+R Write Once 16X
DVD+RW Rewritable 4X
DVD-R Write Once 8X
DVD-RW Rewritable 4X
DVD ROM Read 16X
CD-R Write Once 40X
CD-RW Rewritable 24X
CD-ROM Read 40X

CD ROM
Maximum speed 48X
Modem
PCI K56flex data/fax modem
Video graphics
Integrated graphics
Sound/audio
Controller: AC97 audio
Location: Integrated
Network (LAN)
Integrated 10/100 Base-T networking interface
Memory card reader
USB interface
Supports the following cards:
Compact Flash I
Compact Flash II
SmartMedia
Memory Stick
Memory Stick Pro
MultiMediaCard
Secure Digital (SD)
Micro Drive
XD Picture Card (xD = extreme digital)
External I/O ports
I/O ports on the front panel
Port type Quantity
9-in-1 (4 slot) + 1 USB One
IEEE 1394 One
USB (2.0) Two
Headphone One
Line-in One
Microphone One

I/O ports on the back panel
Port type Quantity
PS/2 (keyboard, mouse) Two (one each)
VGA (monitor) One
Parallel One
USB (2.0) Four
IEEE 1394 One
LAN One
Audio One each (line-in, line-out, microphone)

Expansion slots
Slot type Quantity
PCI Three (two available)
PCI Express One (available)
DIMM Four (two available)

Drive bays
Bay type Quantity
5.25-inch, external Two (occupied)
3.5-inch, external Two (one available)
3.5-inch, internal One (occupied)

Keyboard and mouse
HP PS/2 multimedia keyboard
Quebec Keyboard Kit (French Canada only)
HP PS/2 scroller mouse
Software
NOTE: HP provides basic support for software that comes with the computer. For in-depth feature assistance, refer to the help section in the software or on the software vendor’s Web site.

Key to software:
cd/dvd = media included in box
fc = only available in French Canada
nfc = not available in French Canada
Software titles that shipped with PC Software Category Software Title
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005
Microsoft Service Pack 2

CD/CD-RW/DVD/DVD+RW WinDVD 5 Player Basic (with optional 7.1 upgrade)
Sonic DigitalMedia Plus 7.02
Sonic MyDVD Plus 6.13
Sonic DigitalMedia Archive 1.2

Education and Reference Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2005 Standard (fc)
MSN Encarta Standard (online) (nfc)

Entertainment, Music, and Games iTunes 4.8 (w/Quicktime)
HP Tunes
Microsoft Plus Digital Media Edition LE (nfc)
Real Player
My HP Games (nfc)

Imaging, Photography, Video, and Film HP Software Update
HP Image Zone 5
HP Image Zone for media center
muvee autoProducer 1.1 for media center
muvee autoProducer 4

Productivity and Finance Adobe Reader
Microsoft Works 8.0
Microsoft Office 2003 Student Teacher Edition Trial
Microsoft Money 2005 (nfc)
Quicken New User Edition 2005 (nfc)

PC Security Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition (60-day security update subscription)
Norton Security Center

Utility, Maintenance, and Performance PC-Doctor 5 for Windows

HP Recovery Microsoft system restore
HP Recovery Software Suite
Software Repair Wizard

Service and Support Updates from HP
Help & Support Center
Desktop Web-based registration
Online documentation

ISP Signup Google toolbar
Connectivity Support Tools (nfc)
ISP offers

HP Partner offers Snapfish
Adobe Store
Symantec Security Check
NetSmartz
IntelliMover Data Transfer
@Backup Online Backup
SwapDrive Online File Sharing

11

It’s a huge upgrade. Anyway, I’d recommend 3 things:

  1. Getting another hard drive. I have 3 of these (well, 2, one had a defective port and I’m gonna have to send it back and get it replaced). It’s not that yours is bad so much as 160 gigs fills up really, really fast.

  2. If you can spare the cash get two of these. Before you hit buy though, wait for someone else, I’m not entirely sure the board is SLI ready (SLI is basically taking two Graphics cards in two slots and “gluing” them together with a connector so they work together). If you end up not having enough slots but the board is otherwise capable you can probably remove the sound card, unless you get really good sound cards or you’re a complete audiophile you’re probably never going to notice a difference in sound quality.

  3. The processor could use work, but the motherboard’s socket type (AM2) isn’t giving us much wiggle room. You have a 5200+ which is fine, you can choose to not upgrade it and be fine, I think my old computer has a worse processor and I ran games pretty well at reasonable-high settings just a week ago, if you really want to find something else that’s named AMD 64 X2 <x>+ and look for a number a bit higher than 5200.

Otherwise it’s a good mid-range machine for sure.

12

never mind.

13

That big block of stuff you perused, that’s his current comp, the one he bought is:

Which is quite a bit better. :wink:

14

Yeah, I posted, read your post, thought “what?”, looked back over the thread, and… yeah.

15

If it makes you feel any better I forgot about that first post too and thought “who the fuck sold him THAT as a gaming rig?” Before I figured it out and made my post.

16

Do you have any idea what OS it comes with? Presumably Vista, but is it a 64 bit edition?

If not, you’re not going to be able to use all of your RAM. Windows will probably see somewhere between 3.2GB and 3.5GB. Granted, it’s probably not going to make a huge difference in performance, but it’s something to keep in mind. Other than that, it’s a pretty decent system, especially for $400.

As far as the motherboard, I just took a look at it, and it only has one PCI-E slot, so SLI is out of the picture, and it looks like that’s one of the best CPUs you can put in it, so there’s not much tweaking you can do.

The only thing you can really do is put a better video card in there. Toms Hardware has a list of the best cards for the money that they did just last month. I’m not sure how much you want to spend, so I’ll let you make your own decision there.

17

Not really. If the salesman wanted to be accurate, he would have stated that the AMD processors of the day had shorter pipelines than NetBurst Intel chips, which is absolutely true, and is the reason why Athlon 64s outperformed similar Pentium 4s despite a serious difference in clock speed. Also contributing was AMD’s on-die memory controller compared to Intel’s higher latency controller on the motherboard.

18

It comes with no OS installed. I’m thinking of getting this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/MICROSOFT-WINDOWS-XP-PRO-64-BIT-EDITION-OEM-w-SP2_W0QQitemZ260358085280QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Software?hash=item260358085280&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1234|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Thoughts?

19

That will work, but Tigerdirect has it for $10 cheaper. Shipping should only be a few dollars, too. I don’t know, I think I’d rather buy software from a an actual retailer rather than from eBay. At least then I know it’s genuine.

If you wanted to go the vista route, you could get the Home Premium 64bit from newegg for $100. The only thing is, it’s for system builders, and it seems like Newegg has restrictions on who can buy it. It seems like you used to have to buy a major PC component from them in the last x months, but I may be confused. I just added it to my cart no problem.

Or, if you’re brave, you can download the Windows 7 beta for free, and use it until it comes out retail. I’ve been using it about the last two weeks, and I haven’t had any real problems with it. It seems pretty polished and stable for a beta release.

Or if you’re REALLY brave, install Ubuntu Linux, and run any Windows apps/games through WINE, but I’ve never tried that so I don’t know how it would compare.

20

Not exactly. The AMD chips extended the existing registers from 32 bits to 64 bits, and added 8 new 64-bit registers. So, yeah your application could theoretically load more data onto the chip itself and do stuff with it. That’s not going to affect the performance of anything the OP is likely to run, but I’d guess the salesbot was mangling something he’d read/heard somewhere else and not entirely full of crap.