Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: bloom25 on April 26, 2003, 03:18:28 AM
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Intel vs AMD debates are kind of like preaching religion to athiests - nobody is really listening to what you say. It's a lot like politics, most people already know what political party they are going to vote for and no matter what anyone tells you you won't change your mind. That said, I'm bored and I feel like speaking my mind on this subject. ;) I think the community here is generally "mature" enough to have a rational discussion on this topic. (It will also give me something to read tommorow, considering I have to work on Saturdays for the next few months. :) )
First, let's talk about benchmarks:
I have built and worked on a LOT of Intel systems and have built and worked on a LOT of AMD systems. As far as performance goes, reviews on hardware sites are simply not comprehensive enough and are often biased one way or the other. I can run benchmarks that run twice as fast on a P4 than on the same rating Athlon, just as easily as I can run benchmarks that are the exact opposite. By very selectively picking and choosing which applications I want to run I can make either Intel or AMD CPUs look about as attractive as a 1980's vintage Yugo. ;) An example would be Lightware 7.5 tests - a few of the often benchmarked filters are very heavily SSE 2 optimized and the P4 dominates the Athlon XP in those tests since the Athlon XP does not support SSE 2 instructions. By the same token, running a benchmark like Sciencemark or a few x87 FPU stressing Spec benchmarks can highlight weaknesses in the P4s FPU or purposely create extremely branch heavy code that will favor the Athlon. (For even more fun, look at Linux application benchmarks. Why? Because Linux applications are usually compiled (and thus optimized to run and take advantage of features of each CPU architecture) on the hardware in the machine. What's interesting with these tests is that generally the scores of similarly equipped P4 and Athlon systems are within +/- 1% of each other.) I feel a review that only lists around 5 CPU benchmarks are proclaims that one CPU "dominates" another is fundamentally flawed.
Why?
If you look at what most people do with their systems you will find that hardly anyone stresses their systems hard enough and rarely runs ANY software where there is a noticable difference in performance between even something as "slow" as an 1800 MHz system and a 3000 MHz system. What software packages do most consumers run on their computers? I think it's safe to say that most people who read this forum spend the majority of their time on a computer either playing games or browsing the web.
If anyone ever tries to sell you a new computer claming that upgrading your CPU will do anything to speed up your Internet browsing, alarm bells should be going off in your head. The fact of the matter is that any system built within the last 4 years or so is going to be limited mainly by your Internet connection. Even something as "old" as a P2 300 MHz system is more than fast enough for web browsing.
What about gaming? I think most of you know that gaming performance is almost completely determined by video card performance, given sufficient CPU horsepower. (Which is usually anything around 2 GHz class or faster with the current fastest consumer level video card available, the Radeon 9800 Pro.) If you ever look at gaming benchmarks you'll probably notice that most tests are run at very low resolutions with montior vertical sync disabled. If you do this and run a test like Quake 3 at 640x480 at 16 bit color you'll probably find that a top end P4 or Athlon XP system can score between 350 and 450 frames per second with the fastest graphics card available. I don't know about the rest of you, but I only really look at the tests run at 1024x768 or higher with all the goodies like anti-ailiasing and anistropic filtering all enabled. Generally you'll find that all tested systems score within 10 FPS of each other because the graphics card has become the limiting factor. Often, you'll see fractions of a FPS seperating one machine from another. Even then, you'll find that P4 based systems edge out the Athlon XP based systems in one test, and the Athlon XP based system edges out the P4 based system on another. It makes you wonder about a few things: How many serious gamers only play one game where one CPU is much faster than another? How many of you can afford to buy a Radeon 9700 or 9800 Pro that can take advantage of a newer CPU? How many people with 9800 Pros run at 640x480 16 bit color with vsync off? ;)
What else do people do with their computers?
1. Write CDs. CPU speed has almost no influence on this. Any system from around a P2 300 MHz machine can burn a CD just as fast as a P4 3.06 GHz machine, given the same drives.
2. Office applications. In the "real world" these tests are almost totally influenced by hard disk performance. Take a P3 1 GHz system and throw a pair of Seagate 15000 RPM LVD SCSI drives in a Raid 0 configuration and test it against a P4 3 GHz machine with a single 5400 rpm IDE drive and guess which will win. ;) In fact, if you look at the tests run in benchmarks like Sysmark 2001 and 2002 you'll find they usually run around 12 tests spread around 4 applications or so and run those same tests over and over to come up with a score. The office tests generally sort a spreadsheet over and over again, where the content creation tests usually run a couple of photoshop filters 3 or 4 times in a row to generate a score. Nobody does that on a system; why would you run a "blur" filter on a photograph 3 times in a row or sort a huge spreadsheet, undo, and repeat 3 more times? (For fun, look at the scores of AMD and Intel systems on Sysmark 2001 and 2002 and take notice of the differences. Then look at the tests run to generate those scores. You'll soon discover just how useless and biased these tests are. The office portion of Sysmark specifically runs tests that generally run faster on Athlon systems. The content creation portion was changed between 2001 and 2002 versions to run filter tests in Photoshop that favor the P4. The combined score in 2001 shows Athlons (and P3s coincidentally) beating the P4s. The 2002 test scores are the opposite. If the benchmark runs the same applications, why would the scores change so much from one year to the next? Both of these benchmarks are so flawed the scores they generate are all but useless.)
Very few people (and even fewer home users or gamers) do things like continuous video editing, serious 3d rendering, work with large SQL databases, or run enginering/scientific applications. In reality, it is only in these types of applications that you see real noticable differences between the CPU types. I think it's safe to say that the people who run these tests already have their mind made up if they are buying an Intel or AMD based system. If you do video editing as a profession, you want a dual Xeon or one of AMDs new Opteron based systems (if you can afford to pay $750 per CPU and 2 GBs of ECC ram!). With a single CPU you want a Hyperthreaded P4. If you do 3d rendering, you need to look at what applications you are running to decide which CPU to use. SQL database applications and most engineering/scientific software is faster on AMD Athlons and Opterons. These are the only applications where one CPU type is far superior compared to the other.
What is really needed is a universal benchmark that runs 100s of tests and compares the results to a reference platform. It's only in that matter that the benchmark can truely reflect realistic performance in a way that matters to the home user. The problem with this is that such a benchmark will end up showing that neither AMD or Intel CPUs are greatly superior to that of their competitor. Neither AMD or Intel will want to support or fund such an orgainization because it would be detrimental to sales.
I have one last point to make. In general, a new CPU architecture comes out of AMD or Intel about every 3 to 5 years. What's interesting about this is that many of the engineers who design CPUs are experts in one particular area of CPU design or went to the same schools as one another. Some of these people have worked for multiple companies or even move from Intel to AMD or vise versa when a new architecture is being designed. I'm sure that most of you don't know that the Athlon and much of the new Opteron and Athlon 64 were based on a server processor known as the Alpha, which was designed and produced by Digital Equipment Co. (DEC). (The Athlon even supports some of the Alpha's memory addressing modes and uses it's EV6 bus protocol!) AMD now has many of the engineers from this company working for them and Intel, Compaq/HP have many others and the rights to much of the Alpha design itself. HP and Intel are co-developing the Itanium. It's a pretty safe bet that some engineers who worked on the Alpha and/or Athlon are now working at Intel on the P4 or Itanium.
Here's my take on the whole situation: Buy what you want. Ask for recommendations and listen to advise from those whom you trust which motherboards, video cards, etc are best suited for which ever CPU you want to run. Both platforms are mature enough at this point that either an AMD or an Intel system can be equally stable. What primarily differentiates them at this point is features of the chipsets which support them and the price of the components needed.
What do you guys think? (I need something to read tommorow! :D )
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try 'War and peace' thats a good read and it will take you months :D
hehe
ok seriously i think if you want expensive cutting edge you go for the top Pentiums as they seem to have just a little edge over the top Athlons and are less of a problem to cool and power etc.
If you want ALMOST cutting edge but SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper you'd best go for Athlon CPU's.
As for stability I have owned an Athlon thunderbird 900 for well over a year running at 1 gig on a KA7A-Raid mobo and all ive had to do to keep it stable is keep up on the Via 4 in 1 drivers.Whenever a problem occoured the updating of these solved it 99% of the time.It runs fine on a 350W power source but was a little unstable on my old 250W power pack.
So what am i going for next ? Well im at the end of my systems life span. A recent purchace of a Radeon 8500LE and a 100ATA 40 gig harddrive gave me a good 6 month lease of life as no game at the moment cannot be run on it. So my next system will need to be a minimum 2 gig system with 100ATA support (maybe even the newer 133ATA etc) and basically as ive priced up these types of systems I have realised that the Athlon 2.6 gig chip and the 2.4 pentium would be where id aim for. Both are reasonably cheap BUT the pentium will require extra expense for the different memory sticks.
So Ive decided as Athlon has never let me down so far im going to stick with it. Ill spend a little extra on a decent cooling fan and go the athlon path :)
For now my radeon 8500 (little faster than the 9500 but a lot less than 9700) will suffice.The HD is ok for a while at 7200rpm and 100ATA and my memory of 512MB at 100hz is showing its age and needs a new boost.Sondblaster live is ok and i havent the speakers to support better sound stuff.My new TFT monitor is great too if a little slow on the refresh at 60Hrz.
So its a 2.4 to 2.6 athlonXP
Mobo?, best i can find that supports high transfer rates of various peritherals
256MB of decent new fast memory (branded)
new case and preferably higher than 350W power source
One of the new cooling kits too which can be fun to mess around with.
the rest i swap over. hope thats enough for your morning read :)
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I think you got it pretty much right there Hazed.
I'd say the hyperthreaded P4s (3.06 GHz 533 MHz FSB and the new 800 MHz FSB P4 3.00 GHz) are overall just a touch faster than the 3000+ Athlon. Between about the 2400+ and 2800+ (comparing to 'B' type P4s) I'd say the rating system AMD uses is fair. Below that (comparing to 'A' type P4s) I think the AMD stuff is faster.
If I had to pick a couple areas where either AMD or Intel based systems have significant differences (and not with the processors themselves directly) is that of chipset that support them.
AMD supporting chipsets generally (and the nForce 2 chipset specificially) often incorporate support for newer technologies before Intel supporting chipsets. DDR SDRAM got its start on the Athlon platform. Onboard Raid controllers were seen on AMD supporting boards before those for Intel. AGP 8x supporting chipsets were available for AMD processors before Intel's own chipsets incorporated support. Serial ATA and DDR 400 memory support are common on nForce 2 and KT400 boards, but only on the brand new i865 and i875 chipsets are you likely to find support for these on an Intel platform. The AMD platform supporting nForce 1 chipset was the first to support dual channel DDR Sdram in the consumer PC market. (Though to be fair, this chipset was first used on the Xbox, which runs an Intel P3 processor.) The nForce 2 chipset also offers its Soundstorm audio, which has features and performance that isn't even matched by an Audigy 2 soundcard (real time Dolby Digital encoding in hardware), let alone any other onboard sound product. (Tom's Hardware had a nice article called "Sound can be hazardous for games" that's a nice read on this.) The nForce 2 chipset also offers things like dual LAN, and onboard graphics options FAR ahead of anything else out there. (nForce 1 has GeForce 2 MX, nForce 2 has GeForce 4 MX level graphics available.)
Intel chipsets themselves are extensively tested and, generally speaking, are very stable. (Unfortunately, I can't say that the Granite Bay chipset is a good choice for a gaming system. The i845PE chipset was excellent. The i865 and i875 will probably be very nice as well.)
With the CPUs themselves, Intel often incorportates new x86 instructions into each new Pentium processor. Since they are the market leader, software companies are forced to adapt. The benefit of this is that since the x86 instruction set as a whole is so outdated adding new instructions can really make a big difference in terms of performance in certain applications. MMX, SSE, and SSE2 instructions are all examples of this. MMX instructions are now widely used, and while not an overwhelming success, they did improve performance for those applications that used them. SSE was much better, and SSE 2 instructions can deliver a big performance advantage in the applications that can make heavy use of them. If you are AMD, these added instructions are not as beneficial. First of all, the Athlon was never designed from the ground up with these instructions in mind. AMD tried to come up with their own special instructions back in the days of the K6-2, and while 3dNow! did make a difference, not enough software was rewritten to take advantage of them. When the Athlon was released AMD added support for about 1/2 of the Intel SSE instructions and called it 3dNow! Professional. With the Athlon XP, AMD added the rest of the SSE instruction set. The problem is that for a time a lot of SSE optimized software ran very fast on Intel machines and very poorly on AMD machines. When the Athlon XP added SSE support, AMD could match the Pentium, but since the Athlon was never intended to fully support SSE when it was designed it can never gain the performance boost from using them that the Intel Pentiums do. AMDs new Athlon 64 and Opteron add support for SSE 2 instructions. When AMD was designing these two new processors they supposedly were considering coming up with their own x86 instruction extensions, but in the end the 3dNow! experience probably weighed in. They decided to not only support SSE 2 instructions, they extended the whole x86 instruction set to 64 bit and added a full 64 bit mode to their processor. That allows the Athlon 64 and Opteron to nearly catch up the the P4 in heavily P4 optimized applications and the full 64 bit mode allows for heavily optimizing instructions to run on your processor. (They dropped some of the really obsolete x86 quirks like segmentation and added some sorely needed extra general purpose registers when running in 64 bit mode.) I think this is the right choice to make for AMD.
Basically what you can take from this is that usually Intel processors are capable of running certain applications very quickly. AMD processors, historically speaking, are well balanced CPUs with good overall performance running all types of applications. (Considering the Athlon, Athlon 64, and Opteron were based on the Alpha they tend to run very complex mathematical software packages very well.)
If I get bored, there's still a lot more I can talk about. ;)
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For me personally its all about price and has been for the last few years. I have owned both Intel and AMD based systems and built no telling how many of each. Yes I do give up some areas with AMD and some others equalize it with the newest/newer P4's but I am happy aside from my motherboard with my system.
If Intel were to become the AMD of the price scale tomorrow I would most likely have an Intel CPU running my system. As it is now I feel that with the variance between AMD and Intel being so small I can go with AMD and beef up in other areas like RAM, power supply, case, sound, HD and video card to make up for the hardly noticeable difference in CPU. Just for one single reason. I am not spending $700-$800 for a just released CPU and another $150-$200 for the top of the line Intel chipset mobo. Which makes it easier to grab that next 512MB DDR SDRAM or even the next big time video card.
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Very good points.
My own situation is a little different in that I run a few software packages (CAD tools - PCAD, Matlab, Spice) which run significantly faster on Athlons so the economy factor doesn't mean as much to me.
Over the past 3 years it is very fair to say the AMD CPUs and supporting motherboards have generally been cheaper than Intel's CPUs. Up until very recently, AMD supporting motherboards have been more upgradable as well. (Only newer nForce 2 boards will be able to support the next Athlon XP released.) Many boards that started with something as slow as a 600 MHz Duron processor could be upgraded as far as a 2100+ Athlon XP and maybe even as far as a 2600+. Intel's P3 and P4 supporting chipsets did not have nearly the upgradablity (CPU wise) as Socket A (462) AMD boards. Intel has had Socket 370, Socket 370 (Tualitin), Socket 423, and Socket 478 during the same time period. Socket 478 also has had 3 different P4 types to go along with it. 400 MHz FSB, 533 MHz FSB, and now 800 MHz FSB P4s all take Socket 478, but only the newest chipsets can support the 800 MHz FSB P4 'C's. In the past, the same was true of 533 MHz FSB P4 'B's when they first came out.
I wouldn't discount the importance of overclocking/tweaking either. Athlon Thunderbirds and the newer Athlon XPs (Throughbreds) are very overclockable. It's possible to take something as slow as an $80 1700+ Athlon XP (1400 MHz true clock) and overclock it to 2 GHz (2400+ level). More recently, newer P4s have also been good overclockers (1.6a Northwoods were popular a while back), but in general Intel chipset boards are not as tweakable as VIA or nForce 2 boards.
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Originally posted by bloom25
I wouldn't discount the importance of overclocking/tweaking either. Athlon Thunderbirds and the newer Athlon XPs (Throughbreds) are very overclockable. It's possible to take something as slow as an $80 1700+ Athlon XP (1400 MHz true clock) and overclock it to 2 GHz (2400+ level). More recently, newer P4s have also been good overclockers (1.6a Northwoods were popular a while back), but in general Intel chipset boards are not as tweakable as VIA or nForce 2 boards.
Case in point $49 XP1700+ in my EPOX Nforce2 board overclocked to 2.2Ghz, and thats on the low side many guys are hitting 2.4-2.5 on avg. some guys have hit 3+Ghz on water cooled setups.
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but if you buy an intel chip someone very dear to me makes more money :cool:
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Originally posted by bockko
but if you buy an intel chip someone very dear to me makes more money :cool:
I love you too.
MiniD
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A large part of the problem lies in the current compiler technology available to make use of all the new whiz-bang instructions availables on newer processors.
Your comparison about Linux performance with AMD and Intel are shining examples bloom25. The current GNU compiler used in Linux is GCC 2.95.x, which has zero support for SSE, SSE2, and only incorporates a subset of the current instruction extensions for the P4.
Thus all floating point on a Linux system uses the standard x87 FP set. Natively, Linux makes little to no use of any AMD extensions in the kernel code.
Good news for the GNU GCC folks though is on the way. The current 3.x.x build of GCC supports MMX, SSE, and SSE2 instructions, plus the full compliment of P4 extensions. The only thing missing the the new floating point registers incorporated into the P4 Xeons.
In Windows, MS Visual C++ (which is probably the most widely used compiler for Windows development) only supports the MMX exensions and none of the SSE/SS2/3DNow extensions.
You have to code support for those instructions in assembly.
That does not appear to be changing any time soon.
If code we created in the native processor instruction set, there would be immediate performance gains to be had for both AMD and Intel. Alas, it is not currently feasible to do this and still support all the various CPU's out there.
I say it is not currently feasible. Actually, it is feasible, but the support would be very costly to do so.
I get tickled about people talking about the AMD Opteron. Oh boy, 64 bit technology. Little do most realize, but a hefty chunk of the most popular applications in the world are still running mostly 16 bit code.
The GCC compiler will be the first to address the 64 bit code issue, as the various UNIX variants need it to get by the year 2038 without blowing up.
MS has not shown much support for AMD, so its not likely they will produce a compiler what does anything natively for Opteron.
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Skuzzy you should know that the Opteron runs 32-bit code as well as 64-bit code - and does it way faster than any AMD architecture has so far.
It offers the best of both worlds, something Intel doesn't seem to be able to match.
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I believe RedHat 9.0 (what I run at home) is using a GCC 3.3 release at this point. I know 8.0 used a 3.2 release. Both of these are quite different from the earlier 2.9x releases.
One of the strengths of Linux is that it can run on many different platforms. (x86, x86-64, Itanium, Sparc, MIPS, Super H, 68000, ARM to name a few.) Most of the kernel is very portable and definately not optimized for one architecture or another. Only a very small section of the kernel is non-portable. It makes sense that the primary compiler used for Linux software would be the same. (Actually an interesting discussion to have at some point would be why Hyperthreading generally results in no performance gain (or even a loss in performance) under Linux. I personally think it is because Windows' moving from kernel to user mode is so painful that Hyperthreading can help in such a situation.)
Microsoft seems to be dragging their feet when it comes to supporting x86-64. Windows XP for x86-64 is taking them forever to finish. Judging by benchmarks under Linux vs Windows 2k/XP, I can now think of one possible reason why AMD pushed the Athlon 64 launch to September. The current Windows versions also do not support NUMA, which certainly doesn't help the dual Opteron systems in Windows benchmarks. I think the problem is that Microsoft doesn't want to spend the time to support x86-64 unless Intel also plans to support it at some point.
I don't think anyone can argue that x86-64 is not a significant improvement over x86. Adding 16 additional general purpose registers, removing segmentation, and removing the need to use PAE to address more than 4 GB of memory (and it's performance hit when doing so) are significant improvements. As far as the importance of 64 bit for the home user, as I've argued in the past, I don't see a big need for it at this point. It's certainly worth mentioning that the Opteron will have much better 64 bit performance than Athlon 64, because it's memory bus is 144 bits wide (ECC memory adds extra 16 bits), versus only 64 bits for the Athlon 64.
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Siaf,..the point I was making had to do with compilers not keeping up with the technology. If they did, we all would experience a potentially large gain in performance.
I was not aware Red Hat jumped on the 3.2 GCC compiler in 8.0 bloom25. That particular compiler had quite a few bugs in the SSE/SSE2 support.
FreeBSD is jumping on the 3.x GCC for the 5.0 release as well.
I do not understand why MS has been so slow in updating the compiler to be able to support the native instructions in the newer CPU's. With all the ties they have with Intel, you think it would be a no-brainer to do, especially since Intel has its own compiler to support the new instructions done.
Linux's SMP support has never been really all that great. The problem with Hyperthreading (while being a very clever design, I must admit) is when a task switch occurs under any UNIX, then the processor cache gets invalidated, which can mean redundant loading of the same code.
As the Hyperthreaded is implemented, they share the same CPU cache, so the performance will be pretty poor as compared to to physically different processors due to the cache not being invalidated for all the CPU's in the system, but only in the one that will run the next code/data path.
Some tweaks in the operating system kernel to make it aware of a hyperthreaded CPU would help alleviate this, but for right now the potential performance gains will not be realized.
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Ok, quit with the price excuse. This shouldn't be a consideration when buying a component. I could understand it when Intel and AMD were jumping 1 or 2 MHZ, but now you can build a system that will last 1 or 2 years before you really have to upgrade (and do you really have to upgrade above 1 GHZ for AH?). As it is now the CPU's that are available are way ahead of any programing being done!
I want to tell you something about the guy who faces you in the morning mirror. Besides being ugly( in 99% of the cases, heheeeee) that is one nice fellow! Now he should be nice to himself and lavish himself as often as possible because he is such a great person! He shouldn't have to settle for an AMD if he really wants that hottest Intel chip:)
You work hard to earn your money and you should reward yourself for that hard work. Spending extra on a hobby you enjoy shouldn't get your panties in a bunch. Giving up what you really want should bunch em! It's more important to turn that money into something you enjoy then it is to hang on to it for who knows what. Money in itself isn't the goal here. Turning money into something you enjoy is. So cut loose and spend, you are worth it! Money is round to roll, not flat to stack!
If money is a consideration when building your system, then maybe you should give up computers as a hobby and start coupon clipping.
I don't want to hear anyone say they bought something less then they wanted because of money. Beg, borrow, but don't steal. You will feel better in the long run if you spend on yourself.
We only have one chance at it so reward yourself as often as you can:)
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One thing is clear these days.... you're having to dig much deeper into things to isolate the pros and cons. In truth, for the last year and a half, the differences have been somewhat negligable. We've had to create very specialized tests in hopes of making them visible.
AMD caught Intel in design. Even passed them for a little bit. Now, they're close enough that one chip really isn't better than the other.
Intel caught AMD in the pricing... well... at least on the higher end stuff. Once again, that has become less of a selling point. When you're talking top of the line, price isn't really a consideration anyways... since you've passed the bang-for-the-buck realm that now resides somewhere between 2g and 2.4g.
So... be cautious of anyone that tries to tell you that you have to buy AMD because their architecture kicks bellybutton or their prices are so much lower. These people are not speaking objectively and are picking and chosing from past history and are not necessarily accurate with the current state of affairs.
Likewise, anyone that tries to tell you that you have to buy Intel because it is the most stable and more trustworthy is also picking and chosing from past history and is not necessarily accurate with the current state of affairs.
At least people aren't trying to seel a piece of crap chip as if it were comparable anymore. And at least people aren't blindly assuming that the other is automatically better anymore.
The processors are just too close to call a winner on. The pricing is just too close to make much of a difference. This is the first time I can remember this type of scenario in this industry. Its good for everyone except those trying to make a proffit.
Now... don't get me started on manufacturing processes or I'll start to look like a company boy again.
MiniD
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Originally posted by OZkansas
Ok, quit with the price excuse. This shouldn't be a consideration when buying a component. I could understand it when Intel and AMD were jumping 1 or 2 MHZ, but now you can build a system that will last 1 or 2 years before you really have to upgrade (and do you really have to upgrade above 1 GHZ for AH?). As it is now the CPU's that are available are way ahead of any programing being done!
I want to tell you something about the guy who faces you in the morning mirror. Besides being ugly( in 99% of the cases, heheeeee) that is one nice fellow! Now he should be nice to himself and lavish himself as often as possible because he is such a great person! He shouldn't have to settle for an AMD if he really wants that hottest Intel chip:)
You work hard to earn your money and you should reward yourself for that hard work. Spending extra on a hobby you enjoy shouldn't get your panties in a bunch. Giving up what you really want should bunch em! It's more important to turn that money into something you enjoy then it is to hang on to it for who knows what. Money in itself isn't the goal here. Turning money into something you enjoy is. So cut loose and spend, you are worth it! Money is round to roll, not flat to stack!
If money is a consideration when building your system, then maybe you should give up computers as a hobby and start coupon clipping.
I don't want to hear anyone say they bought something less then they wanted because of money. Beg, borrow, but don't steal. You will feel better in the long run if you spend on yourself.
We only have one chance at it so reward yourself as often as you can:)
While you guys (MiniD and OZkansas) are right that the current high end stuff is priced comparable to each other...
$383 - Pentium 4 3.06GHz vs. $319 Athlon XP 3000
$67 - PC3500 DDR 512MB
$257 - RADEON 9700 Pro
$222 - GeForce4 TI 4600 8x AGP
(Prices found on Pricewatch.com at 12:45pm 4/28/03)
There are still those of us who can not break down and buy it all at one whack every year or so. My current setup is as follows for length of ownership.
Sound Card - Diamond MX300 - paid $50 in September 1999
Hard Drive - IBM 13.6GB 7200rpm - paid $150 in September 1999
CPU - AMD 1.4GHz T-bird - paid $140 in September 2001
Mobo - ASUS A7V266 - paid $140 in September 2001
DDRRAM - PC2100 2 x 256MB - paid $56 a stick in September 2001
Video Card - Abit Siluro GeForce4 Ti-4400 - paid $250 March 2002
Hard Drive - Maxtor 7200rpm 80GB - paid $150 in March 2002
Anyway I think you get the picture that I only allot myself a few hundred dollars a year. This is what I choose to do personally and this next upgrade coming this summer sometime will have considerably more since I am getting a new case as well along with new CPU/Mobo/RAM and maybe a new video card. So if I bought everything I plan on gettting now here is the break down.
CPU - either AMD or Intel listed above $300-$350
Mobo - for either AMD (Nforce2) or Intel (who the hell knows) $120-$200
DDRAM - $50-$70 a stick for 512MB stick (I always get pairs here)
Case - CoolerMaster case ~$150-$175
Total range - $670 - $865 (just a guess since I don't know which way to head with the Intel mobo)
It all depends on the bonus I get plus how much I need to stick back in the account for expenses after my wife has our 2nd child. So yes for me it is all about the $$$$$$$$ and how many places to the left of the decimal point I have to look at when I purchase something. The closer to two places the better off I am.
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Intel most definately beats AMD when it comes to manufacturing. AMD only has one fab (Dresden) for all of its CPUs. It also doesn't help that their new Opteron uses SOI wafers, has 940 pins, and a die size of 120mm^2 and AMD still uses 200mm wafers.
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Reschke, your current system is more then enough to run AH. Your choise to upgrade it really isn't needed. You are looking at a 3 GHZ CPU by choise now not as a necessity. That is what I was driving at in the first post. You could not upgrade this summer and not miss the upgrade proformance wise. What I want you to understand is that when you upgrade now you will have to live with it for a long time if you want to watch the pennies. So buy to satisfy your wants. Buy what you feel is the best and don't deny yourself that satisfaction. Life is too short to do other wise!
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While what you said was true in that what I have now is more than adequate to play AH. However with the recent drop in prices on both sides of the CPU fence the time is right to step up and get a significantly faster CPU that will work for another couple of years. As for just playing I don't just play games on this system. I do graphics work for advertising and a myriad of other things with this system other than play games.
Yes I have weighed my options on both sides and I still don't know which way I will head. It all depends on motherboard cost at this point as to which way I will head once I walk into the store. But this thread was not about me to begin with I simply gave a different way of upgrading a system over a span of several months
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darnit!
Du bist ein schlauer Hund! :D
ty :)