The AMD conspiracy ???

[windog]

Firstly ... there isn't "actually" something like an Intel- or an AMD-PC. Both those are only a component inside the PC, neither manufacturer make the entire thing for you (it's like Bosch making parts for cars but don't make cars themselves) ... just the "brains" (or CPU - Central Processing Unit) - which is a rather small chip placed onto the main board inside the box.

Well let me jump right in, Firstly the main-board/motherboard contains multiple chipsets made mostly by eastern manufacturers, it is not AMD or Intel chips driving the graphics or not on all models. You get Via, creative, Invidia, SIS. Now the RAM or memory can be Samsung to Kingston depending on taste.

Still the main component would be the CPU or now known as APU depending on model. For the most part Intel is dominant this was due to the fact that early day AMD systems had a tendency to "pop" There were no money in their unstable product so it got a bad reputation.

That said the new AMD systems still run like toasters but thanks to innovations such as heat-pipe cooling and even liquid cooling AMD is running much more stable. It is worth pointing out that if you install liquid cooling it is considered safe to use if you do it correctly! There are also non conductive liquids available that will add to your peace of mind.

As for the most part the NEW AMD systems give you performance especially in gamming. It is not as slow as most will tell you. Yes the benchmarking utilities will give it a low score but in actual game play an example would be FEAR 3 you can expect all the blood and gore and more.

Intel became too expensive if you look at the 775 Quad-Core it maintained a high price till end of life. To date their Core i3 is a pi$$ poor excuse of a CPU. If you cannot get an i5 don’t go for Intel.

I only suggest if do go for AMD spend that little extra and get a proper cooling solution to go with it.

[nico42]

You are scaring me^^ I will never buy an AMD computer

[irneb]

I wouldn't say "Never get an AMD". Just make sure you have decent cooling and you should be fine. As windog states, for some purposes AMD actually performs faster (and as I've also stated AMD's 3d calculations through the 3dNow acceleration used to be faster than Intel), but stop me if I'm wrong: doesn't gaming performance have more to do with the GPU than the CPU/APU?. Though these days for my line of work the 2nd Gen i7 is simply the best performance/price/stability ratio. Who knows, perhaps the new year will usher in an awesome AMD and my advice would change - though it would need to be truly AWESOME to surmount the stigma of their overheating from earlier.

For me robustness is maybe a bit more of an issue than speed. Usually I'm rendering 3D graphics to huge resolutions (in excess of 9000x4000 pixels) so a single frame can take anywhere from an hour to several days of 100% usage on a multi-core CPU. Thus far the i7-2600 has not given any overheating issues in the past year or so. Actually I should be using a Xeon for my purposes, but they're simply too expensive for the same performance - they're supposed to be made for servers and are meant to be as robust as they come, but the price simply places them outside my range. The AMD's I've used previously would constantly shut down if they had any overheating safeties (if not they'd simply melt), I haven't tried liquid cooling yet - but that again starts upping the price over my budget.

On the low-end PC's (i.e. Celeron/Sempron/Atom/etc.) you'd not expect such massively extreme use anyway. Those would usually be installed in a PC/Laptop/Notebook for general purpose email and letter writing, not gaming and long running calculation. So here you wouldn't need as great an emphasis on robustness, and thus the overheating becomes less of an issue.

My point is that using AMD is not necessarily cheaper than using Intel. For your purpose you might find that the AMD is sufficient or even better than the equivalent Intel (even if you have to incorporate extra cooling). But this isn't the case in all scenarios, and sometimes the pendulum swings the other way as well: both in terms of new developments every now and again, as well as in terms of the particular use you place on the CPU. So stating that AMD is cheaper, is far from a blanket statement (especially if not specifying which AMD compared to which Intel ==> Sempron is WAAAAAYYYY cheaper than Xeon, but you can't be expected to compare the 2 now can you?) - whether it's a 50-50 statement is debatable as well (depends on scenario).