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Intel v. AMD; NVIDIA v. ATI
vexxed13
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm trying to design a new computer to from scratch. I'm not entirely up on which companies are in the lead anymore. Last I knew, Intel was beating AMD soundly and NVIDIA was slightly up on ATI . Are these opinions generally true? Is the NVIDIA/ATI thing mostly a preference still?
Where do you guys find out if a new card/processor is a clear-cut winner over its competitors?
Where do you guys find out if a new card/processor is a clear-cut winner over its competitors?
vexxed13 on
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Nah, i'm just messing with you. No sane person should ever choose VIA.
On a more serious note, Rook is correct. It all depends on your budget, technically the best graphics card out at the moment is an nvidia card. However price to performance wise the best video card out right now is an ATI card.
So, if you had an unlimited budget you'd go for an Intel processor and an nvidia graphics card. (for example)
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Intel extreme CPU
Nvidia 280 GPU
middle 'o road
Intel Q6600 or E8400
ATI 48x0
Low budget
AMD dual cores
Nvidia cards
Dont' buy an AMD chip unless you're really on a budget, and don't buy a more expensive card than an ATI 4870 unless you have money to burn.
Is it just general consensus (like omgduh 360 graphics > Wii graphics)?
All of those!
Tom's Hardware has good and easy to understand ratings.
Also, core clock will tell you something, but an Intel Q6600 running at 2.4 GhZ or whatever the stock clock is is still going to kick the ass of an AMD Quad-core at 2.4 GhZ
The GPUs it's pretty much all benchmarking, since you have cards like the 9600 which are only slightly worse than the 8800GT even though they have something like half the stream processors.
all of the above. I'm not *as* up to date on exact CPU specifics, but I do know the sweet spots for CPU's, and that right now the intel core 2 architecture kills anything AMD has.
As for video cards, I just bought one, so I looked at them pretty heavily before I bought. the sweet spot for GPU's is the 4870, but with the recent price drop of the GTX 260 it's a bit more of a toss up. I'd still go with 4870 because it's about 5% faster than the 260 and is still about $30 less.
in the $200 space the 4850 is currently the best card.
in the low end space the 8800GT and 9600GT are fighting it out.
At the very high end is the GTX 280. IMO a waste of money, but if you have $450 to burn, and absolutely have to have the best of the best, that's the card to get.
The triple core processors were acutally there first quad core processors but they fucked it up and couldn't have all 4 cores on the chip running so they deactivate one and sell them as triple cores lol.
But yeah the main things to look at are Cache, Front side bus and clock speeds but even then that doesn't tell you everything. My favorite processor right now is the Q9450 (2.66GHz, 12MB of cache, 1333FSB low, 45nm chip) it's a beast of a CPU at a relatively cheap price, at least compared the the next step up processor which is only marginally better in the clock speeds
So now I have to choose, do I go with the weaker CPU for brand loyalty, but then also get ATI to support AMD, or do I go with a cross combination of AMD and Nvidia, despite the fact that it may lower performance overall that AMD and ATI would not have. Ugh.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
I used to love AMD as well, alas I moved over to intel with there new line. Lets just say the grass is greener over here friend
They've cleaned those up in the latest stepping (chips that end in 50 rather than in 00).
Meaning the first Intel quad core processors were two dual core processors on a single die and because of that when they needed to communicate that had to be done via the bus rather than in-processor like the AMDs quad cores?
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Yes, Intel's quad cores are two dual-core dies basically duct-taped together. The two cores on each die share L2 cache (each core has individual L1 cache), but to go between dies they need to traverse the front side bus, which is basically just as slow as having two dual-core chips in two separate sockets (but I guess it makes motherboards cheaper). There are very few scenarios where this is a bottleneck, although right now my area of research concerns one case where it actually is a problem (basically anything bottlenecked by inter-process communication).
AMD's chips have four cores all on one die: each core has an individual L1 and L2 cache and all four cores share an L3 cache. Intel is supposedly coming out with a 6-core (on one die) chip before the end of the year but I personally think it'll get delayed into 2009 and be fantastically expensive once it does come out.
i know very little about the inner workings of processors, more of a macro guy in my understanding. so does that mean that while intels quad cores are faster right now they will fall behind the next line of AMD quads? or are there other reasons why the current AMD chip (9850 phenom) isnt out performing an intel chip (Q9450)?
oh and as a side note, will that 6 note chip be 3 dual cores, 2 tri cores, a true quad and a dual core or a true hex core?
Intel is going to go with a unified design whenever they think it's worth bothering with.
Intel's six-core Dunnington chip will have an L1 cache for each core, an L2 cache for each "pair" of cores, and have all six cores sharing an absurdly large 16MB L3 cache. It will probably cost a fortune and I wouldn't be surprised to see it mostly aimed at the server market (edit: in fact rumors are that it will only be availiable for that weird Xeon socket). Most of Intel's efforts are going towards their new socket and the new architecture that will go with it.
What are you doing with it? Gaming: go with a faster dual-core. Something processor-intensive that's not gaming: varies by application, find some benchmarks.
there isnt much difference in most applications between a 2.6 ghz dual or a 2.6 ghz quad.
the difference mainly comes in overclocking and multitasking. you can multitask on a quad better and some of the newer intel quads can be overclocked to the 3.5 ghz range.
Woah, hey. There isn't much difference in most games between a dual and a quad of the same speed. If you're encoding video or running a processor-heavy server or something, you bet your ass you'll see a difference.
(and you can overclock a dual-core higher in most cases because it will be generating less heat because it has fewer cores)
Intel has had motherobards with dual sockets since the Pentium. They just cost a fuckton more and require specialized processors, that's all. And that's never going to change.
AMD is still king of the budget, Intel hasn't managed to steal that crown since the heady days of the Celeron 300a.
How much this actually matters is really contingent on your budget. If you've got 400$ to lay down on a video card / cpu / mobo / memory, you're going to be a lot happier as a gamer if you saved money with an AMD processor and ended up with a good video card instead of a budget model.
If your goal is to build a rig that performs within the top 10% of gaming rigs, you're going to be annoyed at yourself for building a system with AMD processors that just don't go as fast as their Intel counterparts. Intel just has more headroom up there.
I build a lot of systems every year from both camps, and don't find much to complain about either way these days. There are great (solid) motherboards available for both platforms, video compatibility (despite the ATI/AMD merger) isn't an issue, and in general there's a lot of performance to be had for the money. AMD's problem is their high end. If you have an infinite budget, you'll quickly cap out on CPU performance with the AMD platform. Offsetting this somewhat, you have a protected upgrade path in the sense that you can easily build an Athlon 64 X2 EE system today and upgrade to a quad core Phenom tomorrow (AMD keeps a list of low-watt phenom compatible mobos.) Intel's problem is that they like to grind our bones to make their bread. Seriously though, nothing wrong with Intel, just that on a budget, AMD wins.
Budget conscious gamer? If spending a dime is painful, go AMD. The better video solution you'll get out of the savings will mean a whole lot more overall performance and you'll probably get one more upgrade's worth of use out of that mobo/memory.
Money's no object? Go Intel. Nothing's faster and the dual-cores are sweet for overclocking right now.
Now of course you're somewhere in between, but you need to tell us where and fill in some general information for us to help you out. How much, about, is your budget? Are you building a full system or scavenging your old one for an upgrade? It sounds like you might have some 3d cards in mind already so I'm assuming you're a gamer. What sorts of games do you normally play? Is your goal to be ready for a specific game, or just future proof yourself a bit?
A number of AMD's sub-$300 quad core chips have unlocked multipliers. So if you are wanting to overclock and not spend a ton, that's probably the best option.