ADM vs Pentium

[IALuder]

which do you prefer?

im custom building a computer, just curious which you guys prefer.

[Wren57]

ADM... hmm... never heard of them... hmm...

OH! You mean AMD? Intel CPUs have a faster front-side bus (FSB), but out of all the computers I have ever had or used, the AMDs have been more stable and predictable.

FYI... I own an AMD powered computer, and some stock in AMD, if that tells you anything.

[ebpda9]

well what processors are we talking about here ? pentiums vs xp+ or celeron vs it's amd counterpart ? pentium hands down

celeron's are a joke....hehe I used to work at Best Buy...you can have a Celeron 5 gigahertz and it'll still be crap..

[IALuder]

i was looking at the AMD anthlon for xp.

i was just curious to which is better AMD or Pentium 4?

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

If you're going to build an AMD, you need a high end barton core XP or an AMD64 if you need power to compare to the highest end P4s.

P4 sucks cuz of overclocked

AMD rule!

[IALuder]

put a chicken if your for AMD.

[armyguy5]

i got an AMD xp 2800 "barton" and overclocked it to 2.8 ghz very stable =) pentium are crap IMHO and expensive

chris

[blind34_1]

I don't know, there seems to be a HUGE amount of opinion when it comes to "who is better". It all depends on what you want the computer to do.

If this is just a machine for word processing, web surfing and other light to medium duty tasks, a budget Celeron will do you just fine. Yes, a celeron is just a crippled p4 with half the cache, but you get intel stability at a relatively low cost. Yes I said INTEL STABILITY. (that's my opinion, but I also run an AMD).

If your building a gaming rig, your going to want to go AMD. They just seem better for gaming. I have no data to back this up, but thats my feeling. Plus you are going to need the extra cash you saved to buy all the other top-shelf items you're going to buy.

If your building a system critical machine, you know for record keeping, data storage, number crunching, etc. A P4 would likely be suited better to that task. Again, I have no data, these are just the grumblings I hear.

Since I predict youre going to go with AMD, learn about them first and what you are going to buy. anandtech.com is a good site for reviews on this stuff. Don't bother with 64-bit stuff yet. Too expensive for hardware that has no real mainstream software support yet. Windows Longhorn is slated for 2006 release, unless you like running a beta OS...

Definatly go with a barton-cored version, any of the higher numbered ones are good. I am considering a 3200+XP ( http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merch...ory_Code=amdxp ), which very closely is said to out perform a p4 3.2 Ghz.

Keep in mind that the numbers that AMD throw on there processor packaging are NOT clock speed numbers. They are pulling a Cyrix trick on this, their reason being that raw speed isn't everything. You can read about this on AMD's site, and many other sites (use Google). The numbers they use are based off of one of their early athlon thunderbird procs, (which also happen to be very close in percentage to the raw speed of p4's..wink..wink)

well at least thats what I know and think...do your research.

ive had an barton 2500+ for awhile now and have it overclocked to 2.2ghz or 3200+ standards.. amd's r much more bang for ur buck and ive found to be more stable..

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by armyguy5
i got an AMD xp 2800 "barton" and overclocked it to 2.8 ghz very stable =) pentium are crap IMHO and expensive

chris

Uh, seriously?? How about some screen shots?

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by pbateson
P4 sucks cuz of overclocked

AMD rule!

Eh, P4s overclock MUCH higher than AMDs at this point. I still prefer AMD for $/performance ratio.

I have a barton 2500+ in my main rig running @ 200x12 @ 1.93V.

As far as processors go, there definitely isn't a champ of AMD vs. Intel. Part of that depends on what you'll do with it and how well your software is optimized for that processor.

The biggest kicker is which chipset to get. The chipset will most likely be a more deterministic factor in overall performance than the processor you buy. Do lots of research before getting a motherboard to support an AMD.

For Intel, 875P or maybe 865 (if you hack the memory interface) all the way.

b

i personally think that AMD's are faster than Pentinums.......a lower rating AMD is faster than the better rated P4's.......

[IALuder]

well im building a computer to do everything. gaming and internet for me and typing word excell crap for my dad. so i need best of both worlds.

but im more into the gaming side. so new question to throw at you ATi or Gforce?

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by SFKing

but im more into the gaming side. so new question to throw at you ATi or Gforce?

I'm sure this will start an arguement, but at this point in the game, ATI. I'm happy with my 9700pro, though its quickly becoming dated. I'd had NVidia cards in the past that I was happy with also though.

[blind34_1]

I would also lean toward ATi. I've heard good things about both Ati and Nvidia. I'm going to go with some variant of a Radeon 9800 when I get some cash together. I currently run a Geforce 2 GTS and that is a kickass little card for being grossly outdated. So really your going to have to look at reviews and benchmarks and decide which one you like better. My vote is with ATI.

If your building an all purpose machine, then dont look at any celerons. go with AMD XP series or Intel P4.

NOOOOOOO NO ATI'S, G-force...if u got a high buget then go for the new gforce 5950 or something like that forgot the numbers.....ati's suck, i've never owned a good ati product

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by vtracer20
ati's suck, i've never owned a good ati product

Then buy a newer model video card ATI has come a long way in the last two years...

Way to go! AMD is the best!

Who care? ATi is even better than Geforce. ATi will be have better graphic.

Listen, overclocking is like turboing a stock motor. I overclocked my celeron 1 gig a while back. It bent over and took it in the ass, but I blew my motherboard. I'm now running a p4 2.4ghz on a soyo p4x400 dragon platinum edition mb.

You'd have to understand chips in general and binary to understand the AMD x P4 argument. See P4's have a math coprocessor. This allows it do to complex math MUCH faster than an AMD, not to mention the fact that windows is built to work with intel CPU's, since ALL computer processing is math and a hybrid combination of AND and OR logic statements.

Games get better performace [if you really believe that, I believe that is more about your RAM and video card, I'll explain] on AMD because they don't have co-processors, they use processor cycle on regular functions, and can do things like transfer memory [ie, blitter images onto the video ram] faster. Now the better your video card and the faster your RAM, the faster and more space your computer has to create frames and blitter [transfer] images onto the primary video buffer. AMD also calls it the AMD XP 2400+ and it's only rated for like 2.0ghz, search more online for details about that.

Think of it this way. Do you want to go through the backache of getting adapters, shift linkages, axles, and wiring for a b18c1. You could get the same performance from a b16a with internals and intakes and it would drop right in and you'd be less likely to have a problem.

Games do not use math anyway. I know that may seem contradictory, but small consoles like game boy can't handle the math. Programmers of games use a trick called bit shifting. See multiplication could take several processor cycles to compute. Addition and memory commands take one cycle.

ycoordinate * 6

that may take several cycles to compute. But if you shift binary bits, once to the left halves the number and once to the right doubles the number. 100 =1 | 010 = 2 | 001 = 4. So break down ycoordinate * 6 into it's binary factors.

[>> means shift bit to the right, << means left, it's actually reversed because binary is backwards, but I don't want to confuse you]
6 = 011, y = 3 or 110
3*6 = 18

6 in exponents of two = 2^1 + 2^2. y*6 therefore equals
(110 = 3)
(110>>1) + (110>>2)
+01100
+00110
=01001
= 18!!!
TADA!!! no multiplication involved

This can complete in one cycle because it involves memory shifting and addition. Pentium or AMD your games will function the same, because programmers try to stay away from math functions like divide, multiply and powers because they can shortcut it to make games faster. So it's really about what ELSE you do with your computer. You'll never find an AMD in a high profile server or mainframe [non-80486 stepping family of processors] because they just aren't reliable. Pentium kicks ass at numbers. AMD doesn't, and for games why would it? In the home PC, it's really about your motherboard bus size, hard drive buffer size, and amount of RAM. How fast would a viper be if it only has 1st and 2nd gear? You're only as fast as your slowest component. Don't worry about processors.

[blind34_1]

good call. my previous post about which procs are better: OWNED.

never thought of it that way. just shows I should do more research.

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

bigbear, you a CpE? I was up all night programming ASM (MIPS) and C last night.

Ok... are you trying to say something?
Let me edit and say I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say.

Originally posted by bigbear

[>> means shift bit to the right, << means left, it's actually reversed because binary is backwards, but I don't want to confuse you]

Whether it's "backwards" actually depends on whether it's big endian or little endian.

AMDs get used in mid-range servers, and now have been used in a supercomputer. The real reason AMD hasn't had many chips used in anything high-end is because they haven't targeted the high-end market with their designs. AMD ignored the high-end until they decided to make Hammer. The only Intels really used for servers are Xeons or Itanics, processors specifically built to be used in servers. Although Xeon is based on the Pentium line of cores, it is by no means a Pentium chip.

As far as reliability goes, that's questionable. Intel has had its fair share of blunders just the same as AMD. Every processor has a bug of some sort (well, many actually), the real question is whether you can get around it.

The larger contributors to your stability are driver stability, data integrity, and heat. Most hardware instabilities people tend to encounter are actually driver issues, hardware incompatibility issues, or heat issues. Choosing the right motherboard and using compatible RAM and add-on cards (with the right drivers of course) will be your biggest success for stability. Whether it's AMD or Intel is mostly a question of chipset stability/compatibility with add-on cards and the OS.

Intel has historically had, hands down, the best chipsets for stability/performance on the market. However they have produced some very unstable and low performing chipsets in their days just as anybody else has. Via has a bad rep for instability and incompatibility, but has made strides in the last couple of years. AMD has made some decent chipsets as has SiS. Performance-wise the gap between the 875P and alternative chipsets for AMD has effectively closed.

b

Whether it's "backwards" actually depends on whether it's big endian or little endian.

Well at the hardware level it is no?

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by bigbear
Ok... are you trying to say something?
Let me edit and say I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say.

Eh, I was asking if you are a computer engineer. That's the kind of stuff we do and you seem to know a lot about it...

Oh ok hahah I wasn't sure if you were trying to be an asshole. Actually I'll be 20 in sept.

I wrote my first program in BASIC on a little VTECH 2 line LCD computer in 6th grade that my grandparents gave me and I was hooked. I started building them for my first job when I was 15. Since then I met a former microsoft programmer [who says a lot of stuff that makes sense once I learn it, but it's very broad and never specific, almost like he has no idea what he's talkin about] who was impressed with my knowledge and gave me a copy of the VB 5.0 professional. I spent the entire summer of 10th grade cooped up trying to fuigure it out. Since then I've ****ed around with PHP, VB, C++, Javascript, Macromedia Actionscript [which I used very uniqely in a school play as part of a backdrop], .bat, .inf. Assembly is the only language I have yet to learn, although I understand it. I'm currently putting myself through community college getting my electronics technician degree and I want to build and LS/VTEC hybrid in a crx with junkyard parts for cheap so I can hack into the ECU and **** with it and stuff. I've been studying in particular game programming and windows architecture because trying to create my own platforms for a device I have in mind would be insane. Rather I should mimick the windows architecture and it's relationship to gaming programming. That's how I know about blitter and bit shifting. I am also familiar, although not experienced, with microprocessors and microcontrollers and their inherit communications principles. I have a lot of stuff I want to do to my car that involves takin electrical components apart and rebuilding them and such, so I'm takin TIG welding [MIG this summer, although I don't know what possible advantages it could have over TIG] and might get my ASE along with my electronics technician degree. I am familiar with everthing about computers except the translation of hex into assembly and the dependance of windows on hardware protocols like .vxd's and their relation to hardware. That is a very closely gaurded secret by microsoft I am guessing. I might dabble in windows CE and see if it has anything to offer me in the area of device creation seeing as it has a host of support for non80486 processors like the hitachi-h7 found in dreamcasts. I was also interested in programming games for dreamcasts because the GNU compiler for windows was capable of building h7 compatible exes that I could burn to cd's with the right headers that could run on a dreamcast. I abandoned that though because it really had nothing to offer me. I wrote a database program in which I used SQL probably in a way it was never designed to be used for a friends dads' mortgage company. I've done macromedia flash presentations that just ran forever for banquets. I've actually got a small prototype website on my computer and apache server. I have ****ed around with, but never had much use for, the windows API aside from game programming. I was contemplating developing a website product management package that used PHP to read a product database and order processing from an SQL database that is managed with a VB server side component that would manage products and orders. I just don't have time for that one though, I'm too busy.

Plain and simple - I'm the worlds biggest geek. I learned all this stuff on my own, not some high school C++ class where they teach you about recursive functions. I've actually written useful shit.

Originally posted by bigbear
Well at the hardware level it is no?

Well I actually was just f'in with ya on that one...shoulda put a jfwy sign in that post. Big-endian and little-endian more appropriately refer to byte-order, not bit-order. I'm assuming that by "backwards" you were referring to bit-order? I guess I'm a little confused on exactly what you meant by backwards in the first place.

It sounds like you've definitely gotten yourself into quite a pile of stuff there. That you've taught yourself everything is good because that's how you really learn it all. Classes don't really teach much.

Assembly is fun but it takes a different mindset when you have to think about registers and the likes. Going from a high-level programming style to assembly can be a difficult process because of how much you need to change how you think. Equally going back from assembly, or just going from assembly in the first place, to a high level language is difficult. At least that holds true for most people, but it's definitely doable and easier for some than others.

A good place to start with learning assembly is on microcontrollers. If you really want to get into that kind of stuff, get something like a Microchip PIC microcontoller and a programmer for it and start having fun. You can get a small proto board and make it do useless crap, but once you learn enough about it you'll find that you can have some fun with them. Their architecture isn't too difficult to learn and understand, as such their assembly language isn't too difficult to learn and understan either. The thing with assembly is that to really write good code in assembly you need a deep understanding of the architecture you're working on.....hence why I recommend starting with something like a PIC.

Good luck with those projects!

b

Yeah I have heard about the PIC, I was more interested in the STAMP until I got some books on it and discovered it's limitations. I was interested in outputting video signal, and that's gonna require a lot of work. Can you tell me right off the bat whether I can program the PIC to do that or am I going to require a low scale video chip like the ATI Imageon? Either way I fuigured I'd have to set up a VRAM setup, so I might as well use the Imageon because it would spare processor cycles that could be better used testing for conditions and blitting. Is that going to be overly difficult to do [wiring those components together]?

The ET degree actually covers assembly on the PIC so I was just kinda takin my sweet time on that.

[IALuder]

its nice to see i created such a discussion.

ok AMD and ATi is what im going with.

now what hard drive and DVD Burn drive should i get. im think of 200GB or 160gb.

[blind34_1]

wow, bigbear you're like me only you've actually applied yourself. I'm also going for the ET degree, and currently doing my sophomore project. We are going to use a Microchip PIC to control a small robot vehicle to drive itself around a predefined track. Then we get to take it to Salt Lake City to compete against all the other ET students doing this project.

Assembly for a microcontroller is really not that bad, and its actaully kind of fun. Then again, I never had any previous experience writing software to control and interact with external hardware. I made a kick ass voltmeter using AD converters using a 68HC11. My pride and joy!

Anyway, SFKing, to answer your questions here, for a hard drive I would suggest Western Digital. I know plenty of people might shoot down this idea, but I have no idea why. WD makes pretty high quality stuff. I use them in almost all applications and have had no brand-specific problems. Most WD products come with a 3 year warranty, which is very handy if a major problem comes up. Pretty much all of the drive manufacturers are price competitive, but the best bang for your buck is going to be WD.

As far as models go, I would take a serious look at their new 10000rpm raptor SATA drive. The are only about 40 gb, but they are hella fast, and if you throw two of them into a Raid 0 (striping) configuration, you've got a VERY fast set of drives. The drawback is if one of the drives fail, you lose all of your data on both drives.

If you are looking for just mass storage for videos and mp3s, then just go with a standard ATA (parallel ATA) drive, 7200rpm, 8mb cache. I just saw this week Office Max is having a rebate deal: WD 80gb, 7200rpm, 8mb cache for $20.00 They are currently taking rain checks because they FLEW off the shelves, but you might want to look at the retail stores for rebate deals like that. If your looking at the higher capacity drives, retail may be a bad idea, because they tend to not offer rebates with those. Go to Pricewatch.com and search for the sizes you want. BTW: MDT (Magnetic Data Technology) uses WD parts.

I personally am planning on 2 40gb raptor drives in raid 0 and two mass storage drives (one is my old ATA 40gb) and the other will be a 80 or 120gb drive for all my music, video, lan party crap, etc.

As for DVD burners, you really need to do your research. The DVD+R format is the unofficial format that will be adopted, so be careful when you go out to buy a drive. Just to be safe make sure you get one with this on it: DVD+r, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, because different standalone players read different formats (that the big brand names for that screw-up)

Brands are a toss up, I'd suggest TDK or Plextor as my top choices. Under that: Pioneer, LITE-ON.

I wouldn't get a non brand name or the unknown brand names, just because you never know what your going to get. You'll pay around $150 to $250 for a good drive. Speeds are going to be mostly 4x, but the 8x's are out, but still pretty expensive.

(on a side note, cd burners are very established technology, and so you should be able to pick a cheapo one with buffer underrun protection for VERY cheap)

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

^^^ I second WD.

I have 2 raptors (36 GB by the way) in RAID 0 and they fly. I also have numerous other WD drives, 800 JBs, 400s, etc. and they are ALL still working. I just had a 1 month old Maxtor die on me though, and it was cooled very well.

Back in the day IBM was the shit. WD was really good because they tried to be like IBM. Maxtor is just plaiiiiiin crap. This dude I know bought one and he tried for like a year to get it to work in his system. He eventually chucked it into the woods. Kingston, Samsung, and Micron RAM are all really good brands. If you can, buy a MB with onboard raid. You have no idea how fast that speeds shit up. Like TuRbO'd NOS fOr tEh CoMpuuTeRR. None of that gay wait time between scenes.

wow, bigbear you're like me only you've actually applied yourself

HAHA yeah, that's where the geek part comes into play.

[ebpda9]

hmm i had only problems with wd. i think i swapped 3 of them in like a year.

Meh, who's perfect? Just get IBM.

[blind34_1]

well, when they do fail, that three warranty should cover you. But if your expected any drive to perform for more than 3 years, thats kind of a lot to ask.

[94_AcCoRd_EX]

Originally posted by bigbear
Meh, who's perfect? Just get IBM.

As long as you don't get a "deathstar". IBM had their troubles too...

bigbear: The PIC won't be any good for video processing. They are good performers for their class, but for video I'd probably go with something specially designed for handling video. PICs are great for doing a variety of jobs (think....microconroller ).

As far as wiring and everything goes, it's pretty simple. You can get simple proto boards and sockets for the chips and hook stuff up. You may need a little soldering for the chips, but wiring can usually just be done using regular wires for protoboards. If you really want something compact you could always go and do your own traces with a kit, that's handy if you want to set up your own form factor and have no wires protruding.

On hard drives.....ok so here's the deal. IBM used to be the shizniz until they shifted manufacturing to I believe Hungary. They had so many problems it became unprofitable (not to mention class-action lawsuit) and sold the HD business.

WD used to use IBM components, that's why they "tried to be like IBM." It was basically a rebadged IBM drive. Not anymore, not sure if they're back to manufacturing their own or not. WD hard drives only have a 1 year warranty now. Unless of coure you go SCSI, or maybe SATA. But the Caviar line is 1 year warranty. They can be acquired very cheap, but also have a bad rep for failure.....then again, I just bought an 80 GB WD Caviar.

Seagate and Maxtors are supposed to be quieter than the WD's. Not sure how they are on reliability.

If you get a 7200 rpm or above drive, invest in some cooling for it. A HD bay cooler works very well. It'll definitely drown out any noise the HD makes.

3 years for a HD is nothing. The fact that people even believe that shows that they've been brainwashed by crappy manufacturing and quality control standards for the last few years. A HD ought to easily last you 5-7 years under normal use. If you leave your system on 24/7 and never powerdown the hard drives and do lots of data processing on them, perhaps 3 years is a more appropriate lifetime....however for most normal computer users 3 years is pretty short. The fact that drives are commonly dying within anywhere from 1 day (IBM) to 1 year (anybody) is pretty shoddy in my opinion.

Raid is definitely an idea worth considering.

b