amd cons?

[Gajdycz]

i know the pros for the athalon line, but what teh cons, besides so big ass prices.

 

[The Mullinator]

In terms of price for performance vs Intel chips the AMD's are actually extremelly good.

One major disadvantage is that they don't have Hyper-threading, so an AMD 64 chip will generally run a single program faster than an equivelantly priced Intel chip, but the Intel chip will be faster than AMD when running more than one program.

 

[Direwolf]

I have to point out that on average, AMDs are MUCH cheaper than Intel. The cons are a slight speed loss when multitasking, and some people have heat issues with stock cooling.

 

[Majestic XII]

I have to point out that on average, AMDs are MUCH cheaper than Intel. The cons are a slight speed loss when multitasking, and some people have heat issues with stock cooling.

Its the other way around really. People have heat problems with their prescotts with stock cooling (or well... pretty much every cooling you can get ).

 

[Asus]

AMD's single CPUs do Photoshop a little slower. Here is a chart with times in seconds.

AMD's single CPUs don't win in as many encoding programs Link.

This is with Single CPUs only by the way. Dual CPU review here

AMD isn't sold by Dell. Is that a Con?

AMD doesn't sell space heaters. (I'm sorry, I had to say it)

AMD doesn't have a laptop CPU really out yet that is made for the soul purpose of saving battery life and not performance.

AMD doesn't make it's own chipsets...that could be a disadvantage I guess. They depend on Nvidia and VIA for chipsets but that is also a good thing since there is no monopolization of the Chipset market on the AMD platform.

Hypertheading is somewhat of a complex idea to understand.
It works with the resources one CPU has and tries to fill the CPU with things to do, basicly.

HT tries allows the CPU to share it's resources to do the most it can is actually a generalization. There are times when HT can cause a performance decrease. Sharing resources can cause one of the threads to stall and leave the CPU hopping on one leg, so to speak.
AMD's design is much more efficent than Intel's, in the way of filling it's pipeline, and could not use HT in the way Intel implemented it.
Intel quite often will not have it's pipeline full while AMD will. HT is a way for Intel to correct that in certain situations.

AMD's pipeline is much shorter than Intels so when something goes wrong it can clear it's pipeline fairly quickly while Intel's P4 will have to wait longer. But at the same time HT allows one of those threads to keep working, hopping on one leg again but this time in a good way.

You will see increases in heavy multitasking or when using workstation programs that are optimized for multiple threads.

Here are some multitasking benchmarks.
Edit:Here is an article that explains SMP and SMT (HT) pretty well.

 

[Rocketman9mm]

asus is the man.

 

[BaNDiT]

absolutely, someone turn him [ASUS] hehe into a mod!

 

[iamaelephant]

Wow, Asus you never cease to amaze me

 

[Gajdycz]

asus, have my child.

now, what is the lowest amd cpu that compares to my 3ghz p4?

 

[TheRook]

either a 3000xp or a 2800AMD64 or a 3100 Sempron (budget but they are stunning little beasts sitting above the xps in gaming tests but below the AMD 64s)

Andy

 

[Asus]

A 3100+ Sempron is a great budget chip. It is on the Socket 754 platform and has an internal memory controller just like the rest of the Athlon 64's.

This is one of the only charts I can find with a Sempron listed among the rest of the chips. Sempron is priced at $141 in the Retail box at Newegg, by the way.
Budget review

 

[bosox188]

Hmm I haven't really looked to much at the Semprons, but if it's socket 754 and already $141, why not get an A64 2800+? And only 256kb L2 cache?

 

[TheHitman5]

The Pentium 4 "C" runs circles around the Athlon XP's, but the Athlon64's are veryyy good cpus. I suggest getting a 3.0C and overclocking it, most of them hit 3.6-7ghz+ on air! No A64 can touch that ATM, especialy with the high mem bandwidth of the intel.

 

[Gajdycz]

can i get a review for amd's competing p4 3ghz?

im sick so i have no ability to do this myself

 

[bosox188]

Oh yeah I forgot that the C's are better, but the A's, B's, and maybe E's are worse than the Xp's. Though I'd say the XP's are a much better value, especially since you can get an $80 2500+ Barton and OC to a 3200+ perfectly with stock cooling.

 

[TheHitman5]

Oh yeah I forgot that the C's are better, but the A's, B's, and maybe E's are worse than the Xp's. Though I'd say the XP's are a much better value, especially since you can get an $80 2500+ Barton and OC to a 3200+ perfectly with stock cooling.

But a "3200" isnt really a 3200

 

[Nex321]

Is it worth upgrading to Athlon64 3500+ socket 939 if you allready have P4 3.06 Ghz? I have a X800 XT PE coming so I need to know if its worth it.

 

[bosox188]

Is it worth upgrading to Athlon64 3500+ socket 939 if you allready have P4 3.06 Ghz? I have a X800 XT PE coming so I need to know if its worth it.

Well you seem to have the money and the 3.06ghz P4 had a 533fsb, it's fast but I think it may be worth it. I would do it, you'll get a good performance boost and with socket 939 you'll be set for future AMD cpu's.

 

[Nex321]

Ok thanks

Allso have this question:

Athlon64 3500+ vs P4 3.06 Ghz Northwood which one is better on deskop? I mean on internet, multimedia etc etc?

 

[Asus]

Ok thanks

Allso have this question:

Athlon64 3500+ vs P4 3.06 Ghz Northwood which one is better on deskop? I mean on internet, multimedia etc etc?

That should be obvious and there is quite a gap between the two.
Just how much performance do you need/want though?

 

[Nex321]

I want my x800 xt pe to run as its supposed to. If I get 3500+ I'll OC it to 3800+ on the first day.

If 3500+ on stock speed is better on everything compared to my current, I'll take it.