AMD or Pentium CPU?

[Pesmerga]

I'm stumped.

At one glance, Pentium's look and sound so much faster, but then again, AMDs cpu's are noted to be just as good as Pentium even if their clock speeds are lower.

I'm pretty torn between the two, and I'm wondering what would be best (Looking to match minimum specs for HDR in hl2) for general gaming and video editing. If someone could lay down the law on both, that'd be awesome.

 

[lister]

The differences between AMD & INTEL....

Intel:
1) Brand name
2) Faster core speeds
3) Hyperthreading (most models) [tricks Windows into seeing "two" processors, improves performance some (5%-15%) in multi-tasking situations; on rare occasion can DECREASE performance slightly in some applications]
4) Newest chips support LGA 775 (new socket type) and the matching motherboards have PCI express (new add-on interface) and DDR2 memory

AMD:
1) Price
2) Get more done per clock cycle (that is why slower chips can tie or outperform Intel chips)
3) 64-bit processing (on Athlon 64s only; not yet supported by Windows, but a 64-bit version is in the works, so in the future performance of these chips will increase)
4) On-chip memory controller (again, only Athlon 64s; this allows faster, more direct access to the system's RAM and increases performance in memory-latency intensive applications)
5) Generally easier to overclock (be carefull with ANY OCing, though)

then go by their rating for general use, for games the AMD will beat P4's with clockspeed equal to their rating, and for media encoding the P4 will win.

Normally the AMD chip will give you more power for less money.
There, hopefully that actually answers your question a little better

 

[Vorac1ous]

Depends on what you plan to do with this computer. Are you going to be doing alot of video editing, or just a little? Would you want speed over quality, or quality over speed?

If you're mainly going to be gaming, I suggest an AMD 64. AMD's are not as fast as the P4's in FSB speed or Ghz speed but they tend to be more reliable, thusly they are of better quality.

If you're going to be mainly video editing, a P4 is the better choice. The P4 is faster & can handle the higher quality graphics that are involved in video editing.

 

[the_lone_wolf]

If you're going to be mainly video editing, a P4 is the better choice. The P4 is faster & can handle the higher quality graphics that are involved in video editing.

it's nowt to do with graphics, the processor doesn't know what program is using it, it only "sees" a series of instructions to which it responds in a certain way. the architecture of the Intel chips is just better suited to the instructions given when editing/encoding video etc etc, but thats not to say they won't be good at gaming, just AMD's are better (in HL2 benchmarks my 3000+ outperforms the 3.4GHz P4).

in the same way AMD chips are just fine for video editing/encoding, i use mine for it and it's still plenty quick enough. if the equivalent performance chips had the same pricetag it would be a tough choice, but since AMD's prices are much lower the choice for this generation's processors wasn't difficult for me at all

oh yeah, AMD chips run cooler as well

 

[Pesmerga]

Thanks for the replies. It looks I'll being going with the AMD64 3000+.

Another question...with HDDs, which Interface is ideal? Is there a huge difference between IDE and SATA? Or SATAII and SATA150? If you could clear up the confusion, that'd be great. Thanks.

 

[FictiousWill]

Sata drives don't use jumpers and have much smaller cables that don't restrict airflow in your case. If you can, go for sata.

 

[Pesmerga]

Thanks again... but now there's an IDE / SATA choice for the cd/dvd drives! Ack! Does the motherboard have specifications to be compatible with the drives?

 

[duffers20]

I dont think that there is a performance gain from using an SATA optical drive over an IDE version.

 

[NonStopableForce]

Amd

-nsf

 

[Tr0n]

AMD for teh win.

 

[Pesmerga]

okie dokie, going with an AMD64 3000+ then, thanks!