Difference between AMD and Pentium?

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AMD is supposedly better for gaming and 3d animation, and a ton cheaper too.

Intel is supposed to have better performance on video editing and graphic design, etc., and theyre also a lot more expensive.

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Nov 16 2004 5:20AM

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hucksterjibber15

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athlons are much cheaper, and an amd 3.5 is faster than a pentium 3.5. they rank them differently. Socket a boards are cheaper too i think, as opposed to a p4 board. Pentium is name brand, therefore it costs more, with less performance. i am an amd kinda guy.
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Nov 16 2004 6:10AM

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mikee

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I remember I read somewhere that the biggest difference they found is that once is better at multitasking, and was faster in multitasking situations, while the other was faster when only running one process. I'm not sure which was which though or exactly what it said, but yeah, something along those lines.

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Nov 16 2004 6:31AM

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AMD uses faster components. as said up above an AMD 2.5 GHz will run at 2.2GHz but at running at that speed it is still equivalent to the Pentium 2.5 GHz. hence why the AMD is called a 2.5+ GHz. there technology is just faster and mor reliable than pentium.

i have the athlon 64 chip in mine and its the first chip with the capabilities of running 64 bit technology. doubling the speed of recent processors at 32 bit. it reads data at a rate 2X that of the old processors. turning a 2.8 GHz processor into a 5.6GHz in all actuality. but windows does not fully support the 64 bit so choose for the future if u want 64 bit technology.

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Nov 16 2004 7:30AM

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davidh

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wow, thanks^. that sounded like he actually knew what he was talking about.
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Nov 16 2004 8:00AM

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^hmm well it is my major dealing with computer technology so i would damn hope so my man ;)

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Nov 16 2004 8:10AM

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Justo8484

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does AMD do hyperthreading though? i have a p4 2.8ghz processor with hyper threading, which essentially doubles the processing power of the chip. under device manager it shows my processor as two seperate 2.8ghz processors, so one of those processors can be handling photoshop or illustrator, while the other one takes care of everyday windows functions like networking and such. but the amount of RAM you have in your computer is also a big factor.

Nov 16 2004 8:14AM

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^whats the point of that? i would rather have 2.8GHz of speed with 64 bit's being able to be transferred. then i can have double the speed estentially controlling photoshop instead of just 2,8GHz. i dont know what basic windows operations take 2.8 GHz of processing power to complete. so whats the point in having 2.8 GHz directed only in the opening of folders, running applications, and etc.? i would rather have that power directed into an application, not running something in windows.

but like i said, windows can not completly encript 64 bit yet. the processors are ahead of the software technology.

yeah RAM is big... thats why i have 768 MB DDR PC3200

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Nov 16 2004 8:28AM

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d-loc, for majoring in computer technology, you certainly have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

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Nov 16 2004 8:42AM

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^you must be right

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Nov 16 2004 8:45AM

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I must be, since, you know, a 64 bit 2.5 ghz chip actually runs at 5.0. I mean, since you said it, it must be right.

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Nov 16 2004 8:51AM

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so what ur saying is that it doesnt run that fast technically?

cuz if you dont think that then i dunno what we are going to do with you. i just took a class 2 months ago dealing with networking and how a computer interacts.

all processors before the athlon 64 ran on 32 bit transfer rates. the athlon 64 does double that, transfering double the info in the same amount of time. so yes i would have to say that a P4 2.5 GHz, which is 32 bit, runs at half the speed of a athlon 64 2.5 GHz.

how do i know, well i had 3 months of teaching to go indepth and understand exactly how all bit transfer rates work.

oh and i have a athlon 64 2.7GHz and i know for a fact ir runs faster because i have done benchmark test runs with all my hardware. the only reason it doesnt run at full 64 capabilities is because windoes is 32 bit technology. wait until the new windows, totally new format, no NT anymore or that shit. its completly new from the ground up. it will have complete 64 bit transfer rates.

im also into far more advanced technology than you can imagine. lanemeyers knows whats up with the nano shit going on these days. unrealesed to the public and the average software/hardware user. research needs to be done and people with advanced knowledge need to be present to even to start to begin recolecting what Nano Technology will bring to this world. i myself cant get over the fact of how fast some of the processor speeds are they predict and how advance we will be soon.

i mean just imagine having to buy 1 machine to place in ur home. you then just tell that machine what to make for you and add some ingrediants. let the machine run over night and have basically any electronic you want sitting on the table in the morning. from the simplest radio to one of the most advanced home entertainment systems you have ever seen.

you cant even begin to take in what nano technology has to bring to the human race. we will be revolutionized once the technology has been stabalized at a cost more efficent to americans. currently it cost over $1 million to make just 1 computer made of nano chips and technology.

but soon that will all change and we will then have nano in every electronic component you use today.

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Nov 16 2004 9:04AM

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SkiBumDreams

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well d-loc actually there is a version of windows you can download for free (what free from microsoft) that has 64 bit support, however it is only in beta right now but technically microsoft does support 64 bit, technically.

about the no more ntfs (i assume thats what you meant by nt, please correct me if i am mistaken about what you meant) for the new version of windows due out who knows when they have scrapped the new winfs filesystem for that os. they are still planning on coming out with winfs but it is not scheduled to debut with the next version of windows

while microsoft may be saying they are starting from the ground up on this os i doubt it very much they said much the same thing way back when about ME, that it would not be running on top of dos, which was a lie.

onto amd vs intel. amd is cheaper and wehn compared much more worth the money than intel however intels top end chips are better than amd (this is excluding the amd 64 and 64fx. amds 64 bit processors are something to be reckoned with, their price is something to be reckoned with as well! If you have the money why not invest in a 64 bit chip though. There are operating systems out there that do support 64 bit computing including several linux distrobutions, and macs, i am not sure about bsd but it might, and like i said earlier windows has a beta 64 bit os for free download.

dloc are you runing a linux distro on your 64 bit?

Nov 16 2004 11:54AM

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yeah i knew there was a windows that supported 64 bit but didnt think it was complete. and im not doing any beta testing for microsoft unless they pay me or ensure it wont crash my system.

haha yeah ME was a joke when it came out. im hopin the new version will be new. but on that note if it is new think of all the problems that will occur. the support will be shit cuz noone will know the system very well. and what do you think about backwards compatability if they do make a new OS?

no im not runng linux, i have a custom built PC. which i upgraded about 3 months or so ago when my mobo got fried. so i ended up with the athlon 64 processor, and asus mobo, and a new video card. i think the geforce 5900SE

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Nov 16 2004 12:09PM

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D-loc, I'm not denying it doesn't run faster, I myself have a Athlon 64 3200+. I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily operate at twice the clock speed of a 32 bit CPU.

Most of the benchmarks you have done show that the Athlon 64 is faster, but thats mainly because the FSB is integrated into the chip. Because of the differences in archetecture between an AMD and Intel chip, AMD's tend to perform a bit better; a 3200+ AMD chip tends to perform about the same as a 3.2 ghz Intel chip.

Not only that, it will take years for every application to be developed to support 64 bit archetecture, therefore, buying a 64 bit chip now in hopes to run future 64 bit apps is pointless, because by the time they do come along, your chip will be way outdated.

I bought mine for the performance, but that fact that it runs at 64 bits has very little ot do with performance at this point.

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Nov 16 2004 1:31PM

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npe cruz im sorry to state that AMD labels their processors according to how fast they will run according to Intel.

look it up if you dont believe me.
why do you think you have a 3200+?

well the + is simply there to show you that its not a 3.2GHz but infact something around that nature. probably faster since the conversion ration isnt exact when going from intel to amd. i did a fucking class on this shit not but 2 months ago and i was explained all this.

for example.
my old chip was an AMD 2.2+ GHz. now when you benchmark the chip it shows it as being only a AMD 1.777GHz processor speed, but running at speeds excess of 2.2 GHz. now the way they make the name for each AMD chip is they compare that speed to the Pentium4 1.777GHz and see which performs better. when doing the test you will see the P4 1.777 GHz in fact runs at 1.777 GHz yet when you test the AMD 2.2+ GHz (in fact only 1.777GHz) you get test results up around the 2.2 GHz range. this is because AMD process the info faster than the P4 becasue the way they are built. i cant remember right now without looking in my book what the different components are but they differ.

so that is why they name the AMD 1.777 GHz really a 2.2 GHz processor. since it runs just as fast as a P4 2.2 GHz would run.

cruz do some research then come holla back cuz thats the way i have read and understood. also what my professors have explained to me. so im not dissing you its just what i learned so i gotta go by what i learn in a college rather then listening to you.

my athlon 3200+ 64fx benchmark runs at 2.2 GHz max on the 32 bit config. since windows cant run the full 64 bit it is uncapable of running at speeds of 3.2 GHz.

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Nov 16 2004 1:42PM

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GhostfaceKillah

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pentiums are better for running several programs simultaniously, while amd is better at running 1 program at a time...

so in a way, amd is better for games, while pentium would be better for multitasking with like adobe photoshop, and adobe premiere...

although the performance gain you will recieve from pentium when running several programs simultaniously is minimal
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Nov 16 2004 1:49PM

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GhostfaceKillah

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also a 64 bit chip will only give you like a 10-15% performance boost for non-64 bit programs... there are hardly any 64-bit programs out there becuase there isnt really a stable 64-bit OS... service pack 2 for xp does is compatable with 64-bit cpu's but the performance gain isnt much at all...

that doesnt mean that a 64-bit cpu is useless, they are definatly worth the money
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Nov 16 2004 1:53PM

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GhostfaceKillah

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and the 64-bit version of windows that they have for download definatly isnt worth installing
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Nov 16 2004 1:54PM

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data is data shitfaces. Its all just 1's and 0's and speed is simply the rate and volume its all processed at. There is no chip that will run certain programs better than others. Fat computer fucks that sell computers just say that at the store. If they are selling AMDs then they ask you what you'll be doing with your computer, you say for example 'gaming' then they say 'well AMDs are better for gaming... bla bla bla'.

That said, and internet sites are shady, but when comparing apples to apples, Pentiums, with few exceptions, have always been faster. But Pentiums cost more. The reason people buy AMD's is to overclock them. AMDs on average are easier and yeild better results then Pentiums, plus they're cheaper so its more economical to replace them sooner due to the stress of overclocking. If you want a fast chip outta the box, get a Pentium. If you know what you are doing, get an AMD, overclock it and you'll have a chip thats as fast or faster than a Pentium and costs less.

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Nov 16 2004 3:24PM

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SkiBumDreams

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'its all just 1s and 0s' this is true however the architecture and the alogrithms that architecture of a chip is based on is quite different. Right now in the computing world the biggest bottleneck is not processing power (for the average user) it is still hard drives reading and writing unless you are running some serious raid, the simple upgrading of a processor or ram will add little performance increase as to what the next generation of serial ata drives will offer once they are improved upon a bit. right now even the fastest serial ata hard drives are only slightly faster than the fastest ide drives. serial ata has the capability to be super fast but it is not yet.

64 bit processing with windows now is not worth it (in my humble opinion) the same system benchmarks can be achieved by adding a raid card or other upgrades.

if i was to overclock my puny athlon 1900 to a stable clock with no upgraded cooling, upgrade my ram to something higher than pc2100, and actually buy a decent raid card i could rival any performance gains the latest 64bit chip could produce. especially if you are running a non 64 bit OS

Nov 16 2004 5:23PM

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Currently, 64 bit processors are nto a bit faster then the old 32 bit processors because there is no software (for windows anyway) that can run on them. On top of that, i have talked to this guy who made a 64 bit version of UT 2004 and he said that there were minimal proformance differences. Currently 64 bit technology has no use at all. you take a AMD 3200 64 and a AMD 3200 XP+ and they run at similar speeds. (the 64 is actually worse, becuase you cant overclock it as much, i know form first hand expeirence).

anyway, AMD is much better then Pentium for a number of reasons. for one, the top of the line AMD is faster then the top of the line pentium (according to the current issue of Maximum PC). For 2 becuase you get a shittload more band for your buck with AMD.

and for the record, all of you are wrong about how AMD classifies their chips. for example: I have a AMD 2600 XP+. It cirtanly does NOT run at 2.6 ghz. It runs at 2.08 (well until i overclocked it anyways), and that is standard. It is called a 2600 XP+ becuase eventhough it runs at 2.08 ghz, it is comperable to a pentium 4 that runs at 2.6 ghz. it is how they market them becuase pentuim is the industry standard, people wouldnt band to buy AMDs if they said they ran at 2.2 ghz, becuase that sounds slow.

Another thing that is better about AMDs is that they are much easier to overclock and you can overclock them further. my 2600 is overclocked to 2.2 ghz and running smoothly.
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Nov 16 2004 7:14PM

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the conversion it about .8 AMD MHZ = 1 Pentium MHZ, according to my math. and my bad, d-lock, you got it right the second time you explained it but the first time you said it you didnt.
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Nov 16 2004 7:17PM

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''{that doesnt mean that a 64-bit cpu is useless, they are definatly worth the money''

- only for what is to come in the future. currently they are definatly not worth the money. they are like twice as much for a comperable 64 chip compaired to a regular XP+ chip, but it will pay off in the future to get a 64 bit chip.
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Nov 16 2004 7:20PM

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freezed

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well the processor speed wont help if you are running on a slow, old hard drive...My 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 with a normal hard drive actually runs applications slower than my other computer with a lesser P4, but running two fast 120GB RAID equipped drives.

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Nov 16 2004 8:43PM

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Planet_Captain

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d-loc, if youre really as educated as you say you are on this subject, you really don't sound like it. Especially by saying that a 64 bit processor doubles its processing speed. That is incredibly stupid. You might wanna think about taking that class again...

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Nov 16 2004 10:54PM

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^how does it not? the processor can now send 64 bits of data a second, rather than 32 bits. seems to me like it doubles but maybe my professor was lying to us.

i dont look at things like others would. im technical into bits and shit. and 64 bit is double that of 32 bit. so yeah im saying a 32 bit P4 2.2 GHz is 1/2 the speed of a 2.2Ghz 64 bit. seeing it like this shows that the 64 bit will transfer 2 times the amount of info in the time the 32 bit processor transfers 32 bits of data.

its really quite interesting when you get into the technical bits.

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Nov 17 2004 7:42AM

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Justo8484

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what i was getting at with the hyperthreading business, is that the computer acts essentially as if it is running a dual processor setup. i may be wrong, but i think a processor can only do one single operation at a time, but it seems like more can be done just because of how fast they can be done. with hyperthreading or running a dual processor, the number of processes that can be done in any given time is doubled, because you have two processors working to complete them. make sense? also, bus speed is a big factor in how fast a processor is going to perform as well

Nov 17 2004 8:42AM

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oh yeah i know about hyperthreading but we arent talking about that really. that a whole nother issue. we are on the issue of 32 vs. 64 bit.

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Nov 17 2004 8:53AM

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Justo8484

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except basically every p4 processor intel puts out now has it, so you have to factor that in as well.

Nov 17 2004 8:54AM

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First off 64 bit chips have been around for a long, long time. I have a Sun Enterprise Ultra 5 as my home router. It's 5 yeras old and 64 bit. Many Unix machines in the early nineties were 64 bit. It's just now starting ot make it to the desktop with the Apple G5, AMD Opteron and Intel Itanium.

Basically AMDs are faster for the money, much faster. If you are working on a budget get an AMD. Just make sure to get a good cooling system since AMDs tend to overheat with poor cooling. Intel's won't.
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Nov 17 2004 10:05AM

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D-Loc, I didnt say my 3200+ ran at a clock speed of 3.2 ghz. It, infact, runs at around 2.4. I'm just saying, the 3200+ number (model number) shows what it is comparible to in Intels chips.

You say you have a 2.4'+' ghz AMD chip, I'm assuming you mean either a Athlon XP 2400+ or a Athlon 64 3200+, which actually runs at a clock speed of 2.4 ghz, but, as said before, operates in the range of a 3.2 ghz P4. A '2.4+' AMD chip does not exist, at least not by model name.

You obviously have very little idea what you are talking about, or are terribly mistaken.

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Nov 17 2004 10:15AM

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Also, d-loc, do you even know what it means to have a 64 bit processor, and what the term actually means, or are you just pulling information out of your ass?

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Nov 17 2004 10:18AM

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nopoles

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A quick lesson hyper threading.

CPUs have what is called a pipeline. The CPU is designed to only execute one instruction at a time. But it takes a few stages for that instruction to execute.

So lets stay our stages are like:

1-2-3-4-5

The instruction starts at stage 1 and finishes being executed at 5. Now if it only ran one instruciton it would be very wasteful, only 1 out of the 5 stages would be used at once.

So CPUs use pieplining. Instructions start at the first stage, once done they move onto the second stage. At the same time a new instruction starts at 1! This way the CPU stays busy... or so that's the idea.

Intel's don't do this quite as well. For Intel's marketing machine they decided to make their pipeline very long (more stages). Since there were more stages, each stage did less work. Since each stage did less work they took less time to run. Since each took less time Intel can crank the speed of the processor way up! The higher GHz number means fuck all cauz each clock tick is doing less work than on an AMD or Apple G5.

Intel's also have other problems. Since the pipleine moves so bloody fast they need fast ram. Intel tried to solve this by using Rambus, but it turned out being so expensive nobody would by it, so they went back to standard DDR ram. By doing this, their CPU starvs and their pipeline is rarely - if EVER - full.

AMDs on the other hand run slower but do more work per clock cycle. AMD makes excellent stuff, I highly recommend.

The G5 is even better. It's a RISC architecture as opposed to a CISC like Intel and AMD. RISC uses smaller less complicated instructions (MMX is a set of instructions that take up to 40 clock cycles to execute!). RISC instructions are very fast and simple, the CPU Pipelines are very short and wide. So they can have 5 pipelines running at once, all going very fast.

Onto hyper threading... When a CPU is executing a process it can only execute ONE Process at one. The processe's instructions are broken down into simpler instructions and are exected OUT OF ORDER by the processor's pipelines. The instructions are then put back in order at the output of the processor. If the process is only doing basic integer mathematics (no floating point) then the floating point units (FPUs) of the processor are wasted, etc..

Starting in the last 90s threading was invented. It alllowed for a programmer to make the same process doing multiple things at the same time. Each thread of a process would be ran seperatly by the processor so it didn't help speed, it just simplified the design of the application.

Where hyperthreading comes in is it can execute multiple threads of a process at the same time by putting their instructions through seperate pipelines and execution cores.

This is completly different than dual processor (or symetric multi processing - SMP) where there are two processors running two processes (not two treads of a process).

So there's your CPU primer...

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Nov 17 2004 10:19AM

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cruz you just stated exactly what i said earlier. look at my posts above it explains how AMD labels their processor according to how fast the run with Intel's.

i know their is no 2.4 GHz im jsut stating an example.

i do have a athlon 64fx 3200+, and i know it runs at speed of 2.4 GHz. cuz thats what the system information tell you. ive also done various benchmark tests on my old AMD 2.2GHz which ran at 1.777GHz. the reason they call it at 2.2+GHz is because thats what compares to the P3 2.2GHz.

dude i just finished a college course in networking dealing all the basics of bit mapping and such. i know what im talking about and not just pulling it out of my ass.

its just hard to explain to someone who has no recolet of the subject. plus its hard to type exactly what i am trying to say also, but im not just making shit up.

64 bit means it is capable of transfering 64bits/sec rather than only 32 bits/sec. come on thats the simple part. but yea also FSB and other factors come into play, but i was mearly stating the basics behind 64 bit encription.

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Nov 17 2004 10:47AM

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and cruz any processor speeds exist... just depends on how you set up the parameters in the bios on how the chip will run. you can make any chip run around its specified location. so yeah a 2.4 might not exist as a model number but is easily acchieved by overclocking or underclocking a chip

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Nov 17 2004 10:50AM

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you misunderstood me, I wasn't talking about architecture, I wasn't talking about chips at all. A program is a program, it has a fixed ammount of data to process for any given operation. An AMD running say internet explorer has the exact same ammount of data to process as a Pentium. An AMD running 1600000 programs at once has the same ammount of data to process as a Pentium running the same 1600000 programs. The faster chip is one that processes that data faster, based on architecture an lots of other shit. All I was saying is the whole 'AMDs are better for this shit and Pentiums are better for this shit' nonsense is just that, bullshit. All the chip sees is a whole assload of data, it doesn't care if its from a game or a spreadsheet or the terabytes of porn you're downloading.

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Nov 17 2004 12:05PM

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^ that was for skibumdreams

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Nov 17 2004 12:06PM

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nopoles

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Some CPUs do perform better at some tasks than others. CPUs are all very very different. Different pipelines, execution cores, branch predictors, amounts of cache, etc...

Ever heard of Cyrix? They made pentium-compatible CPUs back in the day. Their stuff ran DOS and windows real well, but sucked really really badly at games. This is because their CPU had week floating point capabilities.

I imagine if the P4 had super fast quad-data-rate ram (really expensive too) it could edge out an AMD at gaming. The fact is that nobody could affoard such ram, especially when AMD's using DDR are less than half the price and perform just as well.

Since each CPU is designed a little different they will definetly do better at certain tasks compared to others.

The thing is you can't classify a specific program as a type of work.

You can't say a P4 will run photoshop better than an AMD. Photoshop will use different parts of the CPU at different times. What you have to compare is each processor's capability and speed at executing different kinds of instructions or groups of instructions.

You'll notice that some benchmarking programs will show a P4 to be super fast compared to an AMD. This is just because they test more functions and instructions that the P4 will be better at. Benchmarks are very biased and can never be trusted.

Both chips run very well, the difference is in the design. AMDs took a more sound design and didn't care so much about clock speed since they knew it didn't matter. Intel decided to go with the high clock speed route so they would have something to market.

But it hasn't worked out for Intel in the end. Their CPUs are way overpriced, their sales are slipping and complications in pushing CPUs to higher speeds has made their P4 lag in performance compared to the competition.

Intel decided to go for the long and narrow pipeline with fast ram approach hoping that they could push CPUs to 10GHz. In practice it's been very tough for companies to push the 5GHz barier, much harder than anybody expected so now Intel's design has nowhere to go.
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Nov 17 2004 1:19PM

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again, you are talking about ancilaries, not the actual chip,of course the memory is going to affect the performance of the system as a whole. I owned a 200mhz Cyrix system, wasn't so bad but the computer store fag said the same thing about one running certain programs better. benchmakring doesnt mean shit since the tests are tainted by all the other equipment, it gives absolutely no indication of how fast JUST the chip is, it tells how fast the SYSTEM is.

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'Dude, check out this nasty gouge.'
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'221 is fucking hilarious'
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Nov 17 2004 1:30PM

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sorry 166mhs cyrix system, then upgraded to a 200 Pentium MMX, those were the days.

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'Dude, check out this nasty gouge.'
'Your mom has a nasty gouge.'

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Nov 17 2004 1:32PM

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No Life

D-Loc, does it say ANYWHERE in this thread ANYTHING about overclocking? I certainly can't find anything.

You're misunderstanding me, I was saying that AMD doesn't have a cpu called a 2.4+ ghz. Overclocking has nothing to do with it.

You are obviously to smart to understand anything I say, so I'll shut up now, for fear of getting pulled into another one of your half-witted posts.

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Nov 17 2004 2:27PM

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SkiBumDreams

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yes all the data is given to the processors at the same time and the procs dont care what the data is however they process that data differently which means that when all that data comes back together there will be a difference.

benchmarking is bull mostly because it does take into account all the other specs on the machine but it is still easy to see which processor is better by getting top of the line products on all sides to support the processor. a better processor doesnt necessarily mean a better processor if no other manufacturers support it worth a damn.

thank you for those very well put together infos nopoles i wish i could have phrased my replies as well.

Nov 17 2004 2:44PM

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hucksterjibber15

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windows longhorn is supposedly able to support 64 bit processing. God knows when that will come out. Apples new g5 chip is able to run with macs o/s i beleive, dont take my word for it tho. apple is ahead of microsoft in every way, but yet i sit here with xp pro, wondering why. software availability.
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Nov 17 2004 2:55PM

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Itsbackfliptime

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my nintendo had a 64 bit processor 7 years ago.

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Nov 17 2004 7:15PM

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