Alrighty... need advice.

[sincka]

I am buying a new computer in about 20 days. I was wondering which brand should I get.

AMD
PentiumIII

Also if you guys could tell me why do you think I should buy one of the two.

Thanx :)

[airedale]

Well IMHO I believe that AMD is a wonderful product. I have an Athlon and a Duron. Both of which I love. I have not had any problems with them and they tend to give more bang for your buck.

Just so you know you may have either started a hot topic, or people will not answer at all. This topic is usually split right down the middle!

Also just so you know I came from using Intel products and switched over to AMD - I don't plan on ever going back either!

Thats just my .02!

Adam :D

[Jeepsta]

The great AMD vs Pentium war.

:cool: AMD :cool:

AMD's are insanely cheap compared to Pentium's and give the same, if not better, performance (NOTE: I am not CPU guru, dont quote me on this). I have an AMD Athlon 500MHz and absolutely love it.

[Soybomb]

Ahhhh a hardware question, this I can answer. Go for an amd chip, they are offering the best bang for the buck at the moment!

[sincka]

I am not intending to start any kind of war. I was planning to buy the AMD but my mother talked to some computer *expert* (yeah right). Anyway he said that PIII are better. From what I've read and heard both are about the same and AMD is cheaper :)

Anyway... three think that I should get an AMD so I think I will.

P.S. I can't wait, my computer is so crappy now :(

proof:

Pentium MMX 200
32 Mb RAM
I won't go on...

Thax guys :)

[Derango]

Go with AMD...you can get more for your money that way. I just bought a Pentium 3 866EB Flip Chip (fast :cool: ). I would have got an AMD except that I had a nice Pentium III motherboard.

It would have cost me just as much to get a new motherboard and processor, in addition to twice as much could go wrong.

[Lend273]

Go with AMD. Right now the prices are great.
I have both an Intel PIII 733mhz and
an AMD Athlon 950mhz.
I prefer the AMD.

Len

[newmad]

Originally posted by sincka:
I was planning to buy the AMD but my mother talked to some computer *expert* (yeah right). Anyway he said that PIII are better. From what I've read and heard both are about the same and AMD is...

...find out if the "expert" runs Linux, or knows much about what it is that you are planning to do. I doubt it. And I doubt then if they're much of an expert :)
A year or so with Linux and I can "out-tech" most of the "tech support" experts that I've had to talk with. Read the sig :)

I've been using AMD processors of one kind or another for 4 years straight now, don't think I'll ever shell out the extra $ for the Pentium sticker. But, to each his own...

[Sweendog]

I was reading an article in Computer Shopper that compared some PIII systems against their Athlon equivalents, and the Athlons beat them performance wise. They said it had to do with teh Athlon using DDR Ram and that the Pentiums aren't compatible with it, yet.
I would have to lend my vote to AMD on this one for sure, effectively the same performance for significantly cheaper. Did I mention that the Athlon system tested was a $1000 cheaper than its Pentium counterpart? :)

[ifred]

Really tired right now but . . . AMD!

[aph3x]

AMD rocks... period. i have three boxes running AMD processors, love them all... :D

[Vialli]

Simple. AMD of course.

Who would like to pay more to get just similar performance??

[prince_kenshi]

Originally posted by Sweendog:
I was reading an article in Computer Shopper that compared some PIII systems against their Athlon equivalents, and the Athlons beat them performance wise. They said it had to do with teh Athlon using DDR Ram and that the Pentiums aren't compatible with it, yet.
I would have to lend my vote to AMD on this one for sure, effectively the same performance for significantly cheaper. Did I mention that the Athlon system tested was a $1000 cheaper than its Pentium counterpart? :)

Are you sure it was the P3? I remember reading a similar article comparing the P4 to the Athlon. The P4 had about a 20% clock rate advantage on the AMD chip and cost over twice as much. But the P4 has a half speed numeric coprocessor. It outperformed the Athlon on a few things as you'd expect from the higher clockrate, but when it came to stuff that required a lot of floating point calculations, like 3-D games, the P4 was outperformed. By the way, I recently purchased a Thunderbird 850 and I must say that it performs fine. It was much cheaper than a P3 of the same speed. I say go with AMD.

[jrbush82]

AMD! My last system was an AMD k62 and my newest is a 1ghz amd athlon... they're sweet! If you compare AMD to Pentium Processors, they run faster compared to the speed of the processor. I don't know all to much about the Pentium 4, but from what it seems that I have read, they both have advantages and disadvantages... AMD is an awsome processor, I personally recommend it.

[MBMarduk]

Dude, DONOT NOT BUY PENTIUMS!!!

READ THIS! (there's much more on the site tho...)
http://www.emulators.com/secrets.htm#Pentium3 http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm#Pentium 4

-Mike

[Tyr-7BE]

AMD for sure...I run an 800 MHz Athlon and couldn't be happier with it. What people say is true as well...it has a higher floating point so it can stomp the competition as far as floats go, and almost every graphical/real world application uses floating point math. I'm not sure about the PIII, but the PIV was buggy as hell.
Go with an Athlon, or if you're concerned about cost, a Duron will give you a little less bang, but its price is beyond belief.

[mongrel]

Sure the amd chips are cheaper but there are a few things you need to keep in mind:
Are you going to have a dual CPU set-up and do you plan on overclocking your CPU, if you answer yes to any of those two your only choice can be Pentium. Sorry AMD lovers but no SMP for AMD

[ASCI Blue]

AMD 0wnz0rs j00. Great product, hauls balls, and besides what sounds nastier. PentiumIII or Thunderbird.

[compunuts]

Originally posted by sincka:

P.S. I can't wait, my computer is so crappy now :(

proof:

Pentium MMX 200
32 Mb RAM
I won't go on...


:eek: It's almost the same as one of my servers set up and you said it's crap??? :( :rolleyes:

It's nice to have a fast machine and all but I find my P 200s and 233s do more than what I need it to do.

NT 4.0 at work runs on PIII 500 that cant' beat the heck out of my Linux box with P 200. :D

[ 23 February 2001: Message edited by: compunuts ]

[compunuts]

Originally posted by mongrel:
Sorry AMD lovers but no SMP for AMD
Who would need to run AMD SMP if it can beat the Intel SMP? ;)
My vote also goes to AMD.

[sincka]

No I will not overclock nor have a dual processor. Anyway thank you very much all for answering to my question :)

My mind was set from the beginning for the AMD but now AMD for sure :D

Thanx all!

[Soybomb]

and do you plan on overclocking your CPU, if you answer yes to any of those two your only choice can be Pentium

OMG, you have to be kidding right? Its very common for a Duron 600 to hit 900mhz, 800's at 1.1Ghz, etc......they are awesome little overclockers!

[MBMarduk]

Originally posted by sincka:
proof:

Pentium MMX 200
32 Mb RAM
I won't go on...



Hey now! A P200 is still great depending for WHAT you need it, although 32MB of RAM is really pretty little nowadays.

[legaviu]

Have the following boxes:

AMD 1.2 G Socket A, NVIDIA 64 TNT2, 256KB
AMD 1 G Socket A with NVIDIA 32 TNT2, 256MB DDRAM
AMD 750 Socket 1 with a Trio3D 64MB PC100
PIV 1.4 with 128 RAMBaloney NVIDIA 32 TNT2
PIII - 700 Mhz with a NVIDIA 32 TNT2, 128MB PC133
PI - 166 MHz with a 1M S3 video card
(and a lot of smaller ones )

Intel products will "SEEM" to redraw faster than AMD products, but when you put them to crunch numbers under GIMP (or Photoshop) or use Arcview GIS, GRASS, or any processor intensive situation... the AMD boxes I have (just got the 1.2Gig box) outperform INTEL no questions asked.

So if you like flashy display use INTEL, if you want a REAL computer, dont waste your money with INTEL, use AMD.

MY CHOICE from here onward (used to be an Intel man) is AMD with my eyes closed.

But hey, its your choice.
;)

[ 23 February 2001: Message edited by: legaviu ]

[dante_d]

:cool: AMD :cool:

[bugfix]

Originally posted by legaviu:
use Arcview GIS, GRASS, or any processor

<Geography curiosity>
What do you use Arcview for and does it still have that shockingly bad interface?
</Geography curiosity>

[legaviu]

Version 3.2 of Arc is fine, specially for the newbies on GIS systems. Its gotten a lot powerful than version 2.0

Regarding interface, hey, just have to get accostume to it, thats all.

When you want to do real work, use ERDAS, ARC-INFO, now if you have budget constraints, ILWIS works SLOOOOOWLY, so I prefer ArcView over ILWIS for presentations or MapObjects for final distro over ILWIS or other budget constraint alternatives. :cool: