What's your ideal CPU?

[Gandalf2041]

Assuming a budget of ~$2000, what CPU would be in your ideal machine and why?:

Intel (Pentium/Xeon)
AMD
Motorola (G4)

If you know of any UNBIASED hardware comparison sites, please post them.

Thanks

:)

[Gertrude]

A CPU for $2000?

[Hayl]

<snore>zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz</snore>

[Gandalf2041]

No, a system w/a specific CPU. Sorry I wasn't specific enough.

What's with the z's Hayl? I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm just trying to decide what my next hardware platform is going to be. I don't have the familiarity with hardware and I'm trying to solicit more experienced opinions.

[grunt_user]

I don't know what they cost but here would be my list
opteron system
Gforce4 video card

The only site i know of for hardware is www.tomshardware.com it does do all it's tests with windows but there are starting to be more and more linux test.

[Hayl]

Originally posted by Gandalf2041
No, a system w/a specific CPU. Sorry I wasn't specific enough.

What's with the z's Hayl? I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm just trying to decide what my next hardware platform is going to be. I don't have the familiarity with hardware and I'm trying to solicit more experienced opinions.

i'm not starting a flame war. was just bored. : (but it will turn into a flame war if the AMD and Intel people start bashing each other - which they probably will)

[Gandalf2041]

Yeah, good point :p Actually, I guess what I'm really looking for are the pros and cons of each architecture so I can make an informed decision. I just haven't found any good sites. You know of any?

[Hayl]

it's hard because benchmarks are never fair.

the Intel people say the AMD ones are unfair and the AMD peopel say the Intel ones are unfair. Same with Graphics Cards. Same with Apple Mac benchmarks.

[Gandalf2041]

OK, OK I get it...depends on who you ask :)

[RWiggum]

General consensus -

AMD: cheap, hot, powerful; preferred by gamers, home builders - works great with an nVidia nForce2 mobo, can be quirky with a VIA chipset. Buy a giant copper heat sink and as much ACFM as you can stand to listen to.

Intel: expensive, not quite as hot or thermally sensitive, takes more MHz to match recent Athlons; preferred by corporations, OEMs, and those who buy into the "Intel Inside" marketing machine. Possibly more stable due to Intel mobo chipsets, could be a placebo effect by those hoping that their overpriced P4 purchase was justified somehow.

Motorola G4 - extremely expensive, slow, can't keep up with current x86 products. I'm not just talking about clock speed, either - a 1GHz (current top-of-the-line G4) doesn't hold a candle to a P4 3.06 or an Athlon 3000+. Obviously you're going to have a hard time building your own G4 system (it can be done) - which means you're probably buying a Mac. If you want a Linux box, blowing 2-3 large on a new PowerMac just to remove OS X is a waste of a lot of money.

Oops - you wanted unbiased. I like AMD chips, warts and all. You'll never find an unbiased opinion; everyone has a favorite. And for a nice $2000 Linux box, I'd probably buy a stripped Sun Blade 150 with a 650 MHz UltraSparc-IIi. It's expensive, but a hell of lot better quality than commodity x86 stuff.

[jedthehumanoid]

my computer at work is an intel based machine and my main machine at home is AMD. I like AMD for prices and I've found that there boards seem to allow a greater range of processor speeds again helping cost but really I would have to say if you got the cash go with intel. Having less noise from fans is great. (believe me, i just moved to an apartment that has all hardwood floors, so you can imagine how loud those silly fans seem now. I might have to buy intel next time unless i can find a good heatsink fan with a low amount of decibals..... i found some good case fans that are quite enough but i haven't managed to find one for the heatsink and all it takes is one loud fan to bother you.

[Hayl]

Originally posted by jedthehumanoid i found some good case fans that are quite enough but i haven't managed to find one for the heatsink and all it takes is one loud fan to bother you.

http://www.quietpcusa.com/

i got one of their acoustic kits and it has greatly reduced fan noise.

they also have the best selction of quiet cpu heatsinks and fans i have seen.

[Molecule Man]

I would also suggest investing in a quality Power Supply. I personally have an Antec True Power 420w. I love the thermal control strategy. The PSU fans are thermally controlled and there is special molex leads for the case fans so all six case fans ( 4 80 mm on the case and two in the PSU) end up being as quiet as your typical notebook set to noisy or "performance". Meaning if you are in a quiet room you have a bit of white noise, but have any noise in the backgroun (ie TV, radio, games) it is unnoticeable.

http://tomshardware.com had a recent review about PSU's. About the only thing that was not mentioned and should have been, is pay careful attetnion to the Amp rating on the +12v rail. For modern systems, meaning Athlon or P4, it really should be 18A or better.

Ideally I would go for an Opteron, but realistically I am waiting for Athlon64's to come out.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by RWiggum
AMD: cheap, hot, powerful; preferred by gamers, home builders - works great with an nVidia nForce2 mobo, can be quirky with a VIA chipset. In Windows. In Linux, the nForce2 drivers are still in the beta-quality stage (for example, there is no way to get nForce2 AGP support except from either an EXTREMELY experimental kernel patch, or nVidia's video drivers -- so if you don't want to patch the kernel, and you have an ATI video card that you want AGP on, you're screwed).

The nForce audio drivers also leave a bit to be desired, but they're getting there (the ones from nVidia, that is -- and to be fair, the previous release was a LOT worse). Haven't heard anything either way with the network drivers, and the IDE drivers are now part of the AMD Viper IDE driver (at least, in 2.4.21-rc6 they were).

So support is getting there, but it's taken a while.

My KT333, OTOH, worked quite well right away. *shrug*

[RWiggum]

Hmm - I probably should have been more specific. I'd agree with that. I have fought with crappy VIA4in1 Windows drivers for about four years now. I have always found them to be the weak link in an otherwise nice platform.

However, I haven't had any problems with my VIA based boards under Linux. I'd always assumed it was more of a hardware than software issue - and who am I to argue software issues with bwkaz? :p

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not own nor have I set up an nForce mobo. I have only heard that they are much more stable and better supported for the Athlon than VIA has ever been able to provide. If drivers are VIA's greatest weakness, they are one of nVidia's greatest strengths. In hindsight though, those comments/experiences were all coming from the Windows camp.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by RWiggum
- and who am I to argue software issues with bwkaz? :p Actually, go ahead. If I'm wrong (on anything), I'd like to know about it. :)

If drivers are VIA's greatest weakness, they are one of nVidia's greatest strengths. In hindsight though, those comments/experiences were all coming from the Windows camp. But then, in Linux, the drivers aren't written by Via. They're written by a couple of very smart kernel hackers. :D

The nForce drivers for Windows are good, that's right. I believe the nForce drivers for Linux are just not kept up well enough, and I think that's their problem. With more and more support moving into the kernel (I, too, am waiting impatiently for 2.6 ;)), though, the time that that will be true seems very much limited.

[iGuy]

So, what about a G4 RISC chip? Paste Eater, your specs are wrong. [ A dual G4 system can produce over 20 gigaflops.] And it does not have the 640K memory hole that still exists on PC systems. [RWiggum, I must disagree]

Or you can get really serious and go SPARC. {RWiggum, I must agree]

Besides there is something about not even being the Intel part of WinTel.

[Sastraxi]

For Linux, I'd have to say AMD. For anything else, I'd have to say AMD. But especially for linux. GCC3.2, when optimised for the Pentium4 architecture, creates invalid SSE2 instructions. There are no invalid instructions when optimised for Athlon XP machines... therefore you *could* actually get more power out of the Athlon on certain occasions.

But I'm with the normal reasons, more bang per clock, more bang per buck, etc. etc.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by iGuy
And it does not have the 640K memory hole that still exists on PC systems. There is no such thing as a 640K memory hole.

Sorry.

There is a 640K limit (actually, the limit is at 1MB, but the BIOS has to go somewhere in that space, so it gets put above 640K, or at least, that's where DOS maps it), but only in real mode. When you boot any operating system nowadays, real mode is replaced by protected mode as one of the very first things that happens -- and once the OS switches the CPU into protected mode, the memory limit jumps up to 4GB (and it can go higher, up to 64GB, if you use special options in the OS kernel).

There might also be a 15MB-16MB memory hole, but that should only be enabled if you have any ISA hardware that requires it (almost no ISA hardware does anymore, since almost no one uses ISA stuff).

[trilarian]

I've gone full circle from AMD and Intel many times in my struggle for the ultimate cpu, never liked Macs or G series cpus. Currently, and before I say this I have all AMD processers now. Intel's top of the line if faster than AMD's top of the line. But is just the fastest worth the double and triple AMD prices? Thats for you to answer. The latest thing Intel has done has made me boycott Intel along with M$(been boycotting M$ for years now). Check outthis (http://www.bluehaze.com.au/unix/palladium.html) for some info on palladum and the fritz chip. Do a little research and some common sense and you will see why I ban Intel as well now. Good luck deciding on a system.

[arkaine23]

I'd go for Dual AMD Barton 2500+ in a MSI K7D Master. I'd modify them so they were SMP capable and up the multiplyer and FSB, hoping to get about 2.3 to 2.5 Ghz from them.