The Truth:Are AMD's as responsive as Intels

[Vinny77]

I have been a long time intel user and supportor and I am looking into buying a new system to upgrade my current one in my signature.

I am looking to get a

Asus A8N32-sli deluxe
and
Operton 165

Ive always considered intels to feel smoother than amd's in everyday desktop applications as well as in games. To me Intel chips just feel smoother, and AMD chips seem to feel slow and possibly clogged. Not sure if its the architecture or somthing else. My brother currently has a AMD xp 2500+ system and it feels horribly slow compared to my current system. But my computer is faster, but I still get that general feeling of it being less responsive.

Ive never used a AMD 64 system, but from what I have read they are pretty much the same feeling as the XP, they play games great but still have that general feeling that I have been talking about, them being less responsive and somehow clogged. In my reading many have said, if you need multitasking and a very responsive system do not go for a single core AMD, as they have this general feeling I am trying to explain.

so in general the current Intels dont really offer me a great improvement on my current system. so its either I keep what I have or I get the system which I listed above with the Operton 165.

I know for a fact that AMD chips are better for gaming, My true concrean is everything else, and my main concerin is that feeling of an AND sytem feeling less responsive and somehow clogged, do the Operton Dual core and the X2 series processors from AMD have this feeling of what I am talking about. Im not trying to bash AMD, I just wnat to get the best product for my personal needs.

 

[BitByBit]

Most people who've used both Intel and AMD systems would disagree, as the general consensus seems to be that Athlons and Athlon 64s in particular are 'snappier' than P4s, with the latter occasionally being described as sluggish, though my own experiences with this system wouldn't lead me to describe it as such.

I suppose alot of it is down to the individual's expectations; if you've convinced yourself that Pentiums are faster and smoother than Athlons, then you will continue to draw that conclusion in future comparisons. I'd suggest reading up on other user's experiences.

 

[Markfw]

Well, the only thing I can tell you is that my P4 2.66 gig Dell at work is horrible compared to my Athlon64 3000+ single-cores, and my X2's are just as good as my dual opterons. Thats not a real fair comparison I know, but The difference seems much greater than 2.66 to 3.0 !

 

[Hacp]

They all feel responsive to me, but as of right now, AMD chips are the better buy.

 

[Duvie]

Ive never used a AMD 64 system, but from what I have read they are pretty much the same feeling as the XP, they play games great but still have that general feeling that I have been talking about, them being less responsive and somehow clogged. In my reading many have said, if you need multitasking and a very responsive system do not go for a single core AMD, as they have this general feeling I am trying to explain.

The first part of that is incorrect and likely you surround yourself with the same bunch of Intel clones....

I have had every Intel from the P4a to the p4c and the XP to A64 to X2's...I can tell you the truth....

The only time the P4 ever had a better "feel" was when it went to hyperthreading with the P4c model.....for obvious reasons I hope the Intel fanboys would understand (though not likely)....

The A64 is still a single core so going up against P4's like the HT C model though slightly better the the XP should still not feel as responsive as the P4c and p4e models...again for obvious reason most ppl should have frikken figured out by now...I dont have time to explain it to the chronically slow....


Ultimately the X2 and other dual core cpus should make this a mute point. If you still have feelings of a sluggish system is likely you dont know how to build one and your IO system is bottlenecking you....



Honest truth The P-D XE should be the best at this since it has effective 4 cores though may only be sensed once you have loaded those cores thoroughly....not likely for even the heavy users...


Rankings IMO

1) X2's
2) P-D
3) P4s with HT
4) A64's (single cores)
5) XP / P4b's and a's

 

[EightySix Four]

actually they're saying the P-D XE is having some problems, don't remember exact but hyperthreading is lower performance in some things.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: crazySOB297
actually they're saying the P-D XE is having some problems, don't remember exact but hyperthreading is lower performance in some things.

check out AT article when it first came out...The P-D XE was looking like a multitasking champ

I have to agree I am hearing things like programs will access 1 physical and 1 virtual core instead or 2 physical cores....I am not sure if this is the case once you have multiple apps running and all cores are loaded...I beleive in that case similarly loaded X2 and P-D XE systems the XE will still possibly remain slightly more responsive....

The problems some are seeing makes you wonder even more what type of fudging around THG was using in his review..remember how things would cahnge (IE like certain apps would run strong for hours and then slow down so others sped up?)....I truly believe he was messing with affinity and manually setting items on the INtel chips...Tampering to say the least....

 

[n7]

Your P4 @ 3.4 GHz is good, but it's not going to compare to an X2.

Just as a warning though, don't expect it to feel smoother doing everyday basic tasks.

But if you fire up some video encoding software, set the affinity to CPU 0, then load up your favorite game & set the affinity to CPU 1, then you'll see what a joke Hyperthreading is compared to dual core

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: Vinny77
I have been a long time intel user and supportor and I am looking into buying a new system to upgrade my current one in my signature.

I am looking to get a

Asus A8N32-sli deluxe
and
Operton 165

Ive always considered intels to feel smoother than amd's in everyday desktop applications as well as in games. To me Intel chips just feel smoother, and AMD chips seem to feel slow and possibly clogged. Not sure if its the architecture or somthing else. My brother currently has a AMD xp 2500+ system and it feels horribly slow compared to my current system. But my computer is faster, but I still get that general feeling of it being less responsive.

Ive never used a AMD 64 system, but from what I have read they are pretty much the same feeling as the XP, they play games great but still have that general feeling that I have been talking about, them being less responsive and somehow clogged. In my reading many have said, if you need multitasking and a very responsive system do not go for a single core AMD, as they have this general feeling I am trying to explain.

so in general the current Intels dont really offer me a great improvement on my current system. so its either I keep what I have or I get the system which I listed above with the Operton 165.

I know for a fact that AMD chips are better for gaming, My true concrean is everything else, and my main concerin is that feeling of an AND sytem feeling less responsive and somehow clogged, do the Operton Dual core and the X2 series processors from AMD have this feeling of what I am talking about. Im not trying to bash AMD, I just wnat to get the best product for my personal needs.

Btw, if your an everyday computer user and don't use much multithreaded SMP aware applications that are intensive, then I doubt that you should upgrade at all. Better off saving your $$$$.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Good OC. Sounds like it's a Northwood. Frankly, I don't see why you should upgrade yet except to have AMD goodness.

Whatever you do, don't get any current Intel desktop CPUs. They are just egg fryers. Their laptop CPUs (the Dothans) are the best they have right now.

AMD is two years ahead of them on the desktop. AMD just rules on the desktop.

 

[Mik3y]

AMD64 processors are technically more responsive than intel processors. With their hypertransport and integrated memory controller, they transfer data from teh cpu to the mem and vice versa faster and better than their comparitive intel processors. its no wonder intel will be adopting hypertransport soon.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
AMD64 processors are technically more responsive than intel processors. With their hypertransport and integrated memory controller, they transfer data from teh cpu to the mem and vice versa faster and better than their comparitive intel processors. its no wonder intel will be adopting hypertransport soon.

This is true...however, I can imagine that the OP "feels" faster or "smoother" on his P4 because the HT can bypass the Windows scheduler quite often...however, if you feel smoother on the P4, then my guess is that your software will SCREAM on the X2!

 

[justly]

Just curious, was the AMD system you where comparing to also running WD Raptors in a RAID-0 with memory overclocked by around 40%, that may have a lot to do with how responsive a system feels.
There is a good reason reviews are usually conducted with identical components and a clean install of the OS.

I only mention this because your perception of the differences may be exagerated due to things other than the type of processor used.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: justly
Just curious, was the AMD system you where comparing to also running WD Raptors in a RAID-0 with memory overclocked by around 40%, that may have a lot to do with how responsive a system feels.
There is a good reason reviews are usually conducted with identical components and a clean install of the OS.

I only mention this because your perception of the differences may be exagerated due to things other than the type of processor used.

:thumbsup:

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: justly
Just curious, was the AMD system you where comparing to also running WD Raptors in a RAID-0 with memory overclocked by around 40%, that may have a lot to do with how responsive a system feels.
There is a good reason reviews are usually conducted with identical components and a clean install of the OS.

I only mention this because your perception of the differences may be exagerated due to things other than the type of processor used.

:thumbsup:

:thumbsup::beer:

 

[Lithan]

Originally posted by: Vinny77
I have been a long time intel user and supportor and I am looking into buying a new system to upgrade my current one in my signature.

I am looking to get a

Asus A8N32-sli deluxe
and
Operton 165

Ive always considered intels to feel smoother than amd's in everyday desktop applications as well as in games. To me Intel chips just feel smoother, and AMD chips seem to feel slow and possibly clogged. Not sure if its the architecture or somthing else. My brother currently has a AMD xp 2500+ system and it feels horribly slow compared to my current system. But my computer is faster, but I still get that general feeling of it being less responsive.

Ive never used a AMD 64 system, but from what I have read they are pretty much the same feeling as the XP, they play games great but still have that general feeling that I have been talking about, them being less responsive and somehow clogged. In my reading many have said, if you need multitasking and a very responsive system do not go for a single core AMD, as they have this general feeling I am trying to explain.

so in general the current Intels dont really offer me a great improvement on my current system. so its either I keep what I have or I get the system which I listed above with the Operton 165.

I know for a fact that AMD chips are better for gaming, My true concrean is everything else, and my main concerin is that feeling of an AND sytem feeling less responsive and somehow clogged, do the Operton Dual core and the X2 series processors from AMD have this feeling of what I am talking about. Im not trying to bash AMD, I just wnat to get the best product for my personal needs.

You're very dumb. Amd's SLAUGHTER Intels in minimum FPS, which is where the "stuttering" feeling in games comes from. Your brother probably has malware from all the porn he surfs on his computer, and you blame amd out of some sad need to feel superior to people who made smarter choices than you did.

Frankly, all the reports of amd's feeling less responsive in desktop tasks than intels are from fanboys who expect that morons like themselves will believe it. Anyone who knows the first thing about computers knows that the only pauses they could be describing are hard disk spin-ups which have nothing to do with the cpu.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeouch, Lithan with the smackdown.

I've found that Athlon 64s produce a nice, snappy feeling on the desktop. At least, that's the way it is on my Sempron 2800+.

 

[w00t]

it because your p4 has hyper-threading and the singel core doesnt have any technology like that sure its a little slower in multi-tasking but it's alot better in gaming if you were to get a opteron dual core or an x2 dual core you would be more than happy. your computer is already nice so maybe buy a new video card sumthing you can oc do they make a x800gto2? for agp

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: Lithan

Originally posted by: Vinny77
I have been a long time intel user and supportor and I am looking into buying a new system to upgrade my current one in my signature.

I am looking to get a

Asus A8N32-sli deluxe
and
Operton 165

Ive always considered intels to feel smoother than amd's in everyday desktop applications as well as in games. To me Intel chips just feel smoother, and AMD chips seem to feel slow and possibly clogged. Not sure if its the architecture or somthing else. My brother currently has a AMD xp 2500+ system and it feels horribly slow compared to my current system. But my computer is faster, but I still get that general feeling of it being less responsive.

Ive never used a AMD 64 system, but from what I have read they are pretty much the same feeling as the XP, they play games great but still have that general feeling that I have been talking about, them being less responsive and somehow clogged. In my reading many have said, if you need multitasking and a very responsive system do not go for a single core AMD, as they have this general feeling I am trying to explain.

so in general the current Intels dont really offer me a great improvement on my current system. so its either I keep what I have or I get the system which I listed above with the Operton 165.

I know for a fact that AMD chips are better for gaming, My true concrean is everything else, and my main concerin is that feeling of an AND sytem feeling less responsive and somehow clogged, do the Operton Dual core and the X2 series processors from AMD have this feeling of what I am talking about. Im not trying to bash AMD, I just wnat to get the best product for my personal needs.

You're very dumb. Amd's SLAUGHTER Intels in minimum FPS, which is where the "stuttering" feeling in games comes from. Your brother probably has malware from all the porn he surfs on his computer, and you blame amd out of some sad need to feel superior to people who made smarter choices than you did.

Frankly, all the reports of amd's feeling less responsive in desktop tasks than intels are from fanboys who expect that morons like themselves will believe it. Anyone who knows the first thing about computers knows that the only pauses they could be describing are hard disk spin-ups which have nothing to do with the cpu.

Why don't you watch your language? Calling this person dumb will not help him, nor does it contribute to this thread at all.

 

[carlosd]

My single core A64 feels as smooth as any P4 I have used. The X2 is another story, it is really a different felling when haeavy multitasking where ANY single core CPUs including P4 with HT get stucked. Fast hard disks is an impotant issue when multitasking hard, even with the X2 and a single HDD, CPU intensive with intensive I/O operations make the system feel slow, its a different story with 2 fast hard disks, one of the dedicated to OS.

 

[RussianSensation]

1) If you are worried about gaming (because you keep mentioning how A64 > P4 at gaming), upgrading P4 3.4ghz is the LAST thing you should be concerned about. That overclocked 9600xt card is overdue for a major overhaul. Upgrading to a dual-core setup with such a videocard will gain you 0% improvement in games.

2) If you are concerned about snappiness, go with opteron 165 or x2. But, unless you are doing some serious multi-tasking work, buying a new processor for $300 US, new AMD board for $100 is seriously questioning my bang-for-the-buck criteria.

3) You should consider upgrading to 1 gig of ram either way if you keep the current system or go with a new one. That 512mb of ram is FOR SURE contributing to some sluggishness.

Bottom line, best bang for the buck for you, get more ram, upgrade the videocard.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: Viditor
however, I can imagine that the OP "feels" faster or "smoother" on his P4 because the HT can bypass the Windows scheduler quite often...

HT doesn't bypass the Windows scheduler. HT makes it possible for the CPU to internally schedule instructions from separate threads for execution in parallel, using parallel execution units.

This issue about AMD single core CPUs being less responsive is not something that I've ever noticed myself. It should probably also be noted that the effect of extra thread swapping in the non-HT CPU shouldn't really be detectable to any user. If a demanding application is running in the bakground, it's another story, though many multitasking performance problems probably can be blamed on poor scheduling in Windows.

Anyway, a dual core CPU like the Athlon64 X2 or Opteron will have better resposibility than a P4 with HT, so there's no need to worry.

 

[Zebo]

Reversed with A64. Sure AMD Socket A chips are "slower", less snappy, than a modern p4 primarly because of memory config. Old Athlon setups had terrible dual channel latency... like on order of 150ns vs a modern P4 quad pumper DC in the 80ns range, almost twice as fast. However AMD 64 is twice as fast as a modern p4 ~40ns primarly due to northbrige on CPU now. Another problem you're comparing a three years old chip to your chip. A-XP 2500 was'nt shat - like a 2.2 Ghz northwood in speed w/o hyperthreading. Only reason people bought it was half the price and P4 at time and could be overclocked to 2500Mhz.. then you'd have about a 3.3 northwood.

The Athlon 64 is most assuredly a fast 32-bit CPU. Benchmarks can be found at every hardware site on the web, but just in case you?ve missed them, I?ll summarize: In all but a very few benchmarks the Athlon 64 stomps an equivalently priced Pentium 4. Not only that, but the Athlon 64 simply feels faster under normal use.

You?re probably asking, ?What do you mean it feels faster?? Well, for comparison I have a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz machine at work, and an Athlon 64 3000+ machine at home. They both have 1GB of the same ram and 80gig 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drives. Under light use?web surfing, writing documents, writing code, etc?the Athlon 64 is just snappier. Windows, menus, animations, etc. respond quicker and feel faster on the Athlon 64 machine. I?m not alone in my feelings either. In a recent forum post our own Mike Chin writes:

?... my A64-3200 system [is] right next to my main P4-2.8C rig. Win XP Pro on both. No contest: The A64 runs faster & cooler. I don't mean benchmarks, I mean using the full range of apps I use daily -- Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, a bunch of web design tools... I've been gradually migrating to the A64 -- to turn it from backup machine to main machine.?

Most of this increase in speed and responsiveness is due to the integrated memory controller. Because of the Athlon 64?s memory controller, the delay from when an application first requests data to when it receives the first pieces of that data is much smaller than with a traditional northbridge-contained memory controller, thus increasing the perceived responsiveness of the application. To be fair, though, AMD is not the only one trying to increase the responsiveness of every day computer use. Intel?s HyperThreading helps to achieve just that.

HyperThreading is Intel?s name for their implementation of Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). SMT is simply a way of allowing more portions of a CPU to be active at one time. To achieve this, an SMT-enabled CPU is actually exposed to the operating system as two CPUs. This way, the operating system can schedule two threads to run simultaneously. The CPU then sorts out which thread is actually running at any given time and in some cases can run portions of each thread in parallel.

Many people think that, because of HyperThreading, multi-tasking should be much smoother on a Pentium 4 than on an Athlon 64. While it is true that HyperThreading can provide a large benefit in multitasking situations, in my experiences the Pentium 4 is still significantly less responsive than the Athlon 64, even in situations involving heavy multitasking. I do software development work and most of the multi-tasking I do is during a compile. My Athlon 64 system is noticeably more responsive during a compile than my Pentium 4 system at work. Add to that the fact that the same code that takes 15 minutes to compile at work only takes 8 minutes to compile on my home machine, and you have a much more pleasant computing experience.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page2.html

 

[BlvdKing]

I agree with Duvie:

1) X2's
2) P-D
3) P4s with HT
4) A64's (single cores)
5) XP / P4b's and a's

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Zebo
Reversed with A64. Sure AMD Socket A chips are "slower", less snappy, than a modern p4 primarly because of memory config. Old Athlon setups had terrible dual channel latency... like on order of 150ns vs a modern P4 quad pumper DC in the 80ns range, almost twice as fast. However AMD 64 is twice as fast as a modern p4 ~40ns primarly due to northbrige on CPU now. Another problem you're comparing a three years old chip to your chip. A-XP 2500 was'nt shat - like a 2.2 Ghz northwood in speed w/o hyperthreading. Only reason people bought it was half the price and P4 at time and could be overclocked to 2500Mhz.. then you'd have about a 3.3 northwood.

The Athlon 64 is most assuredly a fast 32-bit CPU. Benchmarks can be found at every hardware site on the web, but just in case you?ve missed them, I?ll summarize: In all but a very few benchmarks the Athlon 64 stomps an equivalently priced Pentium 4. Not only that, but the Athlon 64 simply feels faster under normal use.

You?re probably asking, ?What do you mean it feels faster?? Well, for comparison I have a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz machine at work, and an Athlon 64 3000+ machine at home. They both have 1GB of the same ram and 80gig 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drives. Under light use?web surfing, writing documents, writing code, etc?the Athlon 64 is just snappier. Windows, menus, animations, etc. respond quicker and feel faster on the Athlon 64 machine. I?m not alone in my feelings either. In a recent forum post our own Mike Chin writes:

?... my A64-3200 system [is] right next to my main P4-2.8C rig. Win XP Pro on both. No contest: The A64 runs faster & cooler. I don't mean benchmarks, I mean using the full range of apps I use daily -- Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, a bunch of web design tools... I've been gradually migrating to the A64 -- to turn it from backup machine to main machine.?

Most of this increase in speed and responsiveness is due to the integrated memory controller. Because of the Athlon 64?s memory controller, the delay from when an application first requests data to when it receives the first pieces of that data is much smaller than with a traditional northbridge-contained memory controller, thus increasing the perceived responsiveness of the application. To be fair, though, AMD is not the only one trying to increase the responsiveness of every day computer use. Intel?s HyperThreading helps to achieve just that.

HyperThreading is Intel?s name for their implementation of Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). SMT is simply a way of allowing more portions of a CPU to be active at one time. To achieve this, an SMT-enabled CPU is actually exposed to the operating system as two CPUs. This way, the operating system can schedule two threads to run simultaneously. The CPU then sorts out which thread is actually running at any given time and in some cases can run portions of each thread in parallel.

Many people think that, because of HyperThreading, multi-tasking should be much smoother on a Pentium 4 than on an Athlon 64. While it is true that HyperThreading can provide a large benefit in multitasking situations, in my experiences the Pentium 4 is still significantly less responsive than the Athlon 64, even in situations involving heavy multitasking. I do software development work and most of the multi-tasking I do is during a compile. My Athlon 64 system is noticeably more responsive during a compile than my Pentium 4 system at work. Add to that the fact that the same code that takes 15 minutes to compile at work only takes 8 minutes to compile on my home machine, and you have a much more pleasant computing experience.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page2.html

I'd like to point out, my o/c athlon xp platform (2.2ghz) has a memory latency of about 80ns, it's right up there with the best stock p4 chipsets.(I'm using el cheapo pc2700 ram from early 2003 overclock to 221mhz with 3-3-3-11 timings) I think a normal nforce2 platform is in the 100ns to 120ns range.

Yep, and people bought the XPs because they were so much cheaper for the performance basically, though up until the northwoods the XPs frequently led in overall performance(an Athlon XP 3200+ does beat a 3.06ghz p4 rather consistently, but loses to a 2.8ghz 800fsb p4).