Weekly SharkyExtreme Rant

[kuk]

These type of rants come by every week now, heh ?

I was just going through SharkyExtreme's Weekly CPU Prices, comparing the prices of the 1Ghz Athlons and PIII. These are the prices (according to Sharky's round up):

- Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz - $171
- P3-1000/133 - $253

With the $82 difference, the PIII is 47% more expensive than the Tbird.



And then I stumble across these two remarks:


<<
[*]As you may have noticed, AMD no longer has an exclusive monopoly on great prices.
[*](...) the Pentium III looks to be a competitive value to the Athlon this week. At $253, the 1GHz Pentium III is a winner in our books.
>>



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I know that these rants appear every week, but there a lot of newbies here in these forums, and some truthful information needs to get through to them. Make your own conclusions about this one ...

 

[bernse]

Agreed. I wonder what their &quot;books&quot; are? How to blow money unnecessarily? The AMD is beyond a shadow doubt the best deal.

 

[gnognugs]

let them say whatever they want

 

[Pacinamac23]

If the P3 was the same price as the Tbird when I got my Tbird I would have got the P3 in a second. I, like many people, have had many problems with mine. Now, I realize that not everyone has problems but you gotta admit -- a lot more people are having problems with AMD based systems than P3 based systems. Wether that is due to VIA or not, P3 systems are more stable.

 

[KarlHungus]

<< but you gotta admit -- a lot more people are having problems with AMD based systems than P3 based systems. >>

While this statement may be true (at least in the context of these forums) you need to look at the cause: more people are having problems with AMD systems than P3s simply because more people are buying AMDs over P3s. I remember back when overclocking Celerons was all the rage, there were tons of problems with those systems as well - simply because more people were using them.

 

[TravisBickle]

intel is a pimp, what does that make Sharky?

 

[Biggs]

Erm, a server?

 

[Snoop]

<< Now, I realize that not everyone has problems but you gotta admit -- a lot more people are having problems with AMD based systems than P3 based systems. Wether that is due to VIA or not, P3 systems are more stable. >>



Maybe a lot less people should be building systems. P3 based systems are NO more stable than k7 systems. 9 times out of 10, its builder/user incompetance

 

[SloppyB]

My beef with any processor other than Intel, when building a system for someone else, is that if something goes wrong no one can blame the processor. It is like buying a Compaq server...they are bucks but worth every penny.

 

[esung]

I agree with Snoop.. most of the it's the builder's fault. it's also due to the young age of the K7/EV6 system... unlike the P2/3 which has been out for years.. even the MB/chipset makers are still figure things out.. plus AMD is so generous that we can OC the CPU almost anyway we want

 

[WetWilly]

At $253, the 1GHz Pentium III is a winner in our books

Puh-leeze. Maybe they should be spending a bit more time looking at prices. For $253 want to know what a winner is?

Duron 700 @ 1GHz (7.5x133) - $46
Iwill KK266 system board - $129
Your choice - 384MB SDRAM or Radeon LE 32MB DDR - ~$78

As for AMD/VIA instability, well, I went from a rock stable Celeron 880 on a Soyo 6BA+III 440BX board to a rock stable Duron 700 at 990MHz on an Abit KT-7 (non-RAID), including a GeForce2 with AGP4x, and both sidebanding and fast writes on (not that it makes a performance difference, but it's stable). Didn't reformat the drive and reinstall Win98 either.

 

[thorin]

You'd think if people didn't like someone's reviews they'd stop reading them. But no instead they read them weekly and then come here to b!tch and complain about them.

gnognugs
Please fix your sig.

Thorin

 

[kuk]

Thorin: Please, no need to flame ... if you want to know, I was comparing Sharky's round up with Anand's. I wanted to see if there is any major differences between the two. Better than just considering one point of view, or in this case, one source.

Happy?

 

[petes28]

just a thought.. sharky might be considering the price of a t-bird 133 (266) fsb. right now, those are similar in price to the pIII at comparable clocks. if you look at the 100 (200) fsb t-birds, they are cheaper than the 133 fsb pIIIs

 

[arod]

Ive built 10 AMD systems for people and have never had any sort of problems. Maybe people don't buy good parts to go with their mb-proessor

 

[gnognugs]

Would you buy a Mercedes or a BMW?

You'll end up with completely parallel arguments.

Why get all worked up about it, really?

There are some people in here, that would be willing to fight over this.

In the end it comes down to what YOU think is best.

And everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Even Alex &quot;Intel Tool&quot; Ross:Q


thorin: what's wrong with my sig?

 

[nortexoid]

no need to get worked up, but the fact remains that the 1ghz athlon is definitely a better deal price/performance ratio than the p3 1ghz...

truly, people who claim p3s are more stable than athlons (from their own experience) don't know how to properly configure systems..and thus, their said claims are equivalent to &quot;hurrah&quot;, and &quot;bibblsqueekazoid&quot;, etc...

or &quot;urinationizationstation&quot;

the only intel chip i've ever purchased was a 486dx2-66 because it supported 5.0v for my board (overdrive chip)...other than, i've had absolutely no problems with my previous non-intel cpus: UMC U5 cpu, Cyrix 166MX, AMD K6-2, AMD athlon slot A, 486 SLC, AMD 486DX4, and cyrix 5x86...

 

[Kungfu72]

I recently put together a new TBird system (1.133g) with an Asus A7V133 mobo. The experience was 100 times more pleasant than putting together my Athlon 700/K7M system. In fact, I almost feel cheated because I didn't have to do much tweaking to get the new system running smooth and stable.

AMD and VIA have definately come a long way, but I'm not gonna discount Intel platforms either. Both are perfectly viable platforms.

As for Sharky's, well, I've known for some time that they are complete morons. I've never really noticed anything ultra-biased from them, but general stupidity eminates from them in spades.

 

[thorin]

&quot;Thorin: Please, no need to flame ... if you want to know, I was comparing Sharky's round up with Anand's. I wanted to see if there is any major differences between the two. Better than just considering one point of view, or in this case, one source.&quot;

Heh you call that a flame I haven't even lit a match yet

If that really was the aim of your post then you could have come up with a much more fitting Subject line, which would have prompted better/longer discussion of the issue. And your post doesn't mention anything about Anand's article/round-up, so how exactly was it supposed to compare anything when it only mentions one.

Thorin