Why does everyone always choose AMD ??

[caz67]

Hi All.

This is not intended to start a flame war, but i just don't get the obsession with AMD.

I am new to this forum, and i respect all your excellent opinions.

Just explain to me, why everyone always picks AMD over Intel.

Are the differences really that noticeable, in gaming arent we talking less than 10%. The 3.4C and the Athlon64 are basically the same speed. Surely doesnt HT and Intel offer a better package all round???

Do you all buy AMD as its cheaper?? No disrespect intended at all, just trying to get the reasons.

AMD are considered low end, and are sold in back alley pc stores here in australia. Intel is marketed very well, obviously, but they do sell great products. The perceptions of AMD over Intel are vastly different. im not saying these things are true, just the public perception.

I know that the most expensive isnt always the best. The prices between Intel and AMD are very similar anyway, so its definetely not for cost surely??

Isnt it about getting the best results allround. IMO Intel offer a better package, at approx the same price.

AMD are great for gaming no doubt. Intel offer better encoding, equal gaming, HT and multitasking benefits. Isnt this better value??

It just seems to me that, most people, buy AMD based on price alone.

I am willing to admit, if i am wrong. IMO, i think Intel are better allround value.

 

[bluemax]

$120 Canadian could get me a 2500+ Barton with extra cache,
or a Celeron 2.4

Tough choice.

 

[chilled]

Originally posted by: caz67


Just explain to me, why everyone always picks AMD over Intel.

That's just it, everyone doesn't. However, I would say those in the know are more likely to buy AMD than those without a clue simply because everyone has heard of the Intel Pentium brand.

Personally I have a AthlonXP based desktop and laptop due to the price/performance factor (well, I am a student ). I do have an older P3 desktop as well. I would again balance out the price/performance factor in my next purchase. Those in the know are unlikely to shell out a lot of $$$ for very little gain.

I imagine cost is a fairly important factor in this decision, but bear in mind Intel still hold over 80% of the market share.

 

[Elcs]

Im a student.

Mobile Barton Vs. P4.... no contest.

 

[Megatomic]

The unlocked (in the past) multipliers of the Athlon chips made them fun to play with for overclocking purposes. And you can often get a decent motherboard and CPU for the same price as a mid ranged Intel chip. Again, I'm speaking of the AthlonXP series not the A64.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I can't speak for anyone but speaking for myself it is a price/performance issue- and it effects the AMD/Intel balance on two different fronts.

First off is the general processor performance versus price issue. You can almost always buy a chip that has ~85% of the performance of the top tier parts for ~20% of the price, throw in a nice overclock and you are all set. To me that makes buying a top tier processor a ludicrous proposition. To be clear, if the performance difference warranted the cost then I'd have no problem spending the extra money. I have ~$200 headphones and a ~$700 CRT- I'll spend more money without issue if I think it's worth it. Dropping an extra $500 for 10FPS? No.

Since that general rule of thumb is out(and I apply price/performance to all things, not just PC hardware), then it comes down to the chips in the lower priced(~$100-$200) bracket and how they stack up. Here is where Intel overcharges by a rather enormous amount compared to their counterpart. They simply are not competitive in this market segment normally, not even close frequently. Not all that long ago Intel was on their whole RAMBUS kick which really helped out AMD in the enthusiast market. Either you went the only slightly more then AMD route and paired a P4 with SDRAM and had horrible performance, or you paid a couple hundred percent more for roughly equal performance. This may sound like a good reason for a while back but not today, you still have people with AMD mobos that will take a more up to date AXP, that makes sticking with AMD a fairly easy choice.

Right now at the highest end of the market AMD is dominant in gaming- cost no object. Factor in cost and it is a more dire situation for Intel. Intel is doing well in the middle high end range right now, but the mid and budget lines are pretty much dominated by AMD in terms of dollars/performance. For most of the people on these forums, gaming is what drives them to spend as much money as they do on hardware. For those that are more interested in bragging rights, gaming benches are the ones that are the staple of that line of reasoning too.

Brand identity doesn't have much to do with processors outside of your genuine fans. They all work on the same code, which one gets it done quicker or for less- or some combination of both which is the case most of the time- is going to be the driving factor for the majority of the enthusiast market. This same market likes to shop in the ~$150 range of chips(they tend to upgrade every year to year and a half with two years at the outside). Factor these things in and it is pretty hard to justify Intel most of the time.

Mainly my post is focusing on gaming- the advantages you bring up for the P4 such as media encoding(I rip my CDs once, don't do much with AVI on my PC) aren't frequent typical use here. Multitasking advantages are pretty hard to convince people of if they can't see any slowdown at all with their current processor and are thinking of upgrading beyond that. You find a forum with tech enthusiasts that revolves around media encoding and the like and you will probably find they lean as much towards Intel as these boards do towards AMD.

 

[nick1985]

A64 > P4

thats why.

 

[Vernor]

1.All the 'exciting' motherboards seem to come out for the Athlon.

2.Price

 

[new2AMD]

price

 

[caz67]

Thanks heaps guys, for your responses without the bagging.!!

If your choice of AMD, is solely based on value/performance for money thats fine.

Not everyone, is willing to overclock, their CPU's. If no overclocking, was involved would you still be AMD??

I realise, that most of the users here are gamers, but i like to use my pc for more than that.

IMO, id rather spend, money on a product, that offers more rounded usage. Than just one outstanding feature.

AMD or Intel, they both offer great products, which have their place.

AMD really need to pick up in the marketing department. In my town, as i mentioned AMD are nearly non existent.

All my friends and family use Intel.

Im not a naive fool, to believe all Intels hype. I d would be willing to use AMD, if i believed that they offered a better solution.

I not saying that i never will use AMD either, just can't justify the switch at the moment.

Ill admit, that when i buy a component, i buy the highend versions. I read the reviews, and the forums before i buy. I will admit, that i am not limited buy budget.

cheers.

 

[NokiaDude]

Because lately AMD has been making some REALLY good desicions lately. AMD has in my books never been considered "low-end" , A Duron of the same speed of a Celeron will KILL the Celeron. That goes to show that even their "budget" CPU's have a powerful kick in em!



Intel is waaayyy more expensive than AMD.

 

[bluemax]

Originally posted by: caz67
Thanks heaps guys, for your responses without the bagging.!!

If your choice of AMD, is solely based on value/performance for money thats fine.

Not everyone, is willing to overclock, their CPU's. If no overclocking, was involved would you still be AMD??

See my post right below #1.

The same money gets an AWESOME AMD Barton with its extra cache and 2.5GHz speed.... or an icky-poo Celeron 2.0-2.4 which sucks at almost everything you could throw at it. (Okay, the Celeron does okay for web-surfing, media playing...) But come on.... there's no comparison between the two for the same price. None.

No overclocking involved.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: caz67
Thanks heaps guys, for your responses without the bagging.!!

If your choice of AMD, is solely based on value/performance for money thats fine.

Not everyone, is willing to overclock, their CPU's. If no overclocking, was involved would you still be AMD??

Most of the time, yes.
1800+: $60 (w/ HSF, as it's hard to find them retail anymore)
2500+: $85
P4A 1.8: $110
P4C 2.4: $165
Decent Intel mobo: $80
Decent Athlon mobo: $60
Very simple. And with all Barton-supporting mobos, to my knowledge, shutting down on overheating...it's pretty safe.

I realise, that most of the users here are gamers, but i like to use my pc for more than that.

IMO, id rather spend, money on a product, that offers more rounded usage. Than just one outstanding feature.

AMD's offerings are much faster at the low-end in this regard, and at the high-end, Intel has just caught up w/ the P4C. Office apps were the highlight of the K6, then the K7. The K8 is holding with them, and offering a better all-around package. For the high-end, it is a much closer race, and you can easily go P4 and not lose much of anything, or maybe gain, depending on what you do the most...but for a sub-$1000 PC, AMD has the best bang/buck, even on the A64s.
Cool & Quiet is getting suprising support as well, which will keep me w/ AMD when I can finally get a decent A64 setup (I am severely limited by budget).

AMD or Intel, they both offer great products, which have their place.

AMD really need to pick up in the marketing department. In my town, as i mentioned AMD are nearly non existent.

Most everyone I know uses AMD (HP, eMachines, or homebrew), but I must agree. Luckily, they are doing a good job of aiming for business users who don't pay as much attention to marketting, and pay a lot more attention to winstone and spec scores.

All my friends and family use Intel.

Im not a naive fool, to believe all Intels hype. I d would be willing to use AMD, if i believed that they offered a better solution.

I not saying that i never will use AMD either, just can't justify the switch at the moment.

Ill admit, that when i buy a component, i buy the highend versions. I read the reviews, and the forums before i buy. I will admit, that i am not limited buy budget.

cheers.

Intel makes good stuff, just overpriced unless you're into the top 10% of performers.

 

[Davegod]

Originally posted by: caz67

IMO, id rather spend, money on a product, that offers more rounded usage. Than just one outstanding feature.

There's a peice of "usage" software that only runs on Intel CPU?

AMD are great for gaming no doubt. Intel offer better encoding, equal gaming, HT and multitasking benefits. Isnt this better value??

Which is it?

tbh it sounds like you ate a load of marketing "literature" and are now puking it back out. What "benefits" of multitasking does an intel cpu offer over an AMD? You ARE aware any cpu can cope at running programs at the same time as an OS? HT is the supposed to be for multitasking, youve conveniently tried to make it into two points. Encoding is a true strengh of Intel, they tend to beat AMD noticably with a lot of encoding "benchmarks", even with CPU at the same price level. I dont give a crap about encoding, I do any major jobs when I have something else to do anyway, reducing a half hour job by 5 mins wouldnt be noticed.

AMD tend to have their strength in gaming; and AMD cpu usually beats the intel CPU at the same price level significantly. Most people would be fine with a CPU at less than half the speed of what they currently have, except when gaming. With someone else paying, I'm not at all sure wether I'd go for a P4EE or a AMD64-FX. In the real world, most people have to pay for their own computers, and have other things they could be doing with their cash.

This is not intended to start a flame war,

Paradoxial. Any poster that feels a need to make this statement does so because he thinks his post will start a flame war. If poster had any real intentions to aviod starting a flame war, he would not have posted anything which would lead to this comment being felt necessary.

 

[biostud]

Is there anything but performance/price ratio for most users? Basically an P4 and Athlon XP can do exactly the same things, and are equally stable. Of course P4 is better at some things, but unless you really work alot with the things p4 is stronger in, then the price gap just isn't worth it IMO. But at the momen the A64>P4 in most 32-bit apps (games), has a good performance/price ratio and we have yet to see what the 64-bit part can do, and even if it for some strange reason it should be 't3h suxx0rs' it's still a very strong 32-bit performer.

 

[DarkKnight]

i mainly use my comp to game and surf so amd is good enough 4 me

 

[Corey0808]

I've bought AMD ever since I started building my own computers. I've never had a problem with them and they always performed great. In fact up until about a month ago I had been running an AMD T-Bird 850mHz with a Geforce3 and I was still playing games and doing other things at quite usable speeds. Now I have my Mobile Barton running at 2400mHz which for the price I paid will kick the P4 2.4C's butt.

 

[AFB]

The reason I choose AMD is because they are the under dog. If intel did not have a competitor, do you think their prices woiuld be the same ? They would be charging $1000 for a PII . It simply helps keep prices in line and helps foster inovation. You don't think AMD would have a 64 bit processor if Intel was not around. AMD also give you more for your money, an $80 Amd processor can take om a $150 processor from Intel. Thats almost half the cost. The reason why you never here of AMD product is lack of advertising, when was the last time you saw an AMD advertisment ? The are just not a house hold name like Pentium or Intel. Most people have no idea what you are talking about when you say AMD. AMD has really attracted the gaming market, even though many more people use AMD. If AMD ever wants to go mainstream, they need advertising. This would help give them a image similar to the one Intel has currently.

 

[cowdog]

When I purchased my last 3 systems AMD was either had the best performance to price ratio in my price range (cpu + mobo for $200) or had the grooviest new product to play with (Athlon 64). I really don't care if my cpu is AMD or Intel. I am interested in performance, price, and overclocking and not the brand. Price to performance rules for me, but I will spend extra if something really catches my attention (A64 did that). Hyperthreading and chipsets are the 2 primary things I like about Intel cpus. Price to performance and cool new 64 bit platform are what I like about AMD cpus.

 

[Horsepower]

Always is a strong word. Of the last 7 rigs I have built for the family in about 3 years, 2 were AMD.

 

[JBT]

I bought an AMD CPU for $50 bucks the 1700XP... When I bought this I think the highest chip on intels side was either the 3.0 or 3.2 either way my chip can clock to 2.4 Ghz fairly easy and with low voltage below 1.75 vcore which could compete pretty close to performance with Intels top CPU at the time. I don't have it at that right now because one of my sticks of ram is only PC2100 and I don't feel like taking it out and only having 256. I believe Intel's top CPU was also around $400 bucks or so. For my uses which is Gaming and mostly office applications, cold fusion etc... A P4 just is not worth the extra money. If I ran a particular application that was MUCH better on an Intel they yeah I would go with an them I am certainly no anti Intel buff I am typing this on my Pentium-M laptop right now. I just don't see paying usually twice as much for a CPU than I can with AMD.

I believe I am probably a little biased because I "root for the little guy" AMD needs all the help they can get. They are not the giant marketing machine Intel is they don't have the money nor resources to put out such advertising campaigns. I mean have you ever watched a Dell commercial? All you see is Intel inside and their famous blue and orange colors. I am very impressed that AMD can even keep up with Intel in terms of performance, I would say they must put ALL there money back into R&D to try to stay even as much as possible, no wonder they have so few advertisements.

 

[caz67]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi

In gaming AMD offer a few FPS better performance. In the real world, this is "equal performance", as most people couldnt tell the difference.!!

As games are GPU dependant, what does the few frames AMD offer even matter??? Like most people can tell a 5% -10% improvement, with out testing/benchmarking.

Most regular gamers wouldnt, even tell the difference.

If you benchmark, its a bragging rights thing!!!

thanks heaps for your comments guys.

 

[Terrax]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the AMD chips run 2D applications better than the equivalent processor from Intel. Now I believe that is applications such as Office. I think when it comes to the hardcore functions like ripping and decoding, Intel has the edge.

It all depends on what you want it for.

 

[Mem]

Why does everyone always choose AMD ??

Good value for money,good overclockers,great selection of boards and different chipsets etc.

 

[Boogak]

For me, it's all about pricing. Intel processors tend to never go below $150 retail before they're phased out. Meanwhile, I can pick up great overclocking processors from AMD that sell for under $100 (or in the case of my 1700+, under $50!).