Intel or AMD? Nvidia or ATI?

[NotMyRealAccoun]

In your opinion which one is better for each question? I prefer Intel and Nvidia. I would say that they make the greatest products, because ATI and AMD create any shit just to be "on the top", while Intel and Nvidia make better quality products by letting them release their products and create one better.

[ScottJC]

My system is the exact opposite, Intel and ATI combo and it is more than brilliant enough for me. i'd be happy with any combo as long as it works fast enough though.

[Agozer]

AMD over Intel. I won't start speculating which one is better, ATI or nVIDIA. Both are equally good and equally bad in certain things.

I have to had it to ATI though that their drivers have improved tremendously over the years.

[smcd]

If I were to build a machine /right now/ I'd likely go with AMD, using an AMD64. As for the video, it'd be nvidia. Why? Because their drivers have always seemed more stable and their support for linux is a lot better.

[Clements]

For my purposes, they are all good.

[revl8er]

I prefer using AMD over Intel, and I prefer Nvidia gfx cards.

[Blacklord]

I prefer intel and Nvidia. People usually go for AMD since the performance is almost the same and come a lot cheaper. Usually when u buy a AMD the first thing you think about is overclocking it. But AMD has got this reputation quite recently so i still don't trust them.

[Doomulation]

The best end user processor out there right now, is the athlon 64. So amd is the winner for now.
My preference is AMD and nVidia. AMD any day, since they are a lot cheaper than intel and nvidia, well... I never really have used ATI, and I know nVidias cards better, that's all.

[The_Z]

I'd love to get an AMD anthlon 64. I also prefer nvidia over ati.

[Blacklord]

Yeah but intel is the mother of the xeon and ittanium so :P

[arnalion]

I would go for an Amd... why?

1. Better performance
2. Cheaper
3. Cooler

Amd Opteron kicks Intel Xeon in almost every test.

nVIDIA vs ATi? Well is will be more interesting in the future bacause they have gone diffrent ways now (X1900 vs 7900).

X1900XTX
Pixel pipelines: 16
Vertex pipelines: 6
Pixelshading shading units: 48

7900GTX
Pixel pipelines: 32
Vertex pipelines: 10?
Pixel shading units: 32

[Clements]

I would go for Intel (Pentium-M) in a laptop. Better performance per watt under load than current Turion processors, so I can play Perfect Dark for hours on the train. Saying that, I would never buy a Netburst chip.

[arnalion]

Yea Pentium-M is a great processor, based on Pentium III

[Knuckles]

My side is combo AMD + nvidia. It's my choice 'cause I love the performance for gaming with those. I took the different with my friend's PC and mine kicks his (similar specs). I also prefer the way nv drivers are built along with the compatibility/stability and I also love the settings control panel not like ATi messed one :P


on a side note, Intel seems to be now ditching the PCs (just like if they lost the battle). If you saw their recent MAC ad(it's the main part of the ad):


Intel processors were confined on doing boring tasks on boring PCs, now, it will unlesh it's power inside a mac. Imagine all the possibilities.

I won't add my personal comments on this tho.

[PrineOfPersia]

In my opinion Intel Processors are more userfriendly, they don't suck up as fast as AMD Processors, and NVidia and ATI are not very differently but my favourite Grakas are ATI Radeon X800XT PCIe and NVIDIA GForce 7800GTX PCIe!

greetz
PrineOfPersia

[Knuckles]

"they don't suck up as fast "

please define.

[arnalion]

I'm also a little ??? :P

[Dysprosium]

"they don't suck up as fast "

please define.
I think he means they aren't outdated as fast, but I haven't kept records on Intel's processor development.

At the moment, my combo is an Intel processor (Pentium 4, 2.66GHz), as well as a GeForce 6600GT, and they're both doing me well for what I want them to. Could use another stick of RAM though, but that's besides the point.

I haven't really had much experience with AMD processors, although I would have loved to change over to one ages ago. The price of a new motherboard and the processor itself turned me away from that. Looking at an AMD processor and an ATI graphics chip in a future laptop instead. (Integrated Intel make Chris go hulksmash. nVidia isn't large for laptops here, either.)

[smcd]

I never really have used ATI, and I know nVidias cards better, that's all. Hard to argue this considering you've not experienced both sides of the coin. =-\

[Clements]

I've had no issues with ATi. They are on equal terms with NVIDIA as far as I'm concerned.

[WhiteX]

AMD any day, period.
Intel ppl does not think about gaming as much as AMD, for gaming, AMD all the way, however when a client asks for a powerfull and cool server, here in Brazil cooling is a bitch, i sell Intel.
Both Nvidia and ATI are good to me, it is just that here ATI is cheaper, so i can get mainstream ATI with entryway Nvidia prices.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

What about the new Intel dual core processors with HT technology? In my opinion they are really good, and i think they support the newest 64bit softwares.

Oh yeah and they have a anti virus feature too. :P

[Clements]

Check some benchmarks. Athlon X2's have those beat those in almost every benchmark and produce much less heat doing so, and also the high-end X2's are cheaper than Intel's high-end.

In single-threaded applications, a lowly Pentium 4 clocked to the 3.4-3.6GHz destroys the Pentium D's since they had to be clocked really low (due to those heat issues) - whereas the X2 4800 and FX-60 are only beat a couple of times by the high-end FX-57 single core. So, with an FX-60, you get good performance in both single and multi-threaded applications, unlike the Pentium D which is generally only competitive in multi-threaded apps.

Intel is phasing out the entire line of these processors using the current Pentium D architecture in favour of a new one built for performance/watt like their excellent Pentium-M processor. Save up for these instead if you must have Intel.

[arnalion]

Amd has always been good at gaming, but it has taken an advantage in almost everyting with it's 64: ors. The whole Pentium 4 was a big mistake, low performance/watt wasn't a good combination, the high price didn't make it better, and if we look at the prescotts (damn!) i can boil potatoes on my cpu.

Almost every "enthusiast" today uses Amd, and that's for a reason.

[ChaosCode]

I like ATI better becuase of the overlay is alot better for output to TV's

[Blacklord]

indeed AMD made it's reputation in gaming but still can't beat intel as much as it tries. Intel is one of the oldest and most trusted firms. It was here before, is here now, will be in the future. I just can't say the same about AMD even though they are flurishing.

[Doomulation]

Amd is bettering in gaming, not for office ;)
But if it became, I wouldn't doubt that companies started to buy amds in the future, as amd is catching up to intel.

[The_Z]

Yeah but intel is the mother of the xeon and ittanium so :P
Doesn't matter much to me as I am a PC gamer. And AMDs are great for gaming, I've heard.

[arnalion]

indeed AMD made it's reputation in gaming but still can't beat intel as much as it tries. Intel is one of the oldest and most trusted firms. It was here before, is here now, will be in the future. I just can't say the same about AMD even though they are flurishing.


Amd is not only good for gaming. It has taken an advantage in many parts that Intel ruled earlier. You don't know this because you're a common user. Intels reputation has never been so low as it is now. They have given extra prices to a lot of firms so they not would buy Amd (and now got sued). Amd is better then Intel OVERALL today. I don't get that "can't beat Intel as much as it tries", you better join a computer forum fast.

[Blacklord]

Yo man every company has it's ups and downs.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

Instead sayin that AMD is good because its good, tell me why intel is bad. I dont think AMD is that good because all my friends who have the AMD class processors (athlon or sempron) have problems with dust; their pcs keeps rebooting all the time.


I like ATI better becuase of the overlay is alot better for output to TV's
In my opinion, ATI have the worst drivers. 1º they dont have things organized like nvidia. 2º Their output color system dont support worldwide colors, in my case, PAL-M.

Im just bored with Nvidia because i cannot play motogp 3 with bloom effects :( I think it might be a driver issue that should be fixed soon.

[Clements]

My AMD system does not have problems with dust since I know how to clean a computer. Dust accumulation is a common problem for pretty much all computers regardless of what processor they use, due to fans attracting dust. My computer also does not spontaneously reboot or lock up since I keep my system updated and have a well-ventilated case with dual 120mm case fans + a 90mm side fan that are kept clean.

I have already stated why Netburst chips aren't that great. Even Intel themselves are discontinuing them very soon (look at the recent Intel roadmap below, Conroe will replace them in most segments by Q3 2006). So if you buy a desktop Intel processor now, it will be massively outdated in half a year by greatly superior processors.

A Presler 65nm Pentium D has to be clocked at around 4.0GHz to be able beat a stock FX-60 (2.6GHz) - and it uses a lot more power doing so (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/10/amd_athlon_fx_60_dual_core_assault/page19.html), and increases temperatures. Increased temperatures can cause system instability and the stock fans required to cool them will generally be louder unless you buy an aftermarket cooler etc. Intel motherboards tend to be expensive, and the high-end processors cost over $1000. Ultimately, a desktop AMD system is cheaper in the short term (lower prices for mobos and single core CPUs) and in the long term (lower running costs, less power requirements).

The only benchmarks Intel can now win are related to a few specific media encoding apps and some meaningless synthetic benchmarks. AMD chips win the other half of those media encoding tests, all the gaming benchmarks (by a huge margin in most cases), all of the application benchmarks (Mozilla, WinRAR compression), and now multitasking with the new X2 processors.

A Summary for desktop:

- AMD is cheaper
- AMD is faster in most cases (in gaming apps, low-end Athlon64s can beat Intel's high-end processors for a fraction of the price)
- AMD has much lower power consumption
- AMD processors run cooler

[WhiteX]

@ Blacklord: you are acting like a fan boy.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

I have heard that intel keep using high power to make it work faster, soon as you do something on your computer. Can anyone confirm?

[Clements]

If you are refering to Intel's Speedstep technology (lowering or upping the multiplier depending on usage to conserve power), that is only available on mobile processors (P-M & P4-M) and not on their current desktop processors.

AMD's equivalent Cool 'N Quiet technology on the other hand is available on all their K8 processors including both desktop and mobile processors.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

Sooner or later intel will improve his products. This is a question of time, maybe 6 months. But check the specs of the new dual core processor. Just the FSB is not high as EE processors.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/index_view_ppxe.htm

[Doomulation]

All I see is large cache. Intel seems to be losing this war.
It's not that Intel is BAD, just that AMD is BETTER. And it has not happened overnight - it has been a long process.
Nevertheless, it might be a matter of personal preference - get what you want.

[refraction]

This is how it goes, or at least how i know it

Intel = Very good for doing heavy processing such as video editing, desktop publishing and massive calculations or what have you.

AMD = Altho they do well on the above, they are more for gaming, in most cases the AMDs run faster in games that intel chips do, i dont know why, personally i dont care.

Nvidia = Very fast cards, has some nice extra features in its pixel shaders such as dynamic branching, altho since recent cards from ATi, this hasnt become such an advantage. Usually capable of high levels of detail.

ATi = Also very fast cards. Gives a very vibrant looking image maybe at the very smallest cost of image quality (not really sure). Suffered a bit pre the X1800 cards in comparison due to no Dynamic Branching (in 2.0a NVIDIA's PS extension) but since the X1800 has contained something called Ultra-Threading which seems to compete and even beat the Nvidias Dynamic branching, but performance between the 2 in games is still neglegable.


So for gaming, its an AMD chip then the rest is really up to you and your budget, its difficult to point out which one is really the best, they are pretty much neck and neck these days.

[Agozer]

Why do people even make these vs. thread? There are bound to be at least some fanboy comments. Although in this case, comments have been backed up with some actual knowledge as well.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

well, i want some info cuz im going to upgrade my computer, since it dont have PCI express.

[Clements]

You could buy an ASrock DualSATA2 (supports both AGP and PCI-E), an Athlon64/Sempron64 and keep using your old AGP/PCI card. You could then buy a PCI-E card latter without upgrading your motherboard again.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

Money is not a problem for me buyin processor and motherboards, its a problem for video cards. at moment which one should be at the toplist of AMD?

PS. i think ive seen in a magazine, something about the new pci express with 32x but i think it had another name, can anyone confirm that?

[TerraPhantm]

Currently, the ATi Radeon X1900XTX is the best video card out on the market, but that may change soon when nVidia releases the 7900GTX. If I were you I'd buy a mid-range card for around $200, and then wait to buy a topend card until DX10 cards come out later this year.

I haven't heard anything about PCIe 32x, I guess in theory it could exist, but right now there is no purpose for it. Current graphics cards barely touch the amount of bandwidth 8x provides, it's a waste of development time to go past 16x right now.

[Garstyciuks]

Most nvidia cards are made just for a better score on the 3d mark benchmark. But ATI cards gets better results at games, especially at HL², which is my favourite :P.

[Doomulation]

That is not true. It may be that nvidia cheated on 3dmark, but, on games they are both as good in most cases.

[arnalion]

Most nvidia cards are made just for a better score on the 3d mark benchmark. But ATI cards gets better results at games, especially at HL², which is my favourite :P.

Hehe they have both cheated and optimized they're cards for 3dmark. Ati did it the last time whit it's X1900 series. it was a huge diffrence in the picture quality in 3dmark06. Ati said that it was a driver bug (and it probably was). Haven't seen any new tests with catalyst 6.2

But they have both "cheated" earlier.

You usually say that Ati makes "fps" cards and nVIDIA "better picture quality". But Ati got their X1900 cards now so...

[Clements]

ATi's recent cards have better anisotropic filtering options (non-angle dependant AF in the high quality mode) than 6/7 series NVIDIA cards, whereas NVIDIA has more anti-aliasing options, which include supersampling and up to 16xAA for a single card if you use Rivatuner of similar tweak app.

ATi optimised for 3DMark05 like NVIDIA probably does. A recent Anandtech article showed this - but there was no deterioration in image quality, so this is not a cheat at all - but an optimisation in the driver.

PCI 32x does not exist and is not on the horizon. Probably meant 32 PCI-E lanes or similar.

[refraction]

and there's the fanboy comments :p


seriously you cant say Nvidia are better than ATi in games or the other way round, it depends on the game, for example Doom 3 was optimised for Nvidia cards and HL2 was optimised for ATi cards, its really game dependant, but usually theres very little between the 2 to squabble over, they are both equally as good.

yes Nvidia cheated on some things, but so did ATi, they both cheat to get that extra bit of performance, but you cant rely on synthetic benchmarks such as 3dmark for true performance, if you want a true test, use timedemos etc in proper released games.


At the end of the day its down to your choice and looking at reviews to see what you can get for your money

[arnalion]

You can see the diffrence between 7800GTX and 1900XTX. The first one is 7800GTX... This was in 3Dmark06

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/9324

[t0rek]

Well, I arrived late to the discussion. In the CPU department I have experience with both Intel and AMD, and I personally think that AMD has an overall lead over Intel now and in the past years, my opinion in that is similar to Clements one.

However this only applies to desktop CPUs, if we talk about mobile CPUs, Intel with their Pentium M and recently with the Core and Core Duo processors kick AMD ass with they crappy Turion processors. Even with the recent problem that Core Duo has that sucks too much battery, it has already discovered that this was due to Windows's USB driver bug.

The future of CPUs is uncertain, Conroe processors are rumoured to be even a 20% more powerful than current Athlon64s and with less power consumtion due to optimizations to the current 65nm Intel manufacturing process. In the other hand AMD will release a new socket called AM2 this year for the current A64s that will suport DDR2 800, but it's not a major upgrade. AMD is supossed to reduce even more their power consumption even with their 90nm manufacturing processs.

Now in the GPU section, Nvidia and ATI are both very good, they are always pretty close, and it takes just moths to each other to take the winner flag if you know what I mean. For example, for some months Nvidia had the lead with their Geforce 7800GTX but a month ago ATI released the Radeon X1900XTX that beated the 7800GTX. But on march Nvidia will release a new 7900 card that is supossed to beat the mentioned ATI card, so they are always very close.

[arnalion]

Well, I arrived late to the discussion. In the CPU department I have experience with both Intel and AMD, and I personally think that AMD has an overall lead over Intel now and in the past years, my opinion in that is similar to Clements one.

However this only applies to desktop CPUs, if we talk about mobile CPUs, Intel with their Pentium M and recently with the Core and Core Duo processors kick AMD ass with they crappy Turion processors. Even with the recent problem that Core Duo has that sucks too much battery, it has already discovered that this was due to Windows's USB driver bug.

The future of CPUs is uncertain, Conroe processors are rumoured to be even a 20% more powerful than current Athlon64s and with less power consumtion due to optimizations to the current 65nm Intel manufacturing process. In the other hand AMD will release a new socket called AM2 this year for the current A64s that will suport DDR2 800, but it's not a major upgrade. AMD is supossed to reduce even more their power consumption even with their 90nm manufacturing processs.

Now in the GPU section, Nvidia and ATI are both very good, they are always pretty close, and it takes just moths to each other to take the winner flag if you know what I mean. For example, for some months Nvidia had the lead with their Geforce 7800GTX but a month ago ATI released the Radeon X1900XTX that beated the 7800GTX. But on march Nvidia will release a new 7900 card that is supossed to beat the mentioned ATI card, so they are always very close.

Well, welcome :P

I don't disagree with you in any point. It's hard to say which graphics card producer that makes the best cards (S3 ^^). I can only say that i don't like Ati's drivers. Like nVIDIA's drivers more, they have better support for unix too

[Clements]

You can see the diffrence between 7800GTX and 1900XTX. The first one is 7800GTX... This was in 3Dmark06

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/9324

Hmm, that's a driver issue in a single test specific to the X1900 series alone. Not a great comparison to make between the cards. ATi may have fixed that with Catalyst 6.2 since that report is a month old now.

[arnalion]

Hehe they have both cheated and optimized they're cards for 3dmark. Ati did it the last time whit it's X1900 series. it was a huge diffrence in the picture quality in 3dmark06. Ati said that it was a driver bug (and it probably was). Haven't seen any new tests with catalyst 6.2


I said earlier that it was a driver bug.

[t0rek]

IMO the X1900XTX is better than the 7800GTX. However as I said, nVidia has still to release the 7900GTX

[NotMyRealAccoun]

Overall results CPU: AMD seems to be better than Intel, i think im buyin the newest AMD processor for my computer.

Overall results GPU: Nvidia and ATI sucks, they keep fighting to produce a better video card just to be "on the top", thats ok, but what Nvidia will improve on the newest 7900? I think they should stop for a while and then create "the best vc of all times". I think ill go on Nvidia cuz they seems to be less blinded than ATI.

[ScottJC]

Overall results GPU: Nvidia and ATI sucks, they keep fighting to produce a better video card just to be "on the top"Yeah... that's called "Competition", calling something bad based on competitive behavior is pretty childish - this is how the real world works, you make a product and someone else somewhere in the world tries to make a better one and people are forced to decide and this my friend is called "Choice";

[Doomulation]

Overall results CPU: AMD seems to be better than Intel, i think im buyin the newest AMD processor for my computer.

Overall results GPU: Nvidia and ATI sucks, they keep fighting to produce a better video card just to be "on the top", thats ok, but what Nvidia will improve on the newest 7900? I think they should stop for a while and then create "the best vc of all times". I think ill go on Nvidia cuz they seems to be less blinded than ATI.
I don't think that will happen. They will probably increase core and memory speed and perhaps add more vertex/pipelines to beat ati's top card. Then much later, they will release the 8XXX series with improved technology and stuff...
The 7900 will probably just be a card to beat the heck out of Ati's newest one.

[NotMyRealAccoun]

Then I think ill wait for those 8 series. Seems to be a good one to play with AA16x :P

[Lightbringer_x]

My new system (and the other which will follow) will be:

AMD and ATI...

For sure the best thing you can do...

[arnalion]

Which graphics card a person should buy depends on his/her needs. If the person uses unix is there no point of buying an Ati card.