Which of these Processor specs (AMD or Pentium) do you prefer? (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Considering the following from ALIENWARE

Aurora™ 5500

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-55 Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Motherboard: ABIT AV8 - VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard
Memory: 2GB Alienware® Dual Channel Low-Latency DDR PC-3200 at 333MHz - 4 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: ATI RADEON™ X800 PRO 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and TV Out


OR

Alienware Area-51

Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 660 w/ HT Technology 3.6GHz 2MB Cache
Motherboard: Alienware® PCI Express Motherboard with Intel® 925XE Chipset 1066/800MHz FSB
Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: ATI RADEON™ X800 PRO 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and TV Out


Thanks in advance

 

[Shane Martin]

AMD by a long shot. It runs WAYYYYYYYY Cooler as a nice bonus.

 

[Ray Chuang]

Shane Martin, you wrote:


But make sure the manufacturer puts in a high-quality cooling fan for the Athlon 64 FX55 CPU. They still run quite hot and when the CPU has a temperature failure it does it quite spectacularly.

 

[SethH]

I don't think it's that simple. The new 600-series that Ron mentions is a 64-bit chip and has 2MB of L2 cache (giving it a potentially huge advantage). Here's a link to some benchmarks: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/pxe373/

The AMD wins all the gaming categories (which, based on the other threads, I don't think Ron cares about). The other categories are fairly split. AMD wins MPEG-4 encoding, while the Intel wins MPEG-2 encoding.

I think that Intel setup comes with a better chipset, but that's just my opinion.

Ray brings up a good point, the Intel may run hotter, but if something goes wrong with the heatsink on both of those machines, you'd rather have the Intel. The AMD will catch on fire (see tom's hardware) while the Intel will simply slow down to help keep itself at a somewhat normal level.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

So...

I take it if I go with the Athlon I am already
set for the upcoming Windows XP 64-bit OS?

Speaking of which....

Is there a free BETA download of that OS
available for people who now have 64 bit machines?

Anyone know how stable it is? Can it be
uploaded over a preinstalled Windows XP?

Thanks for all your help guys

 

[SethH]

I don't know how stable it is, but you'd also be ready for 64-bit with the Intel. All of the 600-series Intel chips can handle 64-bit.

 

[Jassen M. West]

XP 64 is pretty stable right now and driver support is much better now than it was 3 months ago. I imagine it will only get better.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

Most AMD boards also have a option in the bios to shutdown the pc if the cpu temp exceeds a given level, or even if the cpu or case fan drops below a set speed. At least the Abit board with via chipset, and the Gigabyte nforce 3 ultra chipset both have that feature.

 

[Scott L]

Think you got that backwards but thanks a lot for the link. Here's Anandtech's batch of benchmarks. Pretty much the norm; Intel for media encoding, AMD for gaming.

 

[SethH]

Actually in that particular link I got it right. They even mention how surprised they were that AMD won that category as encoding is usually an Intel strong point. But the AMD came in at 6 min 28 sec and the Intel at 6 min 47 sec.

Anyway, the point stands that generally Intel is better for encoding, AMD better for gaming.

 

[Scott L]

Doh! You're right, sorry I didn't look at the charts too closely. :b That is odd because both Anandtech and Tom's clocked the Intels in better for Xvid, Divx, and WM9 encoding.

 

[Shane Martin]

Ron,
I have not tried it yet but I know its out there. I do not know if its stable.