AMD vs Intel

[ajbritton]

I've been specifying Intel based servers for yonks, but I want to include AMD now (I know, I know, I'm a bit slow to do this!). My problem is that I need to specify AMD equivalents when going to suppliers. Does anyone know of table which roughly maps Intel to AMD CPUs?

[Geoff]

AMD based Opteron machines beat the pants off Pentium 4D Xeons in almost every way.

 

The new Conroe processors on the other hand look to of reversed things.

[CM786]

I have used/specified AMD almost exclusively for the past 5 years. I just think they knock the pants off Intel. The old techie that did my job before I did said that AMD was "cheap and nasty" and "unreliable". What a load of crap (however at that time AMD CPUs did tend to get very hot, to be fair)!

 

Not had a single issue, apart from one motherboard going to Silicon Heaven.

 

At the moment in primary schools I am specifiying AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core Servers amd AMD Sempron Clients. Works great, good value and nice and fast. The clients can be upgraded to Athlon64 too in the future.

 

Simply:

 

AMD Sempron --> Intel Celeron

AMD Athlon/64 --> Intel Pentium

AMD Athlon X2 --> Pentium Dual Core

AMD Opteron --> Intel Xeon

AMD Opteron Dual Core --> Intel Xeon Dual Core.

 

This is very rough since both Intel and AMD have so many variations and revisions of each CPU. The Sempron I think is a cracking CPU for schools, its cheap, quiet, fast (compared to Celeron. matches the P4 in certain benchmarks) and the newer ones are 64Bit too, so good options to expand.

 

An AMD Athlon X2 Server I made recently absolutely runs rings round a Dell PowerEdge Xeon 3Ghz Server I have at another of my schools.

 

AMD are the way to go, for too long Intel seem to have been the only option, partially because they seem to be pushed by the LEAs and the major PC manufacturers reluctance to use AMD; thankfully this is changing now.

[mac_shinobi]

I dunno about anyone else but it would of been nice to see apple use 50-50 of AMD and Intel cpu's in there mac books and mac book pros as that would of not only of been a nice comparison but it would of also given us as "End Users" a choice between what cpu we wanted Just my $0.02 worth lol.

 

Anywho

[ChrisC]

The thing about intel is they push with "oh, we have xGhz of processing power", when an AMD will have significantly lower clock speed, but still in terms of performance kick intel chips in the backside with a steel toecap-ed boot!

 

I have been running AMDs for about 6ish (maybe longer) years, and I can't fault them!

 

To be honest, since my IBM 486, have gone AMD ever since!

 

Chris

[Ric_]

@ChrisC: You don't know the problems I had trying to explain this to RM... all my servers have Opterons in them (they are Sun servers).

 

The new Sun Fire servers are shiny too and use the ULV dual-core procesors which are meant to be super fast and run super cool.

[ChrisC]

Luckily, dell are going down the right route of AMD, I can't imagine how intel are feeling after that, considering that dell have the majority of home pc sales (makes me cringe somewhat), and now to compete for dell stations with intel chips, ouch!

[ajbritton]

Thanks to everyone for commenting on this.

 

Would it be fair to use CM786's equivalence chart and matching the AMD number (3400) to Intel's GHz to find equivalents then?

[Geoff]

Yes, that's probably a decent way to do it. Bear in mind the high end AMD machines go up to 4400+ though. There's no equivelent Intel CPU to those ones. Also that naming system isn't used for Opterons.

[CM786]

Thanks to everyone for commenting on this.

 

Would it be fair to use CM786's equivalence chart and matching the AMD number (3400) to Intel's GHz to find equivalents then?

 

As others have said Intel promote the Clock Speed such as 3Ghz, where as AMD show you a comparision to clock speed performance.

 

For example my old trusty home PC AthlonXP 2800+ has a clock speed of 2.0Ghz, yet the 2800+ means that it is the equivalent of an Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz.

 

So the 3400+ (if its an Athlon) is the equiverlent of an Pentium 4 clocked at 3.4Ghz.

 

Hope that helps!

[ajbritton]

@CM786: Yes, that helps, many thanks.

[Ric_]

As Geoff says, the Opteron processors don't use that convension... I belikeve a 2GHz Opteron is approximately equivalent to a 3GHz Xeon, however its x64 capabilities knock the socks off the Xeon!

[loopy]

not to knock AMD as i a big user of theres (both personally and work related) but the intel conroe is looking to run rings around them at the moment. take this with a grain thou as things chan change quickly.

[Geoff]

Assuming you can actually find a board and CPU to buy. There looks to be supply problem with the 965 based boards.

 

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32855

 

Plus, the Conroe as-is is not a server class CPU. You need to wait for the Tusla CPU (avalible in August).

 

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/07/17/intel_xeon_7100_roadmap/

[CM786]

not to knock AMD as i a big user of theres (both personally and work related) but the intel conroe is looking to run rings around them at the moment. take this with a grain thou as things chan change quickly.

 

Yep.....the Conoe looks very impressive.

 

However, AMD have said they are going to discount their CPUs (quiet heavily) to offer the best price/performance comparision, so bargains will be had

 

I'm sure the Conroe will be quiet expensive too, but it does look really great! 8O

[Geoff]

If the AMD price reductions filter through to the opteron line. A multi CPU dual core opteron system would be better cost vs performance wise.

 

Be careful though if you go down this route, one you go over 4 cores your beyond the limits of windows scalability and you will have to virtualise the system.

[CyberNerd]

links to some reviews here:

 

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/17/0612202

[john]

Conroes are listed for pre-order at a lot of site, CCL have them as do Overclockers.co.uk

[Norphy]

All of our new servers are Opteron based. All of the PCs we've bought in the last two and a half years are either Athlon or Athlon 64 based. All of our Opteron servers are rock solid, they never crash and I've had minimal problems with them or none that are associated with dodgy hardware. It's like anything, you get what you pay for. If you buy the cheapest, nastiest server or components you can find, you're going to have problems. Spend money on a decent branded server or at least big name components and you're laughing.

 

The workstations have been fine too. There has been the occasional problem but none that you can associate with them being AMD based. Same principle applies here, buy cheap tat and you'll have problems. Stick with the branded stuff and you're fine.

 

The last lot of upgrades we did were Celeron Ds. Big big BIG mistake. OK, they were a damn site cheaper than the equivilent Sempron (about £15 cheaper for the CPU, about £10 cheaper for the motherboard which counts for a lot when you're buying 60) but we've had to hack holes into cases and install extra fans into the damn things so we can keep them from overheating.

 

That all said, my next upgrade will be a Core 2 Duo. Primarily because they seem to run cooler than the standard A64 X2s and are as well priced. Intel chipsets are almost always top notch too.

[projector1]

dell had to support amd as many customers were jumping ship from dell as they prefered amd to intel.

We are looking at new servers and hopefully we will give both brands a good looking at.

Also in the september issue of pc pro they have reviewed a QUAD daul-core 2.2ghz operon based server pheww!

and only 6k with 3 year onsite support, (must add to wish list)

 

I had a amd athlon that i passed on to a friend and it si still going strong, well done AMD!

[gcheeseman]

The latest (soon to be available) server chipsets/CPU's from Intel outperform AMD by an unhealthy margin. So switching to AMD for anything under a 4 way system is not going to make good sense - either for performance or for price.

 

Google for term "Woodcrest +review" to get a handful of reliable third party reviews.