Best Proccessor

I'm buying a new computer soon, and I'm building my own configuration.
I want to choose a good proccessor this time.
So anybody who can tell me what he thinks is the best proccessor for a power user (Programming, Win2KPro, maybe personal server, etc...), please reply.
I have this list so far:

Intel PIII
Intel Celeron
AMD Duron
AMD Athlon
AMD Thunderbird
AMD K6-2

I'm not so good at the CPU field so thanks for any help.

[Warmaster199]

The best chip is not even on your list. It's the all mighty 386DX - 33MHz... :) Just joking :) For the best kind of chips, I would go for the Intel PIII. Reasons:

1)AMD used to make chips that were not as good quality as Intel. However, AMD is making a comeback.

2)Intel was the first company to make CPU chips(from my knowledge). Therefore, they make very reliable chips(And fast).

3)Don't go for Celeron, even though it's Intel, Celeron is a lower budget version of PII/PIII. It doesn't have MMX and it has less on-board cache-ram.

Those are the reason's I would go for Intel PIII. About the 386 joke, It just barely runs Windows 3.1 :(

[Edited by Warmaster199 on 09-30-2000 at 09:15 PM]

[HarryW]

1) AMD have made a comeback, all the tests I've seen say the Athlon is faster than the P3.

2) Intel used to make very reliable chips, but the recent competition has made them kinda lose their cool and push products out much faster, thus they aren't as reliable as they used to be.

3) Celerons have less level 2 cache (128k instead of 512k) but it is on-die and runs at the same speed as the processor, instead of the usual 1/2 speed. Some later P3 chips have 256k of full-speed cache instead, the same as the Socket A AMD chips do. Speed is more important than quantity in the case of cache. Also I'm pretty sure that Celerons (the ones made less than a year ago anyway) do have MMX.



To voice my own opinion - I used to go for Intel, but since the Athlon came along and the benchmarks kicked Intel's asses I've taken AMD much more seriously and I think that they now offer better value in the hi-end market. They are even beginning to steal Intel's hi-end server market (though obviously the really high performance servers are still DEC Alpha and Sun SPARC based). Check out the latest Socket A Athlons, they're very good. They also do the Duron, which is an AMD alternative to the Celeron I believe. Not sure what the performance is like compared to the Celeron.

Celerons (and possibly Durons, not too sure about them) are a very good buy if they suit what you want to do. They are very good value for money if you are going to be using mainly office apps, with simple 2D graphics, that kind of thing. Basically they're very good at integer calculations. They are not very good at floating-point operations though (sometimes called 'flops') so some of the more complicated stuff like 3D graphics will not run so well. They are, however, generally quite overclockable so you can make up the difference if you're lucky and get a speedy chip.

Forget K6-2s unless you're on a shoestring budget, they just about work but frankly they're cack.

Not sure about Thunderbirds, are they like Intel's Xeons? Are they aimed at the server market?

Also I can't say much about the P4 as I haven't heard much about it except it's gonna be out fairly soon.


So, unless there's something important that I missed about those that I don't know about, I recommend either an AMD Athlon if you want to play games and stuff, or an Intel Celeron (or possibly AMD Duron?) if you're gonna be mainly using/developing office apps.

What about device support for the chips?

[dimava]

the ATHLON is the best, it was proven that it beat PIII by 50% in an over all average of 500 tests

[HarryW]

Hmm, I think the 50% margin is greatly exaggerated, I think it might be reasonable to say perhaps 10%. It would probably depend on the type of benchmark test.

Device support is fine, the difference that it makes to have an Athlon instead of a P3 is that you have a different motherboard chipset. Compatibility seems to be just as good as Intel. Currently the best one, I believe, is the Via one (can't remember the name) which also supports Ultra DMA/100 which if you hadn't guessed it means you can run those brand spanking new UDMA/100 hard disk drives at full speed. Which is a good thing.

I think the latest Athlon motherboards can be a bit pricey (the UDMA/100 Abit motherboard is very good I've heard) but they are well worth it, and besides you will be saving money on the CPU itself. I looked at some CPU prices only today as I was advising someone on what to buy, and for a fair amount less than the price of a P3 800 you could get an Athlon 900. The Athlons are generally higher performance for the MHz as it is, so that's a significant difference. For a little more that the proce of the P3 800, you could get an Athlon 950. So far as I can see the sweet spot at the moment (the best price/perfomance tradeoff) seems to be the Athlon 900.

Well, I see that most ways lead to the Athlon.
Any other opinions?

[kb244]

I myself go towards AMD, I have an athlon, however keep in mind, even tho the athlon itself is good, you got to make careful decisions on which motherboard and chipset to get. as most athlon problems, were actually chipset problems. Far as the Intel not being as realiable anymore, I think it all happened when AMD and Intel came out with their 1Ghtz, after that Intel had made unrealiable chips, just to try to get something out to the public that says "We're still faster than AMD" I think Intel needs to straighten up, and stick more to realiable than to Fastest.

I have a abit KA-7 Motherboard which uses a KX133, if you get either an Athlon 'Classic' or an Athlon Tunderbird/Duron, get a board with either a KX133 Chipset or a KT133 chipset, both are the same, except the KT has SocketA Support for the TBird. also keep in mind if you are big in Nvidia graphic cards, I have a Geforce DDR, which is extremly realiable on the Abit KA-7 I have, however, a Geforce2 GTS or MX is not compatible with a KA-7, so you may have to goto a SocketA(KT133) Board if you plan to use Nvidia's much newer stuff.

You'll also find AMD's SocketA processors to be much cheaper than the Athlon 'Classic' Also faster(TBird) since they use On-Die Cache and not off-die like the classic used to. so it would be better on your cost side to get a socketA platform.

:D Thanks for all the help!

[kb244]

Oh also if you do go for SocketA (TBird or Duron) Asus is currently the best Socket A board.

[Warmaster199]

Pentium 3 is so powerful, it is concidered a munitions chip. You are not allowed to sell it to countries such as China or Russia because it can be used to guide nuclear missiles.

[kb244]

I find that extremely hard to belive, Athlon has just as much or more power.

and as far as munition goes, Athlon would do much better since it has a much more powerful Floating Point unit which is usaually critical for tasks such as guided missles.

[Cybrg641]

yeah, I don't know where you heard that WarMaster, but the Athlon is even better than the Pentium 3. And those countries probably already have those kind of processors. Probably not that many though.

[kb244]

I know AMD only has a plant in germany, and a plan in texas, but intel has a plant almost everywhere including those places you mentioned, and many home users of those countries (if they can afford it) would have those, also guidance systems on munition systems cost several grands, even possibly upto a million dollars, mainly just because the processing is both intergrated, and has to have Garanteed realiabilty, I doubt that any "smart" goverment is going to put either a Pent3 or an Athlon into weapon systems, with the occasional crashes some of us normal users may have.

[Warmaster199]

The crashes are not the chips themselves. Actually, No crashes are caused by any hardware(except HDD crashes from extra G's). Crashes are caused by faulty software. It's Microsoft to blame for when it comes to software crashes. And you have wondered where I found that a P3 is a munitions chip? My tech teacher told me that and he's very up-to-date. P3(933MHz) is able to do more than 1 GigaFlop (1 Billion Floating point operations/second). That's incredible! Who would need that much speed now when the most graphical programs only need a 300MHz minimum. And therefore, they would be ideal for munitions chips. You said that the government wouldn't use P3's or Athlon's for munitions control? What choice would they have? That's all they can use.

You know PSX2(Playstation 2)? It's able to perform near 1 GigaFlop. And, you may have guessed now, people in China, Russia, Japan, could strip the PSX2 Mainboard of it's core, It's very CPU. They could manufacture missiles with Playstation2 CPU's. I know it sounds crazy, I thought it did too, but I believe it. Don't believe me? Look in the new a while back, a transport filled with new PSX2's was intercepted before leaving for Japan.

You may think I'm scaring you all, but it's all true. This could tell that WWIII is soon to happen... Who knows... Personally, I hope it does NOT happen. If it does, we need to go to Mars because Earth is toast... Scary eh?

[kb244]

you belive it's true based only on what your Tech teacher had said, you're full of it, you need to get some more solid information, most of us can get much more information off the net, than you could get out of your tech teacher also if this is true, I've never heard of a 145$ missle guidance system, and yes it is the chips themselves, microsoft isnt the only OS out there, you obviously dont know that much about computers to blame it 100% on software. crashes also occur with excessive heat, the kind of heat or etc created by a military weapon would fry out your chip in a matter of seconds. Come up with some more solid evidence, like a legal posting at intel that states it should not be sold to those countries and why.

[HarryW]

Why is this supposed to be scary in any way at all? Don't you think a nuclear power such as Russia or China is perfectly capable of designing and manufacturing its own CPUs?

I would have thought a RISC processor would be much more suited to the task. If you've ever seen how complex Intel's CISC instruction set is... well it's ugly I can tell you.

I have heard of Russian-manufactured processors operating in the region of terahertz, I assure you it's no more a danger selling them Pentium 3s than it is selling them rusty kitchen knives.

[kb244]

hehe for all I care I could mail them a Playstation 2 or something, and watch them take it apart and use it in their missles while they remote control it from home using a PS2 controler hehe.

[HarryW]

Hehehehe :D

[railor]

Quote:

2)Intel was the first company to make CPU chips(from my knowledge). Therefore, they make very reliable chips(And fast).

the first CPU was the motorola 8088 (Twit)

and

I had a 286 that ran Windows 3.11 (need i repeat...)

also , the best chip at time of press is the Athlon

[kb244]

Railor is exactly right, dont know why I didnt correct on the Motorola earlier, also in any case being the first doesnt mean you can be the best. It's true Intel been in the business quite a long time, and they can learn from their past mistakes, but AMD also been in there for a while, since the 386 I belive. I think the reason people are so diehard with intel is that AMD does have a history of unstable chips especially the K6-2 when it came to the lower cost option, however Athlon came out and it really w00ped Intel's butt for a while, also look at it this way , heres a couple reason if you wana compare company to chips

AMD :
-Cheaper Chips
-Stable Chips
-Better FPU
-Very high availibility
-First to make it to 1Ghtz, and still holding stable
-Only have two plants (Germany, Texas)

Intel:
-Expensive Chips
-Stable if 1Ghtz and below
-widest varieties of motherboards/chipsets
-very hard to find good CPUs (low availibilities)
-Most Boards have to result to tricks to make CPU run the way they do
-Has many plants worldwide, but still cant meet demands

Also if you are an intel person that fears AMD taking over, I wouldnt fear, as Intel Holds the majority of the market when it comes to standard business applications, Not because Intel is better, but most companies have a long lasting trusting corporate relationship with Intel.

But AMD being faster(FPU), Cheaper, More Availible, I chose to stick with them.

It's nice to know that Big Guy sticking around, but after a while they panic for public relations, and end up screwing up their new stuff, I mean look at 3dfx (Least 3dfx didnt have to recall anything tho)

Wow! :(
You guys diss Intel like it's some kind of a nazi organization.
I know some (maybe most) of you think that AMD is better, but you present it like Intel sucks.
I don't think they are THAT bad.

[kb244]

:D it's kind of like microsoft, sure there products (other than some flavors of windows) Are good or even great, but their behavior as a corporation can lead people to *Hate* them, in a sense AMD and Nvidia had good corporate image. Intel screwing up a couple times, forcing RDram down our throat, having a recall of many boards, and also crapping up on their 1.13Ghtz thus recalling that too. It's all PR Stunts, and their behavior appears less than professinoal.

[HarryW]

Intel are good, but not as good as they used to be, and AMD is better.

They charge more for their chips even though the performance is less. Why? If the two companies went toe-to-toe in a price war Intel would win outright because of it's financial backing. I think it's because they have a high opinion of themselves, and also because they know that business buyers are stupid enough to stick with them anyway despite their poorer product.

Anyway it's nothing personal, it's just that Athlons are better.

[kb244]

Intel in my opinion started to get all flakey when AMD came out with TBird and Duron. mainly cuz well look at this comparism

AMD K5 -> Intel Pentium
AMD K6 -> Intel Pentium 2

Athlon -> Intel Pentium 3
TBird -> Intel Coppermine
Duron -> Intel Celeron

It would appear originally AMD only competed againts Intel most popular Chip, but now it tries to compete with all aspect of Intel, wheter it be the midrange, high range, low budget area of the market.

[HarryW]

The RDRAM thing is a very good point. Fine, RDRAM is all well and good, but the prices for RAMBUS were horrendous and Intel was trying to make everyone drop SDRAM completely. Nobody wanted it because of the bloody stupidly high prices. I wonder what ever happened to RAMBUS.

I asked the guy at that computer company, and he said an Athlon 900 is like PIII 733. But that's only by the way.
I know what SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) is, but what's RDRAM and RAMBUS?
From what I've seen until now, there a couple of things I should consider:
1) For Athlon - I'll be doing a lot of programming including DX programming, so a strong FPU is required...
2) For PIII - On the other hand, I intend to get maximum 933Mhz, and as some of you said Intel became unreliable after the 1Ghz.
3) For Athlon - If I take the Athlon I can take a CPU that's faster than 1Ghz.
4) For PIII - I intend to have Win2K on the new computer and I heard it hates the Via chipset.

Ahhhh! What should I do? :confused: :(

[HarryW]

Well no offense to the guy at the computer company you spoke to, but he's a cLo0l3s5 nU|3iE and he clearly 5u>< 4zZ ;)

That's just not true, and if he thinks it is then he shouldn't be in a position to advise his dog on a calculator purchase, let alone you on a PC.

The Via chipset thing isn't something I've heard of, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a compatibility issue at the moment. I'm sure it will be fixed soon enough (well fairly sure).

[Warmaster199]

SORRY! I guess I was maybe a little wrong about Intel being the best. But you can't blame me! Everyone makes mistakes.

If you want a fast chip, wait for a copper chip. New technology, fast, more conductive(and reliable), smaller. Negatives are: Higher cost(new technique to stop copper from bleeding into silicon).

[kb244]

As far as the win2k+Via goes, I am running Win2k Pro, with a Athlon , that has a Via Kx133 motherboard, and it is rock solid even more stable than my 98SE.

Wow, that's hard. :(

I guess I'm gonna have to go experience with both chips at friends' houses or something.
Most of the posts are for Athlon, but since I'm getting a CPU that's lower than 1Ghz it's still a hard decision.

Thanks a lot for all the help! :D

[()InDiGo)))>]

recently i read a report saying that the difference between a Duron and Ath is not that much, and not worth the price difference. i've just bought a new pc, and it's a Duron. it's not caused any problems iether. the only intel chip that beats the ath chip is the xeons, but they have v. v big cache (standard is 1mb?), but you will not notice the difference unless u want a server. the only dissadvancetages of AMD chips is that:

* they get DAMN HOT, i burnt myslf when i touched the chip by accident.
* they have problems when it come to multi-processors? pentium pro and xeons works better then AMD when it comes to more then 1 cpu?

does intel actually check their chips before they release them? who nos... the problems with pentiums and pentium3s.

i think that the Duron may be the choice of the domestic market as they perform at the same, if not higher against the PIII.

[kb244]

a PentIII and PentIII Xeon (standard is 2 and 4 megs) will get just as hot (or will burn your finger in the same manner) also as far as the dual chip thing goes, the CPU doesnt have a problem being dualed, it's wholey the Motherboard's fault, there arnt any dual athlon boards that's been out longer than a Intel dual board, and if I remeber there is only a single Chipset that is capable of doing dual athlons, and that's in beta stages, or very early consumer release.

[Dillinger4]

Pent Xenon processors were orginally engineered
to out perform standard PIII's. With up to 2MB
of cache running at processor speed rather than
512kb of fixed L2 cache running at half processor
speed. I have two of them that run in tandom in
my Silicon Graphics workstation. And that thing
runs blazing fast.

With IBM's new Interlocked pipeline CMOS
processor architecture comming out we can
expect to see 3.5 to 4 Ghz speeds in three
to four years. OOOOOhhhh i cant wait!!!

[Iain17]

Here we go then.

AMD Vs Intel


The latest Thunderbirds run quicker than an equivalently clocked PIII.
The Athlon’s have more cache, running at full speed now I believe.
A lot of the newest and fastest PIII’s have been recalled because they were faulty. HARDWARE, not software, at fault for once.
The Athlon’s run on a DDR FSB. This means the FSB is running at 200mhz, rather than 100 or 133 on the PIII’s.
The Duron runs on the same 200mhz FSB. The Celeron runs on a 66mhz bus. Bottle neck anyone ?
Intel’s chipsets do support RAMBUS memory, but this is horrendously expensive. It does however run at 800mhz, compared to DDR SDRAM’s rate of 266mhz.
Any AMD chip that is clocked at the same rate as a Intel chip will be cheaper.
Intel have locked the Clock Multiplier, so if over clocking is one of your passions, it can now only be done through the FSB. On the other hand, feel free to overclock your AMD until you can fry an egg on it.
Dual CPU support. Yes Intel has many boards that support dual CPU’s, but unless you go back to the BX (I think) chipset, that only supports CPU’s of up to 600mhz, the performance gain is zero. I have just seen a review of this myself. Seeing as you cannot get a PIII that runs as slow as 600mhz these days, they used two Celeron’s. And guess what. Two 600 Celeron’s beat two PIII’s clocked at 933. On the other hand, Athlon’s also support dual CPU configurations. It is just that no motherboard maker has produced a chipset that will take advantage of this.

[Sastraxi]

The reason that the AMD Thunderbird is faster than the Athlon or Duron is because of it's cache speed. Here's a comparison:

AMD Athlon 1GHZ: 333MHZ Cache
AMD Duron 533MHZ: 200MHZ Cache
AMD Thunderbird 1GHZ: 1GHZ Cache

The cache speed makes a HUGE difference in 3D Games and the like. This is why you should go with the Thunderbird rather than the Athlon or the Duron.