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Distribution: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, Fedora, Ubuntu
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Let me preface this my saying that I am an Intel guy. I always have been. I tried the K5 - didn't like it. Tried a K6-2 - not impressed. Also tried a K6-3. After that I stayed away from AMD for awhile. Through all of the hype the Athlon has caused I have not even been tempted. But last monday I was stuck at work (we got like 25 inches of snow in 24 hours...the whole city was closed) and I figured what better way to pass the time than see what new gadgets are around. When I saw that I could get a 700MHz duron for $65 I figured it was time to give AMD another shot. I also picked up a 128MB MemMan PC133 Mosel SDRAM CAS2 DIMM (This thing hit 161MHz in the reviews) and and Asus A7V. Let me add the following two thought to my previous AMD rant. I cannot stress enough that quality memory makes a HUGE difference when building a system. For what it is worth I think MemMan is The place to buy memory. Very fair prices, GREAT customer service, super high quality product and some of the best tech support I have seen. I also am a HUGE Asus fan. In my opinion they make the best boards around (I have owned 10-12 Asus boards and never had a problem)
So my first impressions? Well I have not had too much time to play but overall I would say that while I am more impressed than in the past I still am not completly sold. I installed Windows ME. Before you get up in arms let me tell you why I wanted to get a feel for the system and I still have not found a Linux util that can match SiSoft Sandra. For this reason I often install windows on a new system before I install Linux. I will post the Sandra numbers later. I benchmarked the system at both 700MHz and 840MHz.
One thing to note. I ran distributed.net for about and hour and it ran very good. At this point I was actually pretty impressed with the setup. I then tried SETI@Home. The machine looked solid. I tried again - same thing. I then downloaded the command-line seti client (I had been trying the GUI client). 5 seconds after starting it the machine was once again locked solid. I have run into problems like this in the past with AMD and this is one of the reasons I have stayed away. To be fair I didn't play with the system too much after the lockup (it was like 3AM and I had to work in a couple hours, so it could be a configuration issue, but all the temps were ok and the machine had been running stable for hours before I tried SETI.
I must say that although I have always used intels CPU's, I decided to try an AMD Duron for the system I built, beacuse I thought it was cheap, and had seen some good reviews of it in the UK.
And I must say that I have found it very reliable, and quick for money I spent on it. I have a 600MHz processor at the core of the computer I use Linux on, and have not seen a crash or lock due to the CPU. In fact the only time I have had problems is in Windoze. However, It is not that I stretch the computer in Linux or run lots of process all together, so I haven't really tested it, but I still am glad that I have an AMD insted of an Intel chip.
Jeremy is right about the memory, without a doubt the single most effective way to speed up your comp. Just for comparison, I only use 64MB of RAM in Linux (compared to 256MB in Windoze), yet Linux runs alot faster!
Much like Jeremy I am pretty much a hard core Intel fan. Being a millionaire playboy, money is no object for me, and thus I can and will only buy the best. OK, I'm not a millionaire playboy, but when I can I will always buy the best parts that I can afford. For my money Intel has just been more stable, more reliable, and around for too long not to go with them. Anyways, now on to my story...
I was building a computer for a familiy member, and this family member insisted on going with AMD for the mere fact they were cheaper. Despite my protests the AMD hardware was bought and I began to put the system together. This family member enjoys 3d gaming, so a Voodoo3 was purchased as well. Upon completion we installed windows98 and began to test the system. The first and most noticable problem was that the 2d performace was horrid. Color swapping and redrawing could be seen everywhere. Next we tried a few 3d applications, and received at MOST 2-3 frames per second. Assuming the problem to be w/ the V3, we returned it for a new one only to suffer from the same problems. Drivers were reinstalled, followed by OS's, followed by more hardware, yet nothing worked. All along I'd feared this would be a problem as I'd read that V3's and AMD based systems really don't agree with each other.
In a nutshell I just couldn't stop thinking how much frusteration could have been avoided by just going with Intel.
I know this thread was started months ago, but I did a search on SETI and just couldnt resist.
Personally, I doubt I will ever buy, or build, a system based on Intel hardware, as I,ve only used AMD and see no reason to change as i,m very happy with the performance and reliability.
My first system was an AMD K6-3 400 had a slight overheating problem (only in the summer) which was caused by the supplier fitting an inferior heatsink and fan , when this problem was resolved by myself purchasing a good cooler (www.overclockers.co.uk) the system was fine.
My second system, which I built myself has a Duron 750 running at 900 on an ABIT KT7-RAID which runs flawlesly, and yes I have no problems running SETI at all, average time is between 9 and 11 hrs. So long as the room the system is in stays cool I can even run it at 950.
I,m not sure why your system has problems, but I doubt its the processor, probably just a bios problem.
AMD chips chips do run slightly hotter than the equivalent Intel so to buy a desent heatsink and fan, follow that advise and I would recommend AMD every time.
I was always a Intel person. Usually no real big problems or whatever but about 4 months ago, I switched and built a system with a AMD Duron 800mhz. Well, the problems that I started getting running my old Celeron 500mhz, I got constant freezes, lockups... whatever...
Now my main system that runs the AMD Duron, I haven't seen a constant freeze as of yet running flawlessly. AMD I believe has a new supporter and any future PC's built by me are gonna go with them. Plus I save cash on them instead of going the Intel route.
i've been using an Athlon 850 for the past year on my main box, and it's been running flawlessly. to be fair, i've never really had any horror stories to report with either AMD or Intel. at the moment, i'm building a box for my friend which will have an athlon 1.4... because, well, he's got a lot of money and wants a seriously overpowered computer. but the 1.4 from AMD constantly kicks the s*** out of Intel's 1.7 on every benchmark i've seen. i'm sticking with AMD ... pricewise, and performance.
Go AMD.. i have 3 AMD PC's, a 500Mhz Athlon(classic), 1.33 Ghz Athlon, and a 750 Duron.. the only problem i have ever had with any of them was overheating when overclocking the 500 to 700.
Now it sits @ 500 running linux giving me no grief at all.
Have never had any problems with the voodoo 1 or 2, but have never tired with a Voodoo 3, and would be very suprised if a voodoo 3 gave me any grief.
Anyone thinking of going Intel purley for reliability/compatability , just aint thinking straight !.
Location: Rome, Italy ; Novi Sad, Srbija; Brisbane, Australia
Distribution: Ubuntu / ITOS2008
Posts: 1,207
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AMD 1.4 running great, Intel PIII running great too, i guess it's just a price issue, although i prefer AMDs for some mysterious reason.
Lately i've been reading about intel's Xeon processor, with hyperthreading. They claim it is the same as having a dual processor performance-wise. Can anyone tell me more about hyperthreading and are Xeon's really good, or just marketed really good?
Thanks
-NSKL
hyperthreading does increase performance greatly in some instances yielding great increases in speed not double though, hyperthreading is also found on the newest p4s i think 3.06 and up, linux recongnizes hyperthreading as two processors so it will see it that way. Unfortunately hyperthreading can cause a drop in performance, some types of applications will slow down using hyperthreading though i think most linux applications should work perfectly well with it (the slowdown bit came from a windows based magazine)
I've used both and don't really have a prefference. WIth Intel, I usually go for the lower speed overclocking kings, have a 2x366 Celeron @ 600Mhz and my new PC is 1.6A P4 @ 2.24Mhz. AMDs are 750 & 900s.
Been happy with both, except the "Infinite loop error" on my AMD/VIA mix systems in WinXP, but, of course, this isn't a problem with Linux. My Voodoo 3000's have run just fine on any of my systems they've been instaleld in.
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