Pentium 4 vs. AMD

[gf]

Did anybody look at BIOS settings? My computer was doing all kinds of strange, intermitting things and I found a setting on my BIOS was messed up.

[Sefy]

letmeinforgodsake, not since 1969 has Intel made a bigger floop then the P4, you can give it all the big names you want, fact is, on EVERY benchmark except those you cook in your own labs the P4 fails on a speed per speed test! how come the P4 loses to a P3!! when it's downclocked to 1ghz ??? i'm not even saying AMD here! i'm saying your OWN Pentium 3 kills a P4 when they are both ran at the same clockrate! putting a number on the CPU saying it's 2ghz doesn't make it a 2ghz! especialy when it can only now finaly beat an AMD at 1.4ghz! no wonder AMD isn't rushing to release more speeds, you are not giving them a challenge!

You are putting numbers on your CPU's that don't justify or do it justice! I used to be one of those who paid good money for an Intel CPU, but I was sick and tired of Intel changing a slot/socket with every new CPU!, and yes the P4 on PAPER is a great new CPU, pity Intel never released it! you just released all those CPU ?ghz speeds cause you couldn't beat AMD's and it's a fact that when Intel has a winner CPU it doesn't drop prices in 9 months!!! because people see right though it!! sure, in the LONG future the P4 which was supposed to be out, will be a great CPU, but by then, AMD will have an even better CPU!.

Intel overcharges, and gives a much lower performance, and maybe you would mind denying all the newspaper ads that Intel threatens PC manufacturers on releasing AMD boards ? which you gave them a hard time to startup! very nice from Intel for competition!, or maybe whould you mind denying Intel sueing VIA for releasing a chipset for P4 to make it cheaper ? which is something I'll never understand Intel doing!

Frisco, like you, i'm totaly shocked that a MUCH stronger system then your previous ones gives you that much trouble! after all, with ALL that CPU power Intel claims a P4 has, wouldn't you excpet it to perform flawlessly ? and this has nothing to do with OS, if you could do it on your OS before, how come you can't do it now on a BETTER system ?

I don't want to see Lab controled Benchmarks, I want to see REAL life benchmarks, not INTEL made benchmarks, I want you to explain to me how is a Dual AMD 1.2ghz wipes the floor with a P4 XEON at 1.7ghz, which has a total of 1ghz MORE then the AMD, and it LOSES! on GRAPHICS!
So don't give me big names on what the processor will do in the future, show me what it can do NOW with today's applications, cause in the future, you'll have another socket, and people who bought a P4 will again need to upgrade, and again waste alot of money, and again will propably be outperformed by an AMD CPU which will cost less then half the price!

I'm sorry for this outburst, it's not my style, but after everyone keeps saying i'm bribed, I get an Intel personal to show me who is really bribed! so unless you give me RAW, HARD FACTS, I wouldn't believe a single word you say, cause you'll have Lab Tests! like Intel paid ZD to show their CPU as better then all the rest.

_________________
Email me for faster replies!

Best Regards,
Sefy Levy,
Certified Computer Technician.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sefy on 2001-09-05 10:47:49 ]</font>

[H@Mouse]

Quick comment:
- yep, dump ME... although ME is using the new Microsoft Media Encoder which helps P4's dramatically, it's still not the best for capturing by any means.

Side notes: the MS multimedia encoder/decoder in ME and 2000 do make the P4 appear to be a better than the Athlons when it comes to multimedia apps (as virtualis seems to swear by - hey! I do agree with you in MicroSoft - happy land though!), actually the tight optimizations make it so. The Athlon is still better for multimedia apps due to the old 3DNow and the 3DNow professional instructions... which MS blatantly ignores... it's EXACTLY this that makes the P4 only APPEAR to be a better multimedia processor. The AMD, due to it's matrix manipulating opcodes (similar to SSE2), is perfectly suited for massive multimedia streaming AND FILTERING (here's where the P4 falls on its face every time - apply some filters for on-the-fly manipulation and now try "stream"-capturing) in conjunction with its floating point capabilities. Now, granted, few apps use their own codecs entirely, falling back on good old MS for some core essentials (read: Intel sponsered optimizations). Try playing around with Linux for any video capturing/filtering on a P4 and Athlon and see what your opinion is then.

As for ME - I seem to recall ME having some time logging features enabled by default. I wonder if it could be causing system load "spikes" like he is seeing. It's for automatic system backups, etc. I wish I could remember the link to disable it. There's a few guides out there to strip out the system-hogging features of ME and make it act more like Win98SE.

Ah-ha! It's detailed here a little bit - http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/winme/

The general Windows 9x/ME guide might help also - http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/windows/

Check around other sites as well for tweaking info. Your P4 at 1.5 GHz IS NOT THE BOTTLENECK. The throttling could be an issue if you have excessive heat buildup in your system. Intel did build in thermal protection into the chip (which AMD has taken the heat for NOT doing on the current Athlons, pun intended). Memory should not be the bottleneck. The operating system IS DEFINITELY one of the bottlenecks if not THE only one. Drivers could be an issue. Jumpers on hard drives (I know, sounds odd, but happens most often with Western Digital drives) could do something similar causing I/O the bottleneck, and the CPU to spike... (for instance, if you have single or multiple hard drives, make sure they're set accordingly... some need to be jumpered differently for MASTER (in a 2 drive config) or SINGLE. We have a person here at work who shall remain nameless that tends to keep a drive set to slave and use it as the only drive on the channel... very, very bad for UDMA!)

- H@

PS: For performance freaks - check out the news on the new VIA KX266 and nForce chipset boards DUE THIS MONTH! Looks like the preliminary tests are giving the old tried-and-true pre-Palimino's a good 5-20% boost... a 1.4 GHz old Athlon seems to be beating out even the 2.0 GHz P4's now in Q3... this is almost Unreal (tm)! The new Palomino (read: Athlon XP) chips ought to give them another 5-10% boost. The rumors are spreading that a 1.53 GHz Athlon XP with one of the newer boards should rival a 2.2 or 2.3 GHz P4.

[TIbrO]

When did Intel remove the clock speed throttling? As far as I know, their new 2Ghz processors still have clock throttling...

Besides the obvious clock throttling, you should make sure you capture to a drive with no pagefiles on it. Make sure your resolution is not too crazy and high; use 32-bit or 16-bit color, not 24-bit. (Don't ask me why, this is just knowledge that I have stumbled across all over the internet)

I was on Windows 2000 since October last year and my PC's performance increased right off the bat from the upgrade to 2000 from Millenium Edition...

Now I am on Windows XP Professional build 2600, and it actually lets me disable the virtual memory pagefile all together, so now Windows uses my 1.5GB of memory, and doesn't use my ATA-100 main drive for paging anymore...

I still capture to a dedicated video capture drive so that when I capture there is nothing hampering with the performance.

My PC's stats are as follows:
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4Ghz
1.5GB of PC133 SDRAM
EPoX 8KTA3+ (RAID)
Two 20GB ATA/100 IBM Desktstar Hardrives
One Western Digital 8.4GB ATA-33 mp3 and backup drive
Matrox Marvel G400-TV (onboard MJPEG acceleration disabled for NT5.x kernel)
PICVideo MJPEG 2.0 Codec (registered) for capture
AVI_IO (registered) used for actual capturing

So my final recommendation to you is to exchange for another processor that doesn't have clock throttling, meaning none of that Pentium 4 stuff, if you like Intel get their fastest Pentium 3. I would and have gone with Athlon. AND go buy AVI_IO. It's only $25 United States Dollars and it makes even 333Mhz Pentium 2s not drop frames, because it used to work for me back when I had such a processor. I even had ATA-66 hardrive with my OS on it back then.

If you want to try AVI_IO out before buying it to see if it will work even on your crippled processor, you can download the trial, which has nothing disabled, from the site. The trial is time-based, so you can capture all you want for whatever the limit is, I can't remember how many days...

[KingJohn]

Ok Here is the deal...

I would never Buy an AMD chip if it was the only processor available.

Intel Rules OK, so no matter what you say, I will always buy in Intel chip

Ding Ding Don Ding Intel Inside

[Frisco]

Well,

Despite the many misgivings about the P4 Processor, the bottom line is that a machine with as fast a processor as I have should be able to capture video.

I don't think anyone can dispute that.

Therefore, my problem must not lie in the AMD vs. P4 debate, but rather something else, either in the OS or perhaps the chip is faulty...although I am not crashing at all, so the latter seems unlikely.

And yes, the BIOS is also a possible culprit, but for the life of me I can't see anything in the BIOS that I could change to make an impact.

[gf]

Yea, they should change the logo from
Ding Ding Don Ding Intel Inside
to
who would buy it is a ding a ling inside.

Enough Said!!!!!

[Sefy]

letmeinforgodsake, I wouldn't have expected much from an Intel personal, you couldn't prove a single point in your argument while I could, so, Ding Ding Don Ding Intel Inside, Idiot Outside
If you PAID me to buy an Intel CPU and gave me ALL the parts required for a WHOLE best in the planet recommanded by Intel system, i'd do the most decent thing, sell it for crap and get myself an AMD system instead!

Frisco, the problem you are having has nothing to do with AMD/Intel debate, but atleast you saw the support you get from even an Intel Personal who couldn't justify anything except give you Intel Commercials, why you might want to try and do is go into your BIOS and put everything on Defaults, don't optimize anything, install a fresh Windows??/???? only with the required system drivers and the required software for capturing, then see how it goes, if it does the same thing, i'd seriously consider going back to the store and asking for a refund and get yourself a BETTER system using an AMD cpu!

gf, Well Said!

[KingJohn]

Frisco, When you upgraded did you just plug the old hard drive in and let Windows install the new drivers for your motherboard or did you "Wipe Windows" and do a fresh install?

[Frisco]

I got another hard drive, actually, to act as my main drive (20 GB). I did a fresh install of windows ME on it. My second drive is the 60GB and does have windows ME on it, although the computer doesn't boot off of it. I haven't bothered taking those files off that drive yet as it has plenty of space left (ie. 43 GB).

[chjan]

Hi Frisco,

Put in only your new HD, then boot DOS. run FDISK and select the ACTIVE partition to be your boot parttion of your new HD.

chjan

[Frisco]

Chjan,

I will do that...I guess you suspect it must be a hard drive problem.

Frisco

[chickenbeast]

Don't worry you system is plenty good enough to do what you are trying to do. I have a p4 1.7 and haven't had any problems with video capture. As long as your system runs fine, and you get the video capture problems worked out, you will capture some nice video. I would assume it is the HD too, as it's the only thing I can think of to bottle neck the system like that. Did you build this system yourself?

[Frisco]

No, I just put in the hard drives, DVD and CD-RW drives and some PCI cards...and installed the OS.

[TheInformer]

Hehe another "mine is better than yours" argument has evolved out of a simple request :^)

No one's bothered to ask what video capture device is being used.

If it's a PCI based (or worse, ISA based) video card, then that might be the problem. Use only an AGP video solution to get maximum throughput.

Are you capturing through an external device connected to your parallel port or USB port? Capture through a PCI card
at least.

Regardless of what company's processor you have, 1.5 Ghz is fast enough. I have captured video on a 400 Mhz Celeron (nothing great mind you :^)

[Frisco]

The capture device is the ATI 64 MB Radeon VIVO Card - it is a AGP based card (as I'm sure you already know).

I am quite sure that it is not the cause of the bottleneck - as I would hate to see what kind of card I would need if this wasn't enough

[TheInformer]

Frisco, go to the video card manufacturer's website and make sure you have the newest drivers loaded. That might be a problem.

Check your video card's properties and make sure DMA is checked (if that's an option) and there are no IRQ conflicts.

[tww1]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-04 09:16:16, H@Mouse wrote:
Nononono... it's quite adequate. Must have been a REAL die-hard AMD fan who told you that!

I greatly prefer the AMD Athlons personally, and they do handle real-time compression and filtering effects leaps and bounds better than the fastest P4 (just due to the weak FPU of the P4 design), but for basic capturing, I've actually read that it's supposed to be slightly faster than the Athlon series.

In general, take a P4 speed * 3/4, and this will yield the corresponding speed of a similarly performing Athlon chip. For instance, in many apps, a 1.2 GHz Athlon will beat a 1.5 GHz P4 and just about all games but Quake III (does anyone actually play that crappy excuse for a game??? I don't think I have one single friend playing it! PRACTICALLY EVERYONE plays or has played Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, Rune, or Undying though - which (the UT engine) still runs faster on 1.4 GHz Athlons even against the 2.0 GHz P4... unbelieveable!) It's just a matter of the apps though. There are a select few where the P4 will edge out that Athlon, you just have to look for them!

Watch the benchmark results on various hardware sites and choose the software that runs faster on the P4. Same with the video editting software (though I know of NONE that run faster on a P4)... you'll likely find some CAPTURE software that runs better on a P4 though! Flask I've heard is much better optimized for the P4 for DVD conversion also!

Games, same way... there's got to be a few that run better on the P4... Q3, sometimes Mercedes Benz Truck Racing, and Dronez are the only ones so far... there might be more in the future...

Sorry... truly... getting way off topic, but I noticed you did strike up the "hot topic" (tm) of P4 vs AMD in your subject and it just got me going.

Anyhow, no, your system is quite adequate for video capturing. Conversion tends to be much weaker with the exception of Flask. Is it usuable? A definite yes! Junk? No. By no means.

PS: yes, I've gone the AMD way for video capture, and all things are quite happy here.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Well i use both system for doing this stuff and i have found that PIII 1000 beats a AMDog 1.3 hands down I build my own system and i have had more problem with this AMD so pissed off. PII not one bit. Stay away from the dazle i have one if you want would sell it to you ) Guess its ok for some stuff but quility could be a lot better> Did find thou if put a fan over the top of it to cool off the restior it dose do some what better.

[vitualis]

Sefy,

I think you misunderstood my last post.

In current applications, it is undeniable that the Athlon is FASTER MHz for MHz than a P4.

This I do no dispute. I don't think anybody disputes this.

Nor do I dispute that the Athlon is a much more AFFORDABLE processor than the P4.

However, in terms of what is AVAILABLE, an Athlon processor IS NOT necessarily faster than a P4. The 2GHz P4 (which is out -- you can go to a shop and buy it) system is definitely faster than any Athlon system you can buy. It may be on specific applications that the Athlon is still faster, but overall, the P4 in this case has better performance.

The AMD camp keeps berating the fact that CPUs shouldn't be simply judged on the clockrate and I totally agree on this. The Athlon and P4 are quite different CPUs and a simple comparison of the clockrate is meaningless. This, however, works both ways.

I am looking at what is the BEST on both sides... and at present, the best available P4 system is faster than the best available Athlon system.

Furthermore, as others have already alluded to many times, there are simply less compatibility issues with Intel processors compared to AMD systems. doom9's woes would never really happen with a P4 system. There is more to a good processor/system than just the raw performance.

In terms of the original question on whether the P4 can capture video, it certainly can.

Regards.

[Sefy]

vitualis, claiming that a CPU that the company who made it printed a speed on it, doesn't mean it is actually at that speed level, which is what I told to our Intel guy here, which didn't bother giving a just reason because he knows i'm right, and he is propbably thinking of some excuse to deny it with other fancy names.

Lets say AMD release a 3ghz CPU ? does that make it 3ghz ? a CPU most show the performance it is claimed to have, and sure, don't measure the CPU by raw performance alone, "think about the future" well, lets think about the future for a minute here.

P4 is 9 months old, and Intel cut it's prices by god knows how much already! so anyone who bought it and spend thousands of dollar! has already lost alot of the money! and in LESS then 9 months, and already Intel has changed the socket platform for the P4, sure there will be converters in the future, but that doesn't make it right for them to keep on changing sockets so you'll have to buy a whole system again just for the new CPU's!

Stability ? Compatibility ? the latest AMD's which will now come out, will not only run FPU intensive applications better, will not only run MMX applications, and not only 3DNow and Enhanced 3DNow, but it will also run SSE applications! so exactly what compatibility issues are you telling me ? i've not had a single compatibility issues yet! if a program is specificly designed for a certain processor and the developers admit they had a bug in their optimizations for a CPU, you want to tell me that makes the CPU bad ? no, that makes the program bad, and that's why we get new versions of it.

I'm not saying a P4 can't perform Video Capturing, i'm saying that the poor guy who bought the system, which is 100x better (in theory!) then his older system, can't do the simple tasks that his older system did! and his system seems to be pretty strong! then why does he have problem with the P4 ? what ? could it be compatibility problems ? but everyone says Intel is the most compatible one! why won't any of you admit that just like AMD might have problems, so will Intel!

So, Logical Conclusion, why waste thusands of dollars on a system that won't last a day! and get a system you can atleast upgrade! and get better CPU's because they come with NEW features, the P4 could have been a great processor, but right now, it's only great on PAPER, cause Intel NEVER released the CPU they were supposed to release.

As for your point of argument that Intel currently offers the best system in the Market, that is totaly bogus, what do you want AMD to do ? lie like Intel and print 2.2ghz on their CPU so they can sell it ? well, your wish just might come true! and again AMD will sell CPU's on true power, as a P4 2.2ghz can only now beat an AMD 1.2

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-05 22:03:35, Sefy wrote:
vitualis, claiming that a CPU that the company who made it printed a speed on it, doesn't mean it is actually at that speed level, which is what I told to our Intel guy here, which didn't bother giving a just reason because he knows i'm right, and he is propbably thinking of some excuse to deny it with other fancy names.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sefy, I'm not sure what you are suggesting here... The 2GHz P4 definitely runs at a clock speed of 2GHz and that's all that it means. Furthermore, that is all that it SHOULD mean unless you believe in going back to the horrible AMD PR rating system.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>P4 is 9 months old, and Intel cut it's prices by god knows how much already! so anyone who bought it and spend thousands of dollar! has already lost alot of the money! and in LESS then 9 months, and already Intel has changed the socket platform for the P4, sure there will be converters in the future, but that doesn't make it right for them to keep on changing sockets so you'll have to buy a whole system again just for the new CPU's!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sefy, I am sure you are aware too that AMD has dropped the prices of its CPUs many times too (in fact, it just ?halved it's CPU prices with the release of the 2GHz P4). It should be obvious to any consumer that there is a balance between future depreciation of equipment versus the opportunity costs of NOT having that equipment. This isn't really an argument at all.

As for the sockets, I don't condone Intel's behaviour either. However, at least the converters exist and will work as expected. Although AMD has decided to remain with the currect socket for the Athlon 4, it is NOT 100% compatible with 100% of existing motherboards after all. This is exactly what I suggested in another Intel vs. AMD thread months back. It is naive to believe that a CPU like the Athlon4 (with many new features over the original) would just work perfectly on existing motherboards.

Exisitng motherboards that don't know about the Athlon4 will need a bios update. I envisage many many problems ahead when it is finally released for the desktop.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>Stability ? Compatibility ? the latest AMD's which will now come out, will not only run FPU intensive applications better, will not only run MMX applications, and not only 3DNow and Enhanced 3DNow, but it will also run SSE applications! so exactly what compatibility issues are you telling me ?</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Take a quick trip to doom9's site and read his hardware woes. Sorry, I didn't mean software compatibility -- rather hardware problems.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>So, Logical Conclusion, why waste thusands of dollars on a system that won't last a day! and get a system you can atleast upgrade! and get better CPU's because they come with NEW features, the P4 could have been a great processor, but right now, it's only great on PAPER, cause Intel NEVER released the CPU they were supposed to release.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

This conclusion could have been for either the P4 or Athlon... P4 systems ARE upgradable. Athlon systems (depending on mobo and future bios updates) may not be flawless upgradable. The P4 did come with MANY good new features (e.g., SSE2). The "new" features on the Athlon4 are not revolutionary.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>As for your point of argument that Intel currently offers the best system in the Market, that is totaly bogus, what do you want AMD to do ? lie like Intel and print 2.2ghz on their CPU so they can sell it ? well, your wish just might come true! and again AMD will sell CPU's on true power, as a P4 2.2ghz can only now beat an AMD 1.2</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sefy, only if you can show that the 2.0GHz P4 actually runs at a clockrate of something less would Intel be lying. Please don't make accusations such as this as you are a moderator. Furthermore, according to the tests on Tom's Hardware, the 2GHz P4 IS faster than the fastest Athlon on almost every test.

Regards.

_________________
Michael Tam

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vitualis on 2001-09-05 22:51:52 ]</font>

[kinneera]

It seems to me that a lot of benchmarks are extremely suspect...yours are no exception, Sefy. It has long been known that company released benchmarks are highly optimized for their specific processors (both parties are guilty of this), and ardent supporters of one or the other do much of the same. A number of the benchmarks that have been referenced provide little to no reliable information about ALL of the components of every system, and some were even lackadaisical about making sure that all components were equal except for the processor, which is not good benchmarking practice. As for the AMDs outperforming at lower clock speeds, there are a couple of things that should be kept in mind. Most, if not all, software programs used for benchmarking are not optimized for the P4. Does this mean that in the real world, the AMD is probably a better pragmatic choice? Absolutely. But it does NOT mean that the AMD is necessarily "wiping the floor" with the P4. When we see a wide range of software that takes advantage of the P4 optimizations, including using optimized compilers, we can begin to draw more meaningful conclusions about the long-term relative performance of the processors. The AMD performs well now for the money because software developers do not have to do much to take full advantage of the processor, but this is an advantage that can easily slip away.

Even more interesting, the future is 64 bit, which is an area where Intel looks to be taking a decided advantage. AMD's 64 bit processors are already late to the table, and are still based on older x86 instruction sets, which I believe will ultimately be a crippling weakness. I think it is the latest issue of PC World that has a fairly interesting discussion of the coming battle in that arena.

Whenever I hear the benchmark argument, I'm somewhat reminded of the old joke "54% of all statistics are made up on the spot". They're not useless, but they're to be taken with a grain of salt. A similar argument applies...

[shochan]

This is the best argument of all! As always im with Sefy. For what I do the athlon 1.4 is great. You want real benchmarks here they are I ahve showed them before but this is for everyone in here, This pertains to what we do (most of the time) Not some crappy future thing. I upgrade processors every 6 months and I have still have the same board for over a year and a half with 3 processor changes 900 tbird, 1ghz tbird, and the 1.4 . For a great portion of us we cant wait for apps to be enhanced with sse2. Think about it if I buy a p4 and it takes a year for my progz to be optimized my cpu would have been blown away by the cheaper amd. how smart is that really to waste your money on crap that wont work right for at least a year (you have to wait for everyone to optimize for the sse2) and by the time it does it freakin is obsolite. here is a realworld no shit bench mark that geared for what we do and you decide what is a waste of money and what isn't.

http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/TH7RAID/page7.htm

[vitualis]

I think you've completely missed the point. Of course AMD is cheaper and of course AMD gives better performance for the price. This hasn't been the issue.

The problem is that many people have the belief that even the best P4 has inferior performance to most Athlons. This simply isn't true.

For video editing, this is exactly what the review you posted confirmed. Except for the curious Flask test (which is contrary to almost every other Flask test), the P4 does well for multimedia applications. Indeed, this review is consistent with every other unbiased P4 review. Read the conclusion to that review -- it is a very good summary.

This review is actually quite old (April) and a 1.4 GHz P4 was compared against a 1.33 GHz Athlon. Now (half a year later), the Athlons are only at 1.4GHz while P4s have reached 2GHz.

The 2GHz P4s definitely have better overall performance than an otherwise equivalent 1.4GHz Athlon. It is inaccurate to suggest otherwise. Of course, it is much more cost beneficial to purchase an AMD system -- there is no debate; but this is a completely separate issue.

Regards.

[AnnihilatorTokyo]

kinneera, good answer. As he said, there aren't many softwares that uses all the instructions of the P4 chip yet. Win2k doesn't, don't know about the support in XP.
And you can't blame Intel for this, since they don't do software.

Guess we just have to wait and see when all software support P4 100%, then we know what's the best CPU.
In my case, I stick to Intel and my P4 1.7GHz, works very good for me. Only negative thing is the price of the RDRAM. And please, don't come say that DDRAM are better, unless you have an independent company do a benchmark, like http://www.tomshardware.com to back it up.

[Sefy]

vitualis, i'm not gonna do quating cause it's pointless and takes more space here
but here is what I ment regarding what you call "horrible" AMD PR rating, how would you know that P4 isn't some sort of PR by itself ? because it beats in performance other slower P4 ? putting a 2ghz on it and saying it's faster then everything else is bogus! if it was true, then that means that an AMD 1.4 is for the least could be marked at 1.9ghz!

AMD has dropped prices, but take into consideration that Athlon is 2 years old!! P4 is 9 months old!! it doesn't even hav a year! and
over the period of 9 months, AMD didn't reduce prices by half, Intel has halfed the half of the half! and only now it's coming close to compared AMD prices.

Sockets, I do condone Intel's behaviour, especialy on a brand new CPU, we all know they only invented the Slot-1 so AMD won't be able to put their CPU's on their board like with the Socket 7, cause don't forget that the Pentium/2/3/Celeron are the SAME processor!! there is NO diffrence between them! that's why the P4 is such a technological "breakthrough" as Intel claims.
As for compatibility on AMD's newer CPU's fitting on older mainboard, that is bogus of you to say it won't be compatible, and I don't call a BIOS update a complete system change like with Intel! a BIOS update is free, a board replacement means loss of money on your current board, and waste of money on another board! as i've already seen old boards with test CPU's using the Palomino and the only thing they needed was a BIOS update so it will know how to use the latest CPU features.

As for Doom9's hardware problems, he himself said he had a crappy GF board with a fauly fan, is that AMD's fault too ? and read all over the forum about hardware which is incompatible with P4! not to mention software and system drivers!

The Only new thing Intel P4 has is fancy name for the exact same stuff it had before, especialy the supposedly SSE2, and everything else which P4 has on PAPER is great, it's on PAPER, it's NOT released, don't confuse should be features with current features!

Again, you are saying a P4 2.0ghz is faster then the fastest Athlon, and that is 1.4ghz !! it's not 2.0ghz vs 2.0ghz!! of course it will be faster! but the mergin is SMALL!! so why don't you compare a 1.4ghz P4 vs a 1.4 Athlon ? this is the argument I always give, and everyone keeps avoiding it! why are you not comparing same clockrate, especialy if you keep saying that P4 is so much faster, you shouldn't be afraid of doing true comparison, and why are you afraid ? cause Tom's Hardware did it! he put a 1ghz of every CPU (underclocking P4 down to 1ghz) and EVEN the P3 beat the P4 on the same clockrate!

I may be a moderator, but that doesn't mean i'm hiding the truth, and I am making an accusation that Intel Lies, and untill Intel proves me wrong, I will keep saying Intel Lies, sure, their 2ghz is faster then their own 1.9-1.4, but it only NOW past the 1.4ghz on SOME tests!

kinneera, why are the benchmarks i've presented bogus ? I'm not the one who did them, AMD didn't do them, Intel didn't do them, it's an independent website that did them, they took the best hardware for each CPU and they compared all the graphic programs which do take advantage of each CPU, and AMD won fair and square!

You claim that I should buy a CPU now, which nothing is optimized for it, and when I finaly have software optimized for it, i'd propably need to buy another mainboard and CPU, so all the investment I did has gone waisted! cause I couldn't take advantage of what I have, and please don't tell me it's software's fault cause we all know how much Intel pays developers and even threatens others to support their CPU's new "features" and not develope for AMD, which is brute and unfair competition on Intel's part! is it any wonder it's called the WinTel platform ?

And AMD is wiping the floor with the P4 in every software today, and if you plan on saying wait for those programs to be optimized for P4, why don't you say the same for AMD ? why don't they take the time and optimize for AMD ? because then it might even be better ? and Intel won't like it ?

As for 64bit, you really planning on paying 3000$ for just the CPU ? by the time it's affordable for the customer, how do you know AMD won't come out with something better ?

vitualis, yes it is simply to say that P4 is inferior to AMD, cause at the moment it is inferiror, it offers NO real advantage in performance, cause for the price you pay for a 2ghz (near 600$) you can get a 1.4ghz AMD which gives you just about the same performance for 100$.

AnnihilatorTokyo, just like i replied before, you say don't blame Intel for software, then don't blame AMD for software, but then you will say, nobody supports AMD, so don't blame AMD for developers being absolutly lazy and not supporting their much superior CPU's.
I won't be surprised if Intel is using more of their famous tactics of scaring of developers to not support AMD.

I won't tell you DDR is better, but I won't tell you RDRAM is better, cause if it was sooo much better in Price/Performance then Intel wouldn't start developing chipset for the P4 to support DDR! cause Intel isnt making any sells! so they are reducing and reducing and now they finaly got the hint it's not just the CPU, it's also all the rest of the components that need to be user pocket friendly!

[pacmania_2001]

Wasnt the original point of this post to find out what was causing the video problem not to debate over whether AMD or Intel was better.

[vitualis]

Sefy, you are stubborn at times!!

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-06 01:49:55, Sefy wrote:
but here is what I ment regarding what you call "horrible" AMD PR rating, how would you know that P4 isn't some sort of PR by itself ? because it beats in performance other slower P4 ? putting a 2ghz on it and saying it's faster then everything else is bogus! if it was true, then that means that an AMD 1.4 is for the least could be marked at 1.9ghz!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Let me write this again. The clockrate is simply the clockrate. It gives a rough measure of performance within a line of CPUs. As AMD advocates have been saying all along and what YOU seem to be missing is that clockrate comparisons between different CPUs is meaningless.

Thus, there is NO problem in comparing a 2GHz P4 vs. a 1.4GHz Athlon. Why? This is simply because they are the top of the line in their series of CPUs. When I talk about "speed" or "performance", I'm talking about the REAL processing power of the chip as measured in a variety of tests.

The 2GHz P4 is NOT a PR rating because it runs at a clockrate of 2GHz. Similar an Athlon 1.4 runs at 1.4GHz. These numbers in themselves mean nothing. However, to market an Athlon 1.4 as "1.9" IS a PR rating. There has been recent talk about Athlon doing this for the desktop series of the Athlon4. Go to Tom's Hardware. They've got an article on it.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>AMD has dropped prices, but take into consideration that Athlon is 2 years old!! P4 is 9 months old!! it doesn't even hav a year! and
over the period of 9 months, AMD didn't reduce prices by half, Intel has halfed the half of the half! and only now it's coming close to compared AMD prices.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sefy, I don't write without evidence. AMD cut their CPU prices by a HALF when the 2GHz P4s were released. Again, go to Tom's Hardware. They've got a few pages on this as well.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>...cause don't forget that the Pentium/2/3/Celeron are the SAME processor!! there is NO diffrence between them!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sefy, I will assume that you are just writing emotively here. Obviously there are differences between the P2/3 and Celeron. Big differences. They are all just based on the same processor core.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>that's why the P4 is such a technological "breakthrough" as Intel claims.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

The P4 represents an entirely new architecture for their line of CPUs (e.g., Pentium classic --> Pentium Pro). The P4 is an entirely different chip to the P3.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>As for compatibility on AMD's newer CPU's fitting on older mainboard, that is bogus of you to say it won't be compatible, and I don't call a BIOS update a complete system change like with Intel! a BIOS update is free, a board replacement means loss of money on your current board, and waste of money on another board! as i've already seen old boards with test CPU's using the Palomino and the only thing they needed was a BIOS update so it will know how to use the latest CPU features.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

The new Northwood CPUs will fit into existing P4 mobos with an adapter. A BIOS update is a big thing as the onus on the compatibility has been taken off AMD and put onto mobo manufacturers. Somehow I doubt there will be a 100% problem free transition. Indeed the continual delay of the Athlon4 release on the desktops IS related with AMDs problem of getting the desktop Palomino working in existing boards.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>As for Doom9's hardware problems, he himself said he had a crappy GF board with a fauly fan, is that AMD's fault too ? and read all over the forum about hardware which is incompatible with P4! not to mention software and system drivers!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

It is a problem for AMD (though not necessarily their fault) if there are anomalous hardware incompatibilities. As for "read all over the forum about hardware which is incompatible with P4" -- can you provide some examples... example which don't turn out to be software driver problems with Win2000 or WinXP.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>Again, you are saying a P4 2.0ghz is faster then the fastest Athlon, and that is 1.4ghz !! it's not 2.0ghz vs 2.0ghz!!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Fastest P4 vs. Fastest Athlon. I believe that is fair. They were both released at approx. the same time. Remember the AMD mantra... clockrate doesn't mean anything, only performance. In any case, I very much doubt the CPUs based on the Athlon core will reach 2GHz anytime soon.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>so why don't you compare a 1.4ghz P4 vs a 1.4 Athlon ? this is the argument I always give, and everyone keeps avoiding it! why are you not comparing same clockrate...</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Simple. Firstly, because as the AMD people keep saying and are completely correctly, the Athlon and P4 are completely different chips. Clockrate comaparisons are meaningless. It would be like comparing a PIII 500MHz vs. a G4 at 500MHz.

Secondly, because the P4 1.4GHz is not a contemporary to the Athlon 1.4GHz.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>, especialy if you keep saying that P4 is so much faster, you shouldn't be afraid of doing true comparison, and why are you afraid ?</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Again, emotive posting I'm sure. I'm not afraid. Of course the 1.4GHz Athlon is faster than the 1.4GHz P4. I've never denied it. I don't believe that anybody else has either on this thread. You are seeing denials that aren't there.

The simple reason of not comparing a P4 1.4GHz with the Athlon 1.4GHz is simple. It is simply not appropriate and again, clockrate comparison between classes of CPUs are meaningless.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>I am making an accusation that Intel Lies, and untill Intel proves me wrong, I will keep saying Intel Lies, sure, their 2ghz is faster then their own 1.9-1.4, but it only NOW past the 1.4ghz on SOME tests!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm sorry Sefy, but what exactly is Intel lying about?? Their 2GHz P4 runs at 2GHz... that is simply a matter of fact. On independent testing by Tom's Hardware, the P4 2GHz had greater performance on the majority of tests over the Athlon 1.4GHz. This is a matter of fact too. Thus it would follow the the P4 2GHz has greater performance over the Athlon 1.4GHz.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>And AMD is wiping the floor with the P4 in every software today</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Again, not true. Sure, MHz by MHz it is, but the Athlon and P4 are different CPUs. Clockrate comparison is meaningless. What you should go by is either performance by price level (AMD wins here by a big margin) or performance by equivalent CPU release (i.e., P4 2GHz vs. Athlon 1.4GHz -- and the P4 2GHz system simply has greater performance).

Regards.

_________________
Michael Tam

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vitualis on 2001-09-06 05:13:05 ]</font>

[Sefy]

Vitualis, give me some credit, i'm stubborn all the time!!

Clockrate:
You can say it's meaningless, but fact is, people buy the marketed speed!
And when people see a CPU with a 1.5-2.0ghz speed, they don't really care
if the advertised speed is the REAL processing power! that's the selling!
and therefor there IS a problem comparing a 2GHz P4 with a 1.4Ghz Athlon!
You may be comparing top of the line of their own series, but what if we
do a little switch ? lets say the AMD was at 2.0ghz and Intel was at 1.4,
you know what will people say ? oh look at AMD even at 2.0ghz they can't
match a P4 at 1.4ghz!
Tell me since when does Intel release so many CPU's at such a short time?
Because they know the public needs to see those numbers and they need to
see them fast! cause Intel IS losing market! because NONE of their CPU's
so far as been able to beat, as you say, TOP of the line from AMD!

Prices:
AMD has NOT cut prices by half! how do I know this ? cause i'm planning
on buying an AMD 1.4ghz, and i'm still waiting for the price cut on the
Internet! (pricewatch) and i've been following the price of the 1.4ghz
for the past 2 months, and the 1.4 was around 130$ and it's down to 104$
and Intel has in those 2 months released: 1.7/1.8/1.9 and the 2.0! and
the price STILL hasn't dropped by HALF as you say! cause if it has, then
I would have been able to buy a 1.4Ghz AMD for as low as 65$!! now THAT
would have been HALF price!

CPU Core:
I'll correct myself - Pentium PRO, Pentium MMX, Pentium 2 and Pentium 3
are the SAME processor, using diffrent socket/slot in this release order
Socket 8, Socket 7, Slot-1 (later as Socket423) and Socket423 (and also
available as a Slot-1 if you look hard, but not compatible with all PII
Slot-1 boards because of 133mhz BUS use), the diffrences you mention as
so BIG, are only Cache sizes, while the first Celerons had NO cache and
the P2 had 128k L2 Cache, and P3 has 256k (i'm not including Xeon here!)
and you just admited it by saying this "The P4 represents an entirely
new architecture for their line of CPUs (e.g., Pentium classic --> PPro)

Future Upgradibility:
You are saying AMD's new CPU's won't work, while i've read and seen it
working on current boards even as old as the KT133, of course you can't
put the 266bus CPU on a 200bus board, but AMD are releasing CPU's from
both kinds. and the same goes for P4, it will be more then a BIOS update
since it will use like you said yourself "The new Northwood CPU's" will
fit, and how do you know they won't have compatibility problems like you
insist Athlon4 will have ? which by the way DOES work! cause the latest
Duron 1ghz (Morgan) is based on the same technology only with a cache
size that is smaller then the Palomino, which by the way is the CPU used
in Dual CPU called Athlon MP, and it IS being sold, and it DOES work.

Hardware Compatibility:
If i'll need to search the entire forum now, I won't be able to answer
you, but i'm sure if you look at the first released of GF3 and ATiRadeon
you will find plenty of hardware compatibility problems that were said,
and at one stage was even said the GF3 will NOT work on a P4! but thank
fully for the users of those cards, they managed to do a WORKAROUND fix.
and as for the record CPU isn't responsible for Hardware Incompatibility
it's the MAINBOARD that is responsible! and how much choices do you have
for your P4 ? Intel... and ? oh.. yeah.. VIA, that Intel doesn't want to
give them licence cause they want to suck the blood out of the poor ****
who will buy the P4! either way, this problem is for both CPU's and any
revision, i've seen Hardware Compatibility on P3 and P2 and every other
CPU, and yes, including AMD boards, i've never said it won't happen, but
that is in NO way the fault of the CPU, it is the fault of mainboard!

Fastest vs Fastest:
Oh don't give me that! that is totaly bogus! but if you want to play it
that way, then explain why P4 at 2.0ghz!!! can only NOW beat an AMD that
is only at a 1.4ghz ?? you mean the superior and most advanced P4 needs
2000mhz to beat a poor little Athlon running at 1400mhz ?? ohh... tss..
you may be in doubt in AMD's capabilities, and that was the SAME mistake
Intel did! and that's how all of us got the Duron/Athlon into the Market
because AMD was underestimated! and don't worry, by the end of the year
will see some more competition from AMD, and I hope they use a PR rating
again, to show how much their slower CPU's can reach in speed and beat
their much "superior" and more technologicly "advanced" counterpart! it
shows the buyer that AMD running at 1.5 beats the 2.1ghz from Intel, so
why buy a 2.1 when a MUCH cheaper and more affordable 1.5 will give the
exact same performance ? THAT is my friend, why PR is required! which in
case you don't know, AMD will base their PR rating on INTELs SPECint2000
that at least provide a relatively general metric which is not too biased

Intel LIES:
I'm not saying Intel lies about their P4 being at 2.0ghz, it's propably
much faster then their OWN competing CPU's, but they mark the speeds on
all their P4 falsly, after all, would you buy a P4 at 1ghz that it's P3
counterpart beats in performance ? for some reason, I would REALLY doubt
it! cause numbers DO speak, and people DO buy numbers!

Pentium 4 as a door matt:
Oh it's true, as you say "Sure, MHz by MHz it is" and when people look
at CPU's they look at numbers, that's why Intel hurridly released a P4
which is totaly crippled and COULD have beaten the AMD if it had been
released with the TRUE and FULL specs! then I'd say, great, now we have
competition! but NO! Intel did NOT release the FULL specs! they did a
Pathetic, low life, misreable excuse for a CPU, which I believe you can
read in Tom's Hardware! and AnAndTech!

And can you please stop quating me, I know what I said and I don't go
back on my word, Here is a nice quote for you
"Megatron: I Would have waited an eternity for this! It's OVER Prime!
Prime: NEVER!" - The Transformers: The Movie

[kinneera]

I'm seeing a logical contradiction in your arguments Sefy, which I think is what vitualis is saying. You argue that clockrate isn't a meaninful/fair comparison, then scream bloody murder when we compare a 2Ghz P4 to a 1.4Ghz Athlon, saying it "isn't fair". The argument we are making is that the 2Ghz P4 is the BEST offered by one party and the 1.4Ghz Athlon is the BEST offered by the other party at this point. If the clockrate isn't a valid comparison, then why are YOU afraid to accept that comparison? I sure don't understand.

As for my comments on benchmarking, there are some of us who don't operate on a 6 month upgrade cycle. So the fundamental argument I'm making is that on a more realistic purchase schedule, the P4 is not necessarily the pathetic piece of crap all of you AMD fanatics would like to think. Software isn't optimized NOW, but it shortly will be. The benchmark posted by Shochan shows a much more realistic performance comparison based on software implementing SSE2, and probably not even expertly at that. The fundamental difference is that there simply aren't any more software optimizations possible for the Athlon, so you are at the end of the line whereas the P4 has room to grow. But again, keep in mind that I recognize that the AMD is probably a more pragmatic purchase decision in the present, since its performance has been fully realized already.

Part of the problem is we're arguing apples and oranges. People who support AMD want to make it look like it is superior to the P4 because of the present price/performance ratio, which is absolutely not a reflection of actual relative performance when all capabilities of each processor are fully realized. All I'm saying is that a fair theoretical comparison isn't viable yet, even though the pragmatic comparisons are currently in favor of AMD.

As for 64-bit, I never claimed its going to be consumer-viable anytime SOON. All I'm saying is that Intel does have a clear lead in that field, as the Itanium has been available for several months, whereas AMD has released nothing. And the AMD 64bit processors are based on old instruction sets (much like the less-than-revolutionary improvements from P to PII to PIII that all you AMD lovers like to harp on). I get the feeling that when 64bit does become consumer viable in 2005 or whatever, Intel will likely have a substantial advantage, ultimately rendering this discussion moot and forcing AMD to play catch up once again. I am more than glad to admit this is all just speculation, however.