Intel or AMD, Nvidia or AMD: Where does your allegiance lie, and why?
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As far as processors, I'm into Intel. They're less sloppy and more efficient. AMD has some awesome CPU's for their price range, but if I have money to spend, I'd go Intel. Less cores, less power, less heat, and still better performance. As far as GPU's, the lines are even less blurred for me. AMD has some awesomely powered solutions, that tend to be a bit cheaper than their direct Nvidia competition. But Nvidia has so many of their own technologies, from G-Sync to PhysX, Gamestream to TressFX, TXAA to Adaptive V-sync. AMD just doesn't have Hardware or Software optimization nearly to the level that Nvidia does either. If you're worried about money though, there is no question really, you would go for an AMD GPU. So what's your guys' and gals' opinions?
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NVidia, because their number system is easier to understand. Three digits is simpler than four
Plus their drivers usually seem to have the edge. -
I tend to like AMD CPUs. They invented the architecture and tend to drive more innovation. You might choose an Intel proxy but it's an AMD64 proc.
AMD has excellent bang for the buck which is what matters. If bang for the buck didn't matter we'd all be using Power or Sparc processors which will destroy any Intel.
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@Nic Nvidia's drivers are LIGHTYEARS ahead of AMD's, something else I did forget to mention. But AMD cards still do well even with terrible drivers. I was excited to see Mantle coming, but it seems to make things worse, not better. And Sparc would be nice, but it's not optimized for consumers, so many instruction sets that AMD and Intel use that it doesn't (And the fact that the architecture was concieved in 1987). If Sun or Sparc International throw out a processor that can support standard GPU configurations and DDR3 3000 MHz, I'll buy one as soon as it launches.
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@Nic Unless of course you hearken back to the old days, where they used 4 digits as well
Or even when they used three digits and between 2 and 5 letters. -
@Mike-Ralston said:
@Nic Unless of course you hearken back to the old days, where they used 4 digits as well
Or even when they used three digits and between 2 and 5 letters.I guess they learned their lesson and simplified the numbering scheme
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Do you remember when nVidia only used one digit?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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I wasn't alive back then lol, but I do have an NV1 with the Sega Saturn controller port in the back in an old Chassis here.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
I wasn't alive back then lol, but I do have an NV1 with the Sega Saturn controller port in the back in an old Chassis here.
When did they have a Saturn port?
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@technobabble said:
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/376/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8350_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-4770.html
AMD won that one on price/performance.
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Intel and Nvidia. I have had less issues and better luck with Nvidia cards and drivers. Also I was AMD only from 1999-2008 and went for the first core i7. That PC has 1.75TB of drive space and 12GB of 3 channel RAM. My wife does graphic design and still is happy with it.
I made the mistake of getting a HP TX2 TouchSmart tablet. It came with the AMD Turion Dual Core and vision system, 6 GB RAM. Dodgy comes to mind when I think about my time with it. Issues after issues, mostly annoying little things and then after the warranty HD died and 3 months later the second one died. Can't run at top speed, gets too damn hot and will shut itself off. I could go on and on.
My PC now is a second hand HP with Q6600 with 8GB RAM. Just running Outlook, all my web browser programs and normal searching I max out the RAM and HD daily
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
I wasn't alive back then lol, but I do have an NV1 with the Sega Saturn controller port in the back in an old Chassis here.
When did they have a Saturn port?
Some of the early ones did.
This one has two saturn ports, VGA, 5,1 Audio out, and Optical Audio. -
@technobabble I currently use an AMD PC for work and I've had nothing but problems, emphasis on the word "nothing". It's an APU, which I have to say the onboard graphics impress me, but it's terrible as a CPU. I'm moving to the yet-unreleased i7 4790K as soon as it launches on the 25th of this month, on the good 'ol 1150 socket. I have to say though, most people don't know this but AMD manufactures RAM modules, and some of them are pretty impressive. Seen them overclocked to 4133 MHz, and those 100% Purity Aluminum heatshields make them incredibly hefty, very sleek looking, and extremely capable of dispersing heat. I've currently got a 16GB kit for that, but this AMD processor limits it to an 886 MHz clock.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/376/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8350_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-4770.html
AMD won that one on price/performance.
Even if you grab the FX 9590, the beast of a high GHz Octacore it is, the 4770K still beats it in all real world applications. And that isn't even nearly Intel's best CPU.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@technobabble said:
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/376/AMD_FX-Series_FX-8350_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-4770.html
AMD won that one on price/performance.
Even if you grab the FX 9590, the beast of a high GHz Octacore it is, the 4770K still beats it in all real world applications. And that isn't even nearly Intel's best CPU.
That's not the point. It's the price/performance that matters. No one buys the "ultimate CPU", it's a silly goal to chase. Intel and AMD CPUs are very slow compared to what is out there.
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When people say that they have "problems" with AMD machines, what issues are those and why do you feel that they are tied to the CPU?
I've had Turions for years, have one right here, they've been great.
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@scottalanmiller AMD CPU's within the last... 5 years I'd say have not been made well, lots of problems with pins shorting out. Missing tons of instruction sets, unless you buy one of their top FX Unlocked CPU's. As far as tying issues down to the CPU, things like overheating, random program crashing, randomized PC shutdowns at irregular intervals without permission, Windows errors, and on boards with no control chipsets for storage, Miscellaneuos errors with storage, like corrupted data. Crippling Audio Errors in any type of audio solution, random ejection of drives, driver crashes, issues with supporting displays when using the APU Graphics, issues with it not reading any type of media, failure to intialize the processor after booting from BIOS... Lol, shall I go on? All issues I've had, and I know many other people who have these issues or similar ones, and the one big consistency is that they use AMD CPU's, generally on the FM2 or AM2 sockets. Also, with specific lower-end FX Processors (I'm not entirely sure how power delivery works, but I'm guessing that the CPU controls how much power it recieves), the processor will push itself to max load for no reason, draw too much power, and either fry the rails on the PSU or melt itself.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller AMD CPU's within the last... 5 years I'd say have not been made well, lots of problems with pins shorting out. Missing tons of instruction sets, unless you buy one of their top FX Unlocked CPU's. As far as tying issues down to the CPU, things like overheating, random program crashing, randomized PC shutdowns at irregular intervals without permission, Windows errors, and on boards with no control chipsets for storage, Miscellaneuos errors with storage, like corrupted data. Crippling Audio Errors in any type of audio solution, random ejection of drives, driver crashes, issues with supporting displays when using the APU Graphics, issues with it not reading any type of media, failure to intialize the processor after booting from BIOS... Lol, shall I go on? All issues I've had, and I know many other people who have these issues or similar ones, and the one big consistency is that they use AMD CPU's, generally on the FM2 or AM2 sockets. Also, with specific lower-end FX Processors (I'm not entirely sure how power delivery works, but I'm guessing that the CPU controls how much power it recieves), the processor will push itself to max load for no reason, draw too much power, and either fry the rails on the PSU or melt itself.
While CPU issues can cause a lot of bizarre problems - what you describe sounds far more likely to be software or memory issues. It would be extremely unlikely for a CPU to do that.
What missing instruction sets?
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The original question's pretty broad, so I"ll break it into home and work.
For work, I go with AMD CPUs. They have good bang for the buck, and as a virtualization engineer, the workloads I deal with are highly multithreaded, so the more cores the merrier. At present, the Opterons have up to 16 cores to work with. For graphics, I go Nvidia, as several Quadro models are supported for use with VMware Horizon View in order to bring hardware-accelerated graphics to VDI. I don't deal with end-user hardware at all.
For home, I go with AMD CPUs. Partly it's bang for the buck, but partly it's due to history and a personal tendency towards vendor loyalty. After my 486, I moved up to a K6, and have been AMD ever since. Graphics-wise, I go with Nvidia. For some reason, I've had zero luck with ATI/AMD discrete graphics cards any time I feel adventurous and decide to give them a try. Beyond that, I was a 3dfx customer, and have kept loyalty through acquisition into Nvidia.
