AMD versus Pentium

[Splat]

I'm in the thows of buying a new PC, and I keep on hearing that the AMD's are now 100% compatable, and even heard that they are quicker than the P equivalents.

Any one had a bad or particularily good experience with AMD?

Appologies if this has been cobvered already.

TIA

Splat

[RadarContact]

A while ago I upgraded to an AMD 1800+. Did all the installation myself. Put the CPU onto the mainboard, but the mainboard into the puter, connected all the cables etc., booted, installed all necessary drivers, rebooted and - voilá! Not a problem since. Done in about an hour.

THIS I call an exceptionally good experience given what I've had to go through on some previous occasions...

[timmcat]

Given an equivalent clock speed, Athlon XP processors have, until recently outperformed their P4 counterparts. Hence, the re branding of the AMD product .. for example an XP2400 is not a 2.4ghz chip, but actually has a clock speed of about 1.7ghz (please anyone correct me if I've got that bit wrong) which, due to the performance, was marketed to compete with the P4 2.4ghz.

Recently, the latest chips from Intel have narrowed, if not eliminated the gap, and in fact recent reviews I have read now put the overall performance of the latest P4's ahead of Athlon XP.

Tim

[SpinSpinSugar]

Performance wise, top end AthlonXP and P4 chips are on a similar footing.

However, and it's a big however, there is a huge differential in price/performance between the two. Intel are still commanding a hefty premium for their top end chips, in addition the motherboards they are built on are often more expensive than their Athlon counterparts. It's much more cost effective to go AMD, if cost is important to you. More bang for your buck.

I'd recommend going for something just under the top end. An Athlon XP2700+ would set you back circa £270 inclusive whereas a more than respectable XP2200+ would set you back only about £120 - less than half the price.

A top end Pentium4 3Ghz is going to cost you about £550 inclusive, a respectable 2Ghz model about £140 (2.4Ghz for about £160).

Athlons also tend to be slightly quicker than their P4 counterparts with the same speed branding (ie. A Pentium 2Ghz would suffer against an AMD XP2000).

If you're buying a package system, someone like Mesh will probably provide you a better specified system built around an Athlon than someone like Dell could afford using a Pentium.

As you can probably tell, I've built a few systems now around Athlons and have had no problems whatsoever :D

[Splat]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm on the case.

[tony draper]

Agreed I have always built my own system using intel cpu's, this is my first foray into a none intel CPU and I had no problems with the AMD whatsoever.
From what I read on the tech sites speed for speed the AMD outdoes the Intel cpu on things like flightsim ect.