Intel vs AMD | Which one do you prefer and why ?

[linuxyogi]

Hi,

Which CPU do you use and why ?

Correct me if I am wrong I am living with this idea that AMD offers faster performing CPUs than Intel within similar price range.

I haven't looked the prices in dollars so I cant give you an example.

I am using a PC which I assembled on 2012 it has a Dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+.

[Roasted]

I don't really have a particular bios in favor of one or the other. I have to pay for my electric bill, so power consumption matters to me. As a result Intel has been on my radar a bit more lately. This of course is in regard to CPUs. If we were talking GPUs, I'd side with Intel 100%, though their supposed interest in working with the AMD open source driver has had me increasingly curious.

[CharlesA]

Every AMD CPU I have had has run hot (compared to a similar Intel one), but they are also cheaper than Intel, so it's a trade off.

[mips]

Every single PC I have ever built for myself with the exception of my current PC has had a AMD cpu as they offered better bang for buck at the time. My current Intel Q6600 PC offered better price & performance over AMD at the time.

If I had to build a new PC tomorrow I would get a AMD 8-core CPU.

(OT: I will probably also get a AMD GPU just for Mantle but I would have to think about this as the driver support is not as great as with nvidia, hopefully this changes in the near future with steambox)

[varunendra]

AMD. For the same reason you highlighted - more processing power for the same price range, that's all that really matters.

Yes the AMD is more noisy (if you use the stock CPU fan) and runs hotter, but I find the power consumption comparisons ridiculous, because they assume the processors would be used at their Full Power all the time

If the TDP of an FX4100 is 95W, and that of an i3 is 65W, it doesn't mean they will be consuming this much power all the time, only when they are working at their full power which is rare for a normal working environment.

Despite that, even if we assume the average power consumption difference would be 20W for similarly performing CPUs, and further assume that this system would work 10 hrs a day, 7 days a week, the extra power consumption for an entire year amounts to 73 KW (73 Units of electricity in India).

For a domestic connection in India, it means Rs. 328.5 per year, or Rs. 985.5 for 3 years - the expected life of a system. Whereas the price difference for an Intel CPU capable of delivering similar performance (and I have practically tested many) is almost always more than Rs. 2K here (except AMD's Sempron 145 vs Intel Celerons). I don't see a point in comparing power costs.

Combine this with the fact that when I did the research, a decent motherboard (AMD M5A88-M) for the FX4100 was for Rs 5200/-, whereas the cheapest available MotherBoard for an i3 at that time was above Rs. 10K (Gigabyte), and feature-wise it was inferior (didn't have even USB3). So overall, it meant paying about Rs. 7K more for an inferior system had I decided to go with Intel (when the overall system - CPU/Monitor/KB/Mouse/UPS - cost me about 34K). Easy decision!

[mips]

Yes the AMD is more noisy (if you use the stock CPU fan) and runs hotter, but I find the power consumption comparisons ridiculous, because they assume the processors would be used at their Full Power all the time

+1 Those power consumption issues are actually non-issues.

There's a second review of the 8350 on Tek Syndicate on Youtube where the addressed the power consumption issues in dept. They used one of those wall outlet devices to measure the wattage for the amd as well as an i5 or i7 and then crunched the numbers of full load and normal load usage wrt costs. Yes the AMD does use a bit more power but from a cost perspective it's negligible. I think they used prices from one of the more expensive US states and based on that it would take several years of use before the AMD will cost more to run than a i7 due to the initial purchase price difference.

I'll try and find the video and post a link here as the numbers say it all and it was really interesting.


EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4et7kDGSRfc Power consumption details starts at 09:00


Some other nice reviews http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8Sekdb-IE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIVGwj1_Qno

[rewyllys]

You really mean 73KWH for a year's difference. Kilowatts are a measure of the instantaneous rate of power consumption; a kilowatt hour denotes the total amount of electricity consumed during one hour of consumption at the rate of 1 kilowatt.

Rs 328.5 amounts to approximately US$5.25.

[varunendra]

You really mean 73KWH for a year's difference.

Yup, I did mean that, and I do understand what you explained. 1 Unit of electricity in India = 1 KWH = INR 4.5 at most for domestic connections (lesser in many states). Sorry for my ignorance, and thanks for clarifying that so nicely.

Rs 328.5 amounts to approximately US$5.25.

Indeed.

[lz1dsb]

Intel... As most of the time Intel hardware works out of the box with Linux. Well... most of the time

[varunendra]

Aren't we talking about CPUs only?

PS:
By the way, the onboard AMD GPUs I have used so far all worked out of box with Ubuntu or any Linux distro I use on my pen drives (Slax, Slitaz and those using VESA mode only). Never tried a PCI card with Ubuntu yet, either AMD or nVidia.