Price difference between Intel & AMD systems

[Robert Redelmeier]

Absence of postings isn't proof of a lack of interest.
We all miss stuff. The subject _is_ topical, if inflammatory.

Hi Rob, I am the OP and I must aplogize if I am including a
group which is irrelevant to my original question which was ...

------- BEGIN QUOTE ------- Is there a rough rule of thumb
which indicates the price difference between an AMD system and
an Intel system of the same power?

No generally acknowledged rule. Roughly US$100 retail systems.
Less at the low end/parts, more at the high end/mobile.

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo. (I don't think
memory depends on processor type)

Currently true. For one _interesting_ period Intel systems
were tied to RDRAM for an additional premium.

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent
more than an equivalent AMD system"? ------- END QUOTE -------

I wouldn't put it in % terms because much of a system's cost
is in other stuff (MS-WinXP licence).

My thinking for including c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips in the original
posting is that the essential difference bewteen an Intel and
an AMD system is the mobo chipset (and of course the cpu).

I figured that you guys in c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips would know
about relative pricing of this sort of thing and about the cost
the mobos that include these chips. Am I off-topic?

I wouldn't say so. I'm less sure about a.c.h.o.a . This is a
very general, high-level question, and they are more into details.

-- Robert

 

[Rob Stow]

Hi Rob, I am the OP and I must aplogize if I am including a group which is
irrelevant to my original question which was ...

------- BEGIN QUOTE -------
Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo. (I don't think memory depends
on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?
------- END QUOTE -------

My thinking for including c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips in the original posting is
that the essential difference bewteen an Intel and an AMD system is the mobo
chipset (and of course the cpu).

I figured that you guys in c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips would know about relative
pricing of this sort of thing and about the cost the mobos that include
these chips. Am I off-topic?

No, I don't think it is off-topic. It just didn't
seem to be garnishing any interest from the readers of
c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips. And I was probably in a
grumpy old man kind of funk when I made that comment,
for which I sincerely apologize.

The reason I was surprised it was cross-posted here
is that none of the people who were participating in the
thread seemed to regulars or even occasional visitors
to c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips. Cross-posting to groups
one does not normally participate in is not very common -
spammers aside, of course.

 

[Ed]

Yes, most of them do these days. Sun UltraSparc 3 and US4, the HPaq
Alpha EV7 and IBM Power5 all have integrated memory controllers. I'm
fairly certain that there is at least one 64-bit MIPS core out there
with an integrated memory controller.

Does Intel have a CPU in the works that use an integrated memory
controller?
thanks,
Ed

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hi Rob, I am the OP and I must aplogize if I am including a group
which is irrelevant to my original question which was ...

Well, actually now that Rob has answered, I guess it means csiphc has
muddled into the mix.

Actually, I'm seeing Tony Hill, Robert R., Ed. and a few others answering
too, so it looks like it's relevant again.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Does Intel have a CPU in the works that use an integrated memory
controller?
thanks,
Ed

There is rumours that it is working on it, yup. Some might even take the
fact that it's working on the FB-DIMM specification as a roundabout proof of
it. FB-DIMM has the potential to mask all technological differences between
different generations of DRAM. So a single memory controller that controls
DDR-RAM might be enough to control DDR2, or whatever else comes around in
the future.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

Does Intel have a CPU in the works that use an integrated memory
controller?

To the best of my knowledge, no. Err, well I guess their ARM chips
(XScale) have integrated memory controllers, but I'm guessing that
wasn't what you were thinking of.

Of course, I don't have any sort of secret insight into just what
Intel is doing. I would be rather surprised if they had not at least
looking into integrating memory controllers on their chips. There is
a certain trade-off between the added performance and reduced
flexibility that doing so entails, but all evidence seems to be
pointing the former is plenty reason enough to go down this path.

 

[The little lost angel]

Hi Rob, I am the OP and I must aplogize if I am including a group which is
irrelevant to my original question which was ...

Don't worry about it being off topic. I think Rob Stow was
sleepwalking *grin* when he typed that since I do see a number of
familiar nicknames in this thread and I know I don't frequent the
other NGs apart from CSIPHC pPP

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Bill Davidsen]

-- snip --




I use my PC for home and "small office" use.
No games. No video or sound editing. No movie playing. No power use.

That is the sort of thing I would like to compare between AMD and Intel.

The final system may be something like a AMD Barton 2500+ with 1GB memory,
sound integrated on mobo and a very modest VIA-based graphics and 80 GN HDD.

But all I want to get anidea of is the relative cost on an AMD mobo &
porceesor compared to Intel.

Hope that helps.

Probably $100, one way or the other. On total system price that's pretty
small and you are better off to balance what suits best.

There are two cases where the P4 is faster, those which get a big boost
from HT because of locking between threads, and apps which are compiled
for P4 and use FP features AMD doesn't have. There are a very few cases
where one or the other will do something unexpected, but I wouldn't
worry about it, it won't be on decent code.

Finally, depending on your app and price point one will be faster than
the other. The P4 has more memory bandwidth, that occasionally matters.
And finally at many price points the AMD will be somewhat faster for
some things (deliberately vague there).

Fun features: HT lets you see what multithreaded apps do vs. one CPU and
more context switching, while the top AMD offerings offer 64 bit
capability. Don't care? Then buy what you like on other features or price.

 

[Raj]

if your a gamer go for AMD, they push out more fps, and cost up to almost
50% less of a intel cpu, MHZ isn't all than counts its the instructions that
the cpu holds.

 

[rstlne]

Not really much difference considering the total price of the PC.

Very funny. An Athlon XP 2500+ is only around $65. An XP 2500+ 333
is around $75. Why should someone pay around $100 more than they need to?

"Not really much difference considering the total price of the PC."

That excuse doesn't make sense. Using that type of excuse one could
say that spending $10,000 on a couch doesn't make much of difference
than buying a $2,000 one, since the cost of the house with the couch won't
be so different in percentage terms with each alternative.

An extra $100 could buy a DVD writer or a second hard drive. It could be
saved for future upgrades.

I gotta say..
I like that Couch/House comparision..

 

[rstlne]

We're neither talking about an item with a £8000 price difference (is
your pound key broken?) or one which has an value in it's own right;
it's simply a component of the overall system.

Few people would disagree that an Intel-based PC costs a little more
than a comparable AMD-based system but it's hardly unaffordable in the
context of the overall cost. Some people prefer not to pay the
premium whereas others do not.

The same people who buy AMD because they're cheaper might conceivably
pay twice as much for, say, a high-end RAM or a top of the range
graphics card when parts priced at half the price would give very
similar performance, or pay a premium for OCZ or TwinMOS memory or
Hercules or Sapphire graphics cards over a cheaper functionally
similar equivalents. Fact is any reason for choosing any component
over another might seem no less whimsical to some people than the
reasons some people prefer one chip manufacturer over another.

One of the *few* reasons for building your own PC is to have this
degree of choice and flexibility so I find it incredible that
essentially like-minded people can get so hung-up about other peoples
choices!

--

TwinMOS Is actually "Value" ram. I use TwinMOS because it's cheap.
If your building a low-end pc then I say just get what ever you feel is
going to be the least hassle.. If your wnating to build a higher end system
then go with amd (usually).. If your wanting to build the fastest system out
there then they usually compare cause AMD and Intel seem to price their top
chips at the same mark.

 

[rstlne]

And you base this comparison on a single Business Benchmark test? That

test could have a large I/O element and thus depend on other hardware
factors. And I just pointed out to you that on the very same site, the
P4 3.0 GHz beats the AMD Athlon XP 3000+ on Content Creation Benchmark.
You have to look at the whole performance spectrum. Not everybody run
databases or are interested in business tests. The Intels perform
traditionally very well for numerical modeling problems with vectors
and matrices. Special libraries are optimized for Intel. Also the
simplicity of plugging in an Intel P4 without having to worry about
many things.

You started off kinda good, ended it kinda silly tho..
If you start comparing Heat, a chip accessing the I/O better, special
software optimization, and things like that then your going a bit away from
the true scope of the diffence..
The difference between AMD and Intel systems is that AMD systems have an AMD
processor, Intel systems have an Intel processor.

Currently the p4's deliver much more heat than the athlons..
Go back a year or so ago and the Athlons were far hotter than the p4's..

Some code is Optimized for the p4 vs the AXP (p4 wins that product
Benchmark)
keep in mind Some code is Optimized for the A64 vs the p4 (A64 wins that
product Benchmark)

Got a Intel chipset with SATA support then it's better than a off-bridge
Sata solution (Intel boards with Intel chipsets often have both, AMD only
has the External) ..

Lets not forget about this wonderful HT technology too that so many people
love to talk about..
lets ALSO not forget that it only works on Windows XP
(http://www.intel.com/support/platform/ht/os.htm)

 

[Bill Davidsen]

Got a Intel chipset with SATA support then it's better than a off-bridge
Sata solution (Intel boards with Intel chipsets often have both, AMD only
has the External) ..

In terms of board real estate, perhaps, and it seems logical. In
practice I don't know that there's any difference in performance. I
haven't seen a good independent benchmark yet.

Lets not forget about this wonderful HT technology too that so many people
love to talk about..
lets ALSO not forget that it only works on Windows XP
(http://www.intel.com/support/platform/ht/os.htm)

Who told you that? It works very well with recent Linux, better than any
Windows as far as I can tell, since it knows about HT and doesn't treat
the system as if it were SMP instead of SMT. And Linux winds in the case
of HT+SMP, if only because you need a server version of XP (or did) to
run more than two CPUs, even virtual ones.

 

[Bill Davidsen]

if your a gamer go for AMD, they push out more fps, and cost up to almost
50% less of a intel cpu, MHZ isn't all than counts its the instructions that
the cpu holds.

I have serious doubts that fps makes any difference after you reach the
limits of the human eye, say 70 fps max and 40 fps typical. So it has
become more of a bragging thing than anything else. There's a limit on
the rate of the monitor as well, which people tend to ignore when
comparing. If the monitor is doing 70 refresh that 150-200 fps you see
in a benchmark is ONLY seen in the benchmark.

 

[Tony Houghton]

In <[email protected]>,

Got a Intel chipset with SATA support then it's better than a off-bridge
Sata solution (Intel boards with Intel chipsets often have both, AMD only
has the External) ..

VIA KT800 has on-bridge SATA doesn't it?

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

Got a Intel chipset with SATA support then it's better than a off-bridge
Sata solution (Intel boards with Intel chipsets often have both, AMD only
has the External) ..
love to talk about..
lets ALSO not forget that it only works on Windows XP
(http://www.intel.com/support/platform/ht/os.htm)

I'm not sure that's entirely true, the nForce3 250GB comes with built in
SATA RAID support (actually built in any disk raid support that lets you mix
with PATA). As a matter of fact the nForce3 seems to be about the most
efficient desktop chipset desgin out there right now. A single chip gets you
Gigabit ethernet SATA RAID, Hardware firewall, AGP 8X etc..... Too bad for
P4 owners that Intel was silly enough not to Licence the BUS out to nVidia.

Carlo

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

I have serious doubts that fps makes any difference after you reach the
limits of the human eye, say 70 fps max and 40 fps typical. So it has
become more of a bragging thing than anything else. There's a limit on the
rate of the monitor as well, which people tend to ignore when comparing.
If the monitor is doing 70 refresh that 150-200 fps you see in a benchmark
is ONLY seen in the benchmark.

<SNIP SIGNATURE>

You're not a Doom 3 fan I take it?

Carlo

 

[Tim Auton]

I have serious doubts that fps makes any difference after you reach the
limits of the human eye, say 70 fps max and 40 fps typical.

In the real world we have blurring (and usually on film and TV - with
the start of Saving Private Ryan a notable counter-example). Games
don't do motion blur, so you do need more fps than you might think.
With fast motion (common in games), 40fps isn't enough to make it look
smooth.

Also remember that it's not the average framerate which matters, it's
the minimum. 150fps might sound stupid, but if that's the average you
get when you try to keep the minimum above 60 (or whatever) it's not
the waste of cash it may at first appear.


Tim

 

[JK]

Hi Rob, I am the OP and I must aplogize if I am including a group which is
irrelevant to my original question which was ...

------- BEGIN QUOTE -------
Is there a rough rule of thumb which indicates the price difference between
an AMD system and an Intel system of the same power?

I am thinking of just the processor and mobo. (I don't think memory depends
on processor type)

Is it something like ... "Intel systems cost 25 to 30 percent more than an
equivalent AMD system"?

For Doom 3, it takes an $810 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz EE to come close to the
performance of a $150 Athlon 64 3000+.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

For Business Winstone 2004, it takes a $220 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz to
come close in performance to a $95 Athlon XP3000+.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

------- END QUOTE -------

My thinking for including c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips in the original posting is
that the essential difference bewteen an Intel and an AMD system is the mobo
chipset (and of course the cpu).

I figured that you guys in c.s.i.pc.hardware.chips would know about relative
pricing of this sort of thing and about the cost the mobos that include
these chips. Am I off-topic?

The motherboards aren't that different in price.A decent socket 754
motherboard is around $80, while a socket 939 one is around $110.
Of course there are more expensive ones. A decent Pentium 4 775
motherboard is at least $110.

 

[Johannes H Andersen]

[...]

For Doom 3, it takes an $810 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz EE to come close to the
performance of a $150 Athlon 64 3000+.

What is Doom 3 and why do you need to run it? ;-)

[...]

The motherboards aren't that different in price.A decent socket 754
motherboard is around $80, while a socket 939 one is around $110.
Of course there are more expensive ones. A decent Pentium 4 775
motherboard is at least $110.

And the cheapest AMD with dual channel costs $315 www.pricewatch.com !
All new Pentium 4 have dual channel.