The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2???
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#1: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Shadow_Bshwackr, Location: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 6:02 am
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AMD has always been the underdog in the CPU world, but judging from this article, that may not be the case with gamers like us who's games demand high end performance. As many of you know, I'm a true blue Intel fan and have been for many years, but this article is making even the hard core Intel fans take notice...:wink:

Here is a small quote and link to the whole article...:D

Almost all currently shipping games are single-threaded. Because of that, we expect single-core CPUs with high clock speeds to be fastest on current games. AMD has even given guidance to this end, stating that an Athlon 64 FX-55 will continue to be the fastest gaming CPU, and when the FX-57 is introduced, that new single-core chip will be tops in current games. Our data shows that this is indeed the case. The shocking part is this: Even with liquid cooling and a 25% overclock, Intel's best dual-core chip can't come close to matching either AMD's best single core or dual-core chip in game benchmarks. The differences are quite astounding, and AMD's best efforts surpass the massively overclocked Pentium by as much as 20% in some cases. If you compare CPUs running at their standard clock rates, AMD simply crushes Intel.



Link to the entire article...
www.extremetech.com/ar...748,00.asp
#2: Re: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Vlad,  PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 10:37 am
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That quote from the article sounds more like a PR release than an actual study. In truth many of AMD's benchmarks are trumped up to make them look better than Intel.

Before you begin to wonder of my opinions I am a die-hard AMD fanatic. I have used the AMD series chips for the last 7 years and I love them. Pricewise you can afford, in my opinion a slight decrease in performance that a comparable Pentium class would offer. The fact is the hit in performance is not humanly noticable and I never thought that it would be worth spending the extra money on the better performing chip, when we are talking a price differnce in some instances of hundreds of dollars.

Having used them for as long as I have I doubt seriously if I will ever go Intel, but I will not say that I never would. I run a Linux gateway and internet server for my small home network, 6 computers. The hardware that the Linux server is running on is the first system I built 7 years ago. It is an AMD K6-2 333 megahert over clocked to 350 megahertz and has been overclocked since the day it went live. I have not even had to replace so much as a fan or a heat sink on the machine. It now runs 24/7 has been for 48 days without reboot. I have to reboot about ever 50th day to clear out the memory or I get odd behaviour. It has 256 megs PC-100 ram and a TNT2 nVidia video card at 64 megs. It serves as my network storage box, internet gateway, file server, media server, and I host a TeamSpeak server from it for a First Person Shooter clan I am in. It also runs an IRC server for my wifes website.

The outstanding performance I have had from the AMD processors not to mention my experience with the chips longevity have made me a fan of the lower priced chip manufacturer. In my honest opninion both Intel and AMD produce excellent chips, though when you compare price and performance I think that AMD will always have the upperhand over Intel. I am glad to see that we have choices in the chip manufacturers, this creates innovation in the industry and urges both parties to produce better quality and faster designs. Should these two factions ever decide to work on a project together the outcome would be fantastic and I am sure we would see something truely groundbreaking.
#3: Re: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Shadow_Bshwackr, Location: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 6:04 am
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One of the big factors in my decision to use Intel over AMD in the past was VIA board chipsets. While I commend VIA for a very stable chipset, getting them stable initially was the issue I had with them. Building new computer systems with AMD or Intel from a "time" point of view simply meant more production with less hassle. With chipset makers on the market now such as Nvidea, the instability issues aren't much of a factor these days.

Price is always an issue with me...(Bush like FREE..:D) and if I can get the same or better performance for the same or less $, then I'm all for it.

Like you, I run several machines on a network and use one dedicated box for a web, file, ftp and ICS portal. Wink

Running Linux....lol. Well, you're preaching to the choir with me...lol I run Ubuntu Linux www.ubuntulinux.org/ on my main computer and really like that distribution. I run WIndows XP Pro on the same computer as a dual boot and reboot XP usually only to do games, but overall, I'm on Linux most of the time.
#4: Re: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Vlad,  PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2005 12:54 am
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Ubuntu man your hardcore. I think I may have found a kindred spirit.

Currently I run SuSe, but I am planning on switching to either Debian or Slackware on the next hardware upgrade. SuSe servered its purpose for my first distro, but I think it doesn't afford me the level of control I would like. I do like Feather Linux (Live CD) I use it at work to recover from those pain in the six spywares that refuse to let you uninstall them. Any OS that takes up 122 megs is awesome in my book, and that is with a lite version of KDE.
#5: Re: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Shadow_Bshwackr, Location: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2005 6:27 am
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Yep, SuSe is a good distro too and I've downloaded that ISO (9.1) and tried it out recently. Ubuntu is based on Debian and I really like Apt-get that Debian uses. Ubuntu uses Synaptic Package Manager which is based on Apt-get and stops all the 'dep hell' problems associated with many other distro's including those that use RPM for file distribution.

Live CD distro's are quite useful and there are some on the market that really good such as Feather or Knopix or even SuSe live.

The KDE and GNOME Gui's are both great in my opinion although, I think it really boils down to personal choice. I currently run GNOME, but have KDE 3.4 installed and use it on occasion.

With programs such as Open Office, GIMP, Gaim, Firefox, Evolution and K3B, there really isn't much need for a 'pay for' OS for home/business users other than proprietary software. Wink
#6: Re: The Best Desktop Processor Yet: AMD's Athlon 64 X2??? Author: Vlad,  PostPosted: Sat May 14, 2005 11:37 am
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Agreed, my biggest need for Windows now is for gaming, most of my surfing I use Linux. I also avoid most exploits written to take advantage of Windows default settings and the way Windows uses Java, or Active X scripting.

I suggest anyone who is interested in seeing what else there is besides windows check out a live version of Linux. I gaurantee it will leave you cussing windows. With distros today it is as easy to setup a linux box as it is Windows, and even more intuitive.
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