Intel vs AMD: a sort-of poll

godzero · Post by **godzero** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:09 pm

I'm torn. I have always liked AMD (underdog... good tech, etc)

But Intel has recently became top dog (arguable).

I'm interested in OPEN drivers. ATI has some open drivers for it (quality on my system- so-so). NV has little to compete on this front. Closed drivers are almost useless to me.

AMD has had some really good hardware. Damn good.

vs

Intell has good OPEN drivers for their lack-luster 3D chips. (rumor has.. this will change-just a rumor)

AMD (yay) might merge with ATI (boo?)

What are your thoughts? I'm confused.

MarkUS · Post by **MarkUS** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:22 pm

I just got a barebones AMD Athlon 64 3200+ barebones kit from tigerdirect for $99.99 and stuck my old Nvidia Geforce 2 into it.Here it is. Just using it for a remote server, not a new gaming machine or anything. And in the benhmarks compared to my Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz, it is 25% faster for what I use it for.

I'd say just look at the hardware that you have. I have plenty of extra after upgrading cards, drives, memory, that I just needed something new to put my unused parts into. Now my old hardware is used again.

( Post 8000 )

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:58 am

If AMD and ATi actually merges, I think it's gonna be quite interesting to watch, because AMD has been relatively good about supporting Linux as far as I know, and ATi's drivers can still be a big pain in the ass to deal with at times.

Also, I know ATi's drivers uses the DRI and DRM interfaces, which are evolving quite rapidly these days with all the work on AIGLX and the process of slowly modernizing the X server.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 9:46 am

I have been largely torn as well. On the one hand AMD has always released very good performance and stable hardware while maintaining a low cost. However I am also a nVidia fan mostly because they provide good cards and their drivers for linux don't suck so I don't know how this ATI merge will go down.

The new Intel CPUs definately are more powerful so now I am leaning towards them, plus they provide open source drivers which is great although the cards aren't very high end.

A lot of people are making accusations about who will win this generation war but I think it is just too early to tell, for some reason I get the feeling AMD hasn't layed down all it's cards yet...

murph · Post by **murph** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:10 pm

I'm torn as well, I'm looking at laptops, basically deciding between Turion64, and Dual Core. Both are low end, looking for a combination of power/price/battery life.

--murph

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:12 pm

In the mobile chips market I think it's safe to say the Pentium M, and now the Intel Core Duo outperform the Turion64 in terms of battery life, and performance per watt. Even on the desktop side of things, the upcoming Core 2 Duo will be the fastest chip on the market according to every report I've come across.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:20 am

I've always bought AMD processors. I own a couple Intels, but they were given to me. Neither requires drivers, so that's not an issue. I'm not sure how AMD ant ATI merging affects anything, for me at least.

The cheapest processor I can buy far exceeds my performance needs, so performance is not an issue (and never has been).

As far as video cards go, the next time I buy I'll try to find one with open drivers. None of theses companies has a perfect reputation, so I'll buy from whoever gives me what I need, which is a decent product with good support.

godzero · Post by **godzero** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:53 pm

OK.. to update the thread:

The AMD/ATI merger looks like fact.

Now onto another question:

For those of you with nvidia; Does the open NV driver do any 3d exceleration? I'm not expecting parity w/the closed driver, but 50% perfomance would be quite fine.

My PC has a intel igp (845gv I think), and a ATI9200se (pci) .
Both open drivers are fine.. but the intel igp uses shared memory.. and that doesn't exactly let my celeron shine.

The open ATI driver on my system is about 50% the speed of the closed (but way more compatible) EDIT:(but about 200% of the performance if the intel).

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:08 pm

godzero wrote:OK.. to update the thread:

The AMD/ATI merger looks like fact.

Now onto another question:

For those of you with nvidia; Does the open NV driver do any 3d exceleration? I'm not expecting parity w/the closed driver, but 50% perfomance would be quite fine.

My PC has a intel igp (845gv I think), and a ATI9200se (pci) .
Both open drivers are fine.. but the intel igp uses shared memory.. and that doesn't exactly let my celeron shine.

The open ATI driver on my system is about 50% the speed of the closed (but way more compatible).

I have a GeForce 6200 on my desktop, and the Nv driver isn't really adequate for any type of OpenGL use. I'd say I maybe get 10% of the performance I get with the binary Nvidia driver.

ATi cards on the other hand work pretty well with the open source drivers from my experience. I have a Radeon Mobility X300 in my laptop, and the open source "radeon" driver comes to about 60% of the performance of the proprietary one. I can actually use XScreenSaver with OpenGL and get more than 3 FPS!

godzero · Post by **godzero** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:10 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:In the mobile chips market I think it's safe to say the Pentium M, and now the Intel Core Duo outperform the Turion64 in terms of battery life, and performance per watt. Even on the desktop side of things, the upcoming Core 2 Duo will be the fastest chip on the market according to every report I've come across.

I know next to nothing about the mobile video drivers, other than the open ATI does just fine on the laptop I recently repaired (circa: 2005, bad HDD), atleast as good as the closed ATI driver on my pc, prolly 2X better.

I'm resigned to the thought.. if I were to pickup a laptop, it would prove to be the worst choice.

godzero · Post by **godzero** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:26 pm

Sorry, but you posted at roughly the same time as me, so here it goes:

I have a GeForce 6200 on my desktop, and the Nv driver isn't really adequate for any type of OpenGL use. I'd say I maybe get 10% of the performance I get with the binary Nvidia driver.

Sounds like software running on the CPU, any chance that video (edit: overlay, ig kaffeine) is fine?

ATi cards on the other hand work pretty well with the open source drivers from my experience. I have a Radeon Mobility X300 in my laptop, and the open source "radeon" driver comes to about 60% of the performance of the proprietary one. I can actually use XScreenSaver with OpenGL and get more than 3 FPS!

Sounds just like my experience (prolly x300). The performance was passable. (no doom 3, but ok for simpler things)

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:16 pm

I was a little confused on what the AMD+ATI merger ment but this post set things into perspective (its also very short which is nice

). I hope this leads to ATI open sourcing their drivers and then once Nvidia see's how well it will work out maybe they will open source theirs. Don't know how likely that will be but I really hope that does happen.

As far as CPUs right now AMD has just lowered a bunch of prices and they will be coming out with Quad Cores in the not too distant future and also Anti-Hyperthreading. It will be interesting to see how necessary Anti-Hyperthreading is since dual core and even quad core would be very benificial to the desktop without it and games are starting to support threading. I don't know if the drop in AMD CPU prices makes it better performance for price than Intels next-gen so I can't really say who is winning as of right now.

thelinuxlink.net

Intel vs AMD: a sort-of poll

Intel vs AMD: a sort-of poll

I just got AMD.

How about laptops?