"Oh no, Colin has turned 180 degrees and is now a total Intel fanatic!!!" I'm sure that's what a lot of you will be saying after reading this. No, I'm not biased towards Intel, I'm simply trying to point out some facts. I don't love either company, Intel or AMD, but I do like them. They're good for each other. Just think about a world where only Intel or AMD exists. With a virtual monopoly on x86 processors, who's going to stop either company from charging you through the nose for processors? I actually like AMD more then Intel, AMD seems to listen to the public on what they want and in general they usually do try and deliver. Intel on the other hand seems a little more arrogant, pushing things down people's throat (RDRAM + P3...) instead of listening.
When people e-mail me asking about systems, I almost always tell them to go with an AMD based system. Why? AMD is, and probably always will be a better value then Intel. Value doesn't mean lousy performance either! AMD CPU's are damn fast and can give Pentium 4's a good run for its money but in the end P4's are faster!
In terms of CPU "care" Intel has this down. Their retail heatsinks are designed very well, not only to cool the CPU but the larger foot print of the socket 478 heatsinks helps shield against EMI. AMD has a lot of catching up to do. They're moving in the right direction in terms of heatsinks, the current ones bundled with the Thoroughbred XP2200+'s are a heck of a lot better in design and cooling capability then the ones that originally came with the AthlonXP (Palomino core). AMD CPU's still have severe heat issues to conquer; even the Thoroughbred (0.13 micron) runs extremely high. At those temperatures it takes only a few seconds before the little processor dies of over heating.
As an independent hardware tester and reviewer I'm quite offended when someone attacks my integrity. The benchmarks that are being used on the web are not biased towards Intel just because they use SSE2. if I wasn't allowed to test with SSE2 enabled benchmarks, it would be like testing a car's top speed without using the 5th or 6th gears.
I'm not biased towards Intel but since with all the crap floating around I just wanted to try and set the record straight. This is more of a personal rant then anything else, but hey, I'm also a consumer. If you want to flame me and my opinions you're more than welcome to e-mail me here.
Oh and just for the record, I went with a P4 1.8A which runs at 2.4 GHz on an Abit TH7II-RAID with 512MB PC1066 RDRAM and it's running faster (and quieter) then my AthlonXP 2000+ on an Abit KR7A-RAID with 512 PC2100 CL2 DDR.... for the moment that is.
Check out the most recent word on the street about processors right here, the latest memory technology here, motherboards at the end of this link, and heatsinks and cooling solutions at FrostyTech.
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