AMD or Intel

[stormbind]

Risc and Crusoe are technologically superior, though the tools used to manufacture them may be a slightly lacking.

Don't know much about Motorola, except that when compared to x86, it's a showdown of little endian vs. big endian (little is about 20% more efficient).

VIA chips have a more efficient x86 pathway but are lacking in many other respects.

Intel vs. AMD is a case of two companies, when compared to the world competition, just copy each other. Chips may differ, but not by enough to make me favour one over the other. AMD offer better value so I'll vote for them

 

[Speedo]

But what about the higher processor speed it is a full GHz up on AMD. Not only that but I've heard they have less instances of overheating and crashing.

Hehe, there's a little catch there. The Intel P4 chips throttle their clock speed down if they get to hot (which isn't a bad thing in itself). This is why you *should* see less instances of overheating.

The catch is that P4s produce much, MUCH more heat than a comperable Athlon. In fact the high end P4s are so bad that if you don't use a good quality heatsink and thermal paste, the chip will get hot enough to throttle back under heavy loads. An Athlon, OTOH, will almost always be fine even if you just use a stock HSF and thermal pad.

 

[WildWeazel]

What would everyone recommend for a college laptop used for multitasking and gaming (nothing too hard-core, mostly Civ 4)- P4 or Athlon? I'm thinking Athlon 3200+, but that may be overkill since I most likely won't play anything like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3.

 

[vbraun]

What would everyone recommend for a college laptop used for multitasking and gaming (nothing too hard-core, mostly Civ 4)- P4 or Athlon? I'm thinking Athlon 3200+, but that may be overkill since I most likely won't play anything like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3.

I would reccomend getting a Mac. It prevents you form playing games when your suppose to be doing homework.

 

[WildWeazel]

Hence the term "multi-tasking"

 

[shadowdude]

What would everyone recommend for a college laptop used for multitasking and gaming (nothing too hard-core, mostly Civ 4)- P4 or Athlon? I'm thinking Athlon 3200+, but that may be overkill since I most likely won't play anything like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3.

if it's nothing hardcore and mostly multi tasking than a P4 would be best and a little cheaper. For ultimate performance in games you'll want an AMD Athlon.

 

[pman67]

For a lappy, I would look at the newer P-M's with the 533 mhz bus.

The Pm is quite possibly the wave of the future. They run fast and cool. At the highest stock clock speed (2.13 ghz, I think) they will stomp a P4 in anything but video encoding type tasks, and overclocked to 2.5 they will match a FX55 in almost any gaming benchmark. If Intel would ever match them up with dual channel ram and an 800 mhz bus in an efficient chipset, they would be a desktop powerhouse. Of course, that would make them admit that the P4 isn't the king of the hill, and they aren't ready to do that yet.

On top of all that, at stock speeds the Pm pulls less juice at load than the P4 systems do at idle. At full load, a top end P4 system will easily pull 2+ times the wattage of the Pm's.

Asus has put out a daughtercard that will let you put a Pm into a socket 478 motherboard, but so far the only boards they have certified are the P4C800 and the P4P800, and it doesn't allow much in the way of voltage control etc. for overclocking yet.

Sorry to go on so long, but that's my $.02

 

[dragokatzov]

AMD all the way! but do your self a favour, avoid motherboard with VIA chipsets. instead, go with nVidia's nForce chipset or a SiS chipset. VIA chipsets are garbage, IMO.

I have a P4 and it sucks!

 

[aneeshm]

The nForce 4 with an AMD Athlon 4000+ is what I'd recommend . I myself use the nForce 4 with an AMD Athlon 3200+ .

 

[WildWeazel]

I think I'm going to go with a Turion 64 ML-30. I found a Presario powered by one for $750. All the P4-M laptops I could find were too high-end for me.