Oh Gosh! (hand upside head, bugged out eyes)....
nroberts said:
In my opinion and experience AMD is usually the best choice and not just because of price. Ever since the Athlon the AMD chip has been doing as well or better than Intel chips in most venues. There are occasional brief periods where this is not so, but for the most part AMD is very competative if not just plain better.
The AMD64 has its frontside bus inside the processor. It also has hyper transport. It has a bunch of other stuff that you won't get to use using 32 bit Windows, which is what you will want to run your DAW software unless there is something available for the new 64 bit windows. I am under the impression from friends and such that there is little in the way of applications that run on 64 bit windows. Theoreticall they should be providing 32 bit access to kernel calls so that programs can run in compatibility mode but maybe they don't. In 64 bit mode the CPU has over twice as many registers among other things...this means more speed assuming programs can take advantage of them.
AMD is a lot less expensive also. There is very little reason to buy Intel and I haven't in years. On average, at least in the past, Intel chips have cost about 2x as much as comparable AMD chips. Unless they accell in something I need, and they haven't so far, I just don't see justification for the expense. Obviously my recommendation is AMD and that is always what I buy.
This gentleman (or woman) does not want to buy an AMD, he/she (just assume I do that all the way through) does not want to buy and Intel.
He wants to buy SOMETHING THAT WILL WORK FOR HIM!!! Start with the people that support the application he needs most. If they have been in business very long they will have a very good idea. And not just vendors but model numbers or at least MB maker and supporting chipset.
When I got a DC1000e card made by pinnacle I asked Videoguys what they could support the best, They said they were still having trouble with amd's and suggested an intel, I said what about the glue chip set made by intel, the 845. They said great! Okay, I got an abit MB because it also included raid 0,1 on the MB. Abit is the gamers first choice because of its overclockability.
Crashed intermittently every 3 hours to 3 days. Regardless of ap. I still have it, but crital stuff is done on the Asus MB. Stable as a rock but a few frames per second slower at unreal tournament than the abit mb. same glue chipset, same amount of ram. Oh yeah, and how about the ram, and the manufacturer of same.I have had crucial come doa, and also some super special gamers ram come doa. worse than doa is intermittant failures! Is it the power suppliy, the cpu chip, old bios, the operating system, bad cable and on and on.
Windows XP is mostly win 2000 that is largely windows nt and was made by a guy microsoft hired from dec that wrote one of dec's operating system. It does not have a kernel like Unix/Linux, as such. The linux kernel is just a few K (and I mean k!) in size and very little user code is ever executed in it. Not so nt/2000/xp. That is one reason it has more bugs and less security then linux/unix. Most all code is backward compatible in xp64. one of the main things is larger memory space and faster transfer (via bigger chunks of data with fewer instructions) of data.
Most all new intel chips are hyperthreaded now. with the dual processor chips just coming online you can have two actual processors both with hyperthreading on the same chip. Amd is starting to do the same with dual processors (due sometime june if all goes well) but does not support hyperthreading. Which may not matter at all if your software does not support one or the other or both. Xp will support multiple processors up to about 4, I think, until you have to go to a server operating system.
Since I don't know his most important aplication I don't know which amd processor or intel processors to reccomend.
If he should get an amd processor should he get the 55 or what. Should he get a server type mb or one that is more oriented towards gamers, ecc or registerd memory or neither. does he need a raid array. will he need two monitors? (I have two systems both with dual 19inch monitorys, I will never go back. when I am in photoshop i can have my image on one side and all the menus I need open on the other)
Does he need a case that mutes sound or one that optimizes cooling.
I could go on.
In my opinion, and its JUST my opinion (although it is an INFORMED opinion) what you have is a prejudice that has worked for you so far. please don't post all the tests that show the amd usually has more processing power at a lower price point. I will agree with them. I read tomshardware, sharky, anand shimpy and pc magazine plus many others. But this person wants a wrench that works, and I don't know enough to reccomend a craftsman, or snap-on, or some cheap chinese set.
I guess you do, and I think that you believe that amd is right for him, but I think the right processor is just about 20 percent of a successful system for him.