amd athlon 64 vs. intel pentium 4

[drumthrasher]

i was wondering why more people want an amd athlon 64 xxxx+ over the intel pentium 4. i don't know too much about processors, but i was just wondering what is the difference. i would rather get an amd cpu just because everyone else does and that i think you can rely on it more. but on the amd the speed isn't as fast. i have a 3700+. on other computers i see at the stores that are exactly the same except for the cpu. they have a pentium 4, but the GHz speed is a lot more, more like 2.93 or 3+.

 

[BigLu]

People will tell you this a thousand times, clock speeds mean nothing. A64s don't work the same as P4s, the A64 will do more per clock cycle, more work done with less effort.

 

[drumthrasher]

thats what i was thinking though...clock speeds. cool. i'm planning on keeping my computer for a while.

 

[PerfectSK]

Yep, pretty much what BigLu said. AMD 64 cpus get more done in a clock cycle compared to their Pentium 4 counterparts. More work in less time equals lower frequency ( ie like 2.0ghz). AMD 64 cpus are more for gaming, and Pentium 4's are more for multimedia. However if you have a decent P4 like the 630, coupled with a nice mobo, and a good graphics card like the 7900gtx or 1900xtx, you'll have a great gaming machine.

 

[uid=[0]]

Clock speed means nothing if your not doing any work lol. make a computer that has 600GHz clock speed, and if it takes it 35 clock cycles to open notepad, its not doin much for ya

oh and to add to that, me personally i have used both, and prefer the amd because it doesnt lagg quite as much under heavy load. such as running photoshop CS2, and Visual studio .net, a p4 3.2GHz with HT, and 512 ram will lag like a mofo.(specs are from the one i had)