And I just wanted to make some sense out of all this alphabet soup. Pentium D, Intel EM64T, Athlon 64, Opteron, Sempron, Itanium, Turion, it doesn't make any damn sense to me anymore.

Is this a valid/apt analogy, or am I way off:
EM64T : Athlon64 :: Itanium : Opteron

What exactly are the Sempron and Turion?

If a Pentium D is dual core, then what's the AMD equivalent, if there is one?

I realize I'm asking for a concise response to the state of intel-compatible processors in general, and that may be difficult. But any help is appreciated. I was just horribly confused the last time I looked on Newegg (my main PC is an Athlon 1500+, if that gives you an idea of the last time I upgraded...)

[Edited on December 3, 2005 at 1:36 AM. Reason : f]

12/3/2005 1:36:15 AM

don't feel bad cause i lost touch since i left NCSU... i'm still running a fuckin amd 450 baby!

12/3/2005 4:41:09 PM

Toms Hardware did a massive comparo and it has been updated as recently as Oct I think.

12/3/2005 4:46:29 PM

The Athlon 64 x2 is AMD's cometition for the Pentium D's. Of course... calling it a competition is a joke. Cnet just recently did a prize fight benchmark between those two chips...

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html

Bottom line?

Quote :

"AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips are the runaway victors here, laying out the Intel Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition 840 chips pins up.""

Turion is AMD's mobile chip, mostly you'll find that in laptops and media pc's. The pentium M however seems to do better in reviews, so for low power and mobile users go pentium M.

The opteron is AMD's competitions for the Xeon. And like the Athlon vs Pentium fight...

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=paxville&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

That covers the dual core xeons vs dual core opterons. Opterons win out in every way.

Itanium is intel's new architecture they've been pushing for a while. Itanium II looks neat, but I don't know much about it. It's mostly meant for servers though, so you shouldn't be worrying about it. Generally people have been unimpressed with it and it's not the runaway success intel hoped. The 32 bit emulation has been rocky to say the least. It is afterall, a fully 64 bit system, and not fully 64/32 bit compatable like the athlon 64's.

I don't think athlon has anyhting that directly compares to itanium, does it?

Sempron is AMD's competition for the Celeron line. Here's an article on that

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=61&type=expert

Not much to really draw from that, but they're both good low cost options. If you're a gamer or a power user though, don't touch either.

[Edited on December 3, 2005 at 5:23 PM. Reason : ]

12/3/2005 5:20:17 PM

lmfao

cnet

in the CNet test they didn't use an intel chipset mb

they also didn't say whether or not they turned HT off with the D/EE

and the multitasking test consisted of only two processes

[Edited on December 3, 2005 at 5:33 PM. Reason : explanation]

12/3/2005 5:28:32 PM

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/processorsmemory/0,39024015,39233885,00.htm

Similar conclusions.

Was trying to link him to a comparison that was at least accessible by someone who didn't know what they were looking at beforehand.

Now, it's true that the P4 EE and P4 D's don't do as badly in synthetic benchmarks, and the cnet comparison seems exaggerated. AMD still has the most robust dual core lineup, for servers and home users both in general. That's not to say there isn't some point where a p4 has a better price/performance ratio than something that AMD offers, but for the most part AMD is the better deal and the better performer.

For more thurough comparison...

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051121/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts-38.html

That's where the benchmarks start. Note that for the most part the Athlon64's find their way to the top of the charts. More often then not, Pentium D's are outperformed by AMD chips priced well below them. There are a few real exceptions to this, and if those real exceptions correlate to how you use your computer, then take that into consideration. Some of the synthetic benchmarks also seem to produce some inconsistent results, but synthetic benchmarks are nearly as good a guage as looking at how programs you'd actually use run.

The mother-of-all charts is a bit much to look at, espescially if you focus on the synthetic benchmarks too much or the gaming benchmarks and aren't a game.


[Edited on December 3, 2005 at 6:06 PM. Reason : ]

12/3/2005 5:49:19 PM

cnet also used nvidia instead of ati, another swayer in the "competition", at least in the gfx department, but there's no doubt amd is still the better chip

[Edited on December 3, 2005 at 6:08 PM. Reason : .]

12/3/2005 6:07:49 PM

Generally speaking, my experience has been, when looking for the most bang for your buck:

Athlon X2 > Pentium D
Athlon 64 > Pentium 4
Pentium M > Turion 64
Celeron ~= Sempron

I dunno about the Opteron and Xeon, since I don't work with servers much. I hear the Opteron is better, but can't versify it personally. Just my two cent(s).

12/3/2005 8:21:29 PM