AMD vs Intel... real-world performance?

[Forde3654Eire]

I've been hearing from some guys lately that AMD CPUs are always better than Intel CPUs. To give an example, I recently purchased an i3 2100 with an B75 LGA 1155 motherboard... however I've been told that was a wrong decision, and for the same price, an Athlon II X3 with a compatible motherboard is the way to go.

I showed several benchmarks from Anandtech and Tom's Hardware for the i3 2100 and Athlon II X3, which clearly shows the i3 2100 beating the X3 in almost every benchmark by a large amount... the benchmarks even show the Phenom II X4 and FX-4100 having a hard time keeping up with the i3 2100, unless highly overclocked... however, these guys told me that benchmarks are irrelevant and misleading, and that in real-world scenarios, at equivalent price-points, AMD is always better than Intel... so what's going on here? Weren't benchmarks made to show clearly hands down which CPU is better? Have I been fooled or something by these benchmarks?

These guys even go as far as saying an i7 2600K can never keep up with an FX 8 core.

 

[amuffin]

That's not true at ALL.


The FX, or any of the FX's do not compare at all to any generation of i7, especially not the 2600k.

 

[Forde3654Eire]

That's not true at ALL.


The FX, or any of the FX's do not compare at all to any generation of i7, especially not the 2600k.

Sure, but there's something else I want to understand. The FX processors have very high memory read and write speeds, memory latencies and such... so I've seen in some benchmarks...so what does that translate into? What does it mean? These AMD fanboys said that the high memory read/write speeds translate into faster real-world experience, therefore making AMD CPUs better than equivalent Intel CPUs... or are they just trying to make up anything to back up their AMD "fanboy-ism"?

 

[hunter315]

The FX series of CPUs was hyped a lot, it isn't nearly as good as AMD was playing it up to be, this does not mean that they are bad CPUs, any CPU you can get today is going to be fairly powerful and none are bad, some are just better for their price than others.


Benchmarks are designed to provide objective measures of the processors, it is very difficult to report on real world performance because there are too many variables between individual systems, a user with a very fast SSD and an Athlon II x2 250 will say their system feels very fast for some day to day tasks like web browsing, word docs, and solitaire, where a much more powerful system with a 2600k and a conventional hard drive won't feel quite as fast, this has nothing to do with the CPU and much more to do with the drive in the system.

The extra memory read and write speed of the AMD chips doesn't mean too much since most tasks are not memory limited, in the same way that 1600 MHz memory shows slight but not massive improvements over 1333 MHz memory, improving memory bandwidth in normal tasks won't get you very much, especially for applications normal users use.



How good of a choice a CPU is really depends on your needs and the applications you intend to run, someone like my mother who doesn't do anything intensive on the machine has no need for anything over a low level i3 or an AMD APU so a 2600K would be a bad choice; however, someone doing a CFD simulation would cry themself to sleep for months if they tried to do it on an i3 instead of a big Xeon workstation in which case the i3 would be a bad choice. It all depends on you.



Benchmarks are meaningless if you don't understand how to use them, they are merely data, information is data with context.

 

[cbrunnem]

I've been hearing from some guys lately that AMD CPUs are always better than Intel CPUs. To give an example, I recently purchased an i3 2100 with an B75 LGA 1155 motherboard... however I've been told that was a wrong decision, and for the same price, an Athlon II X3 with a compatible motherboard is the way to go.

I showed several benchmarks from Anandtech and Tom's Hardware for the i3 2100 and Athlon II X3, which clearly shows the i3 2100 beating the X3 in almost every benchmark by a large amount... the benchmarks even show the Phenom II X4 and FX-4100 having a hard time keeping up with the i3 2100, unless highly overclocked... however, these guys told me that benchmarks are irrelevant and misleading, and that in real-world scenarios, at equivalent price-points, AMD is always better than Intel... so what's going on here? Weren't benchmarks made to show clearly hands down which CPU is better? Have I been fooled or something by these benchmarks?

These guys even go as far as saying an i7 2600K can never keep up with an FX 8 core.

you friends are idiots. the only reason that AMD "MIGHT" own a price point is because they took their best processor and undercut an intel chip that it could beat.

show them this thread, ill call them idiots again. an athlon beats no current gen last gen or two gen old cpu from intel that has comparable thread counts.

Edit: no current AMD cpu can compete with an i7 2600k let alone the 3770k. not even close and we are talking desktop cpus too not server cpus but intel owns that too.

 

[jaguarskx]

If "real world" means surfing the internet, reading / typing a Word document, watching a movie, then yes your friends are correct; there is no real difference between AMD or Intel CPUs.

For applications that are CPU intensive like video encoding, 3D rendering, and games your friends are wrong. Assuming the same clockspeed, an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPU is roughly 25% more powerful than an AMD Athlon II CPU.

Most programs / games only use 2 cores. Given the difference in raw processing power, a Core i3 CPU can performance just as well or better than some more expensive quad core AMD Phenom II X4 CPUs.

Just agree to disagree. Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to convince people otherwise.

 

[Forde3654Eire]

Good answers guys, clears a lot of doubt I had

Alright lets put it this way. Where I am, the X3 costs $88, and the least expensive AM3 motherboard costs $64 (least expensive AM3+ costs $125, FX-4100 is $120). I was planning to unlock + overclock, so thermal paste + aftermarket heatsink is $48. There are no Phenom II's available here. Total cost: $199

Alternatively, keeping all other system components the same, the i3 2100 cost $112, and the B75 motherboard cost $72. Total cost: $184.

I am a gamer, using a Sapphire 6850 (and the i3 2100). I only do the occasional video-editing, which involves converting my Fraps .avi files to .mp4 files for Youtube videos in Sony Vegas. Whenever doing this, I always allocate the GPU to do the conversion... so I guess CPU type doesn't matter?

Taking a look at both builds and/or my needs, which build would you guys see as the better solution?

 

[pit_1209]

In fact hunter got everything right, in real world situations the entire system is the factor that affect the responsiveness and speed of the build, Amd do have good cpu at great price/perfomance ratio so Intel but the real question is Is that enough for me?

I mean if you´re only planning to do some basics stuff, internet, ligth gaming, etc. What´s the point of a super fast cpu with 90 cores and threads? just pick your side in the hierarchy and remember, not less than 3 tiers the update. XP

 

[pit_1209]

Good answers guys, clears a lot of doubt I had

Alright lets put it this way. Where I am, the X3 costs $88, and the least expensive AM3 motherboard costs $64 (least expensive AM3+ costs $125, FX-4100 is $120). I was planning to unlock + overclock, so thermal paste + aftermarket heatsink is $48. There are no Phenom II's available here. Total cost: $199

Alternatively, keeping all other system components the same, the i3 2100 cost $112, and the B75 motherboard cost $72. Total cost: $184.

I am a gamer, using a Sapphire 6850 (and the i3 2100). I only do the occasional video-editing, which involves converting my Fraps .avi files to .mp4 files for Youtube videos in Sony Vegas. Whenever doing this, I always allocate the GPU to do the conversion... so I guess CPU type doesn't matter?

Taking a look at both builds and/or my needs, which build would you guys see as the better solution?

I consider myself an Amd guy but in this matter I vote for the i3 build, i got an athlon 2 x3 and I can tell you an i3 is way better, in gaming is very superior, I also have the sapphire 6850... just pick the i3 in this case IMO.

 

[cbrunnem]

If "real world" means surfing the internet, reading / typing a Word document, watching a movie, then yes your friends are correct; there is no real difference between AMD or Intel CPUs.

For applications that are CPU intensive like video encoding, 3D rendering, and games your friends are wrong. Assuming the same clockspeed, an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPU is roughly 25% more powerful than an AMD Athlon II CPU.

Most programs / games only use 2 cores. Given the difference in raw processing power, a Core i3 CPU can performance just as well or better than some more expensive quad core AMD Phenom II X4 CPUs.

Just agree to disagree. Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to convince people otherwise.

just cause you cant tell if there is a difference doesnt mean there isnt. an intel cpu is probably faster at everyone of those tasks but the difference is very small but none the less it is still faster. its like a 1 second shortcut on a two hours road trip. too say its faster is correct but its not really meaningful.

 

[rds1220]

Your friends are idiots and obvious AMD fanboys. Only a fanboy say benchmarks don't matter or try to brush them off as meaningless or deliberately skewed. The I3 will easily beat out an Athlon. The Athlon is old and slow and will bottleneck a decent GPU. It will also beat out the Bulldozer in all but the most heavily threaded programs. Yes a little dual core I3 at 3.2 GHz will beat out a Bulldozer with more cores and a higher clock rate.

 

[jaguarskx]

just cause you cant tell if there is a difference doesnt mean there isnt. an intel cpu is probably faster at everyone of those tasks but the difference is very small but none the less it is still faster. its like a 1 second shortcut on a two hours road trip. too say its faster is correct but its not really meaningful.

Considering the difference in CPU processing power is around 25%, assuming the same clockspeed, the difference will be more than a few seconds especially if the time required to render or encode can be hours. 3D rendering can even take days depending on the scope of the project.

 

[jaguarskx]

Getting back to video encoding...

I just encoded a 1 hour and 44 minute video using the XviD codec so that I can watch on my portable media player (Cowon S9). The video was encoded on my Lenovo Y470 laptop with a core i5-2410m CPU (2.9GHz Turbo Boost) and on my desktop with a Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 3.0GHz. I used VirtualDub to encode with the same settings on both machines.

While the developers of XviD claims the codec is multi-threaded, the codec actually only use 1 core. Therefore, whether the CPU has 2 or 4 cores doesn't really affect the performance of the XviD codec.

Using the 2-pass method of encoding, the Core i5-2410m managed to complete the encoding process in 39 minutes. The Q9450 managed to complete the encoding process in 55 minutes; a difference of 16 minutes. The Core 2 Duo / Quad series is faster than AMD's Athlon II CPUs, but this basically demonstrates that a faster / better designed CPU architecture can have a significant performance impact depending on what you plan to do.

This is just one video. Sometimes I batch up to 20 videos to be encoded. Assuming the average difference in encoding performance is 16 minutes for each video, my laptop can complete the enter batch process 5 hours and 20 minutes quicker than my desktop.

 

[Goden]

Considering the difference in CPU processing power is around 25%, assuming the same clockspeed, the difference will be more than a few seconds especially if the time required to render or encode can be hours. 3D rendering can even take days depending on the scope of the project.

If someone is going to be working on projects that take hours to days to render, then they are obviously not going to be shopping or using AMD. They are going to be using the fastest and most powerful Intel CPU that money can buy.

As of right now, Intel and AMD fill certain niches in the market. High performance graphical/audio/video work is not a niche that AMD CPU's fill. They are not marketed, priced, or designed for that role. AMD's entire yearly income is what Intel spends just on research and development alone. They are not, will not, and can not be as powerful as Intel CPU's. However, they are price-to-performance competitive with Intel for the average grade CPU's. They also have Intel beat in the APU market.

 

[jaguarskx]

If someone is going to be working on projects that take hours to days to render, then they are obviously not going to be shopping or using AMD. They are going to be using the fastest and most powerful Intel CPU that money can buy.

They also have Intel beat in the APU market.

Some people do 3D rendering as a hobby and more power CPU will have real world difference.

I believe you mean to say that AMD beats Intel in the integrated graphic core market because an APU is simply an AMD marketing term for processor that has a CPU core and GPU core; like the CPUs that Intel sells.

 

[amuffin]

If Intel bought Nvidia...

 

[Pinhedd]

You need to talk to smarter people

 

[amuffin]

:lol:

 

[Forde3654Eire]

You need to talk to smarter people

Hahaha apparently so! :lol: Fortunately the good folks of Tom's Hardware seem to know their stuff. As far as I'm concerned in Saudi, there are 2 groups of extremely biased people:

1) Intel all the way, no matter what (most people never heard of AMD). i3 2100 is extremely weak, not even usable. You must have a quad core, regardless of whether its just surfing the internet or gaming. i7 is the only way to go... this gave me good laughs hahaha :lol: Nvidia all the way, AMD is crap. You must have the graphics card with the most GB... so in their sense: GT 520 with 2GB RAM outperforms a GTX 560 with 1 GB RAM.

2) AMD all the way, no matter what (Intel is deemed as inferior). Athlon II X2 smokes an i3 2100.

And another group, just for laughs: Laptop segment: Anything which isn't Apple (Macbook, Ipad etc) is utter crap and unusable :lol:

 

[Forde3654Eire]

By the way, I thought you guys might like to see this. I'm very fond of my build, I decided to make a video of it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_UfIhs9K0

 

[cbrunnem]

just for he record i was talking about general tasks like web browsing...

 

[Guest]

Jaguarskx pretty much covered everything giving really valuable data to the public. Have no doubt in Tom’s hardware they know how to make the fast faster, with overclocking the heat above ambient temperature hardware is running as a wall than can force you down clock your CPU with Speed Step, C1Halt, Thermal monitor or Offset and ended up running their processor below 2.000 Ghz in some cases at idle just to have some low temperature readings to the cores.

I don’t use any of that and I’m runing my CPU at 3 Ghz idle, I get a boost on 100% load to my CPU with some bios settings up to 3.3 Ghz by carefully spending time exploring the cooling methods in air this thread can really help you:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/340000-10-corei-7920-bloomfield

I don’t like to think AMD is out of the game finally if they can deliver us a -20 C cooler CPU than we already have will help us to work at higher overclock levels and I believe we all move in there.

Have no doubt by adding +4 GBytes to your pc and with OCZ RevoDrive3 X2 240GB SSD PCI-Express x4 (RVD3X2-FHPX4-240G) as a hard disk with 1500MB/s reading, 1225ΜΒ/s writing as you can see here:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-3-x2-pci-express-ssd.html

will give you a real life performance boost experience to a level making you believe that all this time you were working with a stone age PC build! All you need is a motherboard with clean PCI-E x4 root in order not bottleneck your graphics card working 3d rendering images to the size of 4 Gbytes but then again is taking only 2,6 secs to load them in memory so go figure.

 

[Forde3654Eire]

Well speaking of temperatures... I'm a little concerned about my i3 2100. I'm running on the stock cooler and thermal paste. After running Prime95 for about 20 mins, the cores reached 69 C... is that high or considered normal? I have some Arctic Silver thermal paste lying around, I can use that if needed.

 

[Dangi]

Right now the best processor are Intel, price-performance AMD.


Right now is "useless" to have and 6-8 core CPU as most programs doesn't use more than 2 cores and windows doesn't manage that many threads well.

Also I'm pretty sure that if you code video using Linux the FX8150 performance will increase dramatically, to the point of catching i7-2600K ?? I doubt that.

 

[lhikary]

i agree 6 cores are mostly useful in video rendering but i dont think amd is powerful in that cuz as far ass i know amd cpu's are mostly for gaming and intel for everything
would like some help here
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/316452-30-asus-maximus-gene-header
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http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/316475-30-asrock-extreme-limts