What CPU would you get?

[jmiddleton]

AMD is feeling some pressure right now because their cash requirements have increased with the acquisition of ATI while their cash receipts have declined because of the price war with Intel. This is bad news for short term investors but the company is in no danger and, longer term, the synergies of the merger will leave the combined AMD-ATI in a much better position to compete with Intel at the platform level.

Given that Intel has, and will likely retain, a 12 month advantage in process technology, it is unlikely AMD will ever recapture the raw performance crown for an extended period of time as they did with the Athlon 64. Intel makes their share of mistakes, which open windows of opportunity for competitors, but there is a lot of talent at Intel and you won't keep them down for long.

To compete, AMD must offer a package that doesn't depend on any single component outperforming it's Intel equivalent. By exploiting their strengths like the ATI graphics expertise (690G chipset) and Hypertransport (Torrenza) AMD should remain fully competitive at the platform level for the foreseeable future.

Bottom line: it's a good time to be a consumer. Surely you don't think Intel would have come up with the superb Core 2 architecture without the pressure from AMD!

[flavius]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

Bottom line: it's a good time to be a consumer. Surely you don't think Intel would have come up with the superb Core 2 architecture without the pressure from AMD!

I'm quite eager to see AMD's response. Just today I read a piece about Intel's new 45nm line. I wasn't too impressed.

[Crashless]

Check out Tom's Hardware's CPU comparison chart:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

Should make things a bit clearer about what you're getting for the money.

And although lots of people around her overclock their servers, I would really recommend against it for something as mission critical as a Sage server. I just woudn't be willing to miss an episode of my favorite show because I wanted to get a little more performance out of my machine.

Just my $.02

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by Crashless

Check out Tom's Hardware's CPU comparison chart:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

Should make things a bit clearer about what you're getting for the money.

And although lots of people around her overclock their servers, I would really recommend against it for something as mission critical as a Sage server. I just woudn't be willing to miss an episode of my favorite show because I wanted to get a little more performance out of my machine.

Just my $.02

My god I cant say thanks enough. I searched a while for that link on tomshardware and just could not find it. My search skills have either fallen or their site search engine sucks, hehe. Looks like I am waiting for price drop next week and getting an e6700. I agree with you about the overclocking, if I want faster, I'll spend the money, don't want to risk anything.

[stevech]

I buy CPUs in the sweet-spot, i.e., never the latest and high priced, but above the mid point.

So to me, as long as AMD's price is equal or less than Intel, in this speed range, I'll always buy theirs. And of late, they run a lot cooler. Doing my share to stave off an Intel monopoly.

What amazes me is that I've never had nor heard of problems with instruction set compatibility between the two.