Okay so I'm in the market for a new processor and wanted to get a discussion goin on what you guys think Linux works best with as far as processors go. Listing pros and cons of either processsor would be nice, so yeah.

Really Intersting



Thank you

Linux works good on almost any processor. It would really help if you can give us an example of your use case. What do you want to achieve with this system, for example, do you want to have a simple desktop system, are you a gamer, is a lot of your software multithreading, is it a server (for which purpose with how many users), ... .

Hi,

I suggest you to buy intel unless you are going to buy opteron processors.
I had a couple of bad experiences with amd (they died) while intel processors live forever.
Then to be honest is just up to you, they are nearly the same

I alwas get the impression that Intel's top of the range are faster than AMDs but at the cheaper end AMD are faster. Is this still the case?

Well, I haven't had much experience of different CPUs, but Slackware64 seems happy with this one:

Hi,

Really boils down to $$$. Pay more for performance differences. Look at 'CPU Hierarchy Chart'. Sure it is gaming related but a good reference.

Personally, I do use AMD for most of my boxen. Been that way for years. I believe you get a better bang for the buck with AMD. Comparative discussion for Intel vs AMD have been on going for years. Marketing and implementation!

Say that to my old K6-II 350MHz, that still runs as a jukebox for one of my friends. If you run them in their specs, both, Intel and AMD (also VIA, IBM, Sun, Motorola/Freescale, ...), run forever, it is more likely that the motherboard dies.
Short list of CPUs I remember:
- MOS6510, (CPU of Commodore C64, I had a few and only one of that computers died, but I am not sure if it was the CPU that was the culprit, they were to cheap to really care).
- MOS8502, (CPU of Commodore C128)
- Motorola 68000, I had them in Amiga 500 and Atari ST 1024
- Intel 8088, 10MHz in a Commodore PC10
- AMD 486, 40MHz
- Intel Pentium 90MHz, overclocked to 100MHz
- Cyrix 6x86 PR200+, 133MHz, crappy thing, but worked
- AMD K6 200MHz
- AMD K6-II, 350MHz
- AMD Athlon XP 2200+, overclocked to 2800+
- AMD Sempron 2000+, still running in a box of one of my friends
- AMD Athlon X2 5200+, still running in a box of one of my friends, was overclocked to be someting like a 6000+ when it was mine
- Intel Core2Quad 6600, overclocked @3,2 GHz, still running in a box of one of my friends
- Intel Atom 330, still running in my fileserver
- AMD Athlon QL-66, still running in my laptop
- Intel Pentium MMX 133 (the one with the FDIV bug) in a laptop, working till the motherboard died (I think in 2009 or 2010)
- Intel Celeron, 550MHz, working in a laptop as jukebox until someone drowned it in beer
- Intel Core2Quad 9550, still running in a box of one of my friends, overclocked to 4GHz when it was mine
- Intel Mobile Celeron, 630 MHz (ASUS Eeepc 701), still running
- nowadays my main CPU, AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, slightly overclocked @3,5GHz (will be more when I have the time to do proper tests)

None but the one C64 (where I am not sure if it was the CPU) died. My conclusion: If you maintain the CPU in a proper way both brands are of equal quality.
Do you really think that AMD would be still selling CPUs if they were of bad quality?

As onebuck said, it comes down to $$$. At least partially, it still depends on your workload also which CPU I would recommend. For single thread workloads a higher clocked, but cheaper, dual-core will be better than a "slower", but more expensive, hexacore CPU.

IMHO, without knowing what your specific workload will be any recommendations are simply pointless.

You dont just buy CPUs, the chipset makes a big difference.

Aside from some of the newer 'video on the CPU' chips (intel iX 'sandy bridge' and AMD 'fusion' CPUs) support is provided from the chipset.

I dont know about 'forever', that is a bloody long time. But I've got to agree 100% with the motherboards die far more often than CPUs.

The number of times I've pulled a so-called 'dead' CPU from a board, shoved it into another 'known good' board and the system runs is amazing.

Shouldnt the PR200+ have been a 150/166MHz chip? I cant be sure, there were a lot of variants IIRC.

Celeron 533/566, or a 366 overclocked to 550?

Pretty much, and I'm making a huge generalisation, but now you get more cores for less from AMD. The cores will be slightly slower than the intel cores (apart from intel atom vs AMD fusion, AMD is out and out faster there).

Though it wasnt always the case. For a while AMD had the fastest x86 CPUs around.

This one: http://ark.intel.com/products/27323/...he-100-MHz-FSB
Should have mentioned that it was a mobile version, since it was in a laptop.

You are right, seems that my memory was borked. I had that chip I think back in 98 or 99, long time ago.

I would say that it is an oversimplification (at best); it may have been true 12 or 18 months ago, but now isn't really completely true.

To compare, you'd have to throw away the idea of comparing Intel's 'low end' processor with AMD's, and go with the '...and what can I get for the same amount of money', irrespective of what the manufacturer would like you to consider (otherwise, AMD's high end, the FX-8xxx will always get slaughtered against an Intel chip that costs 2x - 4x the price). And, really, you ought to consider 'system cost' and not 'processor cost' as the motherboard costs can be quite different (although, that does give rise to the problem that 'Gamers'/'Overclockers' motherboards are often twice as expensive as more mainstream motherboards, and you have to be careful to compare like with like).

So

• Intel always has a top end chip at about $1000, that doesn't make any sense, from a value-for-money perspective, as it is only 10 or 20% faster than another Intel chip at about half the price. Recently, AMD has had no competition for this Extreme Edition part, but as it doesn't make value-for-money sense, anyway, who cares? (Someone must buy 'em, but I don't know who.)
• At the upper midrange, or something, Intel is winning on non-highly-threaded apps performance, with AMD not being too far off on the strict subset of apps or use cases that is highly threaded.
• The AMD Bulldozer chips have been widely seen as somewhere between a mild disappointment and a disaster. Seriously, the FX-4xxx chips are not a total disaster, but they don't overwhelm the world in the way that AMD's pre-publicity gave some people to believe that they would. OTOH, when you get up to the FX8xxx, you pay nearly twice as much as you do for the FX-4xxx parts and you only very rarely get close to twice the performance.
• For the Fusion/Llano Ax-xxxx parts, AMD have an intriguing offer - the processor core isn't all that spectacular, but they do have the best out of the integrated graphics solution. You also get a reasonable number of cores for your money. There are, these days, competing Intel parts which have better performance per clock, but at this price level you'll be getting two of Intel's pretty good cores against three or four of AMD's not spectacular ones.
• The Phenoms seem to be being killed off, err, phenomenally quickly, so these won't be an option for much longer. Which is odd. Particularly odd is that a die shrink on the Phenom series may well have been a better current bet than Bulldozer, but that might not have been the step towards the future that AMD would like.

Really, if you can make use of the 'more cores for your money' that you get from AMD, or the better Graphics processor in the Ax-xxxx parts (either for gaming, for those games for which playing on an integrated solution is a realistic possibility, or for GPU computation), you can, just about, make a case for AMD. Otherwise, it is currently quite difficult for them against Intel. Piledriver really can't come any too soon, but whether it will overturn the status quo is another matter.