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View Poll Results: Which do you prefer, Intel or AMD?
For most distros and out of the box simple-ness. Intel
For anything efficient and feature rich, AMD. At least the newer generation stuff. Most of the specs I drool over now are AMD based. More so with the intel c2xxx issue and other things. But mostly price and features. As a dev type, having more hardware for the same price as a single system has it's perks.
Since I am frugal computer user and if price is considered. I voted AMD because of that. I am not a gamer on computer.
I got a playstation for that.
Most of my gear comes for less than others pay for theirs. Being one who does not look a gift horse in the mouth.
I don't consider cpu bias at all then.
I prefer AMD since they need to stay in business to keep Intel from grossly inflating prices. However, right now all my systems except 1 are Intel, but I'm hopeful that we can start seeing some ryzen laptops when they release the mobile chips.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
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AMD have consistently failed to produce anything that even aproaches Intel on any benchmark I have seen. For that reason I'll liklely replace my current FX-8370 desktop with Intel when I have to do so. Unless AMD magically make Ryzen suddenly better than even an i5.
On installations where Intel's integrated graphics is sufficient (and since I'm not a gamer, that's just about everywhere), then using Intel saves me from having to buy a graphics card. Plus, Intel graphics is well supported in Linux.
AMD have consistently failed to produce anything that even aproaches Intel on any benchmark I have seen. For that reason I'll liklely replace my current FX-8370 desktop with Intel when I have to do so. Unless AMD magically make Ryzen suddenly better than even an i5.
Given that other than gaming benchmarks, the Ryzen has been easily beating the i7's in every review, I'd say there's no need for "suddenly", they're already superior. Unless you're a gamer.
Distribution: Mainly Devuan, antiX, & Void, with Tiny Core, Fatdog, & BSD thrown in.
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I voted Intel, but I don't really care, I'm not a power user.
Presently, I am trying out a Raspberry Pi3 - Broadcom(!) processor, 1GB ram, wifi, runs from a microSD card, but will shortly be able to run from USB disks, still not quite stable by all accounts - a promising substitute if all you want is web browsing, email, music & video playing - about the equivalent of an Atom processor.
My last two Linux only desktops have been AMD based and I have been quite pleased. Although it's clear that AMD hasn't kept up with Intel on single core performance, in practical usage it hasn't been an issue. My current quad core A8 Trinity CPU does an excellent job.
I have had problems with GPUs however. My R7 360 video card wasn't supported for the FOSS driver in Linux Mint 17 and so I had to use the fglrx (Catalyst) driver. This Catalyst driver wasn't supported in LM 18 but after a few kernel updates the FOSS driver was. So now I'm using the excellent Radeon FOSS driver again. AMD video is really like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. If you avoid the bleeding edge hardware you should be OK - although to be honest Nvidia seems to support its hardware better in Linux.
My last two Linux only desktops have been AMD based and I have been quite pleased. Although it's clear that AMD hasn't kept up with Intel on single core performance, in practical usage it hasn't been an issue. My current quad core A8 Trinity CPU does an excellent job.
I have had problems with GPUs however. My R7 360 video card wasn't supported for the FOSS driver in Linux Mint 17 and so I had to use the fglrx (Catalyst) driver. This Catalyst driver wasn't supported in LM 18 but after a few kernel updates the FOSS driver was. So now I'm using the excellent Radeon FOSS driver again. AMD video is really like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. If you avoid the bleeding edge hardware you should be OK - although to be honest Nvidia seems to support its hardware better in Linux.
With their new gpu drivers (amdgpu), AMD claims their newer card will be supported much faster and with much higher levels of compatibility than they ever were before, as they're actually contributing code to the open source driver. I have seen some issues however, already, here on the forums with people attempting to use them, so who knows if that's just bluster from AMD or if they really truly are trying to help produce a usable open source driver.
With their new gpu drivers (amdgpu), AMD claims their newer card will be supported much faster and with much higher levels of compatibility than they ever were before
Yes and that was a major issue with my R7 360 video card when it came out. It was too new to be supported by radeon in the older mainline distros, and the "bleeding edge" distros included amdgpu for its class of cards - and amdgpu didn't work with it. You just got a black screen. Fortunately the latest release of Linux Mint has re-introduced compatibility with the excellent radeon driver.
At the end of the day I am happy to have a FOSS driver that works, although in future it might be amdgpu if they get everything working with older GCN cards.
I am staying away from the RX4XX cards right now because I don't want any more hardware problems and I do not need higher end gaming performance.
AMD seems more committed to Linux but their drivers are always under heavy development - and that often means problems.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Timothy Miller
Given that other than gaming benchmarks, the Ryzen has been easily beating the i7's in every review, I'd say there's no need for "suddenly", they're already superior. Unless you're a gamer.
Delving deeper I see what you mean. Perhaps the temperature issues I'm having with my 8370 and a gamer friend at work have contrived for me only to see only the poor gaming performance.
I do see, however, that AMD's goal appeared to be things which ought to give better gaming performance (single-threaded performance and instructions per clock cycle) so they did seem to have failed a little.
Delving deeper I see what you mean. Perhaps the temperature issues I'm having with my 8370 and a gamer friend at work have contrived for me only to see only the poor gaming performance.
I do see, however, that AMD's goal appeared to be things which ought to give better gaming performance (single-threaded performance and instructions per clock cycle) so they did seem to have failed a little.
Oh, most definitely. Although you can also look at it as they focused too much on making sure the technology itself would be well suited towards the enterprise. If you look at the ryzen benchmarks, everywhere it's EXTREMELY strong is where they'd want the enterprise class chips that are coming later to be strong. So they seemed to have released these as too much enterprise bias, and didn't do enough to get these chips more consumer (game) focused. Although they also said the gaming benchmarks have been improving with BIOS updates and driver updates for Windows, as some of the issues are with Windows being inefficient in the use of the Ryzen.
IMO, they're never going to get Ryzen 1st gen quite on par with Intel for gaming, but my next desktop once I can afford it will be Ryzen. They're GOOD ENOUGH in games that the rest of the stuff for me makes me definitely want it over Intel for the price. And I do desperately need to upgrade. While some parts on my desktop aren't that old, the motherboard is 7 years old now, and the onboard sound died about a year ago. I got a cheap $15 sound card from Fry's, but that definitely makes me think this machine is on it's last leg.
Last edited by Timothy Miller; 03-14-2017 at 02:02 PM.
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