1329 replies to this topic

[SNOWHOUND]

ChalybsUmbra, on 17 May 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

You do your name justice, Vulpesveritas, you true fox.

I game on a laptop. An Asus G73. Its like 7 or 8 pounds. I think I'm going to go for either a new lappy with a 7970m or 680m. Laptop gaming is very viable now too. A 7970m is like 30% faster than a 560 gtx fermi card.

Thats all well and good but your comparing this generations graphics cores (i.e. 7xxxm series) with the previous generation (or soon to be previous generation as the 6xx series slowly makes way) of nvidias desktop GPUs. Is this really a fair comparison?

....Just saying.


NOTE: i too am one elitist a**

Edited by SNOWHOUND, 17 May 2012 - 12:26 PM.

[Trevnor]

Catamount, on 17 May 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

TLDR: computers are stagnating. Moore's Law is dead and buried. The world is different now.

What this means is that we can somewhat future proof, at least moreso than before. PSUs should now last out their whole life as long as you buy just a bit above your needs, because TDPs aren't increasing (so just leave headroom for deterioration), people can shop for more multicore CPUs, like Bulldozer and soon Piledriver since software trends towards more parallelization as it gets more intensive, and that'll extend CPU life, and GPUs... yeah just shop for the best you can get and its guaranteed to last a long time almost regardless.


I think we've entered the first generation in computing where we can futureproof.

Actually, it's still really hard to future proof. While you are right in most of what you said, processors may not be getting faster, but there will certainly be more of them. And that's before any breakthroughs in nano-tech. Moore's law may be dead, but it's not to say that we still aren't advancing. Welcome to Tilera

Also +1 to you OP

Edited by Lt Trevnor, 17 May 2012 - 12:37 PM.

[ChalybsUmbra]

SNOWHOUND, on 17 May 2012 - 12:25 PM, said:

Thats all well and good but your comparing this generations graphics cores (i.e. 7xxxm series) with the previous generation (or soon to be previous generation as the 6xx series slowly makes way) of nvidias desktop GPUs. Is this really a fair comparison?

....Just saying.


NOTE: i too am one elitist a**

Well, I'm comparing it because I don't have an Nvidia 660 GTX to compare it to yet. I'd rather not compare it to anything above that since that too is an unfair comparison. Desktop GPUs of that price are humongous. Plus the 670 draws like 315+ watts while a 7970m draws like 100 at max.

Why do you want to be an elitist a** about it? Some people have to travel a lot so they compromise for the mobility. You gotta rub it in our faces because we can't carry around desktop and monitor?

[RoundTop]

If any desktop elitist makes waves.... I walk over to the 50+ inch TV, plug in my HDMI cable, sit back on the couch, and laugh at them.

And when the next LAN party rolls around, I'm not the one complaining about having to lug a machine around, then take 20 minutes to set it up.

Laptops for President!

[Vulpesveritas]

@roundtop,
Well, Intel does have an edge in laptops... in the $1000+ range. Gaming wise, an AMD APU + a discrete GPU in xfire is going to be faster than any other sub-$1000 solution, and for an average user the AMD cpu will be fast enough for them. With Llano being slightly faster than a SB i3 in multithread, and Trinity being just slightly slower than an IB i5, it should therefore be once again faster than an i3 solution. Given the $700 and below pricing for APU based laptops, they are just great deals. Anyhow. Trinity is slightly faster clock-for-clock vs Llano, and clocks higher than the Intel CPUs, has a better integrated GPU, has more components on chip, and has better idle power consumption than Intel chips. And if they end up like Llano did in laptops, it will overclock insanely for a laptop solution as well. Of course, that would require AMD to unlock all their top-tier laptop APUs again...

@Snowhound & Chalybsumbra,
The Radeon HD 7970m is faster than a GTX 580m or 675m (they're the same GPU by the way.) by a considerable amount, generally 30-50% faster. The upcoming GTX 680m is sounding like it is going to be a desktop GTX 680... with half it's cores cut out. Given that the 7970m is a binned 7870, it should still be the faster GPU versus an underclocked 560ti (which are the 580m and 675m) or cut in half GK104. And given that the AMD card is faster in mostly every situation possible, AMD gets a win here. Though I'm wondering what the 7990m will have inside.

@everyone
Thanks for the support of this thread. lol

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 17 May 2012 - 09:19 PM.

[Charles Martel]

I'll never use an AMD CPU, been burned several times too many with Athlons being generally unstable even at stock speeds. I had that instability hammered home when a coworker showed me a load tester called "Gilgamesh". No AMD at the time could pass it.

Edited by Charles Martel, 17 May 2012 - 11:28 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Charles Martel, on 17 May 2012 - 11:28 PM, said:

I'll never use an AMD CPU, been burned several times too many with Athlons being generally unstable even at stock speeds. I had that instability hammered home when a coworker showed me a load tester called "Gilgamesh". No AMD at the time could pass it.

How many years ago was this? AMD has been very reliable the last half-decade.

[Charles Martel]

Original Slot Athlons, both builds I did were an exercise in masochism. Then I built myself a 1.4 t-bird to replace a 600mhz P3, big mistake, though I made a betting game out of the spontaneous reboots. Then every single AthlonXP that went through the shop. It was the AthlonXP that resulted in our shop becoming Intel-only.

Even current AMD setups are full of caveats, from finicky mobos to memory timing issues and "you can use x number of sticks of this high speed, or x*2 sticks of a slower speed.

I learned the adage "you get what you pay for" the hard way and my last three machines have been Intel with no complaints.

Edited by Charles Martel, 17 May 2012 - 11:51 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Charles Martel, on 17 May 2012 - 11:46 PM, said:

Original Slot Athlons, both builds I did were an exercise in masochism. Then I built myself a 1.4 t-bird to replace a 600mhz P3, big mistake, though I made a betting game out of the spontaneous reboots. Then every single AthlonXP that went through the shop. It was the AthlonXP that resulted in our shop becoming Intel-only.

Even current AMD setups are full of caveats, from finicky mobos to memory timing issues and "you can use x number of sticks of this high speed, or x*2 sticks of a slower speed.

I learned the adage "you get what you pay for" the hard way and my last three machines have been Intel with no complaints.

1. Yeah been more than a decade.
2. That comes down to the memory controller, and if you OC its a non-issue. Not to mention anyone using anything faster than DDR3-1600mhz is nuts unless they're running llano, which is still a bit of a waste on a budget build. Intel spec's their CPU's for lower speed RAM than their memory controller is actually able to handle, and gives XMP support for those who mess around with their hardware. AMD just gives you the memory controller's top specs, as dual channel RAM ideally will only be drawing from two RAM DIMMS. Finicky motherboards happen with both Intel and AMD motherboards.
For example; a top end Intel X79 motherboard; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813188116 with a large number of reported issues, and it's an EVGA which is considered a high end brand.
Here's an Asus with issues as well; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131766 which is a mainstream motherboard.
If you think that issues are AMD-only when it comes to motherboards, then you're either ignorant or a fanboy.
3. You do in many ways. Intel you pay more / performance in the short term for lower wattage / heat. System-wise you get much less with Intel due to their motherboards having to be replaced more often than AMD motherboards, changing aftermarket heatsinks with many new motherboards due to incompatible brackets, and Intel mainstream motherboards are harder to make a home server out of due to the more limited SATA connections. Intel also lacks as much backwards compatibility, as even many AM3+ boards still even have PATA support. Intel you can overclock higher on air. And of course, Intel extreme boards have top end performance with re-branded Xenons.
So you get more for what you pay for, but you're not going to get as good of a value for what you pay for.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 18 May 2012 - 12:04 AM.

[Charles Martel]

Vulpesveritas, on 18 May 2012 - 12:01 AM, said:

1. Yeah been more than a decade.
2. That comes down to the memory controller, and if you OC its a non-issue. Not to mention anyone using anything faster than DDR3-1600mhz is nuts unless they're running llano, which is still a bit of a waste on a budget build. Intel spec's their CPU's for lower speed RAM than their memory controller is actually able to handle, and gives XMP support for those who mess around with their hardware. AMD just gives you the memory controller's top specs, as dual channel RAM ideally will only be drawing from two RAM DIMMS. Finicky motherboards happen with both Intel and AMD motherboards.
For example; a top end Intel X79 motherboard; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813188116 with a large number of reported issues, and it's an EVGA which is considered a high end brand.
Here's an Asus with issues as well; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131766 which is a mainstream motherboard.
If you think that issues are AMD-only when it comes to motherboards, then you're either ignorant or a fanboy.
3. You do in many ways. Intel you pay more / performance in the short term for lower wattage / heat. System-wise you get much less with Intel due to their motherboards having to be replaced more often than AMD motherboards, changing aftermarket heatsinks with many new motherboards due to incompatible brackets, and Intel mainstream motherboards are harder to make a home server out of due to the more limited SATA connections. Intel also lacks as much backwards compatibility, as even many AM3+ boards still even have PATA support. Intel you can overclock higher on air. And of course, Intel extreme boards have top end performance with re-branded Xenons.
So you get more for what you pay for, but you're not going to get as good of a value for what you pay for.

Neither ignorant nor a fanboy, I use what has a history of working. And I hold a grudge, to this day I won't touch Hynix RAM with a 10' pole. After the t-bird I went to a P4 Northwood ASAP because every build based on those at work were above all stable. Overclocking is irrelevent to me as it shortens component life no matter who makes it. As for motherboards, I've had no issues at all with Intel boards. My old Northwood is still running with an i865 board as a hand-me-down to a friend, and I use my Pentium D on an i945 board still to run MWLL dedicated server. The Northwood is 10 years old, and the Pentium D turns 6 this year, same mobos as the day they were built. The only upgrade to either of them was adding an 8800GTS to the Pentium D 3 years ago to replace the Radeon 9600 I built it with. Intel's been good to me. AMD, not so much.

As for PATA, I abandoned that with my old Pentium D and only used a PATA drive because that was the only 250Gb drive in the shop. As far as I'm concerned, legacy I/O is a waste of mobo space.

Edited by Charles Martel, 18 May 2012 - 12:25 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Charles Martel, on 18 May 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

Neither ignorant nor a fanboy, I use what has a history of working. And I hold a grudge, to this day I won't touch Hynix RAM with a 10' pole. After the t-bird I went to a P4 Northwood ASAP because every build based on those at work were above all stable. Overclocking is irrelevent to me as it shortens component life no matter who makes it. As for motherboards, I've had no issues at all with Intel boards. My old Northwood is still running with an i865 board as a hand-me-down to a friend, and I use my Pentium D on an i945 board still to run MWLL dedicated server. The Northwood is 10 years old, and the Pentium D turns 6 this year, same mobos as the day they were built. The only upgrade to either of them was adding an 8800GTS to the Pentium D 3 years ago to replace the Radeon 9600 I built it with. Intel's been good to me. AMD, not so much.

As for PATA, I abandoned that with my old Pentium D and only used a PATA drive because that was the only 250Gb drive in the shop. As far as I'm concerned, legacy I/O is a waste of mobo space.

Well, that grudge is your problem there isn't it?
Like I hold a grudge against Intel for spending billions of dollars to keep AMD CPU's out of OEM computers when AMD CPUs were faster, and for environmental damages in New Mexico. At the same time, if someone really wants an Intel CPU, I'll still recommend the best in their budget, but I will try to give them the best value for what they're doing.
However, you are still claiming that Intel is more reliable than AMD, when they have been equally reliable for the last half-decade or so. So yeah. I have an old Athalon 64 sitting at my mom's house which she uses, still running just fine since the day I built it. Nothings been swapped except for the DVD burner since the original optical drive died on me back in '08.

And while legacy compatibility isn't important to me, there are some people who like it.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 18 May 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Charles Martel]

At the end of the day we might as well be arguing over Ford vs. Chevy. But do keep in mind that people choose what they do because of reasons absolutely valid to them. I've been burned by bad kit from AMD, and I'm not inclined to risk getting burned again on an expensive system build. I do recommend AMD cpus for budget gaming rigs. But for higher end, I do recommend Intel. I also prefer Nvidia video cards, but that's because I dislike Catalyst.

[Catamount]

Charles, you're falling to a very common failing in logic, using one's own experiences, anecdotal as they are, as absolute evidence (or evidence, period).

Did you know that 80% of the RAM I've purchased from Crucial has failed within a week? Yep, 80% (four of five kits). Will I ever buy Crucial RAM again? Sure. I got unlucky; I hit a bad batch on two sets, and two bad replacements on the first when I RMAd before giving up and going to another kind of RAM (the second time I just did that right off), and both were known to be bad batches, as I saw numerous reports from across the web for the model/batch numbers in question.


So why would I buy Crucial RAM again? Because I have a rudimentary understanding of statistics, and I know that my "personal luck" in the past is scant evidence of anything. Looking past the fact that companies tend to change over time, with new issues appearing and old ones disappearing, the simple fact is that I'm no more likely to get bad hardware from a given company than anyone else, so the only thing that matters is the overall reliability of the company's products, and anecdotal evidence like "I once bought X from company Y and it failed" isn't evidence of any kind to judge that. In regards to RAM, I've seen complaints of bad batches of memory from almost every company.

So yeah, I'd have no problem buying, say, this ram
Out of 185 reviews, there are basically about 9 (excluding ones later retracted) complaining about instability, and a handful identifying the need to underclock on one specific model of Gigabyte board, which means the odds of me getting a bad stick are ~10% ( +- a few for sampling error), and actually far less than that, because bad experiences are vastly more likely to be reported than good ones (age old problems with reviews). That's what matters, rather than the fact that I have some anecdotal personal experiences, especially from years ago (mine were 4-5 years ago).


The bottom line is that there is no evidence that either AMD chips or Intel chips, are any more likely to be unstable, have finicky motherboards, etc, than the other, and "I had a few chips fail on me a decade ago" isn't really evidence of anything. It's a capitalist nation; you're free to buy anything you please. However, the logic is still unsound, which is what's relevant for the purposes of this thread.

Edited by Catamount, 18 May 2012 - 06:32 AM.

[Charles Martel]

Catamount, on 18 May 2012 - 06:29 AM, said:

Charles, you're falling to a very common failing in logic, using one's own experiences, anecdotal as they are, as absolute evidence (or evidence, period).

Did you know that 80% of the RAM I've purchased from Crucial has failed within a week? Yep, 80% (four of five kits). Will I ever buy Crucial RAM again? Sure. I got unlucky; I hit a bad batch on two sets, and two bad replacements on the first when I RMAd before giving up and going to another kind of RAM (the second time I just did that right off), and both were known to be bad batches, as I saw numerous reports from across the web for the model/batch numbers in question.


So why would I buy Crucial RAM again? Because I have a rudimentary understanding of statistics, and I know that my "personal luck" in the past is scant evidence of anything. Looking past the fact that companies tend to change over time, with new issues appearing and old ones disappearing, the simple fact is that I'm no more likely to get bad hardware from a given company than anyone else, so the only thing that matters is the overall reliability of the company's products, and anecdotal evidence like "I once bought X from company Y and it failed" isn't evidence of any kind to judge that. In regards to RAM, I've seen complaints of bad batches of memory from almost every company.

So yeah, I'd have no problem buying, say, this ram
Out of 185 reviews, there are basically about 9 (excluding ones later retracted) complaining about instability, and a handful identifying the need to underclock on one specific model of Gigabyte board, which means the odds of me getting a bad stick are ~10% ( +- a few for sampling error), and actually far less than that, because bad experiences are vastly more likely to be reported than good ones (age old problems with reviews). That's what matters, rather than the fact that I have some anecdotal personal experiences, especially from years ago (mine were 4-5 years ago).


The bottom line is that there is no evidence that either AMD chips or Intel chips, are any more likely to be unstable, have finicky motherboards, etc, than the other, and "I had a few chips fail on me a decade ago" isn't really evidence of anything. It's a capitalist nation; you're free to buy anything you please. However, the logic is still unsound, which is what's relevant for the purposes of this thread.

Actually my thinking is the result of a very basic logical axiom, "Past behavior is indicative of future behavior".

With that in mind, I do keep an open mind, but that will be colored by past experience. Everyone is influenced by past experience. So an open mind, but not so open it falls out.

Edited by Charles Martel, 19 May 2012 - 08:50 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Charles Martel, on 19 May 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

Actually my thinking is the result of a very basic logical axiom, "Past behavior is indicative of future behavior".

With that in mind, I do keep an open mind, but that will be colored by past experience. Everyone is influenced by past experience. So an open mind, but not so open it falls out.

Main problem being is every company, Intel included, has bad parts that slip past QC. AMD has been trying to survive and get out of it's underdog position behind Intel since it started. It does so by giving better value to a consumer.

Intel's past behavior shows that in the future they should be committing crimes again should AMD ever get a strong edge in each price point again, like they had in the Athalon 64 / Pentium 4 era, where AMD CPUs were faster due to a rather extreme IPC advantage, and Intel poured billions of dollars into paying off OEMs to not use AMD CPUs in retail PCs, as well as pouring nearly as much money into advertising campaigns.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 19 May 2012 - 09:04 PM.

[LordDeathStrike]

while amd processors might be fine on paper, ive had nothing but bad luck with them in practice. im sure somebody out there has had issues with intel cpus in the same fashion but for me its amd that wont run right or for long when i get one.

my current system is an intel i7 with radeon 6790s in crossfire, in a laptop chasis.

[Vulpesveritas]

LordDeathStrike, on 19 May 2012 - 09:14 PM, said:

while amd processors might be fine on paper, ive had nothing but bad luck with them in practice. im sure somebody out there has had issues with intel cpus in the same fashion but for me its amd that wont run right or for long when i get one.

my current system is an intel i7 with radeon 6790s in crossfire, in a laptop chasis.

And I've been fine with AMD since I've used nothing but 2004-->
My mom has my old desktop with an Athalon 64 which has been running nearly daily since the day it was built. Still running fine. (I think I mentioned that before)
Main thing is that I find when it comes down to it, would you rather buy from a company who has better price/ performance, but you sacrifice running hotter; or do you go with a company who has committed a good number of crimes in the past, prices their processors higher for their general performance, but has processors which run cooler and they have the majority of the market.

I still have to agree with Cat: personal experience, if not mirrored by the majority of other's personal experiences in the whole of a market, are sadly illogical to base on due to that sometimes you just have plain bad luck.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

The opening post is wonderful, but i think a mod should come in clear the rest out and lock it.

We're delving back into that ethics debate that just makes you look like a fan boy vulp, which will discredit your opening post which would be a shame because it is a top quality post.

[Vulpesveritas]

DV^McKenna, on 19 May 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

The opening post is wonderful, but i think a mod should come in clear the rest out and lock it.

We're delving back into that ethics debate that just makes you look like a fan boy vulp, which will discredit your opening post which would be a shame because it is a top quality post.

I think foxconn should be shut down due to inhumane treatment of employees and all their executives be held in a United Nations run prison, be given a trial and held accountable for the hundreds of suicides.
I dislike Intel for committing crimes internationally in the past.
I dislike Nvidia for crippling AMD cards in some of their sponsored games. (code which says to disable anti-aliasing in any GPU that isn't Nvidia in the game code itself. So no disability for the GPU, but intentional anti-competitive actions not based on hardware capability.)
I like ethical business.
I like products which have superior performance / price.

Show me an company as ethical or moreso than AMD and has better performance / price for x86-64 CPUs and DX11 enabled graphics cards.
And give me options other than Asus and AsRock for motherboards not made in Foxconn fabs. I don't know of others.

I would love for a company to come along that meets those criteria.


Also, this should remain open for edits next year and if anyone is able to come up with anything I may have missed.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 19 May 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Vulpesveritas, on 19 May 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

I think foxconn should be shut down due to inhumane treatment of employees and all their executives be held in a United Nations run prison, be given a trial and held accountable for the hundreds of suicides.
I dislike Intel for committing crimes internationally in the past.
I like ethical business.
I like products which have superior performance / price.

Show me an company as ethical or moreso than AMD and has better performance / price for x86-64 CPUs and DX11 enabled graphics cards.
And give me options other than Asus and AsRock for motherboards not made in Foxconn fabs. I don't know of others.

I would love for a company to come along that meets those criteria.


Also, this should remain open for edits next year and if anyone is able to come up with anything I may have missed.

Thats you and not everyone else, your posts on the matter try to force your values on others, not every user needs to be questioned over who they buy from on an ethics standpoint.

We understand and respect your viewpoint, but the constant defensive posting and questioning people like above over weather they want to buy from ethical companies or companies who commit crimes is not required, you are perfectly knowledgeable to argue your points (very convincingly) on a technical level.

Edited by DV^McKenna, 19 May 2012 - 11:49 PM.