Why Intel was a bad idea (And should have gone AMD)

[mwpeters8182]

I know a lot of people who are in charge of ordering tech for medium sized businesses - most, if not all, of these folks tend to order Intel motherboards and CPUs. Their reasoning was stability - AMD has more raw power, but they've had less problems with the Intel solutions.

I have an AMD based system at home, and my workstation in the lab is Intel, and have had 0 problems with either.

 

[contoursvt]

Well I build systems for people - many and I can say that more often than not...much more often, I get calls regarding stability issues or quirks regarding the AMD systems. I used to like them but Intel improved things a lot recently (anything newer than a P4 2.4C is good). Speed to me is a secondary thing these days because really, they are both fast unless you're just into playing the number game. I'd rather have a bulletproof system.

I've got a dual 3Ghz xeon box and I wouldnt trade it for anything. My second box is a P4 3.0C and its amazing as well. My friend has a Dual core AMD X2 4800+ and its fast...maybe a little faster than my dual xeon for most things (photoshop is one that it loses to the xeon on)... but I still dont want his box. He's a techie as well and he's always got something that comes up. I ran VMware perfectly but he ran into some stability issues etc. Had to install some patch to make it work. Little things but still annoying.

 

[calebjohnston]

wow.. you'r attention span is really small...

...

...

where was i? oh ya.. i made it to the third sentence.

3x what I got. congratulations. =)

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

What was your point of posting this here?

 

[nutmac]

At the moment, Intel makes more sense for Apple (Intel makes better mobile CPUs). Most importantly, however, Apple can adopt AMD for certain models if they choose (like most PC vendors do these days). Single CPU vendor generally lowers R&D, improves inventory, and yields larger bargaining room, so Apple may not do that. But if AMD does leapfrog Intel by a large enough margin, Apple can adopt AMD with relative ease.

 

[DougTheImpaler]

AMD doesn't supply the chipset that goes with the CPU. Intel also fabs their own chipsets (which the new Macs use) as well as their own wireless networking devices. Intel is a 1-stop shop where if you went AMD you'd also have to buy from nVidia, VIA, SiS or ATi. nVidia is out instantly because of a corruption issue with certain SATA hard drives on the nForce 4 chipset, VIA is out because of substandard issues in the past (PCI issues with Creative and other sound cards causing data corruption son the IDE bus, anyone?), SiS can't make the volume that Apple sells, and ATi's own southbridges are horrible enough that RS480 and RS580-based motherboards ship with ULi's southbridge, and ULi got bought by nVidia, so that's up in the air. In terms of supply, Intel was the right way to go. The performance shown on Anandtech is an extra bonus.

 

[electronbee]

Intel *WAS* the right choice.

Being someone who has used PC's for a long time and has be inside, upside, right side, left side diagonal side, etc of them I would say intel was the BEST possible choice. Also, don;t just focus on the CPU. It needs a chipset, ya know?

Historically speaking when it comes to chipset stability, comptibility with 3rd party cards (GPU, etc), driver support, resolving bugs, etc. Intel is the best.

Man-o-man, AMD and nVidia chipsets have had their problems in the past with hardware and software issues. Yeah, the latter two were always cheaper than intel chipsets but there were always issues. Issues with which video card you had and sound card. You ended up taking 3 or 4 different driver packs for the chipset and using certain drivers for specific aspects of your motherboard/system in order to get it to run right.

Now, true, AMD and nVidia have gotten MUCH better. But, that has been fairly recently. Especially in comparison to intel. But, alas, I have an AMD Athlon 3000+ Socket 939 and a MSI K8N Platinum/SLI. And, I had some driver issues! Yeah. I had to wait for chipset update to use my SATA DVD burner. Plus, there are some features of my mobo that I leave disabled as if they were enabled my system would crash.

Intel, as an overall solution for a company in a position like Apple, is a much better choice.

 

[electronbee]

Oh yeah...

One last thing. When it comes to who is "top dog" between intel and AMD on overall speed and technology it flips back and forth between the two.

Regardless, intel has a larger market share among PC manufacturers, a processor line that covers low-end desktops, dual core, integration, and laptops. And, is a very stable product to invest in. Which is the problem that Apple had with the PPC. IBM did not really care about Apple too much as it had its own industry to take care of and was making money on. Those PPC might be nice chips. But, IBM is not in the speed race that intel and AMD are in nor do they really seem to care. It just isn't their market.

 

[miniConvert]

AMD makes worse mobile processors.

Indeed, and what are we all using so far? Core mobile processors Most of Apple's fantastic consumer designs need 'mobile' chips, i.e. cool and good performace/watt. I think we'll see some extremely exciting designs now...

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

actually Barefeats.com shows that the IntelMac mini with integrated graphics does pretty good in all relevant applications. so the integrated graphics can't be that bad after all.

Stop your stinking spin :relevant" bs, consumers are gamers like it or not this is the nintendo generation. having a real GPU is very relevant to many many people. stop the fanboy garbage Integrated graphics are the cheapist you can get. Stop making excuses, Apple could have used a $20 Gpu and Mini would have been great. Instead they used a freebie and the Apple brown nosers are now spinning this. Integrated graphics are cheap garbage.

 

[electronbee]

Integrated GPU is one thing...

But, is that mac-Mini sharing RAM with the GPU (vice the GPU having its OWN RAM)? Now, that would really be bad.

 

[mahashel]

I'm a huge AMD fan.
However, I've had to admit that Apple would benefit most from an end-to-end solution provider (as mentioned earlier). Intel makes CPU's, sure, but also chipsets, flash memory, wireless controllers, graphics chips.. you name it.. the whole pie. To go AMD, Apple would need to go fishing for a solid chipset manufacturer. To me, the chipset has been AMD's weakness for a long time. One thing I always hated about my powerful AMD boxes is that I was always stuck with a crappy VIA southbridge chipset. nVidia has made some major improvements over the past couple years, but there are still a lot of bumps to smooth out. Bumps that Intel's chipsets don't typically have.

While AMD, in my opinion, currently has a much better desktop chip, their mobile stuff isn't so great. AMD's fat revenue lately has been from Opteron & AthlonX2; so it's unsettling to consider how committed they really are to pushing mobile chip development. Lately, AMD's focus has been to lower power envelopes across the board (with a focus on lowering Opteron power consumption), and it has seemed like their attitude has been such that if the power savings trickled down to Turion, so much the better. This had to have been a major turn-off for Apple, who is rebounding from a bad fling with a G5 and a powerbook.

In the end, I think Intel will be good for Apple. While I'll still use AMD for my gaming PC builds, I'll be keeping my eye on Intel. Hopefully they'll recover from the slump they've fallen into. Conroe, Merom, & Woodcrest look like a nice change of pace. It's far too early to crown any of them as the speed king, but here's hoping we'll start seeing some Macs that'll give my AthlonX2 a run for its money.

 

[dr_lha]

Stop your stinking spin :relevant" bs, consumers are gamers like it or not this is the nintendo generation. having a real GPU is very relevant to many many people. stop the fanboy garbage Integrated graphics are the cheapist you can get. Stop making excuses, Apple could have used a $20 Gpu and Mini would have been great. Instead they used a freebie and the Apple brown nosers are now spinning this. Integrated graphics are cheap garbage.

The "Nintendo Generation" which I would consider myself a member of, are using consoles for gaming, not PCs. As long as the Mini can play Movies and do Expose et al decently, I'm not going to care about its GFX card.

 

[Daedalus256]

zzzzz, snort! Is he done yet?

One answer: Conroe vs AMD Athlon 64 FX-60

Highlights: Conroe is 20-30% better across the board.

Oh jesus you have to be kidding me? You're so ignorant and you just love to live in your little naive world. Don't want to listen to someone? Don't post in their thread with something stupid like this post. Seriously, I don't understand why you would come in here just to make a post about how "boring" someone's thread is when they're just trying to prove a point. From an IT perspective, this is a GREAT thread/post and really does provoke the question "Why intel?" If you're too stupid or something to understand what he's talking about, then don't read the thread, it's that simple.

Quite an informative thread btw, I had no idea that AMD had so many advances over intel's design, I knew about the imbedded memory controller but that's really about it, quite an interesting bit of information.

How I do have to admit that AMD will finally have a run for it's money with the Conroe. Who knows what the Conroe actually performs like, we'll just have to wait and see some benchmarks that are run by typical users.

 

[matticus008]

Stop your stinking spin :relevant" bs, consumers are gamers like it or not this is the nintendo generation. having a real GPU is very relevant to many many people. stop the fanboy garbage Integrated graphics are the cheapist you can get. Stop making excuses, Apple could have used a $20 Gpu and Mini would have been great. Instead they used a freebie and the Apple brown nosers are now spinning this. Integrated graphics are cheap garbage.

You should probably stop being an armchair engineer. There's a lot more involved in shoehorning a GPU, whether it's $20 or $200, into a small space. There's the controller, the memory chips, , the firmware, the traces, and the necessary expansion of the gigantic heatsink in the mini to cool it. Ultimately, the fact that integrated graphics are mostly (but not completely) "free" in space considerations would be far more important than the price.

Functionally and technologically, the integrated graphics are a vast improvement over the Radeon 9200 that used to sit inside the mini. Performance is a toss-up, but there's almost nowhere that the new graphics are appreciably slower than the 9200, which was a bottom-barrel chip when IT was introduced, in case you'd forgotten. The GMA950 may not be impressive, but it's more competitive than what it replaces.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

More spin by the Apple Fan Boys who think Apple does no wrong, Gee I wonder how they got all those great Gpu's in the Laptops but by your logic cant fit in Mini. More spin. If a half decent gpu can go into the laptops they can go into Mini. Stop the spin matticus008. We get enough spin from the President.

 

[matticus008]

More spin by the Apple Fan Boys who think Apple does no wrong, Gee I wonder how they got all those great Gpu's in the Laptops but by your logic cant fit in Mini. More spin. If a half decent gpu can go into the laptops they can go into Mini. Stop the spin matticus008. We get enough spin from the President.

There's space in a notebook. A notebook is a lot bigger than 6x6 inches. Had you bothered to look at all, you'd see these things. It's not volume, it's surface area on the motherboard. And don't call me a fan boy; you don't know how wrong you are.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

There's space in a notebook. A notebook is a lot bigger than 6x6 inches. Had you bothered to look at all, you'd see these things. It's not volume, it's surface area on the motherboard. And don't call me a fan boy; you don't know how wrong you are.

Have you seen the size of the 9200? even a new version of the 9200 would have been better. Lets stop saying Integrated graphics is all that can fit inside because it aint so, and yes i own Mini by the way. But i find myself using a AMD machine as my primary computer. Socket 939 rules Integrated graphics is something i would expect on cheapo dells, Hp's and joes computer not in a Mac who was just advertising how god darn crappy those integrated graphics were just last month.

 

[matticus008]

Have you seen the size of the 9200? even a new version of the 9200 would have been better. Lets stop saying Integrated graphics is all that can fit inside because it aint so, and yes i own Mini by the way.

Yes, I have seen the 9200 hardware. Even in embedded form, it takes up more than 1 square inch of mainboard space (approximately 1.3x1). As you could see clearly from any pictures or self-disassembly, there is not that much free space left on the Intel mainboard. Things were different with the G4 chipset, and even assuming they were the same, there have been other concessions for additional ports on the back side and connections for the IR module.

My questions to you, then, are a) when did you create a "new version" of the 9200 to use (because no such thing exists) and b) where would you put it, in your infinite engineering knowledge? Pulling a rabbit out of the hat is hard enough, and you want a beagle stuffed in there.

 

[Chryx]

not so. besides the fact that the test was a pre-production chip that no one else has tested, ie Tom's Hardware or other third party, the Athlon 64 FX-60 is a currently shipping chip. If you look closley, AnAnd used a crippled AMD box with an out of date BIOS. All the Intel procs are updated Pentium 3's. When conroe ships, then test it against a currently shipping Athlon. Also for the pro end, the Core procs are not 64-bit, and probably won't for AT LEAST a year, and only after they copy AMD64 instructions. Conroe/Merom, guess what, it is 32 bit as well. Too bad OS X is a 64-bit OS with lots of wasted potential.

Okay, so you not only missed the second round of benchmarks that Anandtech did http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2716with an updated bios on the A64, but you also missed that the AMD proc was OVERCLOCKED, AMD don't currently sell 2.8Ghz dualcores. (I have it on good authority they've got a 3.2Ghz in the wings on their DDR2 socket for the Conroe timetable, which will even things up a bit - but I also have sources telling me conroe will have a 3.33Ghz part, against which the A64 isn't going to be faster.. it just isn't.)

Furthermore, Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest are all from the ground up 64bit designs, they aren't P3 based anymore than a 970MP is G3 based...

Conroe is fast across the board (should infact be faster than G5 for vector processing, even at the same clock - due to the SSE hardware being single cycle AND their being more of it.), the memory latency issue is countered in part by something Intel call 'memory disambiguation' which, in short, is an out of order write commit/read system that can move data into cache as it's being written out to memory if a process is about to request data from the same address in memory, rather than writing it to memory and then reading it back in.

And finally, OSX isn't particularly 64bit, only GUI-less apps can utilise a 64bit address space.

 

[andiwm2003]

Stop your stinking spin :relevant" bs, consumers are gamers like it or not this is the nintendo generation. having a real GPU is very relevant to many many people. stop the fanboy garbage Integrated graphics are the cheapist you can get. Stop making excuses, Apple could have used a $20 Gpu and Mini would have been great. Instead they used a freebie and the Apple brown nosers are now spinning this. Integrated graphics are cheap garbage.

so you responded to my mail with post #23 and then again with post #35. So that means you needed another dozen posts to go by to come up with this? seems the mac mini is extremly important to your life.

i somehow agree with you anyway, so calm down a bit.

in my opinion the mini is a bit too expensive. so, yes apple seems to make good money.

all i said was that the mini is good enough for many people, obviously excluding gamers. but it's not the first time that apple left gamers behind to save 50 bucks on the GPU. the gamers are simply not the target for the mini. it's the people using iLife, office, front row. for them the GPU is good enough.

 

[generik]

Stop your stinking spin :relevant" bs, consumers are gamers like it or not this is the nintendo generation. having a real GPU is very relevant to many many people. stop the fanboy garbage Integrated graphics are the cheapist you can get. Stop making excuses, Apple could have used a $20 Gpu and Mini would have been great. Instead they used a freebie and the Apple brown nosers are now spinning this. Integrated graphics are cheap garbage.

Really?

Where did you get those statistics?

A quick survey around my college hostel would reveal the reverse. Perhaps some males are games, but guess what? Those guys in business, or arts, or a whole lot of other similar courses, as well as the girls (and that's 50% of the human race right there) are NOT gamers, they wouldn't give two hoots about games.

What were you on about again? About "most" consumers are what?

Edit:

Oh, and if a survery of college aged young adults would yield such insight, consider what would happen if we expand the scope and include moms and dads, as well as the elderly.

Most consumers are gamers?

I suggest you take that back, it only makes you sound like a moron. No offence.

 

[toothpaste]

Really?

Where did you get those statistics?

A quick survey around my college hostel would reveal the reverse. Perhaps some males are games, but guess what? Those guys in business, or arts, or a whole lot of other similar courses, as well as the girls (and that's 50% of the human race right there) are NOT gamers, they wouldn't give two hoots about games.

What were you on about again? About "most" consumers are what?

Edit:

Oh, and if a survery of college aged young adults would yield such insight, consider what would happen if we expand the scope and include moms and dads, as well as the elderly.

Most consumers are gamers?

I suggest you take that back, it only makes you sound like a moron. No offence.

I couldn't pass this up. You offend someone (assuming the person actually does get offended) in public and then you tell the person not to get offended? That is the funniest thing I have read in a while. Thanks for the laugh. Please dont' take any offence. hahaha

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

All you Mac heads that dont game need to wake up, ever wonder why Arn has a Games section here? ever wonder why Apple has a gaming Page? Everyday Macrumors has all kinds of posts relating to gaming, not boring old work,work,work. A computer should be able to do everything not just boring old work & tunes. Please. Its why my last system purchase was a Alienware because i wanted a machine that does it all! No more compromises for anything. Amazed at all the nongamers mac heads but come to think of it you have to be, please continue all the excuses for why apple is using the cheapist gpu chip made. Integrated graphics are cheap 99 cent garbage. Its the cheapist you can get. Generik you need to pull your head out of Apples ...., Doesnt the air smell better

 

[andiwm2003]

All you Mac heads that dont game need to wake up, ever wonder why Arn has a Games section here? ever wonder why Apple has a gaming Page? Everyday Macrumors has all kinds of posts relating to gaming, not boring old work,work,work. A computer should be able to do everything not just boring old work & tunes. Please. Its why my last system purchase was a Alienware because i wanted a machine that does it all! No more compromises for anything. Amazed at all the nongamers mac heads but come to think of it you have to be, please continue all the excuses for why apple is using the cheapist gpu chip made. Integrated graphics are cheap 99 cent garbage. Its the cheapist you can get. Generik you need to pull your head out of Apples ...., Doesnt the air smell better

o.k. last try to get some useful information into this thread.

how much did your alienware cost?
what gpu is in your alienware?
is there a chance to get a mac mini with a decent enough gpu for 800-900 dollar so that gamers might be interested in the machine?
or would you have to change the formfactor very much? in that case what system with what formfactor would be an acceptable machine to a gamer?

to come back to the original thread: would an AMD chipset be significantly better than Intel to build a machine like this?

i'm asking because i think it is a gap in apples lineup that there is no machine for gaming. only the imac with some compromises and the powermac for a lot of money.