CPUs-- AMD vs. Intel, a Perspective Thing.

Straight_Man

I think there are TWO different entire points of view at work between Intel and its fanboys/followers and AMDs fanboys/followers.

Intel appears to work from a leading-the-competition-maintain-the-edge perspective. AMD is working from, for now, a Catch-up-or at-least-give-value-for-money perspective. Both have their places in the computing world.

But, this is an younger enthusiast site at core. So, it tends to favor AMD.

I tend to buy for 3-4 year use, being a seasoned enthusiast. So, I frankly have owned Intel for the last 15-18 years or more. I want stuff so advanced that it will keep its value and work for me for 3 or more years. I suspect there are others, some vociferous about it without explaining themselves, who work from that perspective of buy the very over-all best, pay a premium, and buy less often.

Younger enthusiasts tend to want the latest and greatest they can afford each year to two years. older ones tend to buy for longer.

What do you think of this???? Honestly???? I think we can discuss this without getting rancorous. And I would like to do so. Please feel free to join me without dumping on either Intel or AMD too much.

shwaip

If you're choosing for longevity, it depends only on when you are looking and what parts you currently have, not on what brand.

For a while, intel was a terrible choice for longevity due to how frequently they were changing their socket.

Straight_Man

Well, not so much other component longevity but EXISTING MACHINE practical longevity.

I think of my laptop as a laptop, not something to plug a new-gen CPU in (It is somehting I expect to use as my enthusiast workhorse for a while, like another two to three years). I think of my folding desktop as a whole unit, and expect to change out the CPU and mother board next time I upgrade it. I agree that both together hits the wallet harder than just one, but honestly I want new chipset and CPU for upgrade.

drasnor

I am on a four-year upgrade cycle and have been since 2000. At that rate, I am buying a new key-three with every upgrade (motherboard, processor, memory) because memory standard and platform change quite a bit in that period of time. When you say "building for longevity" to me that means buying performance-tier parts knowing that they'll still be relevant in four years, not buying a platform that I expect not to change in that period. That doesn't mean buying the absolute-best at the time, but it does mean spending >$600 for the key three. Only once in that cycle did AMD come up a winner (Sledgehammer Opterons). Energy-efficiency means a lot more to me now than when I was living places where my electricity was included in the rent bill, and AMD is a poorer performance/power proposition than Intel.

BlueTattoo

When I need to buy a computer (or upgrade), I look at the purpose of the box and choose the processor that works best at that time. Over the years, it has usually been Intel, although I have bought AMD twice for home and only once at work in 20 years. But I am really glad that AMD is out there to keep Intel honest. They push Intel to release that next chip sooner, not necessarily when they want to. I used to buy servers at work. They had to be HP, but I decided on specs. A few years ago, I bought a round of Opterons when they were beating Intel Xeons, but it didn’t last for long. My current home computers are Intel I5 and I7 and Atom N270. My wife has a Core 2 duo something in her laptop. For that, either processor would have worked. The Intel was on sale.

Straight_Man

@BliueTattoo: I agree that AMD is needed, competition for Intel is indeed needed or prices for Intel would go through the roof unless someone else stepped in to take AMD's place in the desktop CPU arena. I kinda wonder about some of the layoffs at AMD, and wonder if they will be still making desktop CPUs 5-6 years from now, and also wonder if Intel will be doing so in the same future time frame.

Everyone: I like my laptop and my desktop, but for my everything machine, I now have transitioned to a desktop replacement grade laptop from an earlier laptop that did not cut the mustard as a desktop replacement two laptops ago.both my computers are i7s and my tablet is an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor machine.

Note: I was going to ignore Nvidia, but they are in AMDs APU kind of competition market as well as making GPUs. I will probably start an APU thread later on as market things mature some. i will ARM and other APUs be encouraged in that thread. So just a mention here, if anyone wants to add that to the scope of this thread, please start another one instead.