I have access to two PCs for my Poser work - an AMD K6 and a Pentium 2 machines. They have similar specifications, but the Pentium machine is much, much faster for Poser - both rendering and posing. I am about to buy a new PC and the choice is between a Pentium 3 and an AMD Athlon machine both with same speed processor (1GHz) and same memory (256 MB). Can anyone advice me on whether the Athlon will perform as well as the Pentium in this configuration? Many thanks for any help!

I just upgraded to an AMD Athlon 1GHZ from a P2-300MHz and most my renders are now 10x faster. I do not have exact numbers yet but there was a definite speed up. One difference between AMD and P3 is the memory types; P3 uses a 133 MHz SDRAM while the Athlon uses 266 MHz DDRAM. The DDRAM has similar specs to the Rambus Memory but for a much cheaper price. I hope this helps, Sam

The Athlon doesn't have to use DDRAM. Most current Athlon motherboards use PC133 SDRAM. The Pentium3 is available in both 133Mhz and 100Mhhz versions. The Athlon is likely to be slightly faster than the Pentium3, and should be much cheaper. If you are being charged the same money for machines that are otherwise identical, you are being ripped off.

Applications for the regular Windows platform are written with the x86 instruction set in mind, not Pentium processors specifically. Notions about current Intel chips being more reliable than other manufacturers are based on marketing hype from Intel. The 'Intel Inside' badge on some computer cases is a good illustration of that. The AMD Athlon Thunderbird chips are extremely reliable and good performers; being slightly better, clock speed for clock speed, than Pentium3s.

I've found that some software is designed to work with Pentium and will not perform on other processors. I finally upgraded to a P3 from a Cyrix. I know that Cyrix is not the same as AMD, but I found that I couldn't run some softwar on my old Cyrix. It would load, but would never start when I tried to open the programs. When I loaded the same programs onto my Pentium, they work fine. I'm a little leary about non-Pentium processors in that respect, but as I said, I'm not that familiar with AMD Athalon and it may be an excellent processor, so I don't really know if this would be true as it was with my Cyrix. Melanie

The old Cyrix was the one with the problems. That case has led to lots of other rumours and doubts about any non Intel processor, which Intel have exploited to the maximum. If you think Intel can't make mistakes or bad processors, you have some disappointment ahead. alexadh, I know for a fact that 3D Studio Max runs OK on an AMD Athlon. If Discreet say that their program is made to run on Intel processors, that merely points to a lack of wider development and support on their part. With them, it's 'Wintel' or you're on your own. Max users are going to be pretty annoyed with the Pentium4 (which is a poor processor), and may put pressure on the company to develop for the better, faster and soon to be multi-processor AMD chips. More importantly to this thread, Poser works fine on an Athlon T'bird. The PIII is good chip too. Just don't waste money on a P4.

We too are about to buy a new machine... why is the P4 a waste? What's the hype?

The final word is that you pick Pentium for Stability and Athlon for power. You will get more power from an Athlon, but will crash twice as often. I don't know about you, but when I'm spending hours on an image, I'll take the stability.

I just upgraded to an AMD 1.1g chip, 512 megs dram, a 133 board, power supply, cpu fan and a case all for $720. Dirt cheap plus it runs damn fast. I haven't compared it to a P3 of similar layout but for the price I'm very happy. Here's an example render: 12 people with clothes and accessories (about 36 figures total including shoes, shirts, pants), a bank with walls, desk, chairs cabinets, windows doors (about 40 various wall parts and about 20 pieces of furniture). An outside street with 4 cars, three large building models, fire hydrants, lamp posts, street mesh. This all rotates around with the camera spinner at real time in textured preview mode with only one or two hiccups. A 480x480 frame renders in about 30 to a minute including 2 lights at 1024 density with everyone on screen and antialias turned on. Yes, you can code for Pentium chip sets. MSDev has switches for this. It all depends on how the compiler arranges the code for the pipeline. If it knows its going on a pentium then the pipeline layout can be different than an AMD. In any event, you will pay more for a pentium. It maybe faster but I don't know if its worth the price upgrade. If you're not squeamish about putting your own system together I'd go the motherboard/cpu route. I got the v133 board. They make a 266 board but the v133 gets a great review. Plus I can upgrade my processor when I need to instead of buying a whole new machine.

Sorry I meant P4 above, not p3

Attached Link: http://www.techtv.com/products/hardware/story/0,23008,3307115,00.html

I have a PII with 96mb of RAM; an Athlon 750 with 768mb of RAM and an Duron 600 with 512mb of RAM. Both Athlon and Duron machines have NEVER crashed when I'm in the middle (or end) on renderings. As far as I'm concerned, the Athlon is the better choice simply because it's less expensive. For me there are no stability issues at all. At our office we had a P3 733 with 256mb of RAM and an Athlon 750 with 256mb of RAM - both rendered the same Lightwave scene which took about an hour on the P3; 49 minutes on the Athlon. No crashes on either machine. Regarding the P4 - the price/performance is downright pathetic. In ZD test the P4 performed faster than the P3 - but not enough as expected. The P4 1.4ghz performed only slightly better than an Athlon 1.2ghz. That should tell you something! I agree with PJF - don't waste your money on the P4. For a more up-to-date look, check out the link.

I have used a variety of both at work, and went with the Athlon. It's exceeded my expecations, and doubt if I will go with Intel again unless they can be more competitive with AMD. Right now I use a mix of computers, but for pounding out Poser renders, I use the Athlon (800mhz). The other thing that is nice, is I could get the 200mhz bus speed with AMD, which at the time of my purchase, was superior to the generally standary 133 that went with Pentiums.

I would guess the PIII would be a tiny bit faster than the AMD clock speed for clock speed, but it is going to cost more than an AMD 1200, maybe even more than the new AMD 1333, and be 15-25% slower than those. The stuff about Intel being more stable is just market hype, hardware doesn't crash, software crashes computers!

Athlons draw more power and run hotter than Pentiums, so reliability is dependent on good cooling. Motherboards for AMD have also been less reliable than the intel boards, and often do not include on-board sound, video etc. The overall cost of a system for business use is comparable. Games machines need a high-end (fast) video card, so the on-board video is no benefit, and so AMD is a better bet there. For Poser, you don't get anything from accelerated video, since rendering is done by the main processor, not the DSP, only the final display uses that. I'd choose the AMD if you're going to use the machine to play on, and Pentium if you're using it to work on.

I'm the technical manager of my company that produce about 1200 PCs for month. We produce both Intel and AMD system and we haven't had more problem with AMD. Of course AMD requires a good cabinet and good cooling devices, patches for the operating system (VIA patch for instance) but if you require power it's the right choice.

I have been using an Athlon 700 on an AsusTech K7M motherboard for about a year. I have 512 MB PC133 SDRAM. I am overclocking at 800Mhz. (This board is great for tweaking overclocking settings.) I have two main hard drives. I normally run WinMe and can't remember the last crash, or if I ever had one. When I pop in the other hard drive it boots Windows 2000 Pro. On occasion, half way through boot-up I get a blue screen indicating a page-fault and suggesting I disable BIOS shadowing. I just reboot and it comes up OK. I have never had a crash yet on Win 2000 but have only used it for about 4 months.