Attached Link: http://24.86.121.71/FAQ.doc

After seeing a few posts about people wanting to know what kind of system they should get to run poser5 inevitably leads to an intel/amd question. i dont want to generate any debate, i just thought it was good reading so i thought i would share. the original post can be found at the link above. What does 2.4 GHz@533Hhz mean? The ones that I have been looking at are 2400 or 2500 Athlons. How do they compare with your system? July 29, 2003 There are the two major processor manufacturers today AMD and Intel. Intel has been making processors since day 1 of home computing, and is my preference. Intel products are all tested thoroughly and adhere to a strict validation process, and quite frankly, the things never die! Ive been working with computers for near 10 years now and Ive only seen two or three dead Intel CPUs in my life. AMDs, on the other hand, dont quite have the same history. Todays AMD products, however, are very capable and are a great alternative to Intel in some cases. Though they dont have the same reliability as Intel CPUs, they perform better in some areas (usually gaming) and usually cost less. A few years back it was easy to compare the two types of CPUs megahertz to megahertz. Recently, though, as both companies progressed they took different approaches to CPU design. Intel was able to make CPUs with a higher megahertz rating easier than AMD was. AMDs CPUs, however, were capable of getting more done per megahertz than Intel was. Unfortunately to the end consumer, it was very hard to see past just megahertz, and AMD soon found their 1.2 GHz processor was selling less than Intels 1.4 GHz, even though they offered near the same performance. Thus, the AMD rating system was born, starting with 1500+ and 1600+ CPUs. The rating system was originally design to reflect how these CPUs would perform when compared to their Intel counterparts, however it was shown that the ratings are sometimes not correct, and without looking at a plethora of benchmarks it can be hard for a consumer to choose the fastest solution. Today, the XP1700+ CPU has an actual clock speed of 1.466 GHz and the 2200+ CPUs clock speed is 1.8 GHz. The 2200+ is much better performing than the Pentium 4 1.8 GHz CPU however. Getting back to your question, the XP2400+ and XP2500+ CPUs can perform, on average, somewhere near the Intel 2.6 GHz CPUs at 533MHz. That, however, is pure processor performance. There are several other important details, the most important being the bus speed of the system, or the clock rate that the motherboard and the CPU have in common. This number (in megahertz) designates the rate at which the CPU can communicate with the system memory (RAM) and other components on the motherboard like the chipset. Most common motherboards run at 133 MHz. Intel Pentium 4 processors have a quad-pipe architecture, which effectively multiplies the bus speed by 4 to give you a bus of 533 MHz with the CPU. AMD CPUs multiply it by 2, so their bus speed is usually 266 or MHz. Lately however, there have been advances on both sides. The newest Intel based systems have a bus speed of 200 MHz times 4, or 800 MHz. The newest AMD based systems have a bus speed of 200 MHz times 2, or 400 MHz. You can see where this is going the Intel based systems have a much higher bus speed with translates into higher bandwidth with the rest of the system, most importantly RAM. Intel 533 MHz processors have a B after their model numbers, and the 800 MHz processors have a C. AMD isnt so helpful, and you actually have to ask for specification on whether its a Thoroughbred (266 or 333) or Barton (333 or 400) from whoever youre buying from. It makes quite a difference in overall system performance! The Bartons, though still new and expensive, offer exceptional performance (but they dont compare to the new 800 MHz Intel CPUs!). DDR ram and SDRam are not compatible are they, and what is the difference? July 29, 2003 No, things have a tendency of starting on fire if you plug the wrong RAM into the wrong slot. SDRAM runs at 100 or 133 MHz. DDR RAM takes the clock speed of the motherboard and multiplies it by two (double data rate). So the first sticks of DDR RAM were rated at 100MHz, and ran at 200MHz. The 133 MHz stuff actually ran at 266 MHz (PC2100), and so on. The RAM I quoted you is DDR333 (PC2700) and is near the fastest stuff commonplace today. There is faster, but the price grows exponentially. Heres where the fun begins. Above, I explained motherboard bus speeds. Lets assume you get a new Barton CPU (AMD XP2800+, lets say). It has a bus speed of 166 MHz (times two is 333 MHz), and so the entire bus on the motherboard is 166 MHz. Ideally youd use DDR333 (PC2700) RAM to keep the speeds all the same. An AMD XP2400+, however, runs on the motherboard bus speed of 133 MHz so to match the RAM, youd only be using PC2100 (DDR266). Some motherboards can run a CPU at 133 MHz and run the RAM at 166 MHz, so its not TOO important, but it sometimes is better to make sure the clock speeds are all the same across the system. The new 800 MHz Intel CPUs have an awesome advantage over todays AMD CPUs memory bandwidth. With a motherboard running at 200MHz, you can use DDR400 (PC3200) RAM which also runs at 200MHz, and since everything is in sync across the system you get super performance. Thats just the TIP of the iceberg! The newest motherboards have another new feature dual-channel memory support. The concept is simple twice the sticks of ram, twice the performance. In a dual-channel configuration, you use an even number of memory modules in your computer. For example, the system I use at home has 512MB of RAM, but Im using 2 x 256MB modules, to utilize the performance gain of the dual-channel configuration. This is an area where Intel CPUs absolutely blow away anything AMD can offer. In fairness to AMD, the Athlon XP wouldnt know what to do with all that memory bandwidth anyways. Thats another side effect of the different ways AMD and Intel build their CPUs. For a P4, however, the more memory bandwidth, the happier it is. What does faster memory bandwidth mean for you? RAM speed affects overall system performance everything just magically gets faster. IN ADDITION, Pentium 4 C processors have a technology youve probably heard about called hyper-threading. This enables the CPU to do multiple tasks at once, and greatly boosts performance in Windows XP when you start running music in the background, scanning for viruses, and chatting on the internet all at the same time. With todays latest advances in technology, the only remaining performance bottleneck are the computers hard drives. Youre ALWAYS going to be waiting for your computer to load files off of your hard drive. Unfortunately, there currently are no solutions to this problem that are worth the money (I can fix THIS problem, but itll add another $400 to the bill!). How does AMDs Rating System Work? July 29, 2003 Back in the days of the PIII and the original Athlon, it was easy to compare the two types of CPUs megahertz to megahertz. A Pentium III 800 MHz was slower than an Athlon 900 MHz, which was slower than a Pentium III 1000 MHz. When the P4 was released, however, everything changed. Intel designed a CPU that could easily reach much faster speeds, while AMD designed one which did more work per megahertz. In the long run, each design ended up being about equally fast, but it left AMD with a problem. Their 1600 MHz chip was as fast as a P4 running at 2000MHz, but people were walking into stores and simply thinking 2000 is bigger than 1600, that one must be faster. To try and stop this, AMD has been giving a performance rating to their chips. In fact, to find the actual clock speed an AMD CPU runs at, you have to read the fine print on the packaging. Recently, things have become more complicated. As explained above, memory speed has a large impact on your system speed. AMD has started factoring that into their rating system, giving a bonus to chips running on a 166 MHz bus instead of the older 133 MHz bus. To make matters worse, there currently are two types of Athlon XP chips! The newer Barton cores have twice the amount L2 cache (very fast memory on the CPU itself) that the older Thoroughbreds have, which AMDs rating also associates a bonus for. As an example, an XP2200+ runs at 1800 MHz, while an XP2500+ runs at 1833 MHz. The difference is that the 2200+ is a 133 MHz bus speed Thoroughbred, the 2500+ is a 166 MHz Barton. Unfortunately, this leads to some very odd situations. In raw MHz, the fastest AMD CPU was actually the 2800+, a 166 MHz bus Thoroughbred which ran at 2250 MHz. Even the new 3200+ only runs at 2200 MHz, but it is a Barton with a 200 MHz bus. Consumers really have two choices. You can do your research and choose the CPU with the highest true MHz, or you can trust AMD when they say that the extra features really do make a chip faster.