Intel vs AMD

[dande]

I have my render nodes currently using Intel I7's a mixture of sandybridge and Ivy Bridge. I was looking at AMDs this morning they are priced a lot cheaper but what is their performance like in comparison to intel.

 

 

Thanks

[Dimitris Tolios]

Sorry for not typing it from scratch:

 

If it is your single workstation or render node, nothing beats an i7 atm.

Any flavor, 2600K, 3770K, 3820, 3930K etc, has the best balance between multi-threaded performance (rendering/trans-coding video) and single threaded performance (pretty much everything else, including modeling, CAD etc) is close to the best out there - if not the best.

 

The i5s offer amazing single thread performance (o/ced 3570K is perhaps the fastest out there, HT hinders single thread a bit for i7s), and more than decent multithread.

 

FX8xxx are decent for multithread, beating i5s in most cases due to more cores, but their single thread performance pales in comparison.

It is not day and night, most likely you won't suffer / feel anything. We are talking benchmarks here.

The case that matters is always price: if you can catch a good offer on a budget 990 mobo and a 8120 or 8320 that will allow you to buy a better GPU etc that you could not afford otherwise, go for it. But if an i5 is within €/$20-30, is usually a better choice - again for anything but a dedicated render node that is specialized to do nothing but the rendering itself.

 

AMD is going through some tough times, any help you give them is more than welcome, but truth has to be said.

There should be no issues mixing AMD and intel processors - after all, both companies operate on AMD64 instruction set ... (wasn't it better back in the Athlon 64 days with more competition?)

[stevenarnold]

Hello Friends,

 

If money is key then Intel's Pentium G640 is a good place to start. It only offers 2 cores (and no support for Hyper-Threading), but for under £50 you'll get more than enough power for most tasks, and because it requires a standard LGA1155 socket you'll easily be able to slot in something faster later, should it be necessary. But AMD's new A-Series processors have some interesting plus points, in particular the supercharged integrated graphics. If you'd like to be able to play modern games on a real budget then they may be worth the wait.

 

Best Regards

Steven Arnold

 

Hp Proliant Ml370

[stevenarnold]

Hello Friends,

 

If money is key then Intel's Pentium G640 is a good place to start. It only offers 2 cores (and no support for Hyper-Threading), but for under £50 you'll get more than enough power for most tasks, and because it requires a standard LGA1155 socket you'll easily be able to slot in something faster later, should it be necessary. But AMD's new A-Series processors have some interesting plus points, in particular the supercharged integrated graphics. If you'd like to be able to play modern games on a real budget then they may be worth the wait.

 

Best Regards

Steven Arnold

 

esgninc

[dande]

Thanks for your feedback. Money is not the issue I was just wondering how they performed in comparision.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Thanks for your feedback. Money is not the issue I was just wondering how they performed in comparision.

If money is not an issue, 3770K or 2600-2700K CPUs are hard to beat. Faster than anything before the s2011 hex-cores, and for the money you need for a proper s2011 6C/12T render node, you can squize in 2x s1155 nodes with total 8C/16T.

 

The FX 8120 beats the 3570K in pure rendering scenarios and it is also cheaper. So after a number of nodes, there is a certain point were your money can buy more rendering power with AMD than intel, even if we are talking i7s.

 

FX 8320/8350 is too young in the market, and tho it does offer improvements over the 81xx series, it is as expensive as the i5 and the number of nodes were the RAM/Disk/PSU/Case expenses are negated is too big.

[dande]

Thanks again Dimitris. Thats great info

[johnnycash]

Intel may be better. But amd is what gives us hope in games. Low price is always a + for players to students who can spend a little more in the GPU. In fact, I could have Core i3 into my budget, but I had the athlon 2 X4. And I must say that I am impressed by its performance GPU with 6850.

 

I do not know much about hardware, but I'm a coder I know core may be faster if * coded * way. Multi-threading is difficult to code, but game companies adopted. Soon I think all software adopt the thread.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Rendering engines have been multi-threaded for more than a decade now, yet 3DS itself is not fully threaded.

 

The FX 83xx, after a few months have proven themselves as pretty potent chips. Yes, those need to be clocked higher than intel counterparts for equal performance, but this doesn't change the fact that out of the box the 8350 rivals the 3770K in pure rendering scenarios, and ofc beats the 3570K comfortably.

 

The only issue is that there are less mATX / mITX boards to choose from for AM3+ than those for 1155, and that of course the FX is sucking more power than the intel chips under load. A non-issue unless we would be talking dozens of nodes.