Right now I have an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ it runs at 1.67 GHz. Is this 2000+ CPU equal in speed to a true 2GHz intel cpu? Now I know that the GHz of a CPU is not all tha matters as far as speed goes but I do know its pretty key. I doubt the extra AMD features would make up for .33GHz so are the names AMD gives to its CPU just a marketing ploy or is there some truth to it?

This is controversial and you'll probably get a lot of opinions but, generally speaking, AMD Athlon XPs outperform Intel CPUs when you review the literature. For example, An Athlon XP 2000+ will generally outperform a P4 2.0 GHz.

Athlon XP 2000+ vs P4 2.0GHz

Great info and link. Thanks alot.

You're welcome. I hope that it was helpful.

If I'm not mistaken, AMD executes 9 instructions per cycle as opposed to 6 for Intel. That makes up for the slower speed.

I am in complete agreement with badboy but want to throw in a few extra points. This will sound a little pro-intel but its only because at today's top end amd is overrating themselves.

The benchmark above was done when the p4 2.0g was a willamette which was not as fast as the 2.0g northwood. The xp2000+ is better than the 2.0g northwood, but not by near as large of a margin as in the benchmark.

The advantage of amd ends with the 2600+, which is about equal to the p4 2.6g. The half-speed fsb that amd has compared to the p4 becomes a limiting factor as the cpus get fast enough so that data throughput becomes the weak link.

Above 2600+ the xp loses ground to the p4 because amd doles out too aggressive of a rating for the cpu. The tbred 2600+ first came as a 133fsb 2.13g machine and the tbred 2800+ as a 166fsb 2.16g machine. That's too much credit they are giving to an fsb increase. Don't forget when intel went from a 2.4g 400fsb to a 2.4g 533fsb, they did not give themselves a rating bump.

On top of this, amd also overrates the cache doubling for the barton, giving it 200 rating points. The result of all this is that the xp 3200+ is way overrated, according to recent thg benches. Amd is trying to give itself rating point increases for things like fsb and cache increases that intel has not given itself credit for since their rating scheme is just a ghz number.

To net it out, the xp 2000+ beat the p4 2.0g because at 1.73g it had only 17% less ghz. The xp 3200+ is inferior to a 3.2g p4 (not that you can buy one) because at 2.2g it has 31% less ghz.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-20.html

"17% less ghz".

Should say 14%

Well put johnoh.

I know this is controversial.

I am pro-AMD but I keep an open mind and I realize that AMD and Intel will continue to compete with each other to bring us faster CPUs.

badboy we are on the same page. If amd would just come out with a heat spreader and the same thermal halfclocking > autoshutdown strategy that intel has, I would forgive any rating problems

In the test shown in that link, the two systems are given different hard drives (AMD has a 7200rpm, whereas Intel has a 5400rpm). Surely this would affect the benchmarks somewhat. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Johnoh's analysis is right for a change. Beside speed throttling down from CPU temp, heat spreader design, 512 cache versus the 256 (Northwood), lower Vcore (more head room), HT potential (if the board supports it), 800Mhz FSB potential (new board), continous production quality......

I stay with Intel, being in chip set production before, and user of AMD and Intel for over 20 years.

Based on this forum there are more problems with AMD processor issues than Intel.

Real_Cool,

Feel free to point out what you are talking about when you say "for a change".

i understand now

http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/5939.html

Once the program loads into memory the harddrive speed shouldnt matter. But i guess on some tests it might make a differnece. I have a 1.8 P4 that takes about 25% longer to encode MP3s than an 1800+ does.
For my uses I prefer the AMD

Real_Cool points out that, based on this forum, there are more problem with AMD than Intel CPUs.

I suspect that some of this may be true because more people posting on this forum are using AMD CPUs and not necessarily because AMD CPUs have more inherent problems.

There are many more posts concerning ASUS MOBOs than DFI MOBOs. I don't think that this is because DFI is superior to ASUS.

However, if there are less "issues" mentioned with Abit, then, I may have to consider not using Asus.

DFI versus Asus, you are right.