Giga - hurts. (AMD Athlon Processors in general)

Member Name: JackW24

Product:	AMD Athlon Processors in general
Date:	05/12/01 (886 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Faster, Better, Cheaper

Disadvantages: don't think there is any...

Once upon a time, intel made something called a pentium processor, and everyone thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. At the time, it probably was the market leader, and was generally pretty cool.

Mail order, and large PC companies, started whacking these processors in all of their machines as a selling point. To many people who don't really know what they're doing (first time buyers and the like) the little 'intel inside' sticker is a good thing. To me, it is more like a red cross on the door of someone with the plague.

No, there's nothing wrong with pentiums, and over time, like Microsoft, they became a bit of a monopoly in the processor world.

Enter AMD.

They would never be here today if it wasn't for one crucial thing. They are cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised to find an AMD processor at almost a third of the price of the equivalent Pentium. They started out with the K6-2's (well, obviously, this isn't where they started, but this is what pulled it off for them I think). These processors were at true bargain-basement prices, common as muck and at half the price. So, people whose wallets were a little on the floppy side decided on AMD for their new processor purchase, and rightly so.

AMD have had the reputation amongst "techies" for a while now, they're considerably faster than a Pentium of equivalent clock speed (don't ask me how, operations per cycle blah blah blah), and they're a lot cheaper. So for the past few years, anyone 'in the know' has favoured AMD and their products over any of the competition.

Of course, with the release of the fourth incarnation of the Pentium, AMD feel like they are finally ready to seriously compete on the performance level, and in front of the mainstream market. And how do they do this? With the Athlon, of course!

I have had the experience of using two identical PC's, with the exception
of one thing. One was fitted with a 1GhZ Athlon, the other, with pentium's 1Ghz version. The Athlon machine was noticably faster and, dare I say it, more stable.

It's proof of the pudding how good these processors are when it comes to the dubious subject of overclocking. Now, overclocking, for those of you who don't know, is fiddling about with bits and bobs inside the PC to make the processor go faster than it should. The result? a faster PC, an invalidated warranty, and a potentially unstable, warmer, system. AMD processors are favoured by overclockers, because they are more reliable, which is really saying something.

So, to put it simply, AMD processors , especially Athlon's, are faster, better, more reliable, and cheaper than equivalent Pentiums. Personally, I see no reason not to choose them every time.

Enjoy.

Jack.

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