Intel Bashing

TerrorFirmer

A massive chunk of the gaming community have the saddest frame of mind when it comes to Intel Hardware - hardly breaking news I know. It's not so bad now with the new Core 2 Duo out, hard to debate hard facts, but I was just looking around on Guru3d forums and came across a guy having problems with some games.

He had a Pentium 4 Processor - straight away all these recommendations that a 3Ghz P4 processor is crap for games, and he'll have to play on low settings to get by, etc. Now, these weren't random guys - they were computer literate guys with hundreds or thousands of posts.

Now I know the Pentium 4 was a big underacheiver in gaming compared to the AMD counterparts, but in fairness, they're still perfectly good for gaming. I had one until fairly recently and was running all the latest games at the highest settings easily combined with my 7600GT.

So you can imagine my mixture of disbelief, humour and annoyance to see all these guys claiming that "Half Life 2 won't run so good on a Pentium 4' and other bits of utter fantastic nonsense.

This wasn't just fanboyism, this was pure ignorance at its finest, and again, it wasn't just illiterate morons, it was regular members who otherwise seem to have a great grasp of everything else, well, not intel.

I knew Intel VS AMD was a heated debate but god to honest truth, I never realised it was as bad as people telling outright lies to one another for the sake of it. And never have I seen a single product so lambasted as the Pentium 4 Processor on a daily basis - again, nearly all lies, claiming it can't do this, or that...

Anti

Well they are crap, at the resolutions their playing at. Were not talking 1024*768 here or 1280*1024, were talking 1900*1050. And with huge AA and AF

This is where the cpu becomes the bottleneck. The only thing able to keep up at them speeds are the heavilly overclocked c2d's. The quad cores are useless at the moment, as there are hardly any games to take advantage of 2 cores. let alone 4 cores.


And when you look at amd cpus. the fx62-64 are currently the fastest they offer out there. A opty 160-170 can be overlcocked to faster speeds for 100£.

These guys know what their talking about, they just dont explain themselfs very well.

TerrorFirmer

Not really. They did not take that into consideration at all - simply said you'll have to play Half Life 2 at low resolution.

It's the same in every, single P4 thread - regardless of graphics card, monitor, or other hardware - the second they spot P4 they're like Vultures flying in for the kill.

I can guarantee you it's not just because they assume you're playing at massive resolutions because as above, it doesn't matter what the fup your card or monitor is.

Also, I once posted I played Half Life 2 on 1280x768 with full AA and AF and all settings on max on my P4 and 7600GT, purely for comparison reasons for somebody who was having problems - somebody called me a liar and others made sarcastic jokes.

Another point worth mentioning is that relatively similar CPUs, like say, a 3000+ or even something like a 2800+ don't get remotely the same treatment - they get the generic friendly 'Ah it'll run relatively ok, just not the best' response, while anything involving the P4, even high end ones like the extreme get ripped to shreds. It's solely the P4. I just can't believe the hostility against that processor.

Anti

I know where you are coming from. In the overlcockign circles the p4 was never excepted very well. Granted the EE's were absolute monstors in their time. They are aging. But there is no need to bash the cpu for what it is.


But just for arguements sake, When i had my 3500+ overlcocked to 2.8ghz with a 7900gtx I could not play at the settings you mentioned, Some parts were okay, other parts would drop to single didgit fps.

But then the 3500+ lacked the cache of the p4.

Steffano2002

Well, I never had an AMD machine... Don't know why, just don't want to go near them. I've always had P4s. And I disagree with what these guys are saying (obviously).

I currently have a P4 HT 3.4GHz with only 1GB of Corsair (DDR1) XMS RAM and a 7800GTX and my favourite game CoD2 plays perfectly at 1680*1050 on my widescreen LCD. FPS is a constant 125... CS:S and FEAR also plays perfectly at this resolution.

I know these games aren't exactly the kind of games that require huge specs to play properly but still, I think they'd do the job perfectly with HL2 and the like...

And I'm certainly not going to invest €3000 EUR into a PC just so I can play at 1900*1050 with max AA and AF! Throwing money away for small changes the naked eye probably can't even detect... Stupid IMO.

Anti

But you can see the AA and AF, less so at high resolution.

As a test load a game up at 800*600 with no aa or af, then try again with max on both. HUGE differnce

Psycopat

why are you people talking about resolution in conjunction with CPU's its mainly down to the graphics card. P4 3ghz should run half life no bother as long as the graphix card aint crap, yes half life is CPU dependant but a 3GHZ P4 is more than enough. as for amd, celeron->P4->amd64->amd2->amd4x4->core2duo->core2quad its crazy to see people thinking a P4 is better than a amd because its just not, and its also crazy for amd fan boys to say amd is better than core2duo.

Creamy Goodness

it basically comes down to this...

nerdboy: "i've just spent €x amount on my e-dick and nothing you can say will make my opinion wrong"

Anti

Try running hl2 at high res with aa anf af on a p4. it wont happen. upto 1280*1024 your fine. But as i said before, the cpu has become the bottleneck.

Graphics cards are now much mroe advanced then current processors.

Take f0lding @ home as a example.


A x1950pro will spew out work units 15X's faster then the most havily overclocked c2d running 2 instances of the same program. And upto 10X faster then the wuad cores.

And the x1950 is no ehere near top of the range.

Creamy Goodness

yeh but what havok was saying was the second the guy mentioned P4, the fags bash it straight away.

maybe the guy with the p4 doesn't want to play full res with all this AA and AF but the point havok is making no one cared they just went straight for it and bashed the cpu.

my old machine was a p4 northwood 3.2ghz and with 1gb ram and 9800pro and it ran half-life2 like a dream, sure it wasn't at 200000x100000 with 250x AA and AF but did it stop me engaging in the game, did i feel left out that i didn't see that missing dust particle? the answer frankly is no.

Steffano2002

Cremo wrote:

my old machine was a p4 northwood 3.2ghz and with 1gb ram and 9800pro and it ran half-life2 like a dream, sure it wasn't at 200000x100000 with 250x AA and AF but did it stop me engaging in the game, did i feel left out that i didn't see that missing dust particle? the answer frankly is no.

Now that made me laugh!

Cremo wrote:

it basically comes down to this...

nerdboy: "i've just spent €x amount on my e-dick and nothing you can say will make my opinion wrong"

QFT

Anti wrote:

Try running hl2 at high res with aa anf af on a p4. it wont happen. upto 1280*1024 your fine. But as i said before, the cpu has become the bottleneck.

But that's why I think it's stupid... So what if you have to lower your resolution a bit and switch off AA and AF?

I have a Suzuki Bandit 600 that cost me €5000 EUR and the insurance is €1500 EUR. Will I go and buy a GSX-R 1000 that will cost me triple the amount because it's faster and better? No. My Bandit is fun enough AFAIC...

Anti

I agree completly, Im just telling you where they are comming from.

Steffano2002

Oh, well, if you agree that's ok!

TheDrunkenBrain

The Animosity towards the pentium 4 is, I beleive set deep in the psyche of many Athlon early adopters. 'I was there first and I was right to make this brave leap into the unknown because I reaped the Price/performance benefit and will forever perform fellatio on any AMD executive upon request for as long as I shall live' is the general psychological modus operandi (and informal oath) of said P4 bashers.

In saying that they did have a point. For a long time Intel took it's position for granted and is only now having to deal with falling market share in the desktop arena.

Competition like Sex is good for us all so let's hope that core 2 doesn't stand 'erect' in isolation for too long because we will bleed for the bleeding edge kit even more so than we do now, especially if the gap widens - which is a possibility from what I've read of 4x4 for example, a monstrous ungainly answer to core 2. They do have other Irons in the fire though.

Never realized a game like half life was so CPU limited - doesn't sound right to me.

By the way I was an Athlon early adopter and am happily (not on drugs (yet)) typing this on an athlon 3000 based system.

L31mr0d

TheDrunkenBrain wrote:

The Animosity towards the pentium 4 is, I beleive set deep in the psyche of many Athlon early adopters. 'I was there first and I was right to make this brave leap into the unknown because I reaped the Price/performance benefit and will forever perform fellatio on any AMD executive upon request for as long as I shall live' is the general psychological modus operandi (and informal oath) of said P4 bashers.

In saying that they did have a point. For a long time Intel took it's position for granted and is only now having to deal with falling market share in the desktop arena.

Competition like Sex is good for us all so let's hope that core 2 doesn't stand 'erect' in isolation for too long because we will bleed for the bleeding edge kit even more so than we do now, especially if the gap widens - which is a possibility from what I've read of 4x4 for example, a monstrous ungainly answer to core 2. They do have other Irons in the fire though.

Never realized a game like half life was so CPU limited - doesn't sound right to me.

By the way I was an Athlon early adopter and am happily (not on drugs (yet)) typing this on an athlon 3000 based system.

Thats a classic 5am post... kinda weird, a little creepy and laced with inuendo. I like that at the end you admit you would perform fellatio on an AMD exec... nice

anywayyyyy.... back on topic, this isn't a one sided coin. If you have been reading the forums as much as you say you where then you'd also know that when anyone says they are having problems running a game and they give their specs for an AMD machine all the intel fanboys jump right in with their recommended C2D upgrade. Its an age old battle between the Intel and AMD fanboys to try and convert as many to their processing side as possible. So making a statement like intel is the innocent party here and that AMD users care more about the name than the performance is way off. If anything i'd say there are more people out there trying to convert others to C2D then there are trying to convert people to AMD.

TheDrunkenBrain

Sorry, haven't been reading the forums, just weighed in with facts and inuendo is all.

Stephen

I f**king hate fanboys, be they console fanboys, cpu fanboys, OS fanboys, whatever. They're all gimps.

Cremo hit the nail on the head with his e-penis comment

kaimera

Stephen wrote:

I f**king hate fanboys, be they console fanboys, cpu fanboys, OS fanboys, whatever. They're all gimps.

Cremo hit the nail on the head with his e-penis comment

Cremo fanboy

Smellyirishman

Steffano2002 wrote:

Well, I never had an AMD machine... Don't know why, just don't want to go near them. I've always had P4s. And I disagree with what these guys are saying (obviously).

Is that not exhibiting the same kind of ignorance that this entire thread is about, only aimed at AMD? Why don't you want to go near an AMD?

I own both Intel systems and AMD ones. The P4 runs games fine and I play at 1680x1050.

Peteee

Anti wrote:

And the x1950 is no ehere near top of the range.

Since when was the x1950 "nowhere near top of the range" card. Is it not the best that ATi have at the moment? R600 or whatever its called hasn't been released yet AFAIK

And besides that, a GPU merely has to do one thing (Graphics) well, whereas a CPU has to do lots of things well. It just happens that folding@home works well on a GPU architecture.

DaSilva

I'm not big into the games or graphics card world, so forgive my ignorance.

Id really like to have a look at these games client engine where they cannot run on anything but the latest processors.

Seriously, the graphics and audio is bulk end of most games these days, and that is why they have their own hardware. The Physics engine is what is probably running on the CPU mainly. Id like too see these physics engines if they are making CPUs sweat. Wtf are they simulating these days? Is the physics engine that massive that its checking obscurely small things like when my player runs, its checking and calculating the effects on my trousers, if friction will cause them to fall down.

Sounds like some serious engines they are producing or some crap programming.

Anti

Peteee wrote:

Since when was the x1950 "nowhere near top of the range" card. Is it not the best that ATi have at the moment? R600 or whatever its called hasn't been released yet AFAIK

And besides that, a GPU merely has to do one thing (Graphics) well, whereas a CPU has to do lots of things well. It just happens that folding@home works well on a GPU architecture.

you are quite wrong there sonny.

Look at the pipelines the x1950 has compared to a cpu.

Its doing the same thing the cpu does, but upto 15X faster. If you check the stats pager over at folding@home the gpu is pulling more gflops then all the c2d's and p4;s combined.

When the ati cards started folding, F@H got a 65% boost in computational power in their first day. Now it has slown down, As not many people use a x1950 purely for folding ( i do )

Snowbat

Anti wrote:

Its doing the same thing the cpu does, but upto 15X faster.

Not quite - I refer you to the Slashdot discussion: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/13/2030253

A GPU is very efficient at running a very limited set of instructions. It just so happens that the kind of processing needed for folding proteins translates nicely into vector processing - one of the GPU's specialities. It would not run a general purpose OS efficiently for the same reason you won't find a general purpose CPU on a graphics card.

Anti

Ah yeah i know that.

what i mean was. the gpu is doing the same thing the cpu is when it comes to folding. And it is down to the sheer volume of pipelines that a modern gpu has that makes it so much quicker.

hopeful

<

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AMD Fanboy and proud of it

And I will add that my Folding@Home points have gone through the ceiling since I started using my X1900XT.

I will also add that I do think my next CPU will be Intel...purely based on performance vs price.
Unless AMD come up with something very special in the next few months in which case I reserve the right to change my mind

DonkeyStyle \o/

Ah they're all shills, don't mind them.

Steffano2002

Smellyirishman wrote:

Is that not exhibiting the same kind of ignorance that this entire thread is about, only aimed at AMD? Why don't you want to go near an AMD?

Because I never had problems with Pentium 4 processors so why change? I'm not a Pentium fanboy who will advise people not to get AMD! I don't care what people have... All I know is that I'm happy with my P4s and that's what matters.