[vorbis] Are AMDs preferable? [was: Choosing a processor]

[Wilson]

All Intel and AMD CPUs are essentially 100% reliable, and have been for many
years. (Let's ignore the topic of errata.. these are bugs, not creeping
instabilities..)
The various chipsets that run these CPUs possess various levels of
reliability. Opinions differ on how to rank them. Intel->AMD->SiS/Via/ALi
seems to be easy to get people to agree on. Of course, just like spacetime,
there are ripples within this general fabric. The Intel i820 chipset, for
example, is the devil. The Intel 440BX chipset is a magical flying machine
powered by human joy and the laughter of children, and surrounded by
meter-thick armor made of neutronium.
So.. Where do these instability rumors come from? Motherboard manufacturers.
There are only a couple good ones in the entire world, and even they have
"dud" motherboard designs from time to time. An great motherboard with a
weak chipset can still be rock solid. I'm typing this on a Windows 2000
machine, dual P3s, Via 133A Pro chipset (a weak chipset, for those keeping
score)
Other than turning it off while I was out of town last week, it hasn't
crashed or needed a reboot in 8 months or so. That's because it's on a great
motherboard, with hand-picked memory.

The moral of the story: If your system crashes once every few days, it's
probably a cheap motherboard (especially if it's made by ABIT).. If your
system crashes all the time, you have bigger problems. However, 99% of the
time, the CPU/Chipset combo isn't to blame.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Dickson" <crdic at yahoo.com>
To: <vorbis at xiph.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 12:09 AM
Subject: Re: [vorbis] Are AMDs preferable? [was: Choosing a processor]

> Dan Hollis wrote:
>
> > I had tons of irq-sharing and instability problems on intel chipsets
with
> > pentiums, celerons, etc.
> >
> > My recent VIA+Athlon has been 100% problem-free, first time in about 3
> > years of PC hardware purchases.
>
> Everyone's mileage varies on this sort of thing, it seems. I've used
nothing
> but Intel P2, P3, Celeron, and Coppermine-Celeron systems for the last few
> years and had no troubles of this sort. Right now I'm typing this on a 700
MHz
> Coppermine-Celeron system with an i810-based motherboard. It was a mild
pain to
> get set up with Linux (or, rather, with X) only because i810 support
wasn't
> built into the Debian 2.2 kernel, but once I found documentation on how to
fix
> that (thank you, Google), all was well. There are faster machines out
there,
> but by and large I'm quite happy with it.
>
> Craig
>
>
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