If I buy an AMD chipset laptop, what application's I won't be able to run compared to if it were Intel?
PS: phrased the question in that way because I'm not looking for Intel vs AMD debate but rather trying to figure out how I can be affected as an end user.
Last edited by: movilogo on Fri 29 Jun 12 at 13:33
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Answering the actual question first, both intel and and chips are x86 compliant, so there is no "what will and won't run" question to answer. Its not an issue to consider.
As far as more general things go, the intel mobile chipsets are better than the amd ones when it comes to power consumed and heat generated. Both are important considerations for laptops/netbooks.
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My current Intel Core 2 Duo processor CPU temperature hovers around 55 C and occasionally reaches 70 C.
Does AMD get hotter than this?
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Depends on the size of heat sink and fan fitted.
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nah depends on how much heat is generated first, the fan and heatsink comes second.
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The Core 2 is old technology, you need to compare the current intel core I3/5/7 sandy bridge CPUs vs the AMD Fusion CPUs. And there the problem starts, AMD have released 4 different types of Fusion mobile CPUs in the last 18 months, and only the latest have power/heat figures that are as good (bit better in fact) than the intel ones.
Trouble is, you have absolutely no idea what Fusion is in your notebook.
Edit, but if you are buying an AMD fusion laptop (any fusion) it will be better than your current core 2 duo.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 29 Jun 12 at 13:56
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If you're running Windows or Linux then there isn't a difference in what will run software wise. There are differences in the implementation of some instructions on AMD and Intel for 64-bit but the operating system takes care of that.
Now if you wanted to turn the laptop into a Hackintosh and run Mac OS X then you'd need to go for Intel ;-)
As Zero says, the current crop of Intel chipsets and CPUs (latest are now Ivy Bridge) tend to have a lower power draw and therefore lower thermal output. But some of the AMD laptops have better integrated graphics on the chip.
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Depends on what you need really. AMD's are sadly quite rare now, I used to be an AMD fan boy but when it came to upgrading my Athlon X2 I went with the i3 Sandybridge route and frankly the performance is simply staggering. It is telling that the cost of my processor was £89 in June 2011, the cost of the same processor in June 2012 is £88.
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It depends on what you want it for. The desk chips were still reasonably competent until the poor Bulldozer design FX chips. Not that they are bad but not as good as Intel. But they are cheaper. But an eight core* FX-8150 is not as powerful as a four core (hyper threaded) Intel i7 2600K let alone the latest IvyBridge chips.
But the FX8150 is about £80 cheaper... I'd have got one recently because I was going to use it for VMWARE (8 cores handy) but I could not also run MacOS X on the AMD :-)
Back to laptops, I'd stick with an Intel Core i5 or i3.
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I went for the i5 Sandybridge in my media centre / gaming PC. Performance per £ cannot be beaten.
There are various benchmarks published online comparing Intel and AMD processors in real world tasks such as gaming, video encoding and graphics rendering, and the Intels consistently wipe the floor with the AMDs. I thought long and hard about going the AMD route, but the Intels seem to be significantly superior.
I paid £210 for my i5 (bundled with a decent Gigabyte board) back in March, and paid a couple of quid extra for the unlocked multiplier version (K suffix) to enable me to overclock it. I have it running at 4.3 GHz on a standard cooler at perfectly acceptable temperatures.
It's used mostly for video encoding and a bit of gaming (partnered with an overclocked 1GB GeForce 560Ti) Brilliant chip / setup for not a lot of cash (a whisker over £400 built myself, with drives salvaged from my old machine). It'll do me for years. Apart from drive transfer rate (soon to be fixed with an SSD for the system drive), the rig scores a max 7.9 on all the tests in the Windows 7 "Windows Experience" rating system. It will encode a video stream that would take 4-5 hours on my old P4, in about 30 minutes.
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AMD computers - Zero
