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Is AMD Worth A Professional Reputation?
heyetv asks: "AMD has finally proven itself strong in competition to Intel. For over a year now. Old story; read TomsHardware or Sharky's. For overclockers, hackers, and the rest of us, this is great, but what about high volume, mission critical environments with hundreds, or even thousands of machines? What about high-performance clusters? I'm in a growing University/College Intel house of several hundred and trying to figure out why we are still as such. Are AMD's fast, cheap Athlon processors ready for production situations where a lack of support or seemingly minor failure could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and reputations/careers? I'm sure some of you have rolled out Texas-style processors in large-scale corporate situations. Have you had positive or negative experiences in doing so? I'm not interested in a flamewar over which is the faster or more technically superior, but opinions on which one is a processor to base a professional reputation on and given that AMD has only been performing on par with Intel for a year now... is this long enough?"
Sitting at my desk reading stuff on /. like normal, I noticed a new topic about AMD vs Intel. But only one reply? I started to read the message and found my self reading a rather odd story about a man making love to a certian "Crippled Karen". Don't get my wrong, it was a great short story. But I'm still not sure what cpu he feels is better. What about Karen? Would she rather have an AMD or an Intel in that new motorized wheel chair with a computer and an lcd mounted on the left armrest?
Anyway... good story, just possibly the wrong the place to post it.
--we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
--we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Billy
With the problem that Intel has had, do you really trust them too? I have no problems rolling out AMD machines. I know how stable the Athlons are. They don't have compatibility problems.... Look at the number of machines being sold by Compaq and Gateway with Athlons in them.
The real question about high availability situations are the rest of the system. Motherboards...power supplies... disk subsystems...etc. I don't think anyone is building real Athlon servers yet. I know Dell, Gateway, and Compaq don't yet. I wouldn't even consider putting in a clone in a situation like you describe.
The product we sell at work is based on a SBC (Single Board Computer) running a AMD K6-2 300MHz, it's enough for our product, and cheaper than an intel.
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I like AMD, I have been using Athlons since Slot A and I like them. Fast and reliable. I have not had many issues with the hardware, it was Windoze that gave me problems, Linux had no problems and LOVES the Athlon TBird Sokect A which I just upgraded to from the original Athlon.
I do think that mission critical information could be kept on a Athlon based system, when running the RIGHT OS(Linux or Solaris).
CS majors, we are the geeks that run it all. Without us things die.
I'm not sure I understand the question. You're a College/University with severl hundred PCs? That's hardly a mission-critical environment. In fact, I would think it's the sort of environment where you owe it to the institution to look for the best bang for the buck.
But even in production environments, I haven't had any problems with AMD and would certainly trust them at least as much as Intel. If the environment is really that critical I probably wouldn't use either.
Sun and IBM both make rock-solid hardware (Sparc and RS/6000, not x86) and IBM at least has _incredible_ service contracts (Sun probably does too, but I have no personal experience with their service dept.). You pay _way_ to much money for that support, but in a truly mission-critical environment it's worth it.
But again, for a university environment, Athlon is definately the way to go.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
The biggest problem with AMD chips is the motherboard.
While the Athlon is a great chip, you can't get a 4-way SMP system with it yet. And most high-end boxes need SMP. They're so expensive to build that customers need a clear upgrade path - and if dropping in a second processor isn't easy, they don't want the solution.
I build LVS/HA clusters for a living, and one thing I don't think I can do without is the EMP, (Emergency Management Port) which isn't available on AMD motherboards.
The chip really is a smaller portion of the decision. When I build a cluster, I usually recommend an Intel L440GX motherboard, which has all the necessities like onboard dual SCSI, EEPro and EMP. Once you pick out the best motherboard for the lifecycle of the system, you look at the processors that it supports.
If AMD had a motherboard similar to the L440GX that supported SMP thunderbirds, they'd break in to that market. But they don't.
Their motherboards are designed for low-cost deployed workstations or gamers.
Really, motherboard choice is more important than chip choice if you're building LVS, HA, Beowulf, etc. PPC is an option, though.
Thats the bottom line. The amd chip is much cheaper than the P3 or (if you dare...) a P4. Sure, if you wanted to make a power-packed server that is not mission critical and doesn't get 1,000,000 hits a day and you don't want to put "that much" money in to it, slap an amd in there! Just be sure to back everything as much as possibal. The P3 does perform better in the sence that it is more stable and, yes... faster in most applications on the server-side.
For the gamer, an amd is the way to go. It's cheap, fast and get's the job done. Graphics designer? Spend the money on a P3.
To be tottal honest, its a matter of opion. Some people (like myself) like Intel. Other (*cough* cheaper) people like AMD. But don't forget that alot of stablility issues deal with the other hardware you have (motherboard, ram, video card etc..). You CAN'T blame everything on your cpu.
just my two cents
--we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
--we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Billy
The only thing that would keep me from betting my career on the current AMD CPU lines is the VIA chipset. From a stability standpoint they don't hold up for anything. I would not bet my least favorite user's career on anything that uses a VIA based chipset. While I have no experience with the AMD chipset, everyone seems to only want to push motherboards built on the VIA set. For a gamer running wintendoze I am sure it is fine. Rebooting every couple of days is not an issue for most. But when you want a machine to run as close to 24x7x365.5 it is very much an issue. My 440BX based boards have run for as long as I can remember without a problem.
What many seem to neglect to speak about is how quickly the 4x AGP and PC133 memory advantage is tossed out the window on the first crash. Who needs speed if that speed is unusable. Give my 2x agp and pc100 8 days a week if I can run my computer for more than 6 days a week.
Just MHO.
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I have been using AMD for 2 years (an AMD K6-2 300 and a first gen Athlon 600), and my next computer will have at least a 1GHz Athlon in it (as soon as PC2100 RAM is available and relatively affordable, and the AMD 760 chipset is in a ASUS motherboard).
I trust AMD enough to be stable for my needs; that my 300 is stable enough for my parents needs, and that my 1GHz AMD will be stable enough for my future needs. Admittedly, there were some problems with AGP cards with AMD chipset implementations (a lot of problems with 3rd party AGP implementations with the K6-X chips, and the GeForce cards on the ASUS K7M motherboard; problems, AFAIK, that have been worked out), but at a university, high-end graphics is not high on the priority list, at least from my background as a part-time computer technician at my University for 2 years (the CAD labs were the exception, of course).
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Nobody said good stories had to be tasteful. But I guess I should have figured out that it was plaguarized (sp?). It seems unlikely that somebody would take the time to write something like that just to post it anonymously to Slashdot. Oh well, time to look up alt.tasteless and see if there's anything else interesting there.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I bought an AMD Athlon 700. Then I tried to install RH 6.2 on it. Imagine my surprise when the kernal paniced when it tried to boot. Seems that RH 6.2 thought I had a PIII and was attempting to disable the CPUID.
The "solution" I was given? Build a new kernel (sorta difficult if it won't boot in the first place). So, I sent the Athlon back, and bought a PIII 800, which ended up being _cheaper_ than the Athlon (for _exactly_ the same system except MB and CPU) anyways.
AMD has neat CPUs, but the execution leaves much to be desired.
Yes, I do blame AMD for RH not working. At the very least, they should provide RH with example systems to use for testing. Software providers are frequently provided with free hardware for compatibility testing.
Jason PollockBut that doesn't make it worth your while staking everything. I've run into problems with AMD CPUs before, back in the 486 days. I haven't run into any with the Thunderbirds and Durons but who knows, they may exist.
So should you stake your reputation on Intel CPUs? Most definitely not. There have been far more problems with Intel CPUs recently compared to AMD CPUs. Far too many to risk your reputation.
Except, of course, you almost certainly won't be. If you go AMD and you run into any problems, your reputation is shot. If you go Intel and you run into problems, your reputation is likely as not unaffected.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. 'Nobody ever got fired for going Intel'. (Of course, this used to be 'IBM').
Would I go AMD over Intel? Yes. Would I risk my reputation on it? No, though it is clearly the better (and safer) option theoretically.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Fretting over one's CPU, if reliability is at stake, is a real waste of time. There are four high risk components in any computer.
Hard drives fail. Raid arrays and hot swap can reduce the danger here
Power supplies fail. Having redundant hot swappable power supplies are the only way to go
The CPU fan will eventually stop and you should have software monitoring this and reporting to you when it starts slowing down.
The OS is the most complex and error prone part of the system. It's very important to have a good one and very hard to find. Heck, that's why most of the people at this site are here. You won't find a slashdot site for power supplies or CPU fans.
If your hardware is going to fail the CPU is just as likely to blow as a network card or some RAM. It has no moving parts, just pushes electrons around the same way again and again and as long as its well cooled will give you no grief. As for CPU quirks, just about any CPU will have them. Once a CPU has had a few months to season it's bugs are either well known and the chip is avoided or fixed with a BIOS upgrade or OS patch (never to be an issue again). The Athlon is well seasoned and stable.
But honestly, if hundreds of thousands of dollars and people reputations are on the line there is no alternative but high availability clustering. None. Zero. Nada. It's even better if the nodes are in different time zones. So for Pete's sake, make a nice fast cluster of Athlon boxes with RAID 5 and three power supplies a piece running Linux or QNX. Then pat yourself on the back for a job well done.
...given that AMD has only been performing on par with Intel for a year now... is this long enough?
That is just plain incorrect.
AMD has tracked _every_ major device made by Intel for over 25 years. Back in the Plestocine era (1973-1975), Intel & AMD made a technology exchange agreement, wherin AMD got the masks to the 6104 (4Kbit DRAM) and Intel got the masks to the 2704 (4KBit EPROM)(I'm guessing here, anybody with better data is welcome to supply it). Later this deal grew to include the 8080/82xx uP/peripheral family and by the time the 8085 & 8086 came out they were solid partners in competition against Zilog and their Z80. You see, in those days, they had a thing called "second-sourcing", which meant that if you wanted to sell your microelectronic-based devices to the military, you had to establish at least two parts suppliers, so the DoD wouldn't be invested into a proprietary (or outright unavailable) part. The 8086 technology partnership was supposed to be "for the lifetime of the iAPX86 product family", which Intel decided ended with the 386. Since the 486, AMD has been forced to reverse-engineer Intel's CPUs, and has been generally drop-in compatible with Intel, except for occasional issues. Look at AMD & Intel's OEM price lists. THEY MAKE THE SAME CHIPS! (Many of which, like the 8051, you've never heard of.) Except that AMD usually has smaller dice and better yields, which translates to faster and cheaper parts. I guess AMD has drawn the line at licensing Intel's proprietary socket, and now they're no longer drop-in compatible. Intel has from time to time done other things to break AMD compatibility, but they catch up, and AMD usually offers comparable or better parts for less, both because they _have_to_, and because they don't spend millions of bucks for TV commercials with people dancing around in tinted bunny suits. That's what jars me the MOST: the unwashed masses now _know_ that Intel makes superior parts, because they've seen silly blue men advertize the PIII on TV, but they've never heard of that AMD outfit.
To build a High-Availability system, I would:
AVOID the bleeding-edge technology. It COSTS TOO MUCH, and has compatability and reliability issues. Anybody in chip manufacture can tell you that it takes a year to _really_ get a new chip really rolling off a line. Then they come out cheap.
Use AMD for a more reliable CPU, assuming that other factors (such as motherboard chipsets) are equal, which I gather from the discussion they may not be.
Spread the load out among a bunch of cheap machines if possible, rather than build a single expensive world-killer and single point of failure. If the job can't be spread among several machines, forget the x86, you need (or will need in the future) a bigger gun.
Think about this statement: "The Intel Pentium III processor will make the Internet COME ALIVE!!!" Now that's a blatent lie. I hope I'm addressing an audience that's well enough informed to know that _yer_connection_speed_ has one whole lot more to do with the quality of your Internet experience than your CPU speed.
Please guys, leave the engineering to the engineers, and quit wasting money on Intel, even if they _do_ have pretty graphics.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Buy 1 lab worth of AMD machines, and see how it works out. You've probably got a dozen different models of PCs out there anyway; one more flavor isn't going to hurt you too much.
If things go badly, much better to find out with 40 machines then 400.
You must have missed the most important keyword in the story, ``Carbondale''.
FYI, it's "plagiarised".
In the US, it's "plagiarized".
(that's a horse of a different colour)
- The Sigless Wonder
The Intel 440GX is way behind the curve. Intel has poured so much into the Rambus avenue they forgot about the high-end where 4GB RAM and 2 standard PCI busses don't cut it. And the MTH (memory translator hub) failed to produce the SDRAM alternative they needed with the i840.
Enter ServerWorks' (formerly Reliance Computer Corporation, RCC) ServerSet III chipsets. They product chipsets for the big-boys, now for mainboard OEMs like Tyan, Asus and SuperMicro. 2 to 3 PCI busses (1 or 2 are 64-bit x 66MHz -- NOT slots, but whole busses!), 2 to 4-way PC133 SDRAM (supports upto 16GB), DDR SDRAM on the way, just awesome. The massive PCI I/O blows anything Intel's got away, and meets or beats most RISC vendors. Cheap too as the 2 CPU, 2 PCI bus, 2-way PC133 bus ServerSet IIILE can be had for just over $250 in SuperMicro mainboards.
ServerWorks is so good, Intel has adopted their chipsets for their own branded mainboards. Again, check them out!
P.S. As far as AMD, stay _away_ from Gateway 2000 -- the cheapest/worst components. Stick with a vendor that builds quality AMD systems, with AMD-approved components. Try Micron PC as they just introduced systems based on the new DDR SDRAM AMD i760 chipset mainboards and PC266 CPUs.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Yes!
Thank you,
Just another coder...
Everything was great and I was on the edge of my seat until you said "silly blue men." In fact they are not silly but they are blue. They are called The Blue Man Group (can be seen in the upper right hand corner of the screen at the start of the commercial). They are a performance art team who not only do wacky things with pigments, but they play music as well The music during the commerical is actually them playing. They perform in Vegas, Boston, and New York City. Overall they are wonderful to watch and have produced some great CDs. Check them out: www.blueman.com
Bingeldac denies any responsibility for the
spelling and/or grammatical errors above.