AMD versus Intel at the system builder’s

As I mentioned last week, I want to replace my 5-year-old workstation before it dies. I’ve put this on hold temporarily because of the bathroom remodeling project at home, but a reader suggested that I might usefully share what I’ve found out, and I think she’s right.

When I went into the shop, I explained to Kevin, who built the box I’m planning to replace, that I was interested in having him build me a new programming workstation. I asked for a quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard disk, and a midrange graphics card.

What operating system did I want? I’d take care of that myself, probably installing Windows Server 2008 for x64 and Ubuntu 64-bit to dual boot. I’d install various virtual PC images for testing.

The next question Kevin asked was “AMD or Intel?” I thought for about 2 seconds about what Tom Yager has been writing about the Phenom, and said “AMD.” The question after that was “ATI or Nvidia?” I said I didn’t know, but that I leaned toward Nvidia so I could try CUDA programming, even though AMD owned ATI. He assured me that the motherboards he used could handle either.

Kevin whipped up a back-of-the-envelope system design for a box with a AMD Phenom 9950, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 500GB SATA disk, Nvidia 9800 with 1GB of video RAM, 400-watt power supply, a Sony DVD-RW with Lightscribe support, and a Microsoft keyboard with fingerprint reader and wireless mouse. Total cost: $1,190, but for me special today, $1,100.

I took that home to ponder and asked some system builder/overclocker friends in other parts of the country about it. One fired back:

I would go with an Intel box. I’ve always been a fan of AMD but recently they just haven’t kept pace with Intel performance. AMD is receiving more complaints than Intel right now also.

I like the choices he made for you in that hardware goes together fine, I just tend to look to Intel and Nvidia for the best performance. I know you keep your machines for quite a while so that to me would be another reason to go Intel. I think they hold up better. I came to that conclusion after years of abusing hardware while overclocking.

Here’s a rather quick stab at an alternative that may serve you better.

Motherboard = MSI P45 or = Asus PQ 5

Intel Processor = Q6600 or = Q8300

Video card is fine Nvidia 9800

4GB of ram is fine and cheap now.

Sony Lightscribe sounds cool

Keyboard and wireless mouse sound cool

POWER SUPPLY. 400 watt is too small. Go with a PCP&C 500 watt Silencer. 5 year warranty.

Well, 400 watts would have been (barely) enough for the AMD Phenom CPU, but he was right that a PC Power and Cooling 500-watt power supply would be much better for an Intel Q6600 or Q8300 CPU.

The other chimed in with:

The equipment chosen should work well together and make for a nice system. Personally I would opt for one of the 45nm Intel Penryn/Yorkfield processors, but at stock speeds, the Phenom’s are pretty good bang for the buck, at the moment. I think AMD has had the errata issues resolved for a while now, as well.

If the plan is to have the computer for a long time, it may be worth looking at the new Core i7’s and a DDR3 platform, which should be as future-proof as it gets with computers, but the DDR3 and a board that supports it drives the price up quite a bit, although DDR3 is down to about one quarter of what it was just a few months ago.

Also, the AMD Denab should be around the corner. Of course the release of the new stuff also serves to drive down the prices of the last generation processors, so even if you decide to stay with the Phenom, waiting a bit longer could still save a few dollars.

So there I was, thoroughly confused, when the 50-year-old toilet ended the discussion.

What do you think? How would you configure a programming workstation right now if you needed one?