Breaking Dad's Big Bad Gaming Discussion - For all things to do with PC Gaming !

[avtella]

True you have to buy re-inked cartridges which are pretty cheap but it’s a game with firmware updates blocking them - hence preventing updates. You have others like Epson that are like that too.

 

[Tech9]

For home use I have a few slightly modified and specific model Brother printers. Ink refill 400ml is under 1/2 price HP charges for one set of cartridges. I encourage my family members to print in full color because the sheet of paper is sometimes more expensive than the ink used.

 

[drinkingbird]

I was avoiding gettting involved in the AMD/Intel debate but I guess i'm a fool for the bait, it's as logical as the Android/Apple debate.

Let's just say that for high end CPUs, AMD hold the top 17 benchmarks, with intel appearing with 1 chip at number 18, then another 10 places from AMD before another intel appears again. Price per performance the charts are similar.

Four of my home pc's are AMD, 2 are Intel, and they all work well although the intel ones are pretty old now. One of our pc's is a Lenovo Legion 7 AMD laptop and it kicks a lot of desktops out of the park, it's fantastically built and solid as hell for gaming.

We have 25 Dell intels at work, that are about 4 or 5 years old and they are slow and horrible to use in comparison. Although they are bearable, i'm probably the only one that notices they are just not as snappy. I kinda despise Dell as a brand, probably because we are forced to use them at work and I think they're overpriced. I think 3 or 4 of the Dells we bought are now sitting idle and broken upstairs, psu failures,mobo failures etc. Same applies to their gaming range and Alienware imo.

I guess it depends what you want to use it for. That's not to say that you can't have an Intel Gaming Rig, many people do, although pretty much all gamers I know use Ryzens.

My old FX chip for example lasted 10 years, and then sold on for 60 quid or so and I assume it's still going strong in it's new life. That said if you want to type docs in word on the train, perhaps intel is better. I'm sure theres pros and cons to both and I don't have a hate of intel, more a love of AMD, but then I prefer AUDI to BMW as well, call me weird.

Yeah I think @L&LD nailed it with the gaming vs productivity thing. Gaming typically is AMD's arena (not just because they bought ATI) because their processors can be pushed to whatever limits you want and their main focus seems to be raw processing speed. Intel does target that market occasionally with certain processors (like the K series and previously the Extreme which have limiters either relaxed or removed) but they tend to focus more on limiting you to safe and stable boundaries (probably overly cautious and thus not being benchmark friendly).

The AMD model actually has a use in the hosting environment too where you want a single machine to host as many VMs as possible and have as much available CPU to divide up, yet I very rarely hear of a multi tenant hosting provider using AMD, likely for the reasons we've discussed, and probably some perception too. My guess is that Intel also teams up with OEMs to provide exceptional bulk pricing for those hosting providers too.

This is a debate that has raged for decades, everyone has what they like, and often for totally different purposes and reasons, so neither is going to be "wrong".

 

[drinkingbird]

Yeah was gonna say their printers were pretty good in my experience.

I've always used HP printers, the printers themselves have always been rock solid for me and the features for the price of the printer are excellent. Their ink is absurd, but luckily I haven't had to pay for an ink cartridge in a decade or more, that's a work expense.

Obviously they subsidize the price of the printer with the price of the ink. The printer is the free sample from the drug dealer

 

[drinkingbird]

I’m probably the odd one out lol. I like Dell’s businesses line Latitude/Precisions they seemed to last at least for us, still have corporate hand me downs a decade old without issues, and if you speak to the right people (and the right way) even as an individual you can get steep discounts vs listed pricing at times. HP’s (computers only) quality is the one that I’m usually most skeptical about based family experience.

I do like reading all the contrasting experiences between all of us on this thread though on various things lol. In a positive sense.

For work they use Lenovo (one time I had an HP and it was decent but nowhere near the Lenovos). Before that IBM, same thing obviously. I really like the Lenovo T series.

My personal laptop is a Dell Latitude. I like the price/performance of Dell when it is coming out of my pocket. The main factor in getting a Latitude for me is I need the two buttons below the touchpad, I'm so used to resting my thumb on the left mouse button. All the brands (even Lenovo T, which I only use an external mouse with 99% of the time) are now making the buttons under the touch sensitive part and resting your thumb there messes it all up. Seems like it would be so easy to add a feature in the driver to disable or enable that "zone". Touchpads in the past let you enable and disable the scrolling and zoom zones.....

Funny how one small thing can shoehorn you into a particular brand/model. After 20 some odd years of using touch pads with separate buttons, changing my ways isn't going to happen, at least until I don't have a choice, and at that point I'll probably cover the buttons with electrical tape and hope that removes the sensitivity from that area.

 

[drinkingbird]

True you have to buy re-inked cartridges which are pretty cheap but it’s a game with firmware updates blocking them - hence preventing updates. You have others like Epson that are like that too.

Honestly I will never buy a refilled cart or refill my own. Bypassing the firmware is usually easy enough but I've seen so many clogged print heads, which on the larger officejets etc, cost more than the printer itself. Just not worth it for me. I use solely genuine new carts and my current officejet is at about 10 years on the printhead. One before that lasted about 15 and it was still working, just wanted a document feeder which the last didn't have (and it was starting to make some funny noises).

 

[drinkingbird]

For home use I have a few slightly modified and specific model Brother printers. Ink refill 400ml is under 1/2 price HP charges for one set of cartridges. I encourage my family members to print in full color because the sheet of paper is sometimes more expensive than the ink used.

I had gotten my mom an HP years ago that the cartridges went into a bay that did not move, which had hoses running to the print head. There were mods out there to run ink tanks to it, but many of those people ended up with air in the printhead (which is virtually impossible to fix). Even her un-modded one suffered that fate, which I'm assuming is why HP moved away from that model and the carts are now in the printhead. I believe even their plotters went through the same design change, but if you're spending the money on a plotter and the ink for it, guess a print head every so often is no big deal anyway.

 

[drinkingbird]

That`s until they introduce major architecture changes, which may also introduce issues requiring them to provide a driver fix. 12th gen`s new hybrid architecture launch wasn`t without issues either.

Yeah I'm not claiming they have not had issues. The 12th gen before introducing the "efficient cores" was/is actually excellent, a big step up from the 11th gen for the same price point.

My new work laptop actually has the hybrid 12th gen in it and it is working very well, but it is brand new so the bugs have been worked out by now. 2 full power cores with HT and 8 efficient cores without HT, 12 threads total. Sort of a weird arrangement but I guess makes sense for a laptop. First time I looked in task manager at the 12 cores I had to look up to see if it was 6 cores with HT or what, then I realized it was hybrid. Before that I actually thought they had started the hybrid with the 13th gen but I guess the late 12th gen mobile procs was the proving ground.

But that being said, the issues were resolved pretty quickly between Intel and the OEMs. AMD seems to have lingering issues, even if it is potentially the OEMs fault, not giving it as much time as they should since they are less popular. But I'm sure you can find an Intel setup with lingering issues and an AMD one that has been solid from Day 1. I still honestly think it comes down more to the motherboard (and probably the chipset, where Intel really seems to have an advantage for stability) and not to the processor itself.

 

[sfx2000]

For me I will stick with AMD, as the platforms have gotten more stable and performance is completely there. The burning up issue is only limited to the X3D parts mainly due to the motherboard makers leaving voltage options open when AMD disabled it on the chips. MSI was the first to update the Bios to lockdown the voltage adjustments due the sensitivity of the V-cache with voltage. The big gaming centric OEMs went a little too crazy this time against AMD's warning

MSI was called out on this for over-volting the X3D - I saw some of the pics, and was pretty impressed - LGA can pass a fair amount of current, and to cause the package and socket to do what they did...

 

[Maverick009]

My experience with a lot of computers and a lot of tinkering over the decades is the Intel CPUs (or more likely, the motherboards they go on) are just less finnicky and the drivers are more mature. The worst I've ever seen with an intel is thermal throttling due to the OEM not doing enough cooling, and that wasn't intel's fault, and doesn't do permanent damage (and isn't even noticed by most people). Have not run into any motherboards or CPUs burning out like AMD seems to have every few years (happening right now even).

Obviously its just my bias from those past experiences, and things change over time, but systems with intel just seem more mature and stable, and the correct drivers for everything are easy to find and install.

My last AMD was a "586" back in like 95 or 96 (actually that one was fine from what I recall), but I've worked on plenty of desktops and laptops with them since then, just always got frustrated dealing with it.

Like I said I think it is more the fact that motherboards and chipsets supporting intel are just more common and more mature. Probably not really an issue with the processors themselves. Both have squeezed amazing power into a tiny chip.

Similar to how I'll never recommend an HP laptop (not the home ones anyway, even the business ones are kinda shoddy). Maybe they've gotten better, but I've fixed so many that developed bad solder joints on the motherboard (have reflowed several mobos in the oven) and other crappy design related problems, like a heat sink that doesn't even make contact with the GPU, wrong thickness thermal pad was used on several I saw. After a few class action lawsuits, it is time to just give up on a company.

I reflowed one in the oven and replaced the silicon thermal pads with copper shims and Arctic silver, it ran for years and they said it was faster than when new (not surprising, as thermal throttling was no longer kicking in constantly).

HP's official fix was to release a BIOS update so the fan ran non stop. If the heatsink isn't even touching the chip, that isn't going to fix it guys.

Of course I lean toward reliability and stability over the absolute highest speed and power. For gamers and overclockers it may be worth the hassle, right now they're neck and neck but other times AMD lets you squeeze a lot more out of it if you're willing to take the risk and deal with all the trial and error.

AMD is quite stable especially now as the chipsets are now closely worked on in conjunction with the CPU/APUs. Have never had a problem for the most part. Same can be true of Intel as well. Biggest issue with Intel is that most of their architectures sacrifice power efficiency to match AMD's performance as of late.

Also the Pentium 4s were a nightmare on heat and power and had burn up issues. Fast forward and both seem to have different issues with a few aligning with each other. This latest issue seemed to be more on the OEM board makers wanting to compete and one up each other with overclocking features.

Overall AMD's processors are a beast especially in the enterprise market where density, power efficiency, and price/performance matter.

 

[sfx2000]

Prescott P4s and Pentium Ds for example were both pretty notorious for overheating with very sub par / awful performance vs the competition.

As a side note - had a friend with a desktop coffee cup thingy that had a decapped dual core prescott embedded in lucite...

 

[sfx2000]

Also the Pentium 4s were a nightmare on heat and power and had burn up issues.

Recall Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome - where elctromigraton would kill the chip after extended overclocking...

(Northwoods and Prescotts would overclock like crazy if I recall if one could keep them cool enough and force enough volts down their pins)

 

[drinkingbird]

AMD is quite stable especially now as the chipsets are now closely worked on in conjunction with the CPU/APUs. Have never had a problem for the most part. Same can be true of Intel as well. Biggest issue with Intel is that most of their architectures sacrifice power efficiency to match AMD's performance as of late.

Also the Pentium 4s were a nightmare on heat and power and had burn up issues. Fast forward and both seem to have different issues with a few aligning with each other. This latest issue seemed to be more on the OEM board makers wanting to compete and one up each other with overclocking features.

Overall AMD's processors are a beast especially in the enterprise market where density, power efficiency, and price/performance matter.

I had a lot of P4 and Pentium D (dual core P4), they had passive (though large) heatsinks on them. The p4 was all aluminum and not as big, the Pentium D was copper pad and pipes surrounded by aluminum fins and much taller. The front 120mm case fan had a shroud directing air right to the heatsink, and the rear fan exhausted it (no shroud there). This was how Dell did it, and it worked quite well.

It was however very easy to burn up both chips if you put them in a motherboard that allowed OC. I believe those were the days when water cooling started becoming more common.

 

[drinkingbird]

Recall Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome - where elctromigraton would kill the chip after extended overclocking...

(Northwoods and Prescotts would overclock like crazy if I recall if one could keep them cool enough and force enough volts down their pins)

Yeah I'm not going to vouch for the OC ability of anything as it isn't something I've done since like 2000 and even then it was not worth the hassle, just more for playing around then I went back to stability over speed.

The only exception is my 15 year old Core 2 Quad I mentioned earlier where I defeated the artificial limiter they put in to have different price points for the same chip. I don't really consider that overclocking, and it has been rock solid the whole time. Wonder if that tiny piece of electrical tape has dried out yet. Haven't checked CPU-Z recently, it may be back down to 1033 FSB

 

[sfx2000]

The AMD model actually has a use in the hosting environment too where you want a single machine to host as many VMs as possible and have as much available CPU to divide up, yet I very rarely hear of a multi tenant hosting provider using AMD, likely for the reasons we've discussed, and probably some perception too.

The high core count Epyc chips were also a big benefit for those who ran socket based licensed SW like Oracle...

 

[drinkingbird]

The high core count Epyc chips were also a big benefit for those who ran socket based licensed SW like Oracle...

Which Oracle and everyone else quickly fixed in their licensing models

 

[BreakingDad]

You've lost the ink game. It's an amazing deal for HP. The profits are criminal.

It's £2.99 a month, or 36 quid a year for 50 pages a month, when I had an epson it was costing about 150 quid a year or more for ink, that and theres no effort, they just send you more ink when your printer is low automatically, a no brainer tbh, great if you have kids doing homework. If they make a profit that's fine with me also it's a great service, that and the printer itself is like 40 quid and ours has lasted a good 3 or 4 years so far.

 

[Maverick009]

Yeah I'm not claiming they have not had issues. The 12th gen before introducing the "efficient cores" was/is actually excellent, a big step up from the 11th gen for the same price point.

My new work laptop actually has the hybrid 12th gen in it and it is working very well, but it is brand new so the bugs have been worked out by now. 2 full power cores with HT and 8 efficient cores without HT, 12 threads total. Sort of a weird arrangement but I guess makes sense for a laptop. First time I looked in task manager at the 12 cores I had to look up to see if it was 6 cores with HT or what, then I realized it was hybrid. Before that I actually thought they had started the hybrid with the 13th gen but I guess the late 12th gen mobile procs was the proving ground.

But that being said, the issues were resolved pretty quickly between Intel and the OEMs. AMD seems to have lingering issues, even if it is potentially the OEMs fault, not giving it as much time as they should since they are less popular. But I'm sure you can find an Intel setup with lingering issues and an AMD one that has been solid from Day 1. I still honestly think it comes down more to the motherboard (and probably the chipset, where Intel really seems to have an advantage for stability) and not to the processor itself.

Intel still has issues with their CPUs and the Hybrid design that in the 13th Gen they are just getting a hang of, but still rely on Microsoft for software updates to the CPU schedular. AMD had lingering issues with 1st Gen Zen as it was brand new architecture from the ground up. There was also a little bit of teething problems with Zen 2 as it was their first chiplet CPU and at that time when OEMs came back in full force with design wins. Fast forward and stability has been great on their platforms and their market share continues to grow including in the enterprise. Also the first X3D CPU, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D launched with no issues. The problem this go around, is AMD relaxed strict requirements a little to allow overclocking, but they also did not completely enforce limits with the board partners. This led to your biggest enthusiast board makers going a little overboard without further quality checks or thought into this,

Intel has been great to on quality of drivers but also experienceed their own share of issues such as vulnerabilities in the CPU (meltdown anyone?) and sometimes in the chipset. Right now their biggest issue is power consumption and a few bugs still in their hybrid architecture. They also cannot scale as high as AMD in core count at this time.

I suspect we will see issues again soon enough with both AMD with Zen 5/5C/5 Halo products and possibly even more on Intel with Meteor Lake/Arrow Lake CPUs as they move to a Tile AKA chiplet design and also add an L4 cache at same time.

 

[drinkingbird]

Intel has been great to on quality of drivers but also experienceed their own share of issues such as vulnerabilities in the CPU (meltdown anyone?)

Yeah I'd say that is still the biggest black mark on their record. New BIOS required which cuts the speed of your computer by 20 to 30%.

 

[drinkingbird]

I remember the hardest part of swapping out a motherboard (other than praying the filler plate would fit your case) was getting all the wires from the case right, so all the buttons and lights worked.

The hardest part about upgrading the CPU was trying to get all those stupid jumpers (and eventually dip switches) on the LCD display to show the correct speed for "Turbo" and Regular. And yes, I did have a couple games that required turning off Turbo. I think one time I got both numbers right but then realized I had them backwards, turbo was showing the lower speed

Then when the frequency went above 100 I just set it to "HI" and "LO" since it was only 2 digits. I think I did eventually have a case where the first digit was just a "1" that could either be on or off. I think by the time I got over 200 the whole turbo thing was gone.