The Steel Guitar Forum

I may be in the market soon for a new laptop. I broke the display in mine so it only works with an external monitor, not real handy for portability. What are your thoughts on AMD processors? I see many with AMD processors that are less expensive than the Intel counterparts.

Depends on the particular chip. In the high end, AMD has not caught up to Intel. Intel is still the leader in CPU's.

Richard, I'll agree with Jack in what he said, Intel still holds the edge as far as performance. I currently run an Intel quad design CPU in my desktop. That being said, I did for about 4 - 5 years use AMD CPUs in some of the desktops I built and I did not notice any lack of performance.

I am, at times, hesitant to recommend one over the other. I consider competition to be essential to keep Intel an "honest broker" so to speak. I think it will be a sad day and a dark time when AMD folds and Intel has free reign.

But to your question, I think either will be fine.

AMD and Intel really seem to be playing leapfrog in terms of performance. I'd say the absolute latest and greatest Intel notebook chips seem to have the edge in terms of high performance with low power consumption, but if you are comparing like priced Intel or AMD based laptops, you won't see much difference.

Ended up with an Intel based laptop.

The reason I asked was that when I was in computer programming school (89-91), the instructors always said that AMD didn't support the 8086 instruction set 100%. I don't know that to be a fact, but that always stuck in mind.

That's true Richard,but the 8086 instruction set has been dead for 15 years at least....

After I graduated, I didn't keep up with the technology. Pentiums (80586 chips) were just coming out.

I sold and worked on computers for years (both for business and individuals) up until recently when It started feeling like work

Ii use to explain the difference in the two chips like this.. 1 company spends loads of money in advertising do you know which one? OK now you know the main difference in the Intel vs. AMD chips.

Technically Intel has a slight edge in how they handle video latency or processing, but if you ever really notice AMD always come out with the newer technology before intel.. AMD doesn't have as big of an advertising budget to deal with..

Paul Gates Jr.
Marrs D10

I agree Paul, and I also think it's going to be a sad day if AMD ever folds. They are the only one pushing Intel and vice versa. As long as there is competition, they keep each other "honest". If either folds, I am going to hate to see the aftermath. It won't be good for anybody.