AMD vs Intel - Performance and Compatibility

I used to prefer Intel, mainly because AMD became a major player only after Intel released their first Pentium processor. My first PC was an 8086, then 286, after 386, and 486, their chips have always been Intel. Even my Pentium and Pentium II were Intel. Then I tried the Cyrix, and my next 2 processors after that were the Cyrix K6. It was around this time when I heard about the AMD Athlon running faster than everything else, but with one problem, heat and blue screens, and because of that I decided to go for a Pentium III, and that was my last Intel processor.

After the heating issue was resolved I tried AMD, also because of their cheaper prices compared to Intel, and because I'm a gamer speed is very important. I started with the AMD Athlon 1800, then slowly upgraded it until the 3200, which is the fastest Athlon 32 even today.

When the Athlon 64's came out I told myself that there was no way I'd downgrade to a slower 32 bit Pentium 4, and believe it or not the AMD's were still very cheap when compared to the Intel P4, so I got the Athlon 64 3000 then after the 3500. Now I'm using an Athlon X2 5000. I never saw the need to spend over 300% more for an FX processor that only outputs less than 30% additional speed compared to the X2.

Intel finally lowered the prices of their Extreme Edition dual core processors, and they are much more faster than AMD's FX, which is quite tempting and I'm seriously considering going back to Intel for my next upgrade.

The only problem with Intel chips are that they have big compatibility issues! Intel chips can't run on just any chipset board, of course they don't tell you that, but if your board uses a chipset other than Intel, namely VIA and nForce, you'll experience crashes, blue screens, and incompatibilities with ATI and nVidia video cards. AMD on the other hand can run smoothly on VIA, nForce and also Intel chipsets.

Intel's compatibility problem might not be important to the average user whose only concerns are everyday applications and e-mailing and browsing the internet, but for a serious Power User like me, or gamers in general, that means everything.

For example, I now have an nVidia gForce 8800 GTX video card, and before that I had an nVidia gForce SLI 7900 setup (meaning that I have 2 video cards installed and running at tandem in my pc). The SLI setup will only work with nForce chipsets, and the nVidia gForce 8800 GTX will supposedly perform better with nForce chipsets. I have another pc that uses an ATI X800 XT PE and I'm planning to upgrade it with the upcoming latest ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT video card with a VIA chipset motherboard. On either of these setups I won't be able to use an Intel processor.

You might wonder why I don't just get an Intel chipset board? First, because the choices are too few and when you setup an extreme gaming rig you want each and every specification to be exactly how you want it and nothing less. Second, the board brands I prefer only use either VIA or nForce chipsets, and I'm not prepared to shift to a brand I've never used before, even if they have the exact specifications I want.