Why Pentium 496

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:50:40 +0200, Mxsmanic

That is a reason to more carefully scrutinize the failure point, which was not an AMD processor but another factor like fan or grease failure, chbuttis cooling problems. One should never buy a system with the idea that one of the basic fundamental needs will fail and thus Intel's last-resort shutdown would matter. Certainly that shutdown feature is better than NOT having one, but it is not something that should be among primary considerations in any remotely normal system, selection.

I suggest that you drew the wrong conclusion. A system built with an Intel CPU but same problem the AMD one had, is not trouble-free either. You saw the result of the problem as a focal point instead of the cause. Whatever that AMD CPU was, that it was a past generation CPU is a sign that many alternatives from either manufacturer produce more heat today, we can't just write-off the AMDs as hot-running, and contrary to urban myth, many Intel alternatives actually had a higher TDP but merely idled cooler.

Put the $ towards the problem instead. If it overheats the problem was the cooling system or maintenance (lack of) towards cleaning out dust, replacing poor thermal compound, or relubing junk fans (if for some reason it isn't viable to replace them with good quality fans instead).

Some have had trouble, for example Intel southbridge USB issues-burnout. Pointing to one past chipset used on AMD is no evidence against AMD itself. Even in the past some chipsets for Intel posed problems, like Sis 620 (or was it 630) refusing to use UMDA for HDD on NT-2K-XP in many cases. So long as the system proposed doesn't use the specific chipset, there is no point considering that past generation chipset. It brings up another prudent practice though, buying mature platforms where there is ample feedback about issues.

That would be a silly random conclusion. One could argue the same thing for an Intel Celeron w-Intel-integrated video, as it is the most popular combination for the highest selling market segment (OEM low-end).

Not at all. Many popular benchmarks make a ridiculous buttumption that one would only run a few of the premier applications, newest versions of those. How many people do you know that pay thousands of dollars every time a newer version of their apps come out? Most people don't, only getting newer versions when it happened to ship with their new OEM system (which tends not to have premier apps on it at all, except perhaps MS Office).

Take the typical apps of a few years ago and even Athlon XP beat the P4 though online benchmarks suggested P4 beat it most of the time (towards the end of the Athlon XP era at least).

There are reasons to choose either alternative, it would be most valid to choose based on the specific, most common or most demanding use the system will encounter... as it is with a comparison of any two CPUs having different architectures. Nothing wrong with a P4 or Pentium D where it excells but the very specific use, not even a newer version of the same application, must be considered.