Quote:
Originally posted by bigbear
[>> means shift bit to the right, << means left, it's actually reversed because binary is backwards, but I don't want to confuse you]
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Whether it's "backwards" actually depends on whether it's big endian or little endian.
AMDs get used in mid-range servers, and now have been used in a supercomputer. The real reason AMD hasn't had many chips used in anything high-end is because they haven't targeted the high-end market with their designs. AMD ignored the high-end until they decided to make Hammer. The only Intels really used for servers are Xeons or Itanics, processors specifically built to be used in servers. Although Xeon is based on the Pentium line of cores, it is by no means a Pentium chip.
As far as reliability goes, that's questionable. Intel has had its fair share of blunders just the same as AMD. Every processor has a bug of some sort (well, many actually), the real question is whether you can get around it.
The larger contributors to your stability are driver stability, data integrity, and heat. Most hardware instabilities people tend to encounter are actually driver issues, hardware incompatibility issues, or heat issues. Choosing the right motherboard and using compatible RAM and add-on cards (with the right drivers of course) will be your biggest success for stability. Whether it's AMD or Intel is mostly a question of chipset stability/compatibility with add-on cards and the OS.
Intel has historically had, hands down, the best chipsets for stability/performance on the market. However they have produced some very unstable and low performing chipsets in their days just as anybody else has. Via has a bad rep for instability and incompatibility, but has made strides in the last couple of years. AMD has made some decent chipsets as has SiS. Performance-wise the gap between the 875P and alternative chipsets for AMD has effectively closed.
b