"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...
Actually, for audio recording and mixing purposes, the AMD chip is
generally regarded as outperforming the Intel chips. I'll have to rely
on others to explain why, as I don't know.

It could well do some computations faster. If I were trying to build a
Pentium-compatible chip without violating Intel's patents, I'd probably
end up with somewhat different amounts of time taken to execute some of
the instructions. Generally, when a CPU is redesigned from scratch, the
redesigners end up making some of the instructions appreciably faster
because they think of things the original designers didn't think of, or
they know (from experience) that some instructions are more frequently
used than the original designers foresaw. One of the things you'd do,
of
course, is study existing software to see which CPU instructions it's
using in time-critical portions.

As you can guess, I'm a computer scientist, not a musician...


What you guys forget is that a CPU does not work alone. The motherboards,
support chips and drivers for an AMD are different to Intel.
The AMD problems with music seem to be sorted out now, but that certainly
wasn't the case a while ago, and many software companies simply refused to
support AMD.
Personally I'd still recommend AMD for games and graphics, but Intel for
music. Many programs are still not fully tested under AMD platforms
unfortunately, but if you are prepared to stick only to software that
supports AMD, then go for it. Although I don't see the difference in price
or real world performance as all that great anyway. Most musicians worry
more about fan noise, etc. and many of course prefer Apple computers (which
are now using Intel as well :-)

MrT.