Are AMD cpu's unreliable? Opinions greatly needed.

A friend of mine is looking to build a computer for video editing and he was looking at the AMD 1055T processor. He queried some local shops and one of the salesmen told him that from his 10 years of experience he found AMD's to be unreliable and the would die in about 2 years. I am skeptical about this statement as I have never heard of this, and would appreciate input from those who have been using AMD processors.

AMD CPU's tend to run hotter, so they may be more prone to overheating with an equal cooling solution used on an Intel. But no processor will ever simply die on its own. Spend $20 more on a better cooler, and you've got nothing to worry about.

Overheating issues on an AMD processor? All my systems except for my server are running AMD chips. My main gaming machine is a 720BE using the stock heatsink. I have a 7850 Kuma sitting in my HTPC that is also running stock cooling and none of them overheat. They have been really good reliable chips for a long time now. My gaming system gets a work out on the weekends in 100 degree Texas weather and I haven't had any problems with it.....until I made that statement I'm sure. ~grin~

I do remember reading about driver issues with ATI graphic cards, but I'm not sure if that still applies. I prefer nVidia anyway.

A friend of mine is looking to build a computer for video editing and he was looking at the AMD 1055T processor. He queried some local shops and one of the salesmen told him that from his 10 years of experience he found AMD's to be unreliable and the would die in about 2 years. I am skeptical about this statement as I have never heard of this, and would appreciate input from those who have been using AMD processors.

leeroy_basic

A friend of mine is looking to build a computer for video editing and he was looking at the AMD 1055T processor. He queried some local shops and one of the salesmen told him that from his 10 years of experience he found AMD's to be unreliable and the would die in about 2 years. I am skeptical about this statement as I have never heard of this, and would appreciate input from those who have been using AMD processors.

leeroy_basic

I don't know about unreliable. AMD CPUs tended to be well-made. Where the problems lay concerned some chipsets such as Via's KT266 (for Athlon XP) plus the capacitor curse during the first half of the decade. I had 2 KT266 motherboards die on me within 3 years. Plus, I lost my 2005-era MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (nForce4 Ultra for Athlon 64 X2) to the capacitor curse last year. That PC lasted four years.

My wife's PC from 2001 has an Athlon XP 1700+ CPU paired with an ASUS A7M266 motherboard based on the AMD 760 chipset (older than the KT266). It's still doing great as a general purpose Windows XP PC.

Just as I trust Intel chipsets for Intel CPUs, I now trust AMD chipsets only for AMD CPUs.

A friend of mine is looking to build a computer for video editing and he was looking at the AMD 1055T processor. He queried some local shops and one of the salesmen told him that from his 10 years of experience he found AMD's to be unreliable and the would die in about 2 years. I am skeptical about this statement as I have never heard of this, and would appreciate input from those who have been using AMD processors.

leeroy_basic

Your friend is a fanboy and doesnt know much about computers from that statement. He may know somewhat about computers, but now days intel and amd are just as reliable. Intel cost more, but they also have more performance

i have had 4 AMD experiences and 4 intel experiences. first AMD expereince,a 1.6ghz thunderbird ran fine, and had heaps of dust to clog it up but it still ran fine. secondly i bought a 3500+ stock 2.2ghz but after a few years i started runnning it at 2.4ghz with stock cooling and it ran fine (the asus mobo on the other hand had one of its PCIE slots burn out for no reason with a 760gt in it...luckily its was sli so i just changed slots). third, recently bought the AMD quad core base model after reccomendations from u guys for someone who liked to multitask and was upgrading from a sub 3ghz P4. this person has not complained about it so far after 6 months so it must be good. fourth experience was a 1.2ghz sempron old PC i reinstalled with Xp and fine tuned it, and WOW it ran so fast!!!

all my intel experiences have been great to, right from my early P3 700mhz though to my core 2 duo e6400 and now to my two i7's we have here (920 and a 930)

I've been using AMD CPU's for years now.Mmy first AMD CPU was an Athlon XP 1600+. That CPU still runs flawlessly and iirc that generation of AMD's ran hotter than todays. A year later I got another Athlon XP 1900+ which - surprise! - still works. I also have an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ which still runs and am currently using an Athlon II X2 245 which has yet to cause me any problems what so ever. Furthermore, I have an Athlon P320 in my new laptop and I am quite impressed considering how inexpensive the computer was.

Based on my experience with AMD, their CPU's are very reliable. In fact, both Intel and AMD's CPU are top notch when it comes to reliability.

Both Intel and AMD make extremely reliable CPU's.

I work as a PC technician and for every faulty Intel or AMD CPU I see I will see 100's of either faulty motherboard, HDD, RAM, PSU's and optical drives.

So basically reliability in the CPU is not an issue worth considering.

amd cpus are very reliable i have actually had amd cpu's ever since i upgraded from a pentium 3.

my old san diego core 3700 a64 is still going pretty strong in my old computer and that has been overclocked for years at a time from 2.2ghz in the range off 2.6 to 2.7 ghz.

i do have and know of socket a semprons and athlon xp's that are still going strong and have had the hell overclocked out of them over the years.

i have been through countless amd cpu's and never had a single one fail oh and nowadays intels are better for clock for clock but they run very hot compared to say my phenom II 955 x4 which has a thermal limit of 62c and they cost a fair bit more.

im not a amd fan boy by any means i only went for the amd chips for best bang per buck at the times i was upgrading it just happeened to be amd had the better bang per buck, i would just as soon get an intel chip if it offered more performance for the price :)

Do you mean the physical CPU chip will die? That is highly unlikely and its more likely your motherboard will go first. I've only purchased AMD so far for my builds, simply because of the performance for the price, Intel may be faster, but not enough for you to really tell in virtually any applications. It depends on the programmer anyway, if they build for AMD's architecture/pipeline etc and take it into consideration and even then, a quad is a quad at the end of the day.

for your freind the 6 core amd will be a far better deal if the video encoding he uses can use 6 cores and will out perform intels for that task (unless you pay silly prices for a 6 core intel)

the amd chip will be a bit slower clock for clock but it will have 2 extra cores which will make it perform a lot better for encoding if the software supports 6 cores.

my new PC has a AMD Athlon II x4 CPU. and i love it. the heat on when im not using run from 28*C-38*C and when gaming 35*C-48*C

i used intel in the mid-late 90's, but for the last 10 years i've been using amd, and i have had no probelms with one cpu chip. ever. currently have the phenom 2 965 - had for 5 months - and it's the best cpu i've ever had so far. load temps with the stock cooler are 33-35 degrees on idle and 35-40 in gaming. i mostly hit 40 on a hot day

i have the phenom II 955 currently and it runs pretty cool as does my dads one between 30-40 odd although i found the stock cooler to be a piece of crap and my chip easily hit the 62 limit from amd with the stock one in under a minute running a stress test.

im using the sunbeam core contact freezer cooler on mine and under full load on a stress test it is lucky to get as high as 50c and takes about 5 minutes to heat up that much with all 4 cores at 100% :)

stock cooler is pretty bad soon after i built my comp i had to get the cooler i mentioned above as my cpu was over heating too much playing games with the stock one had this chip for a year now and its going pretty well :)

I decided to do a check of my CPU brand usage starting with my first DIY and including notebooks (plus Intel Macs) later on:

1992 AMD 386DX-40

1994 AMD 486DX2-66

1995-1997 Several PCs with Intel CPUs: P-150, P-166, P-200MMX

1997 Intel P2-266

1998 Intel Celeron 400

1999 Intel P3-733

2001 Three PCs all with AMD Athlon XP 1700+

2001 Sager notebook P4-1.8ghz

2003 HP Pavilion ze5270 notebook with P4-2.8ghz

2005 Athlon 64 X2 4200+

2006 Mac Mini with Intel Core Duo 1.6ghz

2007 Toshiba Satellite A215-s4757 notebook with AMD Turion X2 1.8ghz

2009 Phenom II X3 720BE (4th core enabled)

Of all those, two of the Athlon XP 1700+ PCs died within two years due to bad motherboards (both with Via Apollo KT266 chipsets). The HP laptop died in 2005. The motherboard of the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ PC died last year due to bulging capacitors. Those at 2006 and after are fine.......so far.

As for the actual processors themselves. Not one, Intel or AMD, has died on me so far.

I decided to do a check of my CPU brand usage starting with my first DIY and including notebooks (plus Intel Macs) later on:

1992 AMD 386DX-40

1994 AMD 486DX2-66

1995-1997 Several PCs with Intel CPUs: P-150, P-166, P-200MMX

1997 Intel P2-266

1998 Intel Celeron 400

1999 Intel P3-733

2001 Three PCs all with AMD Athlon XP 1700+

2001 Sager notebook P4-1.8ghz

2003 HP Pavilion ze5270 notebook with P4-2.8ghz

2005 Athlon 64 X2 4200+

2006 Mac Mini with Intel Core Duo 1.6ghz

2007 Toshiba Satellite A215-s4757 notebook with AMD Turion X2 1.8ghz

2009 Phenom II X3 720BE (4th core enabled)

Of all those, two of the Athlon XP 1700+ PCs died within two years due to bad motherboards (both with Via Apollo KT266 chipsets). The HP laptop died in 2005. The motherboard of the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ PC died last year due to bulging capacitors. Those at 2006 and after are fine.......so far.

As for the actual processors themselves. Not one, Intel or AMD, has died on me so far.

jun_aka_pekto

When I was building my computer I ran into a guy like that. Tried to tell me that the core 2 duos were better than the phenom 2's. In my experience I have had more Intel based computers die on me than AMD. Iantheone

core 2 (anything) isnt better than the phenom II, lol some people have some blindly biased points of view.

AMD is just as reliable as intel, and have 95% of the performance,

Sorry to break it to the fanboys, but with intel you really are paying extra for a NAME/brand.

CPUs have been very reliable for a long time now. But motherboards were terrible during the first half of the decade from 2002-2005. Perhaps it's because of the capacitor plague or perhaps not. But, I had 4 dead motherboards from that era:

2 Athlon XP motherboards with Via chipsets (an Abit and a Soyo Dragon +)

1 Athlon 64 X2 with nForce4 Ultra chipset (MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum)

1 Apple iBook motherboard (replaced free by Apple and also a bad battery)

Add also my HP Pavilion ze5270 which I suspect also had a bad motherboard. It's a shame that my wife's 2001 Athlon XP PC which has the oldest chipset (AMD 760) for that CPU outlasted them all with this decade almost done.

Edit:

If you still have the old capacitors like the ones behind the CPU socket, I'd keep a close eye on them. This is a photo of bulging capacitors from my MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. Most modern motherboards switched to solid state capacitors. But, some boards still have the old ones. Most of them are those with nVidia chipsets.