Are AMD systems unreliable for trading?

D

Dart

I built my computer with an AMD processor, not really thinking about it since I've used them in the past. However, I've encountered a few glitches with my motherboard. I'm wondering if AMD based products are not as robust as Intel. Any thoughts?
 
As I suspected, Asus doesn't make a 6 or 7 pci-e X16 board. You have to go intel for that many slots. I guess in the money saving AMD market there isn't anyone willing to spend $500 for a motherboard.
 
I do recall an instance way back in the day.. a bunch of Tradestation Charting users were having a particular problem and most were not. All of us having the problem had the same AMD processors. It appeared to be in the microcode. I put myself in the shoes of a software developer and realized that I would get my software working on an Intel mobo with an Intel processor and probably would quit right there leaving the rest to fend for themselves.
 
I did not see any evidence that AMD might be unreliable.

However latest AMD processors are not as good as Intel in terms of speed and thermal characteristics. Modern compilers optimize better for Intel.

Motherboards and chipsets are not as advanced as the ones for Intel because manufacturers are not going to spend money developing for platform that is losing market share.

Sorry to say as a long term AMD fan and customer but my advice is to go Intel.

I run 8 "core" AMD Piledriver on Gigabyte and multithreaded apps run about 20% slower than on Intel I7.

20% difference might not be important or noticeable for most less demanding applications and the cost of building AMD is significantly lower.

However AMD box doubles as an extra space heater which comes handy this winter.
 
Before I built this computer I had a nasty experience with AMD. My nice computer that did everything I needed wouldn't run certain new programs, Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, Maya... why? Because apparently AMD didn't put the necessary MMX version in it's Athlon series processors. I had to dig up an old Pentium 4 to run the new software. It didn't have the performance, because it was really old, but it had that extension I needed. I should have listened to msyelf, not all the AMD fans at the store, and gamers I know who run AMD. At the time I was just using my system for gaming when I built it, but now I need it to be solid for trading. Looks like I'm gonna be spending some money to replace the motherboard and processor to go Intel, right after buying them. :mad:

And yeah, this thing does get hot.
 
Maybe the problem is with the choice of a ASUS motherboard. I have purchased several ASUS motherboards in the past and have never been able to get one to work right when all six slots were filled. Pulling out the ASUS motherboards and installing a MSI motherboard worked well with all 6 slots filled. The ASUS and MSI boards were all for AMD processors. For running a large number of monitors, I choose a MSI or Gigabyte motherboard and leave the ASUS motherboards on the shelf. This problem may not pertain to your recent updated ASUS motherboard and multi-monitor build.
 
Interesting. I haven't RMA'd my motherboard, but the single PCI slot died already, one day it stopped detecting my sound card that was in it, and never again detected it. I tried a known good PCI graphics card in it, and the moment I plugged a monitor into it I got color sploches on the screen of that monitor, like when the graphics memory is going bad. Then the system freezed up. Pulled the card and tested it again in my other computer, card was fine. Dead PCI slot in less than three months. I wonder if Asus does better when they make an Intel board. The board I got is a M5A99FX Pro R2.0.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A99FX_PRO_R20/
 
A year or two back I was looking for a MB with 6 or more PCie16x slots and found what I was looking for in I think a Gigabyte for the AMD processor that the overclocks and gamers were real hot on. I did not follow through with my plans to do the updated PC build and left that for the future. MSI may now offer an equivalent motherboard. I would rather have the MSI board if I had a choice. Hopefully your RMA replacement board will work well for you as I recall you were able to get all 14 monitors working.
 
As a side note, I tried to run a 7850, a 7970, and a 5450 in the Asus board, and it wouldn't work right. I pulled the 5450 and it worked ok, but the 7850 died completely after a few weeks. Computer one day refused to boot, pulled all the cards except the 7970 and it booted. Put just the 7870 and it refused to boot into windows. I returned the fried 7850... it could have been a bad card to start with. But it could also have been the board fried it.

I think this Asus board is sensitive to higher power video cards. It seems to work fine with a 7970 and two FirePro 2460's, and I might add a third FirePro 2270 to it and it probably would run fine with that in there too. The Gigabyte might handle more high power cards at once than the Asus.
 
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