Development PC: AMD vs Intel and 32-bit vs 64-bit

Question

I am looking to purchase a new development PC. My budget is not more than $1,000 USD (including monitor). I am open to laptop (desktop replacement type) or the traditional desktop PC would do just fine.

My primary development environment will be Microsoft, Visual Studio 2008 (and support of older Visual Studio 6 code as well). SQL Server 2005, 2008 as well as legacy support of SQL Server 2000. Microsoft Office 2003, potential to install 2007 but support as far back as Office 2000. The software I will wrote and support will be Windows XP mostly, but some Vista. I am going to have to assume there are 64-bit implementations out there to install to.

My first confusion begins with choosing AMD or Intel. My concern is that there is a compatibility issue with building software using Visual Studio in an AMD environment. I dont have any evidence, its just a concern that hopefully someone will clear up for me.

Last, I am confused about 32-bit and 64-bit installations. Should I stick with the least common denominator (32-bit) even though 64-bit is steadily gaining ground? I am aware that the 64-bit operating systems will address over 4G of RAM and that I like because I would like to set up as many Virtual Machines for test environments as possible, and may have many active at once..

I am not looking for the dream machine, just a machine with a monitor and the best processor for about $1000 that will allow me to write software for the majority of machines out there.

Answer 1

There are some instruction level differences between AMD and Intel but nothing that Visual Studio is going to uncover. Perhaps if you were developing with Sun Studio you might run into them (I have!).

I would go for a 64 bit machine and run 32 bit VMs on it if you feel the need to do testing in that environment. The common feeling around here seems to be that the highest level of Vista you can afford is the platform on which to develop.

Answer 2

With 32-bit XP and Vista, you might not have access to much more than 3GB or RAM, but possibly quite less (My home machine could only access 2.25GB with Vista 32). If you can afford getting a machine with 4GB of RAM, I would recommend using Vista-64 (Home Premium or Ultimate).

Depending on what kind of development you are doing hard drive speed can make a big difference in compile times. Get 10,000 RPM hard drives if possible for a desktop machine and 7200 RPM drives for a laptop, but they do cost more.

Answer 3

Get 4 gigs rams minimum equal that you need a system that can handle more than 3 gigs (so 64bits OS). Rams is cheap and IDE with all others software (debugging, testing, database client, etc) will require you some rams if you want something fast.

Answer 4

AMD smoothed out their incompatibilities long ago. Your decision on that should simply be which brand you feel has better performance/features. I would definitely go with 64 bit because you can always emulate 32 bit for VM's and apps and so on. The ability to use extra memory will pay dividends later when you're just spending $100 for another 2-4 gigs instead of another $1000 to finally buy a 64 bit machine.

Answer 5

For the cpu, you can get a Quad Core for less than 190$, with a board that can handle it (about 125$) you have a strong start. You do not need to have the latest video card...

Answer 6

Given you're interested in running multiple VM's RAM is going to be key, as is the CPU. Currently Intel are ahead on performance for dollar (especially if you are interested in overclocking) however AMD's options are acceptable and the batch of phenoms seem to be better at true quad core applications than the Intel quads.

The quality and speed of the RAM is largely unimportant. Generic DDRII 800mhz will be fine, just make sure you've got 4 or 8 GB of it.

In terms of operating systems, xp 64bit is fairly wanting on driver support even though it's been around for a while. Vista 64bit however has almost all the driver support of Vista 32bit. While this means that some of your older devices wont work, you should have much less hassles with Vista than XP. In terms of versioning, I recommend premium, however you'd need to look into the added feature list to determine if it's worth it or not (to me, it's not worth it at all).

In terms of issues that may occur due to specific processors? I agree with stimms that while there may be slight differences, it's not something you'd encounter in VS development. However my experience in that arena is by no means extensive.

Answer 7

If you look for a not-too-expensive dev machine, AMD should be better.

AMD 780G/790G mainboard has on-board integrated VGA, out-perform most nvidia/intel video integrated mainboard at a reasonable price. AMD Phenom CPU's performance is not as good as those of Intel. But considering you can get a AMD 3-core CPU at the price that Intel offers you only 2-core, it's a good deal.

Intel's CPU has great overclock potential. However as a developer, I suppose you like a solid-as-a-rock machine and not like to take risk geting a blue death screen while compiling your code.

Hardware virtualization is important if you like to paly with X64 virutal machine for testing. Most modern AMD CPUs have hardware virtualization feature built in, while Intel cut this feature from its low-end CPUs.