I have used both Intel and AMD processors for servers but I must say that I prefer AMD over Intel simply because of its performance. Unfortunately most of the people in the hosting world prefer Intel which forced me to focus on only Intel processors but I hope to get AMD processors once in a while.
Everyone knows that AMD and Intel have been battling for the CPU #1 spot for about 6 years straight now.
I used to prefer AMD over Intel server wise until about 8 months ago when AMD seemed to fall behind and Intel took over. Since intel makes motherboards and networking gear now... they have taken control of the server area. Of course their processors + motherboards + nics all in one machine are going use their resources to the max. AMD lost this edge since they only make the processor still... and havent expanded into other area's as of yet.
All of my servers are Intel processors.... but since I am a diehard fan of AMD all my home machines are AMD
<< What do you prefer, AMD or Intel? Why? Which would outperform the other, if both were the same GHz: AMD Duron vs Intel Celeron // AMD Athlon XP vs Intel Pentium // Dual Athlon MP vs Dual Intel Xeon >>
What do I prefer and why? I prefer Intel for everything. Why? Well it depends, I use only Intel for home and for servers but each have their own reasons - one big reason is I find cooling on Intel are a lot better than AMD, this may however only be my personal experience. I like AMD, they are cheap, but that is the only reason why - I've never had to push my systems to their max, therefore have never had any problems or seen any differenced between either AMD or Intel. I don't like Intel because it's quite expensive, although Intel Celeron processors are very cheap which I like.
For my current servers, I only use Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz with dual hard-drives with RAID1 and 1536mb ddr ram.
I find these servers are very good, and have very good performance. However, all my new servers will be Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz with dual SCSI hard-drives, 3gb ddr ram and so on. Obviously, I these will perform a lot better than the P4 2.8Ghz, however the P4's for me have done perfect so far.
<< Unfortunately most of the people in the hosting world prefer Intel which forced me to focus on only Intel processors >>
My supplier now actually deals only in Intel based servers. They used to do AMD, but didn't do many - so not only do Intel Celeron, P4 and Xeon. Now their business has done a lot better actually, and they're able to give a real good price too. I actually have quite a hard job finding a reliable and reputable supplier that offers AMD servers. I don't mean me renting elsewhere, I mean having the systems built and me co-lo them.