Athlon or P4 setup?

Flashman

Hi,
I'm getting one of the these two setups:

Asus A7N8x Deluxe
Athlon XP2600 Tbred

or

Abit IC7
P4 2.6ghz PC800

I really don't have any idea how they compare performance wise, so any insight would be appreciated.

jesus_thats_gre

Get a P4, i just dont like Athlons.


Here is some benchmarrks:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-12.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-13.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/athlon_xp-15.html

Col_Loki

Well the Asus a7n8x deluxe i can vouch for, brilliant motherboard!! Id recomend getting the xp2500+ over the xp2600+ , the 2500 has the new barton core with extra cache so performs on par if not a little better that the 2600 afaik. Its also a very good chip for overclocking, have mine running at xp3200 level .

Flashman

I'm tempted to go for the Athlon, since the money I save could go towards new speakers or gfx card, but the P4 is looking good too. Am I right in thinking that the PC800 is brand new technology, and that the Athlon xps are based on stuff a year old already?

BoB_BoT

Ohh a sticky situation. i would have to say the p4 for one simple reason, it's faster. Athlons are great value for money unlike the pentiums, but athlons are only using half the fsb and pentiums are using a hell of a lot more. the good thing about athlons though are they're good for overclocking but if you're not into that just go with the p4 for speed and lots off ddr uber fast, don't forget the realatively good graphics card.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Flashman as much as dislike you because of your pissing about on the for sale board, Firstly, definitely an intel p4c setup, and get an abit is7 mainboard, they are cheaper and outperform the ic7 boards

RicardoSmith

P4 its faster...

MrPinK

For the money you'll spend on a P4 2.6ghz you could get an XP2800+ and still save €50 to get yourself some extra RAM.

RicardoSmith

In many games and apps the P4 would probably still be faster...

MrPinK

And there are also games and apps for which the XP2600+ would be faster than the P4 2.6Ghz. Overall tho, the P4 would outperform the XP2600+ but i don't think it would an XP2800+

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by MrPinK
And there are also games and apps for which the XP2600+ would be faster than the P4 2.6Ghz. Overall tho, the P4 would outperform the XP2600+ but i don't think it would an XP2800+

Well look at the apps and games that you play check out a few sites that have benchmarked P4 and AMDs using that software and pick whichever gives the best performace for the cheapest price. A lot of stuff especially if its using SSE/SSE2 optimisation properly will be quicker on the P4. If you get one using FSB 533/800 is likely to be quicker on the P4 though.

Personally I'm into quiet/cool systems and you can do that easier with a P4 rig, so maybe I'm bias. I used to have a couple of AMD machines but switched to P4's. I see no reason so switch back. A difference €50-100 is nothing IMO.

CivilServant

P4 is faster for encoding either in mp3 or divx so if you do either of these on a regular basis you can save a lot of time by getting an intel solution. Pentiums are also faster for graphic packages such as lightwave, maya and 3d studio max that require a lot of processing power for rendering scenes.

Flashman

It seems rediculous to pay a premium for the latest technology, the p4, and it still can't outperform the athlon in many respects.
I think I might get a system which could be upgraded to the 400mhz fsb athlons once they appear. Thanks for the help guys.
Sorry truckle about your sale, but matters were out of my hands.

Matt Simis

Things arent as cut and dry as people are posting.

I have a 3500MHz P4 with Hyperthreading and a nForce2 powered AMD Athlon [Barton] 2600MHz (well its my girlfriends and thats real clock speed, not quantispeed).


The P4 is faster for some media encoding and Quake3 based games. The AMD is much faster for 3DMark01 (AMD gets over 20K and P4 gets under 19k) and anything requiring real calculations as well as some other games. They are pretty much a drawn in 3DMark03.

Ill be increasing the clock speed of the P4 soon, but its clear the P4 still requires a massive (as in over 1GHz) clock speed advantage to remain competitive with Athlons, not quite as cut and dry as portrayed. Both systems have ATI 9800s. The P4 is a dual channel DDR Granite Bay motherboard and the nForce2 is running in single channel mode (its faster running on one stick really fast than 2 merely "fast" ones). These are pretty much the way things are going to be for the next 6months till Athlon64 comes out and ends the discussion.



Matt

Cyrus

and get an abit is7 mainboard, they are cheaper and outperform the ic7 boards

only at default it has now been shown that with both boards at 250 fsb and the negative 5:4 mem divider used the ic7 comes out on top.

The P4 is faster for some media encoding and Quake3 based games. The AMD is much faster for 3DMark01 (AMD gets over 20K and P4 gets under 19k) and anything requiring real calculations as well as some other games. They are pretty much a drawn in 3DMark03.

first of all the reason 3dmark 03 is a dead heat is because its almost 100% a gpu benchmark and cpu speed makes far less diff than say 01 which is a better indicator of overall perf

second nforce2 is a quick chipset and acquits otself well against the gb chipset however i think for the moment canterwood has shown it convincingly puts the P4 ahead for the time being, a p4 2.6c on a canterwood board will beat an xp2600 on an nforce 2 board (at 200fsb iirc) in most benchmarks. if u overclock both chips to their maximum i would predict ud see 3.4 from the p4 and maybe 2.4 from the xp, again i think the p4 would be somewhat faster

finally flashman i wouldnt bother with the 2.6 most 2.4s seem to be doing 3.2 + on default vcore when overclocked

ozt9vdujny3srf

Originally posted by Flashman
It seems rediculous to pay a premium for the latest technology, the p4, and it still can't outperform the athlon in many respects.
I think I might get a system which could be upgraded to the 400mhz fsb athlons once they appear. Thanks for the help guys.
Sorry truckle about your sale, but matters were out of my hands.

Hehe tis ok now was just a little annoyed with wallyish offers

I disagree with the whole athlon idea but sure there ya go it remains to be a good processor at an excellent price so ye cant go too far wrong.

jesus_thats_gre

The benchmark results I have posted above clearly show that the P4 outperforms the Athlon in the majority of tests.. There also very little differnce now in price between the two.

Also, the majority of the P4's extra features have not been fully utilised yet and it still outperforms the Athlon. Add HT to this and its blows it away!

BabyEater

"There also very little differnce now in price between the two"
There is a major price difference between the 2 you can buy a XP2800 for cheaper than a 2.4GHz P4 . The only dear Athlon chip is the XP3200. What are the majority of P4's features that haven't been implemented yet.
As for the original post it depends what you are doing with it . If it is for games i would use the money you save on the Athlon and buy a good graphics card.

Flashman

Its for games alright, what else?!?!:)
If I suddenly come across an extra 150e, I'd probably go gor the p4. As it stands, the athlon seems like a winner to me.
Is the 2500 xp barton a good choice? The asus board looks very good, I think it's the fastest of the nforces. And I'll go for 512mb twinmos ram.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Cyrus
snip

first of all the reason 3dmark 03 is a dead heat is because its almost 100% a gpu benchmark and cpu speed makes far less diff than say 01 which is a better indicator of overall perf

second nforce2 is a quick chipset and acquits otself well against the gb chipset however i think for the moment canterwood has shown it convincingly puts the P4 ahead for the time being, a p4 2.6c on a canterwood board will beat an xp2600 on an nforce 2 board (at 200fsb iirc) in most benchmarks. if u overclock both chips to their maximum i would predict ud see 3.4 from the p4 and maybe 2.4 from the xp, again i think the p4 would be somewhat faster

snip

As you would say, first of all [ ] I said "pretty much drawn".. the P4 is about 3% faster. I would disagree thats its almost entirely GPU bound, I have an Athlon SMP system thats bested by a technically slower (in true MHz again, ignoring quantispeed) P4 based system using the same GPU. 3DMark03 is quite receptive to FSB and memory speeds, giving the P4 higher scores all else being equal (meaning the same GPU).

Secondly, you quote the overclocked "max speeds" of P4 3400 and AMD 2400mhz.. I have just posted findings of overclocked cpus of both types and both CPUs were running at higher "max" speeds" and the results were as given.. no clear indication of a "better" system. While we may like to give a simple answer that one is the "winner", that simply isnt the case.

Regardless I have a multitude of systems around me, my main system is a P4 (Im not biased against P4s), the one thing that is unequivocally better on Intel systems is the ease of use. Its very easy now to buy a P4, a new motherboard and get excellent performance. Athlon motherboards and system still require comparitively obscure patches, drivers and an indepth knowledge of BIOS settings. If you dont want hassle, buy a P4 and spend your spare time playing games, watching DVDs, filling Tax returns or whatever else you people do in your PC time.



Matt

RicardoSmith

Personally I thought my P4 1.8@2.4+ was quite reasonable for the performance I'm getting out of it. Certainly I find I'm not having any problems with any software or games either and it runs cool and quiet with little cooling even overclocked. Yet you still hear of enough people having problems with the AMD chipsets and in some games. Thats why I switched to P4's and I don't see any good reason to switch back.

I don't see that high clock speed is a negaive thing. If it delivers the performance at the end of the day does it really matter if its ghz or mhz?