AMD or P4

Porter_Hound

Lo All,
Looking 2 spend a few of my hard earned €'s on a nice new machine. Looking for some advice on which way 2 go.
(Amd or P4) I'm looking for a fast gaming machine.
What kinda specs would I want 2 keep up with the latest games?
Any help much appreciated

_sheep

Grab yourself an Amd Xp1800 or Xp2200 upgrade kit from www.komplett.ie and make sure you have a suitable case and power supply (300w+)

Cant really go wrong with them upgrade kits, if you do go down P4 route make sure you go for ddr ram instead of rambus, thats if you plan on gaming

Need a full system ? is maith liom and pc anseo http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?action=info&AvdID=&CatID=&GrpID=&p=23345&s=fp

Gerry

Do a search in the technology forum for similar topics, you will find loads of info.

eg "new pc" "amd or intel"

Mutz

Does the Difference in Front Side Bus (FSB) Speed make much of a difference in AMD and Pentium Mobo's?

For Example AMD's FSB is 233 and Pentiums in 533.

Can Someone Clarify this for me?

Chaos-Engine

I heard that the AMD XP processors are not actually there stated speed but much less(e.g. AMD XP2200 has a clock speed more like 1.6 GHz)... Please clarify...

MarkR

That's true all right. Have a look at http://athlonxp.amd.com/technicalInformation/understandingPerformance.jsp for some info, along with http://athlonxp.amd.com/faq/ .

This should tell you what you want to know.

JustHalf

Originally posted by megasheep
Cant really go wrong with them upgrade kits, if you do go down P4 route make sure you go for ddr ram instead of rambus, thats if you plan on gaming

Serious lols there. My 1066 RDRAM machine owns everything.

marauder

DDR <nelson's voice> ha ha </nelson's voice>
I too have 1066 RDRAM and it really makes a difference.

Mutz

Read it and from what I Gather is that AMD make more use per processor Cycle, while the Pentium increase frequency to do the same quantity of work.

I Read Reviews of the Athlon XP2000+ which is 1.66ghz and it compares evenly to the p4 2.0ghz.

Its all fairly Confusing, but I'm going to Buy Athlon cause its Cheaper and seems to give the same performance as the p4 2.0ghz which I was going to buy.

Only Thing now that I'm still Worried about is the FSB Speeds between the Athlon Mobo's (233mhz) and the Pentium Mobo's (533mhz).

Winters

My AthlonXP 1600+ (1.4Ghz) would be equal to a 1.6Ghz P4 ... and once i overclock it id say i might be able to get it up to a 2Ghz P4. Look at the following Benchmarks for referance:

Currant CPU is 450Mhz P3
1st CPU is AthlonXP 1600+
2nd CPU is P4 1.6Ghz
3rd CPU is P4 2.0Ghz
4th CPU is AthlonXP 1800+

marauder

3DMark ar MadOnion

The EFFECT OF THE FSB SPEED on GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE...

3DMark Score Chipset

11450 100% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 <- this is my system
11421 100% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
11206 98% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400
10873 95% NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200
9602 84% ATI Radeon 8500
9152 80% NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500
: : :

the reason my P42.4 GHz with Ti4400 beats the other P4 2.4GHz with Ti4600 is that mine has 533mhz FSB with PC1066 RDRAM. The others are likely brought down by PC800 RDRAM and DDR as its an average...

if you are trying to decide on putting money in the graphics card or the chip with higher FSB then I would say put the money in the graphics card though... Look at the difference between GF4 and GF3........
you might want to wait for NV30 or Radeon 9700.....

Gerry

The 266mhz fsb on the athlon is struggling to feed the fastest athlons enough memory bandwidth now. Sure, some boards support ddr333, but the bus between memory and processor ( front side bus ) is still at 266.

I personally think everyone should go and read this article.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzQx

Bear in mind that this site is usually quite an amd fanboy site.

Very interesting article, and it will back up what the lads have been saying about pc1066 rdram.

Matt Simis

Whlie I wouldnt flat out say RDRAM "ownz", I disagree with the second post, there is really only one reason to go with DDR over RDRAM, price. 1066 is more expensive, but performs better. Go with RDRAM if the price and possibility of Intel dropping support for it on their own chipsets doesnt scare you off. Regardless of Intel, Im sure you will be able to get some sort of RDRAM P4 Chipset from VIA or SIS (:rolleyes: ) in the future however.


Something worth considering is the following:

512MB DDR 400 (PC3200) is €204
2x 256MB 1066RDRAM is €396


DDR400 is very competitive with RDRAM and just over half the price. Put it another way, you can almost buy twice as much of the fastest (and most expensive) DDR than RDRAM.

Prices from Komplett (of course).



Matt

astrofool

the new ddr400 boards with cheaper ddr400 ram, are performing at the same level as the 1066 boards, 1-2% lower for some 1-2% higher for others. Thats using an SiS Memory controller, should be interesting when VIA get their version out (p4x400 even if u can't buy them anywhere).

RDRAM is good memory, but lost it's way from the beginning, when intel launches granite bay (is that the codename?) with the dual ddr channels, that'll be rambus' death knell.

DDR-II has double the bandwidth of DDR again apparantly, so should be an interesting year ahead.

marauder

wow, 396 is quite the price.
I got the exact same kingston memory in the US for $270...

www.newegg.com

btw I dont think future chipset support for RDRAM is really an issue. These days memory specs change so fast by the time you get around to upgrading proc/mobo your memory is useless. where is all that PC133 SDRAM I bought last year?????

Matt Simis

Yeah, fair point I suppose. However, I have reused DDR ram from over a year ago in new enough systems recently.

Like astrofool said tho, with Dual Channel DDR coming up, its quite unlikely RDRAM will remain unless Rambus switch to Quad Channel or 2000MHz RDRAM.
And the DDR400 you buy now will (most likely) work in a Dual Channel DDR (1) board early next year.



Matt

Underscore

Getting back to the question at hand, Athlon XPs vs. P4s, Athlon XPs give more power for the money (in my opinion, anyway), but if you have a major budget, you'll want a top end P4, as they are faster than any Athlon.