eternal question intel r amd

elexes

right im going to build a new pc next week r so but i need to decide on the processor .

the computer im going to build will be mainly just for gaming/lans and not much else . but im a bit stuck on what cpu to get for it .

on the amd side theres the amd xp 3000 ( €175.99 ) komplett.ie
and on the intel side theres a p4 3.0 ( £ 210.00 ) gemma.co.uk

im going to be putting it into a shuttle but i havent decided exactly what one to get also ( some advice would help also are the shuttles any good for overclocking ???)

in euros im guessing the p4 would cost about 270 maby 280 is it worth the extra 100 euros for the p4 ? or would i be better off spending that on the ram ?

ARGINITE

Go with the AMD unless u have 298.91 to spend on the Intel. So u can save ur money and spend it on good quality ram or better cooling. Shuttle motherboards are good motherboards but I think Abit are better for overclocking.

Mutant_Fruit

AMD are cheaper, and give better performance as compared to price. If you get the XP2500+ you can easily enough overclock up to 3000+ speeds, and sometimes up to 3200+ speeds.

joePC

I have to say I've always stuck with AMD (Price/preformance Ratio) but if you want your system to be future prof go with Intel the 3Ghz (800Mhz fsb) it blows the AMD 3000+ out of the water, gaming or otherwise.

I would spend the extra few quid....

Thanks joePC...........

OfflerCrocGod

If your going to be spending that much on a new processor(€280) then look for an Athlon64 3000+, they are basically Athlon64 3200+s without 1MB of cache(512KB instead), and they smoke the p4 3.0Ghz:D. Here is one for €180 not bad!.

Col_Loki

Erm thats £180 stg and im not so sure about "smoking" a p4 3ghz ......... Wouldnt mind seeing a few benchmarks.

Do they have motherboards that will take the AMD64 in m-atx to suit the shuttle (socket 754)??
Another little problem is that you cant upgrade the AMD64 without a new mobo as it seems the 754 will be replaced with the FX 939pin.......
Im definetly an AMD fan but have to point out them little things.

If your willing to overclock, mabye an 800FSB intel board with a 2.6C chip and overclock to 3.2?? The shuttles are very small so arent good for overclocking, if you invest wisely on a cooler 3ghz+ should be possible...... you will definetly need a case fan also.

Either choice will make a good gaming system.

unkel

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Im definetly an AMD fan but have to point out them little things.

Same here. Thanks to Santy and late deliveries I hope to be building a P4 800Mhz system over the next week or so. Have been on a diet of Athlons (sounds like Atkins) for the last few years so will let you know how I'm getting on

Creamy Goodness

i'm a intel boy here since day one and i don't want to change.

my advice is if you have the dosh splosh it on the P4 if you don't have the money there is absolutley nothing wrong with AMD.

they provide the best bang for your buck (€)

good luck in building your new pc!

ohh btw i have the p4 3.0c and it's great esp. it kicks into play when i start encoding which i do a lot of.

Mutant_Fruit

Check this benchmark out

Also, i believe that when the divx encoding was done, it was the p4 optimized version, NOT the version with optimizations for AMD64's. Using a version with those optimizations would increase the results a good bit.

The FX51 is clearly the best performing processor in gaming, but results should be kept in perspective. At about 1/4 the price of the FX, half the price of the 3200+, and $150 less than the 3.2 P4, the 3000+ is providing outstanding gaming performance. For those who have wanted an Athlon64 or top P4 CPU, but just couldn’t handle the cost, the A64 3000+ will be like a breath of fresh air.

astrofool

the the 64-3000+ is THE cpu to get right now. Getting a p4 instead is just silly (tho get a p4 over an athlon xp)

Col_Loki

Wow that is fantastic to see, brings a smile to my face . Bout time AMD got their finger out and gave intel a run for its money.

With the AMD64 3000+ out-performing the P4 and supporting 64bit processing its definetly the top end chip to be getting !!
Will be the summer before im upgrading, hopefully the FX is a little cheaper at that stage.

Dempsey

P5's will be out for the summer... They will smoke all

Mutant_Fruit

p5's will be unlikely to smoke all. AMD will presumably release the next stage of the 64bit cpu's, running at 3ghz and up. They will smoke all.

Also, P5's will be a ripoff, as usual

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by Dempsey
P5's will be out for the summer... They will smoke all

Smoke all - now why am I reminded of Vapourware ?

Out of curiousity how do dual processor boards compare eg: dual 2GHz vs. a 3GHz or does the premium for the dual board soak up any possible saving ?

Or is there anyway of using the case as part of the heatsink (or secondary heatsink to the main one?)

Ok you'll never fit it into a shuttle...

elexes

thx for the replies . think ill go with the amd 64 option if i can find a shuttle that can support it

Mutant_Fruit

The amd seems to be the best option, and i might go for one myself next summer...

AS for dual processors, they will have no real world benefit in most apps/games. The program will ahve to be written specifically to use 2 processors. And on average, you'll expect to receive a speedup of about 60% ish. Its not worth it for day to day users.

unkel

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
Check this benchmark out

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
The amd seems to be the best option

Not convinced of this. The only CPU that seems to smoke the P4 in that benchmark is the Athlon 64 FX (€840). The P4 3.2 (€416) outperforms the Athlon 64 (€466) in most of the important benchmarks. Prices from Komplett.

Based on these prices, I'm sure anandtech would have come to different conclusions. I guess we're always that bit behind and I feel it would be wise to wait for a bit to go AMD 64 bit if you have to buy at European prices :rolleyes:

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Dempsey
P5's will be out for the summer... They will smoke all

LOL, yes pumping out 120 Watts of heat they better smoke all - including the house:D, no need for heating we have the p5!!!. It wont be out by summer. Sorry for the price mistake I was asleep at the whell, it seemed way to good to be right. unkel it's €260 from oc.co.uk just dont get it from komplett:rolleyes:.

L1011

one word of warning - if you want to step outside the Windows world and use Linux or BeOS, use Intel -

USB and AGP usually suck on AMD motherboards, and indeed often just fail to initialise in other OS's. Leaving you with ISA emulation of your graphics card sometimes - happened on my Duron in Linux.

Also, theres a serious, serious, serious bug in AMD CPU's in the MTRR register (IIRC, tired) which can basically cause the CPU to trip over and burn cycles. Windows not affected. My 733 Intel laptop killed my 850 Duron speed wise and benchmarked in BeOS as faster than a 1.4 Athlon (2x00+). Yes, thats a PIII outperforming a "P4 level" CPU.

AMD CPU's are also missing the SSE2 instructions which are often used as optomisers in apps on the Linux side of the fence, especially media apps. Looking at my system, vlc, ffmpeg, 3ivX and LAME are all compiled for SSE2. Hence they run slow as a dog on anything thats not a Pentium 4/Pentium-M/Pentium Extreme/Xeon4/Celeron4

I'm on a Celeron myself - if you don't need the cache and don't have the cash (no pun intended) its a far better deal than a "real" P4.

OfflerCrocGod

Athlon64 supports SSE2

L1011

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
Athlon64 supports SSE2

And they have the cheek to claim that its one of *their* 64-Bit registers... heheheh

Anyway, the "P5", Codename Prescott will probably support *all* the 64-bit and 128-bit registers on the Athlon 64 ans well as having a decent memory bus. Meaning that you can run your A64 binaries and have your 64GB of RAM and still have a CPU with no MTRR bugs

Matt Simis

Originally posted by unkel
Not convinced of this. The only CPU that seems to smoke the P4 in that benchmark is the Athlon 64 FX (€840). The P4 3.2 (€416) outperforms the Athlon 64 (€466) in most of the important benchmarks. Prices from Komplett.

Based on these prices, I'm sure anandtech would have come to different conclusions. I guess we're always that bit behind and I feel it would be wise to wait for a bit to go AMD 64 bit if you have to buy at European prices :rolleyes:

Your Athlon64 price is for the 1MB cache version, the one in question is the 512K version which costs about 1/3 of that. It is very competitive with P4s and promises another 5-20% "free" performance increase when Windows XP-64 is out in spring. I switched from a P4 at 3800MHz to a Athlon64 (1MB) at 2500MHz. Even on the crappy Via K8T800 based motherboard I have the A64 $hits all over the P4 in practical use.

The next gen P4s (Prescotts) will require new socket 478 boards and the "proper" versions will require completely new boards (with a new socket). Therefore the need to replace motherboard is there no matter what CPU is choosen (except Athlon XP- its dead).

There are several "cube" A64 systems available.


Matt

Col_Loki

Nice, an AMD64 @ 2500mhz ...... what sort of cooling are you using?

unkel

Originally posted by Matt Simis
Your Athlon64 price is for the 1MB cache version, the one in question is the 512K version which costs about 1/3 of that

Ah, thanks for that point there Matt. Where can you get the 512K cache version of the Athlon 64 FX for that price and are we still talking socket 940 or socket 754?

Originally posted by Matt Simis
I have the A64 $hits all over the P4 in practical use

Keep us informed m8 - you seem to upgrade more often than anyone else on the boards.ie. Hope you keep willing to share your experiences with the rest of the boarders :cool:

astrofool

I think MYOB has a "little" intel love thing going on

Col_Loki

Ah, thanks for that point there Matt. Where can you get the 512K cache version of the Athlon 64 FX for that price and are we still talking socket 940 or socket 754?

That'd be a socket 754 chip, available from www.overclockers.co.uk for £175 stg. Prob be cheaper when komplett get it in.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by MYOB
And they have the cheek to claim that its one of *their* 64-Bit registers... heheheh

Anyway, the "P5", Codename Prescott will probably support *all* the 64-bit and 128-bit registers on the Athlon 64 ans well as having a decent memory bus. Meaning that you can run your A64 binaries and have your 64GB of RAM and still have a CPU with no MTRR bugs

Firstly the 'Prescott' is another P4 cause of the dismal performance boost it gave just didn't deserve for it to be called the P5. Secondly Intels copy of the Athlon64 instuction set will come out with the P5 at the end of the year *or begining of next year*(2005), this is the famous 'Yamhill' project. Thirdly an awful lot of ompitimised s/w is available on the net for the Athlon64 and P4 which support SSE2 and this s/w works fine with no problems (mainly OSS). Ohh and finally why wait you can get a proper 64-bit processor NOW, it's not as if Intel will get there copy out in time.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Nice, an AMD64 @ 2500mhz ...... what sort of cooling are you using?

Im using the Prometia Mach II, a phase change super cooler. The motherboard is limiting speed (has no PCI or AGP lock), the CPU is good upto 2.9GHz ish with this cooler (based on other similar setups). Afaik, the two top scores in 3DMark are a Athlon FX and a Athlon 64.

I do upgrade a lot, just like trying out new stuff. Apart from the slightly iffy motherboards (if you overclock, if not the VIA is fine), AMD64 is a great platform. With the new cheap CPUs its money well spent. Intels roadmap is so pedestrian in comparison.


Matt

Col_Loki

A Prometia , ahh now thats a cooler..... my god!!

Actually a little off the topic of this thread, i remember you use to have an AMD Socket A dual system. Just wondering how you found that and what were its good and bad points??

Im strongly thinkin of going that way, will only involve getting a new board and ram as i have the other components (including water cooling). Was thinkin about holding off until the operton dropped in price, but i might upgrade before that to keep me happy!!

Matt Simis

The Opteron 240 and MSI VIA K8T800 SMP board are only around 20% more expensive than a high end Athlon MP setup, but faster and much more future proof. Id check out that vs a MP at this stage. The MPs are fast, but the motherboards are a little dated (AGP 4x, USB1.1, PC2100 era).

I considered selling my Prometeia and switching to Dual Opterons (as you cant use the Prometeia on two cpus obviously), they really seem quite good.


Matt

Col_Loki

Thing is i have already got pretty much everything for the Dual Socket A, 2 x 2500+'s and my normal ram will work in it. Only thing i need to buy is another CPU cooler and the motherboard. I have an Antec 480w PSU aswell.

The operton is a little out of my league until the summer comes around and i start earning again, i would have to buy mobo, 2 cpu's, reg ram, possibly a new PSU, 2 x new CPU coolers...... ouch .

Have heard some good things in general about the Dually's , and i know its real annoying the way the motherboards are so outdated ........ just want to try something new i guess and was wondering what its strong points were?

Matt Simis

Well, I didnt list the strong points, but they are numerous. The whole system "feels" a lot lighter, (as long as you have enough ram). Alt Tabbing from a game to the desktop to CDBurning in the background is very fast, a totally different world from a uni-cpu system (even my A64). If you do Seti or any sort of serious number crunching, its literally 2x the speed.

Also, when Windows has one of those fits and allows a task to take up 100% CPU, a SMP system only gets hit with 50% of the job, allowing you to ignore it or end the troublesome task without wading through a slideshow.

Finally, you can alter the process (eg with Task Manager) of games to "Realtime" on SMP systems. One CPU will handle Windows + background and the other is 100% dedicated to whatever process. You simply cannot do this on uni-cpu systems.


Matt

Woden

stupid question here but can you lash two "normal" cpu's into a dual cpu system or do they have to be "special" MP ones?

Matt Simis

You can use either 2x MP cpus or 2x normal XP CPUs modified (some minor joining of bridges on the cpu). In the early days you could use two Thunderbirds or Durons without any special tricks.

Ive always used the normal XP route, the cpus are cheaper and available at higher clock speeds. The Athlon XP 2500s are excellent as they have 512kb cache and overclock well.


Matt

Col_Loki

Cheers matt, thats exactly what im looking for !! Ive had to stop dvd ripping half way through so many times because it takes up so much resources for a long period of time.

The Xp2500+'s will do between 2.3ghz and 2.4ghz without any problems and with realitivly small voltage which should make for a good system. Am familuar with the L5 mod so fingers crossed it'l go alrite !! Will probably invest in a week or 2.

L1011

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
Firstly the 'Prescott' is another P4 cause of the dismal performance boost it gave just didn't deserve for it to be called the P5. Secondly Intels copy of the Athlon64 instuction set will come out with the P5 at the end of the year *or begining of next year*(2005), this is the famous 'Yamhill' project. Thirdly an awful lot of ompitimised s/w is available on the net for the Athlon64 and P4 which support SSE2 and this s/w works fine with no problems (mainly OSS). Ohh and finally why wait you can get a proper 64-bit processor NOW, it's not as if Intel will get there copy out in time.

Well the fact is - who *actually* need a 64-bit CPU? I may use a partially 64-bit operating system (BeOS, 64-bit media system and file system), but the only "limitation" of 32 bit I may ever suffer from is there not being enough RAM space - but then again, having a P4 thats not a probably, thank you 36-bit memory address space.

I've had far, far, far too many problems with AMD's, mainly burnouts and MTRR tripping, to ever consider them. They're also in a really, really bad financial state and I'd like to actually be able to claim on my warranty if needed...

No matter what AMD do they will never, ever, ever get to more than abnout 30% share. As Andy Grove (or was it Craig Barrett) pointed out, the *Celeron* alone outsells AMD in their entirity...

Matt Simis

Are you seriously trying to tell us you think AMD are on the verge of ruin? Your warranty is with your retailer BTW, not AMD, so that wouldnt even matter. In regards poor quality, I would only go so far as to say some motherboards, particulary VIA and SIS, are quite iffy. However those companies produce equally shoddy P4 boards also...

The "I cant trust AMD" or "did you know AMDs are unreliable?" sounds like the asinine MIS mantra that Ive heard repeated far too often, but never validated. You dont happen to work in MIS do you? Ive put many AMD cpus through tortorus and brutal treatment, and never had one fail. On the other hand, Ive had many a P4 fall apart (pins fall off after 15 insertions\reinsertions, check Intel white paper).

Im not a fanboy, I go with whatever offers the most at any given moment (ie the present). In this case the AMD offers the best performance and product for a better price.


Matt

astrofool

same as matt here.

A couple years ago I would have gone for the athlon xp, up till lately i'd have gone for the p4, now i'll get an athlon 64 cos it offers the best price/performance atm.

I've only ever lost one cpu, a pIII 650E, and that was due to a slotket design fault that stopped the heatsink getting good contact. Never had one other cpu, amd or intel cause problems. Motherboard wise, i've never had a problem getting an amd going either. Guess some people are just smarter than others eh ?

Dempsey

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
p5's will be unlikely to smoke all. AMD will presumably release the next stage of the 64bit cpu's, running at 3ghz and up. They will smoke all.

Also, P5's will be a ripoff, as usual

The 775 Prescotts will be start at 3.6GHz and will problably reach 4.0Ghz-4.2GHz by the time that Intel launches his Tejas CPUs which are planned for Q4 2004. I'd wait for the Tejas myself, they look the business.

Intel already have P4 Extreme Editions that match the current Athlon 64-bits and it beats them in the benchmarks i've seen.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Dempsey

Intel already have P4 Extreme Editions that match the current Athlon 64-bits and it beats them in the benchmarks i've seen.

The P4EE is a kludge, pure and simple. Its a virtually non existent CPU that costs more than many peoples entire systems. Why dont you amuse us all with the RRP?

Also, how can it "match" and "beat" the AMD64 CPUs? The tests Ive seen show it to be strong in the areas P4s are always strong, eg SSE Media Encoding and just as weak in their standard weak points (3D Rendering, FP Number crunching).

The P4 design is starting to creak and it doesnt matter how much cache you smother it in, it only has so long left.


Matt

jesus_thats_gre

No one seems to have mentioned over clocking a 2.6C or 2.8C P4? Two friends have recently done this and are sitting at just under 3.4Ghz.. In the Aquamark benchmark, they are both reaching scores of just over 50,000. This is up there with the best scores posted on the Aquamark website.

Does anyone here who are posting in favour of AMD have their systems running at this performance level?

Dempsey

Originally posted by Matt Simis
The P4EE is a kludge, pure and simple. Its a virtually non existent CPU that costs more than many peoples entire systems. Why dont you amuse us all with the RRP?

Also, how can it "match" and "beat" the AMD64 CPUs? The tests Ive seen show it to be strong in the areas P4s are always strong, eg SSE Media Encoding and just as weak in their standard weak points (3D Rendering, FP Number crunching).

The P4 design is starting to creak and it doesnt matter how much cache you smother it in, it only has so long left.
Matt

It beats the Athlon FX-51 2.2GHz in alot of tests. Both of them have mad prices but the P4 EE will work in my IC7-G . It dont have much long left cos the P5 is out in Q2 2004.:p The old P4 is matching a newer 64-bit CPU design which isnt too bad at all

astrofool

it's gonna be p4 with something rather than p5 (like pentium-mmx type name)

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Dempsey
It beats the Athlon FX-51 2.2GHz in alot of tests. Both of them have mad prices but the P4 EE will work in my IC7-G . It dont have much long left cos the P5 is out in Q2 2004.:p The old P4 is matching a newer 64-bit CPU design which isnt too bad at all

Well, by that logic I could also say the AthlonFX beats the P4:EE in alot of tests also. I could extend that to "the Athlon64 beats the P4EE in some tests" also.
The P3 actually beat the P4 when it was introduced, in most benchmarks, so I wouldnt read too much into the performance of a new CPU vs old gen.

On Anandtech the Athlon64-3000 (ie the cheapest one) beats the P4-3.2GHz (ie the most expensive "normal" P4) in most tests:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1937&p=5

While only using first gen AMD64 motherboards and 32bit Windows. I considered a P4:EE myself, but the price and limited availabilty put me off.


Matt

Matt Simis

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
A Prometia , ahh now thats a cooler..... my god!!

As this is related its worth mentioning here for more exposure: Im selling a Prometeia Mach II in the Forsale Forum.



Matt

Dempsey

Originally posted by astrofool
it's gonna be p4 with something rather than p5 (like pentium-mmx type name)

The first 'Prescott's' will be in the 478 Socket and labelled P4's then the 'Prescott' is going on to a 775 Socket and labelled P5's then in Q4 2004 the 'Tejas' P5 will be out, its a pinless socket, looks class.

I wont be buying a 64-bit CPU until next christmas if anything cos by then intel and amd will be in the middle of a price war(hopefully) and we'll see some value for money.

Gerry

There's so much crap going on in here, it's very scary.

MYOB..

You are making presposterous claims, without much to back them up. When comparing cpu's, you have to ensure that, as far as possible, the other components in a machine are identical. That clearly wasn't the case if a p3 733 ran faster for you than an athlon 1.4ghz. Clock for clock, the p3 might be slightly faster at a few things, and would be drastically slower at floating point operations. With the athlon running at twice the clock speed, you are talking rubbish. Theres a good reason why it ran twice as fast in your particular case, and since you are the BeOS expert, I'll leave it to you to explain why.

With regards to mtrr, there are workarounds in place for this now, both intel and amd occasionally have bugs in their cpu's, its nothing new.

Regarding platform support, this was true a couple of years ago. But now every common OS offers excellent support for via and nvidia based motherboards.

SSE2, well nothing in linux comes compiled with sse2. You have to do it yourself. The configure scripts for programs like mplayer detect your cpu and so the program is optimized for whatever cpu you have.
3D-Now may not be quite as good, but there have been some enhancements made to 3d-now for the athlon 64( plus the inclusion of sse2 ), and most programs do not take advantage of this.

Your points can hardly be taken seriously considering your ignorance of how badly crippled the p4 Celeron is.
If you have a look here
, you will see that the celeron offers performance of between 60 and 70 percent of a real p4. So you aren't actually saving anything. It looks like a 1.8ghz p4 northwood can beat a 2.6ghz celeron at most tasks.

The celeron spends most of its extra clock cycles waiting for stuff to come from main memory, because it can't fit it in its tiny cache. Its a waste, an inefficient chip.
Why not just buy a low speed northwood instead for buttons, and over clock it?

As for yamhill, it may be built in to prescott, but won't be enabled. Intel will enable it on future cpu's if they feel like it.

You then fall back to "Who needs 64bit" ...
There are performance benefits which average about 10 - 15%. I'm too lazy to dig up athlon 64 benchmarks right now. Go google for them.

And then to talk about market share.. well amd have made some stupid mistakes, but the athlon64 has the potential to really outclass intel, and could help them gradually claw back market share. If they get a proper foothold again, who can say how much market share they could get?
The customer is suffering because of their own ignorance of how crap the celeron is.

Matt, I agree about the P4 EE. It does show big gains in some areas ( e.g. 30% gain in quake3 ) , but doesn't help out the p4 where it is weak. I'm not sure about the p4 design creaking, it was crippled from the start, and has done pretty well up to now because of its scalability. That scalability has now come back to haunt it. Right now its not a p4 design fault that is stopping it clocking higher, its just the fundamental difficulties of making 90nm wafers.

Dempsey, you seem to be ignoring the fact that there are very few of these p4 EE's around, and they cost a bomb.

The pentium-3 still haunts the p4, in the form of the pentium-m. At 1.7ghz, it appears to beat the p4 2.4 at most tasks, and this is a laptop chip which takes a performance hit to save power ( l2 cache latency is around double what it could be ). Intel made the decision to concentrate on the p4 as their chip of the future, as it is more scalable than the p3. But it would be nice to find out just how much more scalable it is then the pentium-m. The pentium-m has more pipeline stages than a p3, but still does more work per clock cycle.
SIS have bought a license to make pentium-m chipsets, hopefully we will see some desktop boards ( and some overclocking ) with this chip sooner rather than later.

I think with the current uncertainty about platforms for the next generation of both intel and amd's new chips, I'll be waiting for a while before buying anything. Buy now, and you'll have to chuck it all out for any sort of upgrade.

JustHalf

I have to agree with Phil ("Gerry") here. But I'd like to add in a few bits and pieces.

Anyone who is looking for a high-powered, easily upgradeable system is buying at the wrong time. There is no board out at the moment that we can guarantee will work with processors to be released in May of this year, from either company.

With Intel at least, you are guaranteed that the socket 775 Prescotts will not work with a socket 478 board. Some socket 478 boards will work with the socket 478 Prescotts, but we won't know exactly which for a while.

With AMD, it's hard to figure out anything. Socket 939 will be a much better deal for everyone than socket 754 or socket 940, but there are problems here too. We don't know if the early boards will work with 90nm Hammers. [1] Of course, AMD don't like telling their customers anything.

Besides, there's the issue of DDR2, PCI Express, and the BTX standard. Motherboards are going to change drastically, and all of your PCI devices will be obsoleted. I've heard rumours of AGP to PCI Express bridges, but that's all I know about that. And we don't know if there'll even be support for these in Windows at the time of release.

If you can, wait until the end of 2004 at least before making any serious hardware purchases. Wait until socket 775 boards certainly support Tejas. Wait until PCI Express support is solid for your OS of choice.

Waiting for AMD to get their acts together could take forever. I can't recommend purchasing any AMD system in 2004, and certainly none now. 90nm Hammers will be out soon enough, and your board could very well not support it. Socket 754 boards will soon only be a home for "value" chips. Socket 940 will no longer be a desktop platform. Socket 939 will be out sometime around March, obsoleting socket 940 desktop chips.

Then, there'll be a new socket when DDR2 comes out, obsoleting all your chips.

In short, no motherboard or processor you can buy right now, no matter the manufacturer, is "future proof".

1: http://www.overclockers.com/tips00502/

Capt'n Midnight

I like it - waiting a year for a faster more upgradable chip , when Moores law would suggest that in a year and a half processing power doubles anyway (486's started life at 16MHz and ended up at 99MHz) and unless the sw supports new instructions many of the tweaks/speed ups are unavailable

Pentium M - nice - with it's lower power and smaller size (silicon) you could easily pop a few into the same package - and easily fanless if you value silence.

All depends on how often you upgrade your CPU vs how often you upgrade your Motherboard/PC...

Dempsey

Originally posted by Gerry
Dempsey, you seem to be ignoring the fact that there are very few of these p4 EE's around, and they cost a bomb.

I thought I did, but I didnt highlight it. I do agree that performance of the P4:EE doesnt justify the price, neither does the AthlonFX.

If you can, wait until the end of 2004 at least before making any serious hardware purchases. Wait until socket 775 boards certainly support Tejas. Wait until PCI Express support is solid for your OS of choice.

One of the reasons i would wait aswell and the prices will have come down from the competition between intel and amd (hopefully).

Mutant_Fruit

I;d like to point out that tom's hardware are renowned for their pro-intel bias. If you exam the specs of their benchmarks, you can often notice sub-par equipment used on the AMD systems, not all of it is extremely obvious.

I'd recommend www.anandtech.com for reviews.

As for the Athlon FX, well, take a lookie here for (in my opinion) a better review.

I do agree though that it is overpriced, but the AMD 64 3400+ offers all the performance of the FX-51, but at a MUCH cheaper price.


And to see the benefit of an AMD 64 over a P4 EE, take a look at this page in particular. The previous game benchmarks were all GPU limited, this shows the power of the chips better.