amd cpus

pertinax

are duron processors ok for games or would i need an athlon? or indeed a bank breaking intel?
and what speed cpu would i need to last 2 years on the games front?


[This message has been edited by pertinax (edited 06-10-2000).]

_CreeD_

Get the Athlon Thunderbird (Or depending on how the vendor labels them, just make sure you get a Socket-A athlon, it's the same thing).
I haven't really looked too much at Duron benchmarks, but the relationship to Thunderbird versions should be similar to Celeron2/P-III (Though I think the Duron is meant to be better than the Celeron2).

Go to http://www.Overclockers.Co.Uk, the bundles section. They have an overclocked 1Gz Thunderbird+Heatsink, with an ABIT-KT7 RAID Motherboard (The raid itself isn't a huge factor since it's only 0 and 1, but the extra IDE ports are nice) for ~520 irish.
Don't worry about the overclock factor. They're gauranteed, and my past experience with them (And of many folks on this board) has been excellent.
Plan to order one next week myself.

Gerry

Or you could get a p3 700, an abit be6-2 raid bx board and a heatsink for about £400. Its not a guarantee of 1 ghz, but P3's are faster in games, and they don't break the bank, and you will have less trouble with it.

btw creed, the highpoint 370 chip (on the kt7 raid, and the be6-2 raid) supports raid 0, 1 and raid 0+1, so it is useful for those wanting speed or security, or both.

[This message has been edited by Gerry (edited 06-10-2000).]

Jak

I have an Athlon 900 running with a Voodoo 5500. I've had no problems with it at all.

The Athlon didn't break the bank, it is not overclocked and there is sweet fk all that I cannot run on it at high res with all the bits turned on at high FPS.

As for what will do you for the next two years, I'd say soemthing around the 800 mark would be best. They should be reasonably cheap by now. Personally I don't see the value in ever buying the highest end chip as the difference in price is disproportional to the difference in performance. The price difference between my 900 and the 1ghz was silly.

An 800 or equivalent will certainly do you a year (likely 2), and in the end of the day you can always Overclock it towards the end to get you a little more time.

_CreeD_

I think 0+1 is a gimick, wasteful at that. The first Raid level actually worth something is 5. If you've got the money to spend on duplicate drives for the others then you should be able to invest in a controller capable of this.

Gerry please stop saying GAMES, as in all games, are faster on P-3's. Some are (Quake3 being the most obvious example, since it has a ton of SSE enhancements and all but ignored 3dnow/3dnow2), some aren't. The vast majority hold just about even between equal speed Coppermine's and Thunderbirds.
The same goes for always saying that Athlons are troublesome. This was true way back when the first Chipsets were released but not now. You've made these 2 points over and over again since then, and each time happy Athlon owners have refuted them.
No offense, but stop letting the bad experiences of one of your mates at the technology's inception over a year ago colour your view.

Athlons are much cheaper then P-3's and are at least as stable. That's a fact backed up by every hardware site out there.



[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 06-10-2000).]

Canaboid

Fight, fight, fight...........

I'll just get my coat.

gandalf

Creed,

RAID 1 is actually the best RAID for Speed etc. (mirroring) RAID 5 is the most cost effective but also the slowest form of RAID as information is "striped" across several drives.

I sell servers for a living and most customers will go for RAID 1 over RAID 5 obviously depending on the price point etc.

BTW I agree with you about bad mouthing Athlons, they have proven at this stage to be reliable and I like others will be buying a Thunderbird 850 with the KT7-Raid MOBO for my new system.

Gandalf.

Gerry

I'm not disputing the fact that athlons are stable, they are indeed at least as stable as p3's. What I will say though, that via's chipset and drivers for the athlon still make it more difficult to setup than a p3. I was slightly intoxicated when writing that
post, I shouldnt really have implied ALL games either. John Carmack says that there is no sse code in quake3, and to be honest I'd believe him sooner than i'd believe you, as he did write the engine after all.

However quake3 will take advantage of sse and 3dnow optimizations in 3dcard drivers, and thats where most of the difference comes from. Both nvidia and 3dfx have optimized their opengl drivers quite well for sse, maybe not so well for 3dnow. I remember seeing a 20-30% boost in quake3 on my old 3dfx banshee when I upgraded my graphics drivers to ones which supported sse. There is a beta patch available for 3dnow in quake3 on the athlon, it seems to boost performance a bit. I think they are just dll's which have been optimized for the athlon, although I'm not certain. I just feel there is so much hype over the thunderbird, people arent aware where exactly it is faster than the p3, and where it is slower.

[This message has been edited by Gerry (edited 06-10-2000).]

_CreeD_

Gerry, apologies if I came on a bit strong. Re-reading the post it didn't come out quite as I intended. But the point's done with.

Gandalf, yup I know 5 ("Stripe set with parity" of the dust on my brain isn't in the way again) is the slowest of the 3 - depending on the number of drives employed, as the number increases the benefit if striping outpaces the speed loss in the parity writes.
But as you said it is the most cost effective. If you're putting a cheap raid solution on a consumer motherboard then that is exactly the market you're aiming for. What they've done is give you a choice between one very expensive redundancy system and the other for speed with no redundancy. Just seemed a bit silly to me. As a home user who would want RAID for data security/stability, 5 is ideal.

Ah, too tired. Time to stop this typing thing...

pertinax

well i was hoping to just replace my motherboard memory and cpu.
If i got a duron and its socket A motherboard could i put another socket A cpu (an athlon?) on it later? Cause that sounds tasty to me if i could.
geforce 2 aint they a bit pricey?
any good card a bit cheaper?

_CreeD_

Swapping A Tbird for a Duron shouldn't be a problem.
Geforce-1 DDR's are still good cards unless you really want to go over 1280x1024, or want some nice FSAA. Starting to get nice and cheap lately (I think Gerry was/is? selling one on the sales board for a good price)

Gerry

The geforce ddr is gone i'm afraid. I sell new geforce2 gts cards for £220, while it might seem expensive, a geforce of some sort is the only type of card that will let you use the 800mhz cpu's full potential. Any other card will be holding it back.

Chubby

So what if the p3 is slightly faster than the Thunderbird or the Duron in some games? I doubt that extra 5fps in Quake3 low resolution is Pertinax's main concern.

Getting an Athlon Thunderbird or Duron will also save a lot of money as well as getting a system just as fast as the p3. And Gerry, when's the last time you've setted up an Athlon with a via mobo? You have to get over your hatred for via mate

Pertinax, are you building your own system or buying it from big manufacturers? For gaming performances, to last 2 years I say you'll need at least a 800mhz duron/thunderbird/p3 cpu. I'd go for the thunderbird but the duron is almost as good and slightly cheaper. And if you're not crazy enough to want to have the highest frames per second in 3d games then a geforce2 should also last 2 years.

[This message has been edited by Chubby (edited 07-10-2000).]

SHADOW

Gerry, I'm not saying your wrong about the GeForce ddrs being gone or at least being on the way out, BUT a recent 'brief' read of Toms Hardware had the GeForce ddr benching higher than all the other cards (including an assortment of other nvidia cards, ie GeForce2 and the Voodoo5 etc).

This I assume is due to drivers for the card and will probably not be the situation in a couple of months...

---

If the bottom falls out of your world, drink Andrews and the world will fall out of your bottom!!
nethousegames

Gerry

soz m8, I was referring to the actual geforce ddr that i had for sale.

The geforce ddr is by no means gone. Its almost as fast as the radeon, and way faster than any 3dfx. The reason it was faster than the geforce2 was a driver issue alright. I have a geforce 2 myself now, and it is faster than the ddr, even in low res.

Yossarian

Between RAID 0,1 and 5, RAID 0 is the fastest. But because it is just data stripping it offers no redundancy. It is because of this data stripping that RAID0 is so fast. RAID5 also uses disk stripping but with parity to create redundancy. Because of the parity calculations RAID5 doesnt have the same disk I/O performance of RAID0. However RAID5 is a more efficient storage solution than RAID 1.

Stephen.