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Athlon1900XP or Pentium4?


Gamesniped
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RDRAM is not that expensive anymore.

I just finished putting a new P4 machine together for Milady Shewolferz...

Asus P4T mobo

Pentium IV 1.8 Ghz

256 Meg of PC800 RDRAM

This thing boots up in less than 20 seconds. Needless to say I was amazed at the difference compared to my 1 Gigger PIII.

I bought the RAM from Mushkin at @ $70.00 per stick. Not too bad when you consider just a little over a year ago a 128 Meg stick of PC700 RDRAM cost me $400.00!

The debate has raged all over the internet as to which processor is better and it only boils down to a matter of preference. Just like cars.

[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: Wolferz ]

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DOAM, you have not read much about the Nforce have you. Its integrated harware is top of the line, the graphics are geforce 2 quality and the sound is top notch. They don't slow down computer preformance enough for it to even be a issue. Also the Nforce has better memory architecture and is optimized for the Athlon XP. Bottom line, don't not get the motherboard becuase of its intergrated compents. If you are short on cash and need to save 40-50 dollars i would go with a cheaper Motherboard.

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I'd go AMD regardless. At this point, I'm a die-hard AMD loyalist. When Intel was milking their CPU monopoly, AMD rescued me with a comparably performing CPU for half the cost. Then they started getting faster. And STILL, they remained the affordibility leader. Now they are spanking the Intel chips like a stepchild.

When AMD started passing up Intel with their 1Ghz CPUs, Intel took up mislabling their processors. Those 2Ghz chips that are out are really 1.8Ghz. But numbers on boxes tend to impress stupid people, so they did it (And we should all know that most Americans are sheep anyway). AMD, on the other hand, uses actual banchmark scores to label their processors now. So while those 1800XPs are really 1.6Ghz, they are STILL getting numbers equivalent to a 1.8Ghz processor.

Intel is just playing dirty.

[ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: Scrivener ]

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Guest dnoyeB!

quote:

Originally posted by DOAM:

Eh, my turn to correct... XP's have a full SSE compliment, and actually work well...but pent's do better. It is here where the pent's spank athlon, and if pent's sell well, it is quite possible EVERYTHING could be based on it. While athlon does have a good SSE now in the XP's, it still isn't up to par with pent.


If its an SSE2 benchmark, yes the P4 will do better since the AMD does not have that. But now you need to provide an actual application that takes advantage of this, and show an improvement worth the $50 difference in the processor cost.

At the end of the day $150 worth of Athlon will CRUSH $150 worth of P4...

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i have a anthlon 700mh for the past 2 years and olny just now (operation flashpoint) is it starting to be taxed, but the lag time is just a little bit so i think maby another year before upgrade or new system.

hay as long as it works fine thats great, but when it dosen't its time to go for a better one...

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Ok, here's the skinny from someone with hands on experience:

If you're just gaming, doing office stuff, and/or some light art work (3d, web, photoshop, etc.) save your money and go with the AthlonXP. Get a 333mhz DDR board if you can find one (sis is a good chipset but better are in the works).

If you're doing 3D work, pluggin heave graphics work, and still want to game then go with the P4... however, don't go below the p4 2ghz. it's the new socket so you're assured of being able to upgrade for at least another 3 months (hehe). Make sure you're getting one of the new mobo's that use DDR ram instead of RDR ram... they're FAR Faster with the p4 cpu.

If you can't afford that, the xp1900 will do just fine and you really won't notice the difference (we're all asleep during renders anyway... well, at least i am).

Now, if you're looking to do professional 3d or video post work but can't afford a multi-processor machine then don't go for anything but the p4 with the new socket design (478 i think).

However, and here is where things change a bit..., the athlon mp's are the sweet point between power and price. A dual AthlonMP system won't cost you your soul and can crunch through renders quite nicely. Not to mention really give you some boost with games that designed to use multiple proc's.

If you've got money to blow though, my dream machine consists of dual p4xeons at 2ghz and a wildcat 3d card and comes in at the low low price of $10k.

The real question really is what are you doing and how much money do you have to spend. Then the decision is quite easy. Just find what gives you the best bang for the buck realizing that either the AthlonXP/MP or the P4 will give you great results.

Just be sure to go with DDR ram on either single cpu system.

As for heat... the cpu doesn't explode. An Athlon 1.4 OC'd to 1.7 oozes a black substance that is nearly impossible to clean off. The cpu is dead. The newer P4's have a steal heat spreader so they live a bit longer... but not that much. Be sure to get a proggy like Motherboard Monitor that has an alarm or autoshutdown function should your fan fail or the temp gets too high (Athlon's are rated to be stable in the high 100's... scary to let them get there though ).

So, go figure out where your money vs. power sweet spot is. Buy, and don't every look back. Well, you can look back after 8 months. By then computers may be completely different and a new version of Windows will be released !

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