Why Amd?

[acphenom]

Well, loads of benchmarks and opinions from "experts" would disagree with you, but maybe it isn't noticeable on non-demanding games, like The Sims, but I think you probably will notice it on games like Doom 3 and whatever.

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Get a Xeon then?

 

[Computergen1]

*Makes fun of LK*

I heard Xeon's suck....compared to something else. I think it was P4...who knows? All I know is I love my athlon 64 compared to my p4.

 

[connchri]

Depends what you get You get a processor with a price that makes sense to be 64-bit, it will almost certainly be 64-bit All Xeons less than a year old will be, all Pentiums 4 Prescotts... some Northwoods... Gallatin, some other ones. All 5xxs and 6xxs. Most people thought won't buy second hand ones! So all the Processors they buy as Pentium, Xeon or Itanium, will be 64-bit.


By merely using nowadays on the Intel bit, you could have cancelled that out, because you can say the same of Intel. You won't buy a new up to date Intel Processor without 64-bit unless its a Celeron D.

Gaming doesn't count

Picked this quote out of loads of ones full with crap.

The only 64bit instruction supporting Pentium 4 is the 6xx series. There were some 5xxJ versions and such like, but these only supported a 64bit extended addressing mode. I.E, removing the 4GB memory limit. The Northwood never had such support, never mind saying 64bit. Theses CANNOT run 64bit code. Not all prescott cores support 64bit. Yes, it's widely acclaimed that they were designed from the onset with 64bit support with it only dissabled, but that's the point, it's no good disabled is it?!

So, folks. You want a 64bit Intel CPU that can run any code that a Athlon64 can, the only P4 that will do it is the 6xx series.

The latest Xeons have the 64bit support of the 6xx series too.

Mentioning the Itanium is also a bit offtouch. It's not designed for desktop, not even remotely associated with the i386 or AMD's 64_i86 architecture. Thats like comparing a Formula one racing car to a remote control submarine, completely unassociated. Different market target, different strategic problem usage, different architecture, different full stop.

Heres a post I posted only 5 minitutes ago on another thread, it seems as though it can be relavent.........


Well, depends on your budget. If its about £100 - £150 GB (as usuall in my case) I'd go for the Intel P4 630 or 640 rather the the AMD Athlon64 3000+ or 3200+. If I had a bigger wad of cash, say roughly £300 - £400, then I'd go AMD dual core.

Reason is, that on the low end of the scale, there is little difference performance wise between the two CPU's in the same price category. Tomshardware.com has a good CPU comparison chart. Put the Athlon64 3200+ against the 3GHz P4 630, and you'll find that the performance difference is negliable. But look at the features of the CPU, and it becomes obvious that the P4 is far more future proof. Four times the L2 cache, and as tests show currently there is no performance differences (or very little) between 1MB and 2MB L2 cache P4's. This will change when multithreaded and 64bit applications are mainstream though. Added to the P4's Hyperthreading and more instruction set support, you can see that using software 18 months down the line that will make use of hyperthreading, SSE3, 64bit and the extra 1.5MB L2 cache, will run far quicker on the P4 630 than on the Athlon64 3200+.

This is a different story on the dualcore AMD Athlon 64s because they also have the added benifits of true multicore CPU's and the 2MB cache (on certain cores) as well as the latest SSE3 instruction sets.

CPU's have almost reach their clock speed limit on using current technology, so now features like hyperthreaded applications are a real performance boaster. Other things like the Hypertransport BUS and the integrated memory controller also have huge performance benifits, but DDR2 and the recent higher FSB's of the P4's along with the Core clock speed of the P4's being substantially higher have tightend the performance gab.

Low budget go P4 6xx series. Big budget, go Dualcore Athlon.

Any fan-boys who blindly critisize this post need to wake up to the fact that a product is exactly that - a product. Companies constantly turn the tide on whose got the "best" CPU. If you do fault what I say, please explain, I don't mind. It's the "Intel Sux Ass!" or the "Athlon is a crash-a-holic" immature crap that I can't stand.

 

[acphenom]

Nah, low-budget, go Sempron or VIA C7.

No one should be buying a Pentium 4 these days. Wait for Yonah and Conroe and the rest of the new Intel chips. Much more efficient than the current P4's, but I still think they'll lose out to AMD solutions.

 

[connchri]

Lol, ok. But when I say low budget, I ment roughtly £100-£150, not £40. Neither semprons, C3's or Celeron D's can outperform an Athlon64 or P4 6xx.

 

[acphenom]

Athlon 64 and P4 6xx are not cheap.

Sempron is a great CPU; I can't really see why people would want more, more, more, unless they're doing tasks like video-encoding or gaming.

VIA C7 is perfect for budget PC's.

 

[connchri]

Ok, but your missing my point. I've had a C7, had a Sempron and used a Celeron D, I real respects to a 19 year old student, whos does play games and I do like my PC to last a few years, would want 64bit and hyperthreading, the sub £100-150 CPU's are ideal. Not that much slower than the top of the range Athlon FX (perhaps about 25-35% slower) but loads faster, future proof and more features than a ViaC7 or Sempron. Semprons old hat anyway, SktA and Skt746. Skt939 is the way forward the now with AMD.

There is a big difference between the budget semprons and those like it and the low end P4's and Athlon64s.

looking at your sig, your hardly in a possition to use a C7 yourself on your main system. I myself don't have the money to get a A64x2 4800+, my only feasable CPU is a £100-150 one, hence using a P4 630 or 640 would be the better CPU for to last the length of my course over AMD's offerings if I was to build a new PC right now.

 

[acphenom]

You've had a VIA C7? They only got released a few months ago, and I haven't seen them available anywhere. Are you sure it was a C7? Or a C3?

Hm? Yeah, I use an Athlon 64 2800+, at my dad's; that is the family PC.

My own PC is a laptop powered by a VIA C3 1.2GHz CPU. It is a lot slower than my Athlon 64, but to be fair, it is using 256MB DDR266 RAM; 16MB of which is used by the integrated graphics chip, and a 5,400rpm HDD, unlike my desktop which has 512MB RAM, dedicated graphics, and a 7,200rpm HDD.

I just think that there's too much emphasis on CPU's. There are more energy-efficient and in most cases cheaper ways to improve performance, such as getting a faster HDD, upgrading from integrated graphics to dedicated, and adding more or/and faster RAM.

I do do my share of video-editing and music-encoding, and my Athlon 64 2800+, now comparable to the Socket-754 Semprons, cuts it fine. I was also playing Halo: Combat Evolved smoothly on it.

A C7 might not be able to go that far, but for a budget machine, it's ideal. It also has the security features and DDR2 support.