building a computer- need advice...

[Half-Lifer]

should i go with an amd athlon 64 3200+ or and intel pentium 4 (2.8-3.0 ghz)?? the thing is i am not looking to overclock the processor- too complicated and expensive for my liking. so which is better as is?? :dozey:

 

[Asus]

What do you plan to do with the PC?
There are no real downsides to an A64 system. It's what I'd recommend.
Awesome game performance

Also, price up a system between the two and see which comes up cheaper. Probably the A64.
Socket 754 (A64) to Socket 478 (P4) and
Socket 939 (A64) to Socket 775 (P4)

 

[Half-Lifer]

well id play half-life of course, and you know schoolwork, download music. but, remember, i'm not gonna overclock the processor, so should i still go with the athlon??

 

[Asus]

I never showed you OCing benchmarks. hehe
Those are "install CPU/sytem and boot" benchmarks.

You can OC pretty well with either system (P4 or A64) but you probably hear more talk of OC an A64 because that's what performs better in games out of the box. Then with some OCing on top of that it's killer...as if it wasn't before.

 

[Half-Lifer]

no, i didnt mean for whatever you said... i am just saying should i still go with the amd even though i'm not gonna oc it. becuz the intel will be faster right??

 

[Washuu]

P4 has faster clock speeds, but the AMD64 will perform better in games with its architecture with same priced processors. So AMD64 is "Faster".

Like Asus said before, Layout your PC with all the similar parts you would be using, then get motherboard+cpu combos and figure out which one has the best price for its performance ( To find out if a much faster P4 is cheaper then the lowest end AMD64, and vice versa )

 

[Half-Lifer]

im so confused- but im just gonna go with a p4 3 ghz, cuz its my gut instinct- sorry all you amd lovers, but i dont see why amd will "perform better when gaming"- give me some evidence please!!

 

[[Matt]]

AMD do perform better in games.... its simple fact. Check out the benchmarks below.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=10

As you can see in the above link a 3200+ AMD outperforms an Intel pentium 4 570 3.8GHz in Doom 3, Far cry AND halflife 2!!! However the AMD 3200+ is less than HALF the price of a p4 570 3.8GHz. If you take a look at all those benchmarks then you can easily see that AMD take the top spot in 9 out of 10 of those games! On top of that the AMD CPU's run much cooler than the latest intel p4 CPU's and also consume less power. See below for evidence...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=13

 

[bosox188]

Alright you want to know how an Athlon 64 3000+ can be better than a 3.0ghz Pentium 4 when the Pentium 4 is 3.0ghz and the Athlon 64 3000+ is what 1.8ghz or 2.0ghz. AMD Athlon processors have lower clock speeds, however they do more work per clock cycle, they are more efficient and therefore do not need as high a clock speed to reach the performance of a 3.0ghz Pentium 4. An Athlon 64 3000+ is faster than a 3.0ghz P4.

The Athlon XP processors were the first AMD's to use this more efficient/more work per clock cycle thing, and the number of the processor would tell what Pentium 4 it compared to. So in example, an Athlon XP 2200+ would compare to a Pentium 4 2.2ghz.

But when Intel came out with Pentium 4's with HT technology that scale was thrown off because a 30.ghz Pentium 4 with HT and 800mhz fsb would be better than an Athlon XP 3000+.

But the Athlon 64's are much better and faster than the Athlon XP's and even when you don't look at games, they are still good in applications and that stuff.

Yeah so there you go I'm pretty sure I got it all right.

 

[[Matt]]

more evidence for AMD's dominance here...

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041115/pentium4_570-12.html

and here...

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD05MTEmdXJsX3BhZ2U9Ng==

and yet again here...

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njc1LDU=

 

[[Matt]]

Alright you want to know how an Athlon 64 3000+ can be better than a 3.0ghz Pentium 4 when the Pentium 4 is 3.0ghz and the Athlon 64 3000+ is what 1.8ghz or 2.0ghz. AMD Athlon processors have lower clock speeds, however they do more work per clock cycle, they are more efficient and therefore do not need as high a clock speed to reach the performance of a 3.0ghz Pentium 4. An Athlon 64 3000+ is faster than a 3.0ghz P4.

The Athlon XP processors were the first AMD's to use this more efficient/more work per clock cycle thing, and the number of the processor would tell what Pentium 4 it compared to. So in example, an Athlon XP 2200+ would compare to a Pentium 4 2.2ghz.

But when Intel came out with Pentium 4's with HT technology that scale was thrown off because a 30.ghz Pentium 4 with HT and 800mhz fsb would be better than an Athlon XP 3000+.

But the Athlon 64's are much better and faster than the Athlon XP's and even when you don't look at games, they are still good in applications and that stuff.

Yeah so there you go I'm pretty sure I got it all right.

AMD's + PR rating isn't intended to show how fast they compare against intel CPU's but how they compare against an original K7 Athlon if its MHz speed were running at the same speed as the PR rating of the newer CPU. However i can definitely see the reason for doing so as the general consensus of joe public is that more MHz = more power and therefor they would have lost a huge share of the market to Intel if they had not...

As for AMD doing more work per clock cycle then i can Tell you the latest AMD CPU's can handle 12 instructions per clock whilst the latest Intels only do 6 IPC.

 

[Half-Lifer]

do i have to overclock it (athlon processor) to get that performance?

 

[The Terminator]

No, no overclocking is needed. All you do is install it like any other processor. An athlon 3000+ is rougly equal, if not faster then, a Pentium 4 3.0-3.2 GHz. So, to recap all other statements made, if you want to have BETTER performance for LESS money, get the AMD. Its your best choice, trust us, we know what were talking about.