Help with prosessors...

[shadow stalker]

I've just been looking about for some hardware (as im going to build my own PC), and i saw this 'Intel Pentium 4 "Northwood" 3.06GHz (533FSB) with HT Technology' and i saw this 'AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB (Socket A) CPU'. Now i have to admit, im a fan onf AMD, but when i saw that the highest AMD goes up to where 2.2GHz, and intel go up to 3.06Ghz, i was leaning towards intel. But im abit confused, is the intel really that much more powerful? Thanks for any help.

 

[Johan_Tayn]

clock speed isn't everything, y'know.. that is evidenced by the fact that despite the huge difference of clockspeed between Intel and AMD, AMD still tags along or even beats the Intel.. Really, it all comes down to what you are doing. The AMD64 is best at gaming and the Intel is best at video encoding(you can thank HyperThreading support for that).

However, as you are posting in a HL2 forum, I have to remind you that Gabe said that HL2 will eventually have a 64-bit version while HT does not justify the trouble to optimize for it.

How much are you willing to spend on a processor? I personally think the best value is the 3000+ AMD64 with a motherboard that you can later upgrade to a 3700+ AMD64 with. And I personally run a 3000+ AMD64 as you can see, so take it from me.. It's worth every dollar I spent(not much).

Butttt... if you are going budget-PC, I think you should get an Athlon XP with the nForce 2 w/SoundStorm chipset.

Just my $.02, but feel free to ask questions.

 

[OCybrManO]

I would also recommend the Athlon 64 3000.

The P4c's (Those are the 800MHz FSB ones. The 3.06Ghz has a 533Mhz FSB) are cheaper and faster (for "comparable" models) than the Athlon XP's... but the top of the line P4 is slightly faster in current tests and a lot more expensive ($300 more for only a slight performance gain? No thanks.) than the Athlon 64 FX's.

The plain Athlon 64's go back and forth against competitively priced P4c's in a lot of the benchmarks I've seen (leaning a bit toward the 64's)... but that doesn't take into account the performance boost a 64-bit OS will bring. I'd go with the 64's.

If you want to go really low-budget the earlier Athlon XP's are a slightly better buy than the earlier P4's... but I wouldn't go back that far.

Until the Athlon 64's came out AMD was taking a beating from Intel's 800Mhz FSB Pentium 4's... but now it seems AMD has covered all of the markets better than Intel.

 

[shadow stalker]

Well i've decided i deffantly want and AMD.... but i was looking at the 'AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB (Socket A) CPU' or the 'AMD Athlon 64 3000 (Socket 754)', i don't want to spend anymore then £100-£150. One other thing, what does 'OEM' and 'retail' mean?(regarding processors, obviously ) Thanks

 

[SidewinderX]

OEM= Original Equipment Manufactuer.
Retail=retail


when tlaking about processors, OEM menas you'll get a bplastic case with a foam pad and a processor inside.
Retial menas you'll get cheap thermal tape, a generic HSF, a manuel, and a warrenty.

 

[hyenolie]

lol i guess he dosent know about the 3.6EEs lol

 

[shadow stalker]

alright, thnaks Sidewinder. What i don't get though is OEM ones are cheaper (and sound nicer with that desciption sidewinder ) and Retail are normally more expensive. Are OEM ones better to get?

 

[SidewinderX]

well, they're the same processor. But, l ike I said, they don't have a warrenty usaually, and they they don't have a HSF (good ones are 20-30 retail), and they don't have thermal compound (~7 dollars)

but if you get oem, you cna get much nicer components in general.

 

[blackeye]

I have to remind you that Gabe said that HL2 will eventually have a 64-bit version

When is that coming out or do you just download it off steam once you have hl2

 

[Asus]

lol i guess he dosent know about the 3.6EEs lol

I'm sure you like many paper launches. Go to newegg.com and see the only 3.4ghz Intel part out there is the old Northwood (Not prescott or EE which are only at 3.2ghz).


MHz/Ghz is only electronics (the clock rate or frequency).
The other main part is the number of operations per clock cycle.

A Pentium 4 can do 6 operations in a clock cycle. At 3200mhz (3.2ghz), that means it can do 19200 total instructions (Mhz x OPC). HT adds to that number when possible.

An Athlon XP can do 9 OPC. At 2200mhz (2.2ghz), that means it can do 19800 total instructions.

An Athlon 64/Opteron can do 12 OPC. At 2200mhz (2.2ghz), that's 26400.
There is a 2.4ghz part out for A64 but I used 2.2ghz to be more of a comparison.

Beyond that, it's up to the architecture and platform design.
E.I. Athlon 64's efficent ondie memory controller and Hypertransport.
P4's 800FSB vs 533FSB etc

 

[oD1Nz]

(you can thank HyperThreading support for that).

Sorry to nit-pick, but I wouldn't put it down to that. All HyperThreading does is create another processor that processes when the "main" processor is idle (or pipelines are empty/waiting for more data). The thing about P4s is that unless you can fill its pipelines fully, they don't perform as well because their pipelines are so long. AMD on the other hand has shorter, more efficient pipelines, so they don't need to be filled to the extent that the P4s do to reach a certain performance level.

In a heavy encoding environment where data is readily available to the processor from the RAM (ie. FSB is matched with RAM using Dual Channel), the P4s pipelines will be saturated, meaning it'll be performing close to its top. Now, obviously when the P4s pipelines are completely full, there isn't much or any idle time for the virtual processor to do anything, so HyperThreading really doesn't help much/at all here.

I'd put Intels slight performance advantage down to its technologies like SSE2, SSE3, MMX, 3DNOW! etc. These can speed up rendering of media almost two-fold in some cases, and because AMDs chips don't have the technologies implemented in them, they have to rely on their other advantages - whether they be the greater operations per clock cycle, or access to the "older" technologies - ie. SSE2 instead of SSE3.

 

[Asus]

Sorry to nit-pick...
I'd put Intels slight performance advantage down to its technologies like SSE2, SSE3, MMX, 3DNOW! etc. These can speed up rendering of media almost two-fold in some cases, and because AMDs chips don't have the technologies implemented in them, they have to rely on their other advantages - whether they be the greater operations per clock cycle, or access to the "older" technologies - ie. SSE2 instead of SSE3.

I agree with ur post except I got really confused when you brought up 3DNOW! in the same sentence as Intel and sounding like AMD never had any of these. If I now understand what you wrote, I think you were just refering to Intel's constant development of newer extensions (even though they take a while to be put into use ).
Just for clarification...
3DNOW! is an AMD only extension and came out before any of the others.
Athlon XP's have 3DNOW!/MMX/SSE while Athlon 64/Opteron's have 3DNOW!/MMX/SSE/SSE2.

The P4 (Northwood) has MMX/SSE/SSE2.
The P4 (Prescott) has added SSE3 (No use yet).

AMD said SSE3 is coming up very soon for Opteron/A64.

The P4's implementation of SSE2 can allow it to beat A64 in some apps while in 32bit mode. But A64's SSE2 is designed to really spread it's legs in 64bit mode and is actually an improvement over the P4's.

 

[oD1Nz]

I agree with ur post except I got really confused when you brought up 3DNOW! in the same sentence as Intel and sounding like AMD never had any of these. If I now understand what you wrote, I think you were just refering to Intel's constant development of newer extensions (even though they take a while to be put into use ).

Yeah, prehaps I didn't phrase that sentance too well - I meant that, yes, Intel is constantly developing newer optimisations/extentions (whatever ) and AMD, because they don't develop their own optimisations/extentions (aside from 3DNOW!) are almost "left in the dust" in that regard.

EDIT:

But A64's SSE2 is designed to really spread it's legs in 64bit mode and is actually an improvement over the P4's.

I was under the impression that AMD wasn't allowed to modify the code they bought/recieved from Intel, (aside from the obvious "implementation-required" changes) or is just that the SSEx code runs more efficantly on a 64-bit platform?

 

[hyenolie]

I'm sure you like many paper launches. Go to newegg.com and see the only 3.4ghz Intel part out there is the old Northwood (Not prescott or EE which are only at 3.2ghz).


MHz/Ghz is only electronics (the clock rate or frequency).
The other main part is the number of operations per clock cycle.

A Pentium 4 can do 6 operations in a clock cycle. At 3200mhz (3.2ghz), that means it can do 19200 total instructions (Mhz x OPC). HT adds to that number when possible.

An Athlon XP can do 9 OPC. At 2200mhz (2.2ghz), that means it can do 19800 total instructions.

An Athlon 64/Opteron can do 12 OPC. At 2200mhz (2.2ghz), that's 26400.
There is a 2.4ghz part out for A64 but I used 2.2ghz to be more of a comparison.

Beyond that, it's up to the architecture and platform design.
E.I. Athlon 64's efficent ondie memory controller and Hypertransport.
P4's 800FSB vs 533FSB etc

actualy, your wronge.
i realy dont give a **** what each processor does, im paying for it, it better do its ****ing job correctly, and as for my ****ing freezing problem, still no answer.

 

[Asus]

actualy, your wronge.

If you're talking about the fact that Intel has 'released' or launched the 3.4ghz Prescott and EE Pentium 4's, then yes they have 'released' them.
But since they are not really available, I don't consider that really released.
A64 3400+ is currently available in volume (I know a few who recently bought one as well).

i realy dont give a **** what each processor does, im paying for it, it better do its ****ing job correctly

So I take it you don't care about mhz/ghz either?
Operations per clock and Mhz/Ghz are the two halves of the puzzle, bud.

He wanted to know why a 3.2ghz Intel performs like a 2ghz AMD, so I answered. Try not to be flippant.

 

[oD1Nz]

actualy, your wronge.
i realy dont give a **** what each processor does, im paying for it, it better do its ****ing job correctly, and as for my ****ing freezing problem, still no answer.

Jeezus, calm down.

BTW, I've corrected your post for you in (readable) english.

Actually, I don't like to admit when I'm wrong.
I'm really stupid, my parents are paying for it, I really care about performance but again don't like to admit it, and as for my freezing problem, I remembered I deleted all of my Windows\system32\drivers folder when I was trying to clean the Windows folder up.

 

[hyenolie]

lol thats hilarious. make up another one, seriously.