Please help me decide

[Invalid]

Ok which should I order?

AMD Config

MB:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Dual LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail

CPU
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor Socket 939 Retail

Memory
Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail

COST: $398.99

------------------

INTEL Config

MB:
Abit IC7 i875P P4 800FSB Skt478 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Serial ATA Retail (Prescott Ready)

CPU
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor Prescott 3EGHz, 800MHz FSB, Socket 478, 1MB Cache Retail

Memory
Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail

COST: $401

Either will also get a Seagate Barricuda SATA 200g Hard Drive. Thanks for any help.

[Invalid]

Also: How is a 3g P4 compared to a 2g AMD64? I mean, by measurement alone isn't the intel "better" based on the speed? Or what am I not understanding?

[Starbuck3733T]

For gaming, the A64 will slaughter the 3.0 Prescott core. I'd go that direction. Plus, you'll probably get a better overclock out of the A64 since its not a space heater.

[dutchcedar]

64 bit.

I'll leave the rest of the Intel vs. AMD argument to the others, but would think both rigs would be closely matched.

What was I saying? Oh yeah... 64 bit. :lol:

[Invalid]

But how does a 2g beat a 3g? What am I not seeing? Obviously its more than that, but I don't get it. :confused:

[Fibbles]

But how does a 2g beat a 3g? What am I not seeing? Obviously its more than that, but I don't get it. :confused:AMD uses more than speed alone. The differences between my 3.0 and a 2.X AMD64 are many. What exactly I'm not sure, but they all have slight differences, like cache sizes, instruction sets etc, so if you plan to game go for an AMD64.

A friend of mine (well, more of an aquaintence) bought an AMD64 FX53, rated at 2.4GHz. The rest of the system was a 6800GT and 2 gigs of RAM. Another 'friend' bought a near identical system, but his differed in the CPU/Mobo area. He got a P4 3.6. With both systems side by side (they're best friends), the AMD one is noticably faster than the P4. Intel does have newer P4's with 64 bit ability, but I have no idea on performance compared to an AMD64. If clock speed was all that mattered, Intel wouldn't be losing to AMD and we'd all have the 4.0 P4 already.

I pretty much have your Intel config. It's great for anything I need, coupled with a good GPU.

[Invalid]

Thanks for the info. Will I see a big difference in this upgrade from my current 2400+?

[Fibbles]

Thanks for the info. Will I see a big difference in this upgrade from my current 2400+?Probably not. I went from a 400 FSB P4 2.4 to a 533 FSB 2.66 to an 800 FSB 3.0. I didn't really notice much, but I might have if I had went from lowest to highest w/out the middle step. If anything, access to socket 939 will open up a few more upgrade patterns later.

[Knipex]

:( I have two cars.

A Mustang II with a 302 5ltr V8:wub:
and
A Toleado Toledo 1.9 Tdi 4 cylinder.

Which gives me more power ???

V8 = 120 bhp from the factory
straight 4 = 130 BHP from the factory:eek:

It takes more than cubic inches to give you power. It also takes more than Mhz to give you speed.

The P4 design was geared from day one for high clock speeds at the expence of effenciency.

I am no expert and at the chance of making a fool of myself (not for the first time and not for the last) I will try and explain.

There are two ways to increase CPu speed.

1) Increase the number of cycles (Mhz) (the the speed at which each instruction is decoded)
2) Increase the number of instruction that are decoded per cycle (each cycle)

Intel went route 1 AMD went route 2

The P4 was designed around the Netburst architecture which was optomised for the fastest clock sppeds with fewer instruction per clock. The advantage of this is that the power dissipation will max out at a much higher clock speed. (Ie. Intel can produce CPU's with vey high MHZ ratings with this design without frying the core)

AMD on the other hand decided to use more transistors and send more instructions in parallel per clock cycle (in fact the A64 has over double the amount of transistors the P4 has) It also went for a higher amount of level 1 cache (128kb V's 16) to handle this.

This means that the A64 is a "more effecient" design doing more work per per cycle than the P4.

(Image 2 guys carrying 100 boxes from a van into a house. One guy sprints back and forth carrying one box at a time and the other guy strolls along carrying 3 boxes at a time. Who is faster ?? Depends on how you measure speed doesn't it !!)

The other difference between the two is pipeline length.

Simpy put each CPU instruction takes 4 stages and at each cycle an instruction moves from one stage to the next.

get instruction - decode - execute - send the result back.

In the old days one instruction went through all the steps before the next one was called. Now they pipe line them so that as one instruction is passed on to the next step another is called.

Now things are done slightly differently and Intel and AMD went their own way about it. They both broke this down into more stages and lined al the instructions up in a row so that when an instruction is moved from stage one into stage 2 another instruction moves into stage 1 so that one the pipe line is full there is an instruction in each stage.

Intel went for a much longer pipe line than AMD (31 stages on the prescot core V's 12 on the AMD 64). There are many reasons for this but I to be honest I dont fully understand them myself.

The problem with this is that not all code is linear. (ie The next instruction you need may not be the next one in line in your pipeline.) When this happens you need to empty your pipeline and call up the correct instruction that you need and wait for it to pass through all the stages.

With a long pipeline this can take quite a while (in cpu terms) so AMD suffer less of a performance hit from this. (on the other hand media encoding is in its nature linear so that all the instructions you need are lined up nicely in order which is why Intel rule the roost at media encoding, games are not so AMD win here.)

This is also the reason why Intel suffer from heat and power problems. Because of the largfer number of stages and to avoid latency problems (teh speed at which instructions can move is limited by those pesky laws of physics so if each stage is far appart you get latency problems) so Intel had to put all the transistors for each stage all nice and close together. While this solves the latency problem it means that all these transistors are putting out more heat into a smaller area resulting in a need for more power and even more heat which results in a very hot very power hungry CPU.

The 64bit instructions on an A64 (which make it an athlon 64) dont make your CPU any faster. :o) In fact for the vast majority of us using windows XP these instructions are not even used. It is the core design that makes your A64 faster.


Sorry for the long post.

Any glaring errors (of which I am sure there are many) please feel free to hit me over the head with them. :h34r:
If you dont understand something please feel free to ask and I will attempt to explain while trying not making an even bigger fool of myself. :D
And if you need more detail please ask Star because he has forgotten more than I will ever know about CPU design.

[Leeum]

The AMD setup for sure. If possible, go for the Athlon64 3200+, you'll wish you had ^_^

[Fibbles]

The AMD setup for sure. If possible, go for the Athlon64 3200+, you'll wish you had ^_^
I would reccomend that too - the AMD643200. Plus it's at an even 2.0GHz...


Excellent Knipex. That summed it up very nicely w/out getting too technical. ^_^

[scopEDog]

For gaming, the A64 will slaughter the 3.0 Prescott core. I'd go that direction. Plus, you'll probably get a better overclock out of the A64 since its not a space heater.
That sums it up pretty nicely..

[Invalid]

Thanks guys. Big thanks to Knipex> excellent post. Very informative!

Here is the potential new order:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor Socket 939 Retail

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Dual LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail

Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3200822AS 200GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

Total: $554 + shipping is free.

New Question

It said that any drive over 137g needs a controller card for the HD. Is this true for me with this setup? Or does the motherboard have the controller card?

[zer0]

well i went from my old amd setup to this intel set up and i cant realy tell a diffrence besides the obvius upgread in speed (from 1700+ to 3GHz) choose the one you feel comfortable with and is in your budget.

[fivecheebs]

Why NForce 3? Why not an nForce 4 board? Is it because you want to keep AGP for a while longer?

Also, if your considering the posibility of overclocking you may want to get some quicker RAM to give you some more headroom.

As for the 137Gb limit. DOnt wory, just use the install tool Disc Wizard (http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html) and all will be fine. Its a windows limitation, not hardware.

[furious trout]

The 137Gb limit should have been resolved in xp sp 1 (added support for 48 LBA in XP)
so assuming you're using XP and are fullty SP'ed up you should be fine ^_^
linky (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013)

If you want to slipstream SP2 onto you Xp install cd there's a good guide here (http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm) (save you time in the long run)


edit ohh ohh i just noticed my custom title :wub: :wub: cheers guys!

[Invalid]

Why NForce 3? Why not an nForce 4 board? Is it because you want to keep AGP for a while longer?
All I know is I have a radeon 7500 and its AGP. I do not plan on upgrading my video as I do not do much gaming.

During all this I noticed everyone talking about gaming, etc. I should really say that I am not a gamer. I only play 1 game and it plays fine on my current card.

Also I am not an overclocker. My system will be as it is from day one.

With this new info, does that change anyones opinion?

[fillip]

Yeah go for a P133 with 64mb of ram & a 4 gig HD running Win3.1


http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Go on, just for nostalgia's sake.

[ỒĊBłůē]

Yeah go for a P133 with 64mb of ram & a 4 gig HD running Win3.1

http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
If I had a dig out in my loft I could rise to that; 166MMX that is. Ah, those were the days... ^_^

[fillip]

With MMX! http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/ohmy.gif

Hardcore! http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/happy.gif

[toby]

i think trout mentioned slipstreaming your xp cd if your interested in doing that get hold of n-lite (http://nuhi.msfn.org/) its much simpler and you can even make an unatended setup so you dont even have to be there its free too!

[ỒĊBłůē]

I was digging through that crap the other day and got to laughing at the Socket 7 coolers of the time. Compare them to an XP120 :lol: (sorry for mentioning aircooling) :unsure:

[Invalid]

After a lot of thinking I am still torn!

All the recommendations for the athlon64 reference gaming, and overclocking. Both of which I do not do. Sure I play a game here and there. But literally this is like 2 times a month. Hardly worth building a machine around it, no?

Again, my most important use here is Photoshop and research online shows that the P4 does well in this area. Is this true? How is the athlon64 with this?

Thanks again for all the information. I highly appreciate it.

[cools]

Go with the P4. HT does make a reasonable attempt at smoothing things out somewhat over a regular single processor :)

[Invalid]

Go with the P4. HT does make a reasonable attempt at smoothing things out somewhat over a regular single processor :)
Thats what I am thinking. P4 3.2g. With 2g of ram.

[Starbuck3733T]

If you can get your hands on a mobile 3.2 or a mobile 3.4 and a mobo to run a real high FSB (like 300MHz) you've got a real champ when it comes to memory bandwidth and overclocking.

[Fibbles]

If you can get your hands on a mobile 3.2 or a mobile 3.4 and a mobo to run a real high FSB (like 300MHz) you've got a real champ when it comes to memory bandwidth and overclocking.Uh, he has no plans to overclock... :huh:

Need to use Photoshop really well? Get a Mac ^_^. My friend also uses PS more than she games, and her machine is an AMD XP3200. She'd never go Intel though. Intel is evil :h34r: It's still up to you, if the P4 turns you on, go for it! Although, if you're not building the PC around gaming, you don't need the latest and greatest, nor the fastest hardware. A 2.8 P4 would save a bundle over the 3.2, I wouldn't think PS demands the very best speed to run well.

[Invalid]

Ok. I want to apologize to everyone about my indecisiveness. I am sure it is a bit annoying.

I have made my final decision and put the order through.

Here is the final choice. I ordered from my favorite place, zipzoomfly.com.


Item No. Description Qty Unit Price 80098-21 Corsair VS1GBKIT400 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Retail *** Free 2nd Day *** (https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80098-21) 2 $101.00 101562 Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3200822AS 200GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer ***Free 2nd Day (https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101562) 1 $119.90 241143 MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Dual LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail ***Free 2nd Day*** (https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=241143) 1 $142.00 80701-2 AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor Socket 939 Retail ***Free 2nd Day*** (https://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80701-2) 1 $190.00 Subtotal $653.90
I went 100 over my planned budget but I decided I really badly wanted 2gigs of ram vs 1. And I did not want to mix and match the memory with what I have now. Right now I have 2 512 sticks. One is PC2100 and one is PC2700. I didn't want to just get two new PC3200 and then have these two.

So once again thanks to all!! I upgrade every 3 years or so. And I really did not want to make a bad decision.

[furious trout]

i think trout mentioned slipstreaming your xp cd if your interested in doing that get hold of n-lite (http://nuhi.msfn.org/) its much simpler and you can even make an unatended setup so you dont even have to be there its free too!
Hmm interesting i do my unattended installs using an answer (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155197) file boot off the cd insert floppy go and have a cuppa come back an hour later and bob's yer uncle

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Need to use Photoshop really well? Get a Mac ^_^
One of my fellow technicans is a photographer and all the latest tests in his magazines show that PS runs better on PCs these days then Macs. A lot of Pro photographers also prefer the level of support they get from PC companies such as Dell over apple.

I built him a 3Ghz P4 with 1gig of PC1024 (Rambus) memory and he says its the quickest and smoothest pc he has ever used with PS. He can zoom in and out of photos and scroll all around them without it ever shuddering. It fairly flies with the filters too although he doesnt tend to use them an awfull lot.