[IceFire]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD


I don't know about maths software but even with a weaker FPU the sheer brute force of the P4s higher clock speed and more recently, the 800Mhz quad-pumped FSB (and the latency advantage that offers over the Athlon in dual channel DDR mode) have enabled it to well and trully eat Athlon for breakfast in more recent games-oriented tests. AMD is being let down by the inability of the Athlon to scale much beyond it's current 2.1-2.2Ghz and it's getting much harder to justify buying them for high performance machines.

And when you say "eat Athlon for breakfast" you mean a performance gain of 10 FPS maximum with a similarly configured Athlon system.  All of the benchmarking and tests that I've read indicate that the 800mhz FSB isn't at the moment creating a huge giant boost in performance but rather is future oriented.

Seeing as the Athlon 3200+ and the Pentium 4 3.06 aren't that far apart in benchmarking its hard to say that one eats for breakfast.  Sure you see the graphs and you say...wow...look how fast that is...until you realise that the graphs use such a fine scale of representation that the results are actually very close.

The clockspeed of present Athlons have very little to do with their actual performance.  There is a reason why AMD needed a PR rating and thats because even the enthusiasts tend to still look at Ghz ratings when it has little comparative value between an Intel and an AMD....the cores of the chips are so very different now.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by mikhael
AMD for the only two reasons that matter:

2. Stronger Floating Point Unit.
 

Actually, I.m not entirely sure that's true.  I remember looking through specbench.org at comparative benchmarks between XP processors and P4s.  (XP2000 chips clock slower, but are suppossed to be identical to an intel 2GHz chip).  I remeber finding that the integer performance was pretty much equal between the Intel chips and AMD XP-valued equivalents, but that the FP benchmarks were better for the Intel equivalent by a decent margin - enough to justify the price difference.

A quick and somewhat half-assed (not really a like for like) search gave the following;

Intel 2.67GHz - 911
http://www.specbench.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2002q3/cpu2000-20020827-01584.html

Athlon XP2700 w/ better RAM - 831
http://www.specbench.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2002q4/cpu2000-20020923-01690.html

I can;t really be bothered checking whether itsgenerally true, but I have a decent amount of faith in Specbench... of course, there's going to be a price difference between CPUs regardless........

EDIT:  NB, P4's higher clock speed is a load of pish.  Intel have been artifically inflating the clock speed with gimmicks since they introduced that architecture, and there's been a comparitvely minimal performance increase... that's why they still make P3's for server apps.  Best example is pipelining - over 16 stages,and the overhead of hazard detection removes any negligable gain - but the clock speed does increase because you can theoretically claim an instruction executes at every stage (hard to explain succinctly, but basically, more stages = higher clock rate). So Intel put a 20 stage pipeline in the P4 - vastly inefficient and ultimately handicapping, but it means that they can claim a higher clock rate.  They reduced the pipeline back down to 16 for the chips in the X-box.

Also, I've heard a lot that AMDs run relatively hot..... MS went with Intel for the Xbox simply because there was less cooling required (quiter) than for Athlon.

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by IceFire

And when you say "eat Athlon for breakfast" you mean a performance gain of 10 FPS maximum with a similarly configured Athlon system.  All of the benchmarking and tests that I've read indicate that the 800mhz FSB isn't at the moment creating a huge giant boost in performance but rather is future oriented.

Seeing as the Athlon 3200+ and the Pentium 4 3.06 aren't that far apart in benchmarking its hard to say that one eats for breakfast.  Sure you see the graphs and you say...wow...look how fast that is...until you realise that the graphs use such a fine scale of representation that the results are actually very close.

The clockspeed of present Athlons have very little to do with their actual performance.  There is a reason why AMD needed a PR rating and thats because even the enthusiasts tend to still look at Ghz ratings when it has little comparative value between an Intel and an AMD....the cores of the chips are so very different now.

It may only be a factor of 10-15% (on average) but the latest Intels are faster than AMDs best. That doesn't mean an awful lot when your paying nearly USD$300-400 for the chips but if you get a 2.4C and overclock it to 3.0Ghz you're paying USD$170 for a performance level AMD can't give you for less than USD$350. Even if you factor in the cost of a decent i875 motherboard, you still come out ahead by about USD$80-100 over buying the 3200+. Overclocking hasn't really been this cost effective since the Celeron 300A.

[Xelion]

Heres what AMD processors currently have..

Opteron Processor Overview
btw this is my fav feature: 256 Terabytes of memory address space

and hopefully the future of gaming will be better with the use of AMD Athlon 64s

The only reason Intel is so far ahead is because AMD wanted to squeeze more money out of the market with the XP series - thus the XP generation of processors was extended to include past the 3000+ mark when orginally it was around the 2400+ mark. They did however set a delayed date for there future processors that are based on 0.13/0.09 micron technology that would include the Opteron and the AMD Athlon 64 Processors - Heres a roadmap of the processors

[Admiral LSD]

...and the reason they're trying to squeeze more money out of the XP series is because they can't get Opteron/Athlon 64 out on time (like a lot of their stuff...). They're starting to get worse than Microsoft when it comes to keeping release dates.

[TopAce]

I have Penta 4, I am satisfied with it, but my bro has AMD. His procy is 1000Mhz, mine is 1700 Mhz, the difference can be seen in Battlefield 1942, it works sometimes unplayably slow to me, he has no problem with the performance with 1024x768, with max graphics. I don't know if it is the fault of the processor, I'll give a try of 'Quake 3 lightning calculation' on both machines, and I'll see which the faster is.

[Rampage]

Okay.  Thanks for the input.

I have selected AMD for my processor.  Now, which is the (most non-obsolete) AMD processor to buy for less than $150 (American) out there?  (Athlon has been out for a while now.  And what is this XP thing?  I know Duron is dead...)

[Grey Wolf]

They added the XP after they switched to Thouroughbred from Thunderbird.

As for which processor, you basically have a few choices.

1. If you don't mind overclocking, go for an 2100+. I would have previously suggested a 1700+, but they're apparently phasing out the Thouroughbred Bs for the low clockspeeds, so you'll have to go for a 2100+, which is the lowest to still use the Thoroughbred B. Speed: 1.73 GHz. Price: $69 OEM/$72 Retail

2. If you want to overclock, but not as much, go for a 2500+, which uses the Barton core. You can get a fairly good overclock off of them, and they have a larger amount of L2 cache than the Thouroughbreds (512k vs. 256k). Also, it runs at a higher FSB standard than the 2100+ (166 vs. 133). Speed: 1.83 GHz Price: $87 OEM/$92 Retail

3. If you don't want to overclock, go for the 2700+. It's the highest-clocked Thouroughbred chip that they sell. Structurally, it's the same as the 2100+, but runs at 2.17 GHz, where the 2100+ runs at 1.73 GHz. The FSB runs at 166 like the Bartons, but it only features 256k of L2 cache. Since it is already clocked fairly high, this is not a good overclockers chip. Speed: 2.17 GHz Price:  $130 OEM/$134 Retail

As a note, the difference between the OEM and the Retail is the Retail comes with a warranty (which you kill off if you overclock) and a crappy heatsink. The OEM is just the processor.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Admiral LSD
...and the reason they're trying to squeeze more money out of the XP series is because they can't get Opteron/Athlon 64 out on time (like a lot of their stuff...). They're starting to get worse than Microsoft when it comes to keeping release dates.

I think the Admiral is taking LSD. Opterons are already available. But why bother unless you're using Linux or NetBSD? I guarantee not one of the people using these boards is running an OS that supports a 64bit processor. If you're not running a 64bit OS AND 64bit apps, you might as well be running Win98 on an SMP system. You're just wasting your money.

[Admiral LSD]

Perhaps "can't" wasn't the right word to use, "couldn't" would probably have been a better choice. AMD have been promising to have Opteron and Athlon 64 out for over a year.

Rampage, if you're serious about going AMD (and I still think it's a bad idea), the fastest AMD for less than USD$150 is the 2700+ Barton (166Mhz FSB) at USD$124. USD$163 can get you the 2800+ Barton but it's up to you whether or not you want to spend the extra money. You'll also want to get an nForce2 motherboard to put it on, I personally recommend the EPoX 8RDA+ as it can be had for under USD$100 and has pretty much every useful thing nForce2 has to offer (AGP8X, Firewire, USB2, ATA133, LAN and the best onboard sound in the business). If you can find it, look for the Revision 2.0 8RDA+ though as this has the "Ultra 400" North Bridge on it meaning that you can use the new 200Mhz FSB Athlon XPs on it. This is definitely a future upgrade path though as the 200Mhz parts are currently ridiculously overpriced. You'll also want to get some decent RAM. The Corsair TWINX RAM kits are probably the best to go for here as  not only are they specifically meant for dual-channel operation, they have fairly low latency as well.

[aldo_14]

Incidentally, this is my current wishlist;

Connect 3D  Radeon 9600 128MB DDR AGP DVI  £94.50    
 
Hansol  720P 17" CRT 0.26mm  £116.32    
 
AMD  Athlon XP 2400+ 2Ghz SoA £56.50    
 
Leadtek Research Europe B.V.  SoA nForce 2 ATX A L  £72.50    

Bear in mind I'm not trying to build a top-spec system, though.... only upgrade my present one to about medium level.  I'm only including the Athlon chip (maybe) because I'm getting the MB.

[Grey Wolf]

Hey LSD? The 2700+ is a Thouroughbred B, not a Barton. There are only 4 Barton cores: 2500+, 2800+, 3000+, and 3200+. Everything else is a Thouroughbred.

[Admiral LSD]

The 166Mhz (333 DDR) FSB was confusing me, I keep thinking that is exclusive to the Bartons...

[Black Ace]

Ok... excuse my ignorance (and yes I have read all of the reviews, etc) but will someone PLEASE in laymans (READ: Gamers) terms describe to me what difference I would notice between a 2600 Thoroughbred and a 2500 Barton?

Thanks... Oh yeah, and I'm not planning on overclocking at this point... a wee bit nervous about it until I can get all the componants I want.

Also, since I've semi-hijacked this topic, is this a good mobo for either of the above processors. I originally was looking at the Epox board mentioned above, but how does it compare to this one, especially in terms up upgradability.

Asus nForce2 A7N8X Deluxe

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by Black Ace
Also, since I've semi-hijacked this topic, is this a good mobo for either of the above processors. I originally was looking at the Epox board mentioned above, but how does it compare to this one, especially in terms up upgradability.

Asus nForce2 A7N8X Deluxe

If you get the Rev 2.0 8RDA+ you get the Ultra 400 North Bridge meaning you can take anything up to a 3200+ Athlon XP (and possibly higher depend on how many more models AMD make based on the 200Mhz FSB). The Asus has SATA but this really only a gimmick as it's tethered to the PCI bus which will only hurt performance in the long term. The EPoX also has a USD$40 price advantage over the Asus as well (the price advantage was the main reason I chose the EPoX over the Asus).

[Black Ace]

Um.,.. anyone there? Maybe nobody knows...

[Ryx]

Originally posted by Black Ace
Ok... excuse my ignorance (and yes I have read all of the reviews, etc) but will someone PLEASE in laymans (READ: Gamers) terms describe to me what difference I would notice between a 2600 Thoroughbred and a 2500 Barton?

If memory serves...
Barton core has 512kb cache, whereas Tbred has 256kb. Small clockspeed increase (). I think a higher FSB, too.

[Admiral LSD]

Actually, for the most part, Bartons take a clock speed decrease (over similar rated T-bred equivalents) but this is supposedly made up for by the enlarged L2 cache. Bartons also have a 166Mhz FSB but, as I keep being told, a couple of T-bred models also had 166Mhz FSBs. Bartons tend to get ahead of T-bred in some tests and fall behind in others but the actual performance difference between those two chips should be minimal.

[Grey Wolf]

Motherboard wise, go for the ABIT NF7-S You know you want to

[Black Ace]

Everyone keeps telling me that... but i like my dual lan for 5 dollars more...