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amd 64bits interesting?
is it interesting to wait for an amd 64 or is it better to buy a classic amd
athlon xp (barton or not) now? cause i want to buy a new pc but i can wait a little if there are many advantages... |
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On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 23:32:54 +0200, "Kriss"
wrote: is it interesting to wait for an amd 64 or is it better to buy a classic amd athlon xp (barton or not) now? cause i want to buy a new pc but i can wait a little if there are many advantages... Well, of course there are advantages, what would have been the point in developing the new chip if there weren't any advantages!? : It's really more a question of whether or not those advantages are going to be of any use to you. First off, going to 64-bits will allow the use of TONS of memory, this is the main reason for the switch. 32-bit chips can only handle 4GB of main memory without resorting to really ugly hacks, and even than they run into fairly major problems at about 2GB of memory. If you have applications that need lots of memory, then the Athlon64 or an Opteron are definitely a good choice. Otherwise, simply being a 64-bit chip doesn't buy you much. However, the new Athlon64 does also offer some additional advantages over existing AthlonXP chips. First off, it will offer more memory bandwidth and lower latencies to memory due to it's integrated memory controller. This alone should improve performance by quite a bit. Second, it offers more cache memory (1MB of L2 cache vs. 512KB for the Barton or 256KB all other AthlonXP chips). Again, this should boost it's performance. Then there is the I/O bandwidth, which is now significantly higher because it's no longer shared with the traffic to/from main memory. Finally there are a number of internal enhancements to the chip that should allow it to perform better. The big downside though is that the chip and the motherboards to support this chip are going to be significantly more expensive than current AthlonXP chips. So, my advice? You're probably better off sticking to either one of the low-end or mid-range AthlonXP chips, or if you want more performance, go for a Pentium4 (the high-end AthlonXP chips don't offer very good value for their money at this point in time). The Athlon64 is going to be fairly expensive for at least a few months time (probably at least until the new year), and at least initially Windows will not support it's 64-bit capabilities (though Linux will). A 64-bit version of WinXP is expected sometime in the new year. ------------- Tony Hill hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca |
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On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:01:10 GMT, Never anonymous Bud
wrote: Having skipped an E.L.F. meeting to be here, Keith R. Williams scribbled: "improve performance"? Nope, the average user WON'T notice the difference. The Athlon64 should perform 15-25% faster than the AthlonXP, this is more than sufficient for most people to notice the difference on more demanding applications, and that's assuming that they're only upgrading from an AthlonXP 3200+ to an Athlon64 3200+, which just won't be the case. Is it going to be some sort of earth-shattering, revolutionary computing experience?! No, of course not! There hasn't been that kind of upgrade in 20 year or more, if ever! But the fact of the matter is that the Athlon64 will be noticeably faster on most applications than a high-end AthlonXP. What's more, at the high-end, the should be in a similar price range. You'll pay a little bit more for the Athlon64 to get a fair bit more performance. If you're looking to do things on the cheap, then a low to mid-range AthlonXP (something in the 2400+ to 2800+ chips) offer much better value. I don't see how this is somehow difficult for you to understand here. ------------- Tony Hill hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca |
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:20:59 GMT, Tony Hill
wrote: Is it going to be some sort of earth-shattering, revolutionary computing experience?! No, of course not! There hasn't been that kind of upgrade in 20 year or more, if ever! But the fact of the Hmm, I thought getting an EGA card instead of CGA, and so was getting a VGA from a EGA, pretty earth shattering revolutionary kind of experience :P -- L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work. If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me :) Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript. If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too. But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code |
On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 23:32:54 +0200, "Kriss" wrote:
is it interesting to wait for an amd 64 or is it better to buy a classic amd athlon xp (barton or not) now? cause i want to buy a new pc but i can wait a little if there are many advantages... It depends a lot on what you intend to do with the new system, now and down the road - always good to supply that info - and what your expected system life cycle is. For general business/home type use and maybe some photo/video work for a 2/3year life cycle the Athlon XP or P4 would probably be the best route right now. I don't know about France but in the U.S. the price sweet spot just now seems to be the Athlon XP 3000+/400 or the P4 2.8GHz. Rgds, George Macdonald "Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me?? |
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:20:59 +0000, Tony Hill wrote:
Is it going to be some sort of earth-shattering, revolutionary computing experience?! No, of course not! There hasn't been that kind of upgrade in 20 year or more, if ever! Upgrading my Sinclair Spectrum to an Amiga 500 fitted that description :) Yeah, I know that is a looser definition of 'upgrade' ie my old software didn't work on it anymore. And it was getting pretty close to your 20yr limit anyway... oh what the hell you're right! ;) Cheers Anton |
"Kriss" wrote in message
... is it interesting to wait for an amd 64 or is it better to buy a classic amd athlon xp (barton or not) now? cause i want to buy a new pc but i can wait a little if there are many advantages... It's actually far more interesting buying an Athlon XP later, when Athlon 64's are more common, because you'll get the XP a lot cheaper. Yousuf Khan |
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