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amd 64bits interesting?



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 19th 03, 10:32 PM
Kriss
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Default 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...


  #3  
Old September 20th 03, 08:47 AM
Tony Hill
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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
  #6  
Old September 20th 03, 11:20 PM
Tony Hill
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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
  #7  
Old September 21st 03, 04:54 AM
The little lost angel
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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.
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But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code
  #8  
Old September 21st 03, 01:07 PM
George Macdonald
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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...


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??
  #9  
Old September 21st 03, 11:44 PM
AD.
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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
  #10  
Old September 24th 03, 09:00 PM
Yousuf Khan
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"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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