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#1
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AMD Athlon 64 3200+ vs Pentium 4 3.2ghz
Hello,
I was just shopping around for a new machine and the only thing I am left to decide on is which one of these processors I should choose. Today I almost bought a very nice HP Pavillion T680 with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor. It was only when I got home, I learnt that 3200+ doesn't mean 3.2ghz and that this processor is actually 2.0ghz. This has now put me in a confusing situation to whether or not I buy this machine or go for a Pentium 4 3.2ghz or faster. Does the Athlon 64 3200+ actually show the same performance as a Pentium 3.2ghz ? What would the readers of this recommend for me to do? I use my computer mainly for Internet related tasks, Communication, MS Office; but recently I have started wanting to use it for video editing and using Flight Simulator 2004, which I have bought but hardly used as my AMD Duron 800mhz with 192MB RAM doesn't work too well with! lol Thanks for any help. Simon |
#2
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Simon Lee wrote: Hello, I was just shopping around for a new machine and the only thing I am left to decide on is which one of these processors I should choose. Today I almost bought a very nice HP Pavillion T680 with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor. It was only when I got home, I learnt that 3200+ doesn't mean 3.2ghz and that this processor is actually 2.0ghz. The clock speed doesn't matter. What matters is how fast it runs programs. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6 Think of the clock speed of a processor as being like how many steps per minute an animal makes. Even though a centipede makes many more steps per minute than a race horse, you know that the race horse can move much further than the centipede in a certain amount of time. Why? It is because the horse makes so much more progress with each step than the centipede. AMD processors also make a tremendous amount of progress per clock cycle. An important thing to remember is that the review of the Athlon 64 I posted a link to is for use of the Athlon 64 with a 32 bit operating system(Windows XP) and 32 bit software. One should expect even greater performance running 32 bit software using a 64 bit OS(it can run 64 bit software side by side with 32 bit software when a 64 bit OS is used), and even better performance running 64 bit software with a 64 bit OS. The typical Pentium 4 chip is a 32 bit chip. This has now put me in a confusing situation to whether or not I buy this machine or go for a Pentium 4 3.2ghz or faster. Go for the Athlon 64. Does the Athlon 64 3200+ actually show the same performance as a Pentium 3.2ghz ? In many cases the Athlon 64 is much faster. This includes business software and games. The important thing to remember is that the Athlon 64 allows future upgrades to 64 bit software. What would the readers of this recommend for me to do? Buy an Athlon 64 system. Make sure to get a good video card since you want to play games. In Doom 3 for example, a $160 Athlon 64 3000+ chip beats an $825 Pentium 4 3.2 ghz EE chip. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=7 For Business Winstone 2004, a $190 Athlon 64 3200+ beats a $1,000 Pentium 4 3.4 EE chip. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6 Another reminder. all the benchmarks I have referenced were for 32 bit software using a 32 bit OS. The Athlon 64 can run 64 bit software when a 64 bit OS is used. Here is one example using 64 bit software(with the beta edition of Windows 64 bit) compared to the 32 bit version running on an Athlon 64. The 64 bit version finished the task in 25% less time. http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=257&p=1 Other applications might have a much larger performance boost when moved to 64 bit. Keep in mind that the 64 bit results are in comparison to the already great 32 bit results for the Athlon 64. I use my computer mainly for Internet related tasks, Communication, MS Office; but recently I have started wanting to use it for video editing and using Flight Simulator 2004, which I have bought but hardly used as my AMD Duron 800mhz with 192MB RAM doesn't work too well with! lol Thanks for any help. Simon |
#3
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JK,
Thankyou very much for that information. It was very helpful. I think I might go for the T680 Athlon 64 depending on one other factor, room for wireless netowrking hardware. Simon |
#4
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Simon Lee wrote:
Hello, I was just shopping around for a new machine and the only thing I am left to decide on is which one of these processors I should choose. Today I almost bought a very nice HP Pavillion T680 with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor. It was only when I got home, I learnt that 3200+ doesn't mean 3.2ghz and that this processor is actually 2.0ghz. This has now put me in a confusing situation to whether or not I buy this machine or go for a Pentium 4 3.2ghz or faster. They call it a 3200+ precisely because it's more or less equivalent to a Pentium-4 3.2Ghz. Actually, AMD is being highly conservative because usually it's closer to a 3.4Ghz Pentium 4. The Athlons are generally faster at games, while the P4's are faster at video/audio conversions (converting from one format to another). Typical office and Internet activity are a wash-out between the two of them. Yousuf Khan |
#5
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Bitstring , from the wonderful person JK
said snip It was only when I got home, I learnt that 3200+ doesn't mean 3.2ghz and that this processor is actually 2.0ghz. The clock speed doesn't matter. What matters is how fast it runs programs. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6 Think of the clock speed of a processor as being like how many steps per minute an animal makes. I prefer 'the rev counter in your car'. Yeah, it measures something, but nothing you really care about comparing between different brands. Roadspeed and gas consumption are much more interesting. This has now put me in a confusing situation to whether or not I buy this machine or go for a Pentium 4 3.2ghz or faster. Go for the Athlon 64. Seconded. The number of things a P4 beats an Athlon at is quite small, and (at least until recently) the price premium for ;buy Intel' was pretty steep. -- GSV Three Minds in a Can Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing. |
#6
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For video and audio editing and a few other things, the P4 will be faster. When you say faster, how much faster? If it's quite a tiny difference, I can live with that. Simon |
#7
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I am very interested in that computer. It must be a very new model,
as the Athlon 64 3200+ at a 2 ghz clock speed is a chip made on the new 90 nm process, and uses two on chip memory controllers, and the newer socket 939 motherboard. This website indicates an October release for the chip. Is that system in stores already (if so what country?), or is it a built to order system to be shipped in a week or two? I couldn't find information on the net under that model number. http://www.c627627.com/AMD/Athlon64/ Simon Lee wrote: JK, Thankyou very much for that information. It was very helpful. I think I might go for the T680 Athlon 64 depending on one other factor, room for wireless netowrking hardware. Simon |
#8
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Here is a link to performance running an Opteron(basically an Athlon 64,
but intended for servers that works with registered ECC memory, a different form of memory than the Athlon 64 works with) using a 64 bit version of Linux compared to an Intel 64 bit chip(Intel's 64 bit chips are very expensive). It shows the Opteron beating the 64 bit Intel chip(which is much more expensive) when running 64 bit software, even when running rending. http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163&p=4 It is hard to find 64 bit benchmarks run under Windows 64 bit, however we will probably see many more before the end of the year. I presented one in a previous post. It will be interesting to see 64 bit benchmarks for video using Windows 64 bit. Simon Lee wrote: For video and audio editing and a few other things, the P4 will be faster. When you say faster, how much faster? If it's quite a tiny difference, I can live with that. Simon |
#9
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On second thought it could be the older Athlon 64 3200+ with
1000K of L2 cache that uses a socket 754 motherboard. So it is either an old model or a very new model. JK wrote: I am very interested in that computer. It must be a very new model, as the Athlon 64 3200+ at a 2 ghz clock speed is a chip made on the new 90 nm process, and uses two on chip memory controllers, and the newer socket 939 motherboard. This website indicates an October release for the chip. Is that system in stores already (if so what country?), or is it a built to order system to be shipped in a week or two? I couldn't find information on the net under that model number. http://www.c627627.com/AMD/Athlon64/ Simon Lee wrote: JK, Thankyou very much for that information. It was very helpful. I think I might go for the T680 Athlon 64 depending on one other factor, room for wireless netowrking hardware. Simon |
#10
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On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 18:00:43 +0100, "Simon Lee"
wrote: Hello, I was just shopping around for a new machine and the only thing I am left to decide on is which one of these processors I should choose. Today I almost bought a very nice HP Pavillion T680 with a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor. It was only when I got home, I learnt that 3200+ doesn't mean 3.2ghz and that this processor is actually 2.0ghz. This has now put me in a confusing situation to whether or not I buy this machine or go for a Pentium 4 3.2ghz or faster. Does the Athlon 64 3200+ actually show the same performance as a Pentium 3.2ghz ? Generally speaking it's actually faster than the Pentium4 3.2GHz.. and cheaper and it can run 64-bit OSes if you so desire. Clock speed is a VERY limited measurement of performance, there are dozens of other factors that affect things. Both AMD and Intel are moving away from labeling their processors only by clock speed these days. What would the readers of this recommend for me to do? Stick with what you've got, it looks like the system you have has pretty reasonable specs. I use my computer mainly for Internet related tasks, Communication, MS Office; but recently I have started wanting to use it for video editing and using Flight Simulator 2004, which I have bought but hardly used as my AMD Duron 800mhz with 192MB RAM doesn't work too well with! lol I think you'll find that for most of the applications your looking at, you would never notice the difference between the P4 of the Athlon64. Benchmarks might show a slight edge for one or the other, but nothing huge. For Flight Simulator 2004 you'll probably find that the video card plays at least as big of a role as the processor. The default config of the system you've got has an nVidia GeForceFX 5500, which is reasonable as far as PCs from big OEMs go. It would probably be slower than the T685 which uses an ATI X600, but definitely faster than the el-cheapo stuff that uses integrated Intel or VIA graphics. Between those two systems (the t680 and t685), it's a bit of a toss-up. The standard price is identical (1100 of those sketchy British monetary units) and almost all the add-in features are the same. The AMD-based t680 comes with a faster processor with more features (the Athlon64 3200+ vs. P4 530), but a slower video card (GeForceFX 5500 vs. Radeon X600 Pro) and slightly more dated I/O technology (parallel ATA hard drive vs. Serial ATA, AGP graphics vs. PCI Express). All in all though, they're pretty comparable. Personally I would tend to opt for the P4-based t685 for the better video card, though buying a Radeon X600 Pro video card separately will only set you back about $125 US (might be a bit more on that side of the pond). Better yet, you could stick with the t680, wait for a year until your warranty expires and you're allowed to open the case and get yourself something twice as fast as either of those video cards for about the same price. ------------- Tony Hill hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca |
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