Athlon 64 vs Pentium 4

man wrote:

This has probably been talked about before here...

I'm building a new system...the goal is to avoid building a new system
for the longest possible time. It's come down to getting an AMD Athlon
64 3200+ with 1MB cache, or a Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.0 GHZ with 1MB
cache.

In my research I've found that a prescott will beat the Athlon in most
benches.

That is not true. The Athlon 64 3200+ will beat the P4 3ghz Prescott
in most benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=1

The prescott also seems attractive because it can be
overclocked to 4 GHZ (!).

Overclocking is not recommended if you want a stable system. Overclocking
also tends to reduce the life of the processor, and might require expensive
water cooling to overclock by large margin.



But is the future of operating systems 64-bit?

Yes.

Or is it going to be
years before windows will be 64 bit in the mainstream?

Years? It will probably be released in early to mid 2005.
64 bit Linux is available now.



So in other words, is 64-bit silly, and should I just go for the
speed?

The Athlon 64 has the speed in both 32 bit and 64 bit.

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:18:12 -0400, JK
wrote:


Overclocking is not recommended if you want a stable system.

Nonsense
There are instable o'c systems but instable non-o'c systems too.

If someone is ignorant of how to o'c, then of course they
shouldn't... same goes for driving a car but it's not an argument
against someone else driving a car.


Overclocking
also tends to reduce the life of the processor, and might require expensive
water cooling to overclock by large margin.

Lifespan is almost always still far longer than useful lifespan
of system. There would be many Celeron 300 o'c to 450 still
runnning if they weren't too slow today... in fact they may still
be running o'c after system is given away.

Water cooling might be needed for highest o'c on a P4, but even
then, the performance to price ratio is fair for a P4. AMD just
has a much more attractive alternative right now.




But is the future of operating systems 64-bit?

Yes.

Or is it going to be
years before windows will be 64 bit in the mainstream?

Years? It will probably be released in early to mid 2005.
64 bit Linux is available now.


Sadly we don't need operating system performance, a 400MHz
Celeron system is enough to run just the WinXP GUI. Applications
are still years away for most of us, or at least those not
willling to fork over thousands of $$$$ all at once.


So in other words, is 64-bit silly, and should I just go for the
speed?

The Athlon 64 has the speed in both 32 bit and 64 bit.


64bit is really just a distraction, there is rarely any point to
buy towards future performance... let tomorrow take care of
itself. What Athlon does well today is in the brute-processing
and memory control department.

kony wrote:

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:18:12 -0400, JK
wrote:

Overclocking is not recommended if you want a stable system.

Nonsense
There are instable o'c systems but instable non-o'c systems too.

If someone is ignorant of how to o'c, then of course they
shouldn't... same goes for driving a car but it's not an argument
against someone else driving a car.

It is an argument for not driving a car above the speed limit. Keeping
with the specs. adds to safety and avoids problems. There are
speed limits for a reason, and processors have rated speeds
for a reason. As you go further outside the specifications, you
increase the risk for problems.



Overclocking
also tends to reduce the life of the processor, and might require expensive
water cooling to overclock by large margin.

Lifespan is almost always still far longer than useful lifespan
of system. There would be many Celeron 300 o'c to 450 still
runnning if they weren't too slow today... in fact they may still
be running o'c after system is given away.

Water cooling might be needed for highest o'c on a P4, but even
then, the performance to price ratio is fair for a P4. AMD just
has a much more attractive alternative right now.




But is the future of operating systems 64-bit?

Yes.

Or is it going to be
years before windows will be 64 bit in the mainstream?

Years? It will probably be released in early to mid 2005.
64 bit Linux is available now.

Sadly we don't need operating system performance, a 400MHz
Celeron system is enough to run just the WinXP GUI. Applications
are still years away for most of us, or at least those not
willling to fork over thousands of $$$$ all at once.

So in other words, is 64-bit silly, and should I just go for the
speed?

The Athlon 64 has the speed in both 32 bit and 64 bit.


64bit is really just a distraction, there is rarely any point to
buy towards future performance... let tomorrow take care of
itself. What Athlon does well today is in the brute-processing
and memory control department.

The first generation Athlon 64 chips were out in early '03.

Monster wrote:

but would you want a first gen 64bit system? First gens are usually
expensive and bad when you look back and compare them to the 2nd or 3rd
generations.

"man" wrote in message
om...
This has probably been talked about before here...

I'm building a new system...the goal is to avoid building a new system
for the longest possible time. It's come down to getting an AMD Athlon
64 3200+ with 1MB cache, or a Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.0 GHZ with 1MB
cache.

In my research I've found that a prescott will beat the Athlon in most
benches. The prescott also seems attractive because it can be
overclocked to 4 GHZ (!).

But is the future of operating systems 64-bit? Or is it going to be
years before windows will be 64 bit in the mainstream?

So in other words, is 64-bit silly, and should I just go for the
speed?

That is not true. The Athlon 64 3200+ will beat the P4 3ghz Prescott
in most benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=1


Don't listen to this guy. He spouts a few benchmarks and ignores all the
contradicting benchmarks. Plus he seems very determined to bash Intel for
some odd reason. The truth is, those two processors are pretty well
matched, performance wise. You won't need 64 bit hardware for a few years
yet. Either processor would work great, but don't believe anyone who tells
you that the Athlon 64 will beat the P4 in most benchmarks. That's like
taking (car A tops out at 210 MPH on most tracks while car B can only do 205
on most of them, but will do 230 on some of them) and interpreting that as
(car A is faster on most tracks). It is a gross exaggeration. Anyone with
half a brain will be happy with either of them. -Dave

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:17:10 -0400, JK
wrote:



kony wrote:

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:18:12 -0400, JK
wrote:

Overclocking is not recommended if you want a stable system.

Nonsense
There are instable o'c systems but instable non-o'c systems too.

If someone is ignorant of how to o'c, then of course they
shouldn't... same goes for driving a car but it's not an argument
against someone else driving a car.

It is an argument for not driving a car above the speed limit. Keeping
with the specs. adds to safety and avoids problems. There are
speed limits for a reason, and processors have rated speeds
for a reason. As you go further outside the specifications, you
increase the risk for problems.


Almost everyone DOES drive above speed limit, at least on THIS
planet. It may increase risk for problems IF the specifics of
the o'c aren't considered, how they effect system. "Safety" is
random nonsense, life is inherantly unsafe and there's nothing
particular to overclocked CPU that's unsafe, if done correctly.


In other words, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with
overclocking, rather that someone should known what they're doing
if they start making *any* kind of hardware configuration
changes.

Hi,

I had a look at those benchmarks and it seems as soon as you put the
resolution up the Athlon 64s drop nearly 20fps while the Intel ones seem
to drop a much smaller amount.

This seems to indicate that the Athlon 64s don't perform very well when
you put them under any real pressure.

-Steve

Stephen Gordon wrote:

Hi,

I had a look at those benchmarks and it seems as soon as you put the
resolution up the Athlon 64s drop nearly 20fps while the Intel ones seem
to drop a much smaller amount.

This seems to indicate that the Athlon 64s don't perform very well when
you put them under any real pressure.

Your interpretation is wrong. The large drop for the Athlon 64 when the
resolution is raised means that the video card is the bottleneck,
and is holding back the cpu from achieving its potential. For
the cpus where there is a small change, it means the cpu is the
bottleneck, and is holding back the video card.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=1



-Steve

JK wrote:

Your interpretation is wrong. The large drop for the Athlon 64 when the
resolution is raised means that the video card is the bottleneck,
and is holding back the cpu from achieving its potential. For
the cpus where there is a small change, it means the cpu is the
bottleneck, and is holding back the video card.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=1


If there is no graphics card available that can keep pace with the CPU
then what is the point of wasting all that money.

-Steve

Stephen Gordon wrote:

JK wrote:

Your interpretation is wrong. The large drop for the Athlon 64 when the
resolution is raised means that the video card is the bottleneck,
and is holding back the cpu from achieving its potential. For
the cpus where there is a small change, it means the cpu is the
bottleneck, and is holding back the video card.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=1


If there is no graphics card available that can keep pace with the CPU
then what is the point of wasting all that money.

The point is to have the video card do all it is capable of.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2149&p=8



-Steve