Athlon 64's vs. Athlon XP vs. Pentium 4

I currently have a Athlon XP 1.8 Ghz system. I'm very happy with it
except the motherboard is not fried. I wasn't planning to upgrade to
anything better for at least a year or two but maybe now is the time.
My first reaction is to go 64 bit to the Athlon 64 but yet I know I
won't use a 64 bit OS for some time and I know the ones to come out
(64 bit XP in 2004 especially and Longhorn) may have less features
than the regular XP so I hate to make the downgrade so am very
concerned about 32 bit performance but the fact of having 64 bit when
the time comes is nice. My concerns:
For the Athlon 64 if I go with that should I look at the regular
Athlon 64 or the Athlon FX? Is there a difference in 32 bit
performance among them? I know there is a big price difference?
As for the others, should I look at one of the faster XP's, maybe one
with the Barton core?
As well, how does the Pentium 4 compare pricewise and performance
wise?
As well, I'd appreciate any motherboard suggestions. I have used Asus
mostly and have been very happy with it.

AMD sucks, so the answer is obvious don't you think?

MarkW wrote in message . ..
I currently have a Athlon XP 1.8 Ghz system. I'm very happy with it
except the motherboard is not fried. I wasn't planning to upgrade to
anything better for at least a year or two but maybe now is the time.
My first reaction is to go 64 bit to the Athlon 64 but yet I know I
won't use a 64 bit OS for some time and I know the ones to come out
(64 bit XP in 2004 especially and Longhorn) may have less features
than the regular XP so I hate to make the downgrade so am very
concerned about 32 bit performance but the fact of having 64 bit when
the time comes is nice. My concerns:
For the Athlon 64 if I go with that should I look at the regular
Athlon 64 or the Athlon FX? Is there a difference in 32 bit
performance among them? I know there is a big price difference?
As for the others, should I look at one of the faster XP's, maybe one
with the Barton core?
As well, how does the Pentium 4 compare pricewise and performance
wise?
As well, I'd appreciate any motherboard suggestions. I have used Asus
mostly and have been very happy with it.


As for comparing AMD XP and Pentium4-C this website sums everything up
nicely
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle....rtno=66&pgno=0

you can draw your own conclusion.

The Athlon FX beats Intel's best by a large margin, however it is more
expensive as it must use registered memory.

The Athlon 64 is still faster at most things than the Intel's best.
However from what I read it is not as easy to overclock as the FX.

as a side note I have heard that the Athlon FX is a limited production
CPU as AMD will be rolling out a better version of the chip soon.

On the Intel side the Prescott core is coming soon don't know much
about it.

As far as motherboards ABit and Gigabyte and Asus are good places to
look at I myself generally get Soyo Mobo's

you might check out these websites
http://www.firingsquad.com/
http://www.hothardware.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/

good luck

The Athlon FX beats Intel's best by a large margin, however it is more
expensive as it must use registered memory.

So what? The processor is hard to get, still expensive, any descent
motherboards?
And at the moment there is no descent 64 bit OS for it, so what's the deal.
We will see the real Intel powerprocessors by the time the Athlon FX is
getting a change to show it's real power.
It's the same with the Apple G5... it's there, but the software is not
optimized so in the end the thing is still running slower than the fastest
Intel.

But speed isn't for me the most important thing, it's the quality. AMD
offers inferior quality

"Peter" wrote in message m...
The Athlon FX beats Intel's best by a large margin, however it is more
expensive as it must use registered memory.

So what? The processor is hard to get, still expensive, any descent
motherboards?
And at the moment there is no descent 64 bit OS for it, so what's the deal.
We will see the real Intel powerprocessors by the time the Athlon FX is
getting a change to show it's real power.
It's the same with the Apple G5... it's there, but the software is not
optimized so in the end the thing is still running slower than the fastest
Intel.

But speed isn't for me the most important thing, it's the quality. AMD
offers inferior quality

ok
1.)processor hard to find: found it here
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ctCode=80710-R
and here
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...=BROWSE&depa=1
and here
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merch...ory_Code=AMD64

2.)It's expensive:
at each of the sites above it was around $300 cheaper than Intel's P4
EE

3.)Nforce based Mobo's are looking good right now.

4.)No decent O/S I guess that depends what you are looking for Linux
from what I have heard already have a couple of 64-bit version out.

5.)low quality? I would need to see some article's on that.

Good luck with your AMD; they're only good enough to cook an egg on LOL

Trust, if they were better I would buy them, I mean, why not? But I still
consider them cheap clones... and it showes.

"Peter" wrote in message m...
Good luck with your AMD; they're only good enough to cook an egg on LOL

Trust, if they were better I would buy them, I mean, why not? But I still
consider them cheap clones... and it showes.

Thank you, Good luck with your Intel. My Intel comp. and AMD comp.
are doing just fine BTW. besides for being a company with less than
10% of the market and produces chips that run up to 1000MHz slower but
are usually not more that 20 - 25% slower shows to me a good efficent
design.