What Can I Really Compare A AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Processor to??

Hi,

Sorry of this is a stupid question. I did a little research before
buying, but maybe not enough.

I walked into my local Best Buy ready to purchase a new Gateway PC
with a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology
that was 3.0 MHZ.

When I arrived, the machine I had selected online was (of course) out
of stock and I spotten an HP PC instead that was about $150 less and
had a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor in it.

I found a salesperson who seemed to know what he was saying and when I
asked for a simply comparison between the AMD processor and the Intel
in the machine they were out of, he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0 MHZ
Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1 MHZ for
this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than Intel."

I have had PC's with both Intel and AMD processors in them and have
never had trouble with either. In fact, some I had long forgotten
which they had in them unless I was asked.

SO, I took the salesperson's word as above and decided to save some
money and get the HP with the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Maybe I screwed up.

While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP
3200+ processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to
buy. It this Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson
said.

I am kinda nervous that I should have ignored him and waited for the
Gateway with Intel.. I am not finding anything on the web that takes
an AMD Athlon and tells you what it is equal to in Intel.

Anyone have answers? Thanks!

For business software, the Athlon XP3200+ is great. An Athlon Xp3000+
beats a much more expensive Pentium 4 3.2 ghz in Business Winstone 2004.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6

For gaming though, an Athlon 64 processor would be the best choice.
I usually advise people to buy an Athlon XP processor if they plan to
run business software, but aren't into gaming.




Ryan wrote:

Hi,

Sorry of this is a stupid question. I did a little research before
buying, but maybe not enough.

I walked into my local Best Buy ready to purchase a new Gateway PC
with a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology
that was 3.0 MHZ.

When I arrived, the machine I had selected online was (of course) out
of stock and I spotten an HP PC instead that was about $150 less and
had a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor in it.

I found a salesperson who seemed to know what he was saying and when I
asked for a simply comparison between the AMD processor and the Intel
in the machine they were out of, he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0 MHZ
Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1 MHZ for
this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than Intel."

I have had PC's with both Intel and AMD processors in them and have
never had trouble with either. In fact, some I had long forgotten
which they had in them unless I was asked.

SO, I took the salesperson's word as above and decided to save some
money and get the HP with the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Maybe I screwed up.

While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP
3200+ processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to
buy. It this Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson
said.

I am kinda nervous that I should have ignored him and waited for the
Gateway with Intel.. I am not finding anything on the web that takes
an AMD Athlon and tells you what it is equal to in Intel.

Anyone have answers? Thanks!

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 19:26:36 -0800, Ryan wrote:

Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP 3200+
processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to buy. It this
Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson said.

The salesman was right(ish) - it would be the roughly the same or faster
than the P4 in most situations. But they would still be pretty close, you
probably wouldn't be able to 'feel' it.

And XP is correct too. The 3200+ model number is a performance rating, and
its clockspeed is actually 2.whatever GHz.

It's all ok, don't worry.

Cheers
Anton

Here is a review of the Athlon XP3000+. The 3200+ would of course be
a bit faster.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=1783&p=10



JK wrote:

For business software, the Athlon XP3200+ is great. An Athlon Xp3000+
beats a much more expensive Pentium 4 3.2 ghz in Business Winstone 2004.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2065&p=6

For gaming though, an Athlon 64 processor would be the best choice.
I usually advise people to buy an Athlon XP processor if they plan to
run business software, but aren't into gaming.

Ryan wrote:

Hi,

Sorry of this is a stupid question. I did a little research before
buying, but maybe not enough.

I walked into my local Best Buy ready to purchase a new Gateway PC
with a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology
that was 3.0 MHZ.

When I arrived, the machine I had selected online was (of course) out
of stock and I spotten an HP PC instead that was about $150 less and
had a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor in it.

I found a salesperson who seemed to know what he was saying and when I
asked for a simply comparison between the AMD processor and the Intel
in the machine they were out of, he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0 MHZ
Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1 MHZ for
this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than Intel."

I have had PC's with both Intel and AMD processors in them and have
never had trouble with either. In fact, some I had long forgotten
which they had in them unless I was asked.

SO, I took the salesperson's word as above and decided to save some
money and get the HP with the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Maybe I screwed up.

While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP
3200+ processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to
buy. It this Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson
said.

I am kinda nervous that I should have ignored him and waited for the
Gateway with Intel.. I am not finding anything on the web that takes
an AMD Athlon and tells you what it is equal to in Intel.

Anyone have answers? Thanks!

On 7 Nov 2004 19:26:36 -0800, (Ryan) wrote:

Hi,

Sorry of this is a stupid question. I did a little research before
buying, but maybe not enough.

I walked into my local Best Buy ready to purchase a new Gateway PC
with a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology
that was 3.0 MHZ.

When I arrived, the machine I had selected online was (of course) out
of stock and I spotten an HP PC instead that was about $150 less and
had a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor in it.

I found a salesperson who seemed to know what he was saying and when I
asked for a simply comparison between the AMD processor and the Intel
in the machine they were out of, he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0 MHZ
Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1 MHZ for
this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than Intel."

While I have heard some really stupid explanations from sales people at the
big retailers, this guy actually seems to be clued in. What he said is
about right.

I have had PC's with both Intel and AMD processors in them and have
never had trouble with either. In fact, some I had long forgotten
which they had in them unless I was asked.

SO, I took the salesperson's word as above and decided to save some
money and get the HP with the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Maybe I screwed up.

While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP
3200+ processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to
buy. It this Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson
said.

It's all to do with work done per clock cycle - the P4 systems have a
higher clock speed but do less work per clock cycle on most instructions.
There's a similar dichotomy between Intel's desktop P4s and Pentium-M CPUS
used in notebooks: a 1.5GHz P-M is roughly equivalent in performance to a
2.4GHz P4... and Intel has now started to use a model number system for
their CPUs, which de-emphasizes raw clock speed

I am kinda nervous that I should have ignored him and waited for the
Gateway with Intel.. I am not finding anything on the web that takes
an AMD Athlon and tells you what it is equal to in Intel.

There's some give and take here, depending on what you do with the system -
in general a P4 system of similar rating will do better at video processing
and some heavy duty FPU work; in gaming and general office work the Athlon
will do better, with many of the tasks close enough to call a tie.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

On 7 Nov 2004 19:26:36 -0800, (Ryan) wrote:

Hi,

Sorry of this is a stupid question. I did a little research before
buying, but maybe not enough.

I walked into my local Best Buy ready to purchase a new Gateway PC
with a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 530 with Hyper-Threading Technology
that was 3.0 MHZ.

When I arrived, the machine I had selected online was (of course) out
of stock and I spotten an HP PC instead that was about $150 less and
had a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor in it.

I found a salesperson who seemed to know what he was saying and when I
asked for a simply comparison between the AMD processor and the Intel
in the machine they were out of, he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0 MHZ
Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1 MHZ for

As others have mentioned, the sales person is kinda-sorta right
(assuming you/he ment "GHz" where you have "MHz" written... a 3.0MHz
processor would be REALLY slow by today's standards! : ). It's
really quite tough to give a single number to compare the two chips,
since in some situations one might be faster and in others the other
might be faster.

As a general rule though, I would tend to say that the AthlonXP 3200+
and the P4 3.0GHz will be sufficiently close in all applications that
you'll never notice the difference.

this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than Intel."

Err, this part is kind of meaningless. The graphics performance is
much more determined by the video card than by the processor. Now, it
may be that he meant the AMD system came with a better video card, so
it would be better at graphics in that regard.

I have had PC's with both Intel and AMD processors in them and have
never had trouble with either. In fact, some I had long forgotten
which they had in them unless I was asked.

SO, I took the salesperson's word as above and decided to save some
money and get the HP with the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. Maybe I screwed up.

While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

It should read 2.2GHz. The AthlonXP processors run at a lower clock
speed than the P4 but get more done for each clock cycle. There's a
HELL of a lot more to processors than just the clock speed that they
are sold at, which is why both AMD and Intel have started moving away
from selling processors based on clock speed alone (you'll notice that
the Intel chip you were looking at was *NOT* sold as a "P4 3.0GHz",
but rather a "P4 530", which just happened to run at 3.0GHz).

Intel's P4 took a sort of clock-speed-above-all-else design approach.
The result is that the chips clock VERY high. There are basically no
other full-fledge microprocessors in the world that run at 3.0GHz+
speeds, so in this sense Intel succeeded. However, the downside to
this was that their per-clock performance is relatively weak, a lot of
instructions take a long time to execute, there are lots of potentials
for the pipeline to stall, small L1 cache, etc. etc.

The end result, as far you or I are concerned, is that it's
performance is no where near as good as one might think by looking at
clock speed alone. AMD's AthlonXP chips running at 2.2GHz manage to
roughly match a 3.0GHz P4, as do Intel's own Pentium-M chips (used in
laptops), while AMD's newer Athlon64 chips manage similar or sometimes
better performance at only 2.0GHz.


Anyway, long story short, you've made a fine purchase (err, at least
as far as the processors is concerned... I have no idea what the rest
of the system is like!). The only chip I might have recommended above
the AthlonXP would be AMD's newer Athlon64 chip, but that may well be
opening a whole other can of worms, not to mention the fact that it's
probably more expensive.

One word of warning though, if you ever need to call tech support for
this PC, you'd probably want to brush up on your comprehension of
Indian accents. As with pretty much all consumer-grade PCs, ALL the
support for this machine will have been outsourced, mostly to India
(HP outsourced a few of their consumer-product techs to Canada as
well, and they might do like Dell and start opening call centers in
the Philippines as well, but for now it's mostly India).

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

"Ryan" wrote in message
om...
While I am happy with this new machine, the "system" area of Windows
XP claims the processor speed on this machine is 2.2 MHZ.

You mean of course GHz. The clock frequency of the 3200+ is indeed 2.2 GHz
(2200 MHz). However, raw clock frequencies have become less relevant in
modern CPUs.


Can someone give me a clear comparison? How does my AMD Athlon XP
3200+ processor compare to the Pentium 4 3.0 MHZ I was planning to
buy. It this Athlon actually better than the Intel as the salesperson
said.

The 3200+ is comparable to a P4 2.6-2.8 GHz, in applications where the
difference would be noticed.

I am kinda nervous that I should have ignored him and waited for the
Gateway with Intel.. I am not finding anything on the web that takes
an AMD Athlon and tells you what it is equal to in Intel.

Such a comparison is impossible, as the two chips utilize different design
philosophies. The relative performance level is then reliant upon the actual
software tasks that the chips are being asked to run. In some cases you
might find a "slower" Athlon to be better than a "faster" Intel, in other
cases the opposite. There is no set formula for comparing the two chips.

(Ryan) wrote :

Best Buy

he said:

"The AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor is actually faster than the 3.0
MHZ Pentium 4 in the Gateway. Actually, it works out to about 3.1
MHZ for this Athlon and AMD processors are better at Graphics than
Intel."

weird, salesperson told you true ... WEIRD !


Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://randki.o2.pl/profil.php?id_r=352019
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

"Ryan" a écrit dans le message de
om...

Anyone have answers? Thanks!

As already said, there is no significant difference, since AMD probably
overevaluates a little the performance. Now you should look at other
features. the next most important ones are the clock frequency of the
front side bus and motherboard, and then the capacity of the first level
cache memory.

-- clmasse at free dot F-country
Free technical support at :
http://www.protonic.com/