Athlon 64 or P4? Help me out!

[LoneWolf]

Have you considered the MSI K8N Neo board? Top rated, with the new NForce3 250Gb chipset. If I was going to get an Athlon 64 (and I personally would, over a P4), this is the board I would choose hands down.

As for Athlon 64 's 64-bitness being useless, I think there's a lot more to it than just 64 bit instructions. The Athlon 64's onboard memory controller and enhanced FPU already provide for some significant performance increases even in 32-bit environments, and the chip is likely to scale better. With the knowledge that Socket 939 Athlon 64's will be nowhere as inexpensive as we had hoped (at least so far) it appears that Socket 754 will be around for awhile as the enthusiast's choice in the Athlon 64 market, so I don't see anyone running out of headroom to upgrade for the next 1-1.5 years, which is pretty standard in the enthusiast PC market.

Toss in the features of an Nforce3 250Gb mainboard (onboard gig ethernet, SATA, hardware firewall, fast Hypertransport bus) and you have a potent combo. I have nothing against the Pentium 4, but a P4 performing similar to the Athlon 64 comes at a higher cost, and will probably not have the longevity that the A64 does, as new 64 bit apps will extend the life of the A64 you buy today.

[Kennyshin]

Not useless, just needs more applications that support 64-bit features.

I'll probably upgrade to Windows XP 64-bit edition when I find it more useful than now.

Motherboards are not that expensive. It's RAID cards and HDDs that are expensive because I buy more of the latter groups.

I looked at Pricewatch prices of Athlon XP Barton, Athlon 64, Pentium 4 Prescott, Xeon 800MHz, 533MHz, and 400MHz, and even Prescotts and Xeons with 1MB and 2MB cache. Athlon XP Barton 3200+ and Celeron D 2.8GHz looked especially good for the money. Both are available for about US$130 and the motherboards are cheap.

Latest additions to my motherboard and CPU collections were dual 533MHz FSB Xeons and Athlon 64 2800+. I bought four 2.66GHz Xeon and one Athlon 64 running at 1.8GHz. Instant impressions were very good with both, but seeing the four logical processors use their processing power according to application and thread needs was even better. Support from OS, applications, chipsets, motherboards, and other hardware is what both makes a processor succeed.

[wicked1]

best bang for your buck would be buy a mobile athlon 2600+ for less than a hundred dollars and a DFI Infinity or Abit AN7 board and OC that sucker to at least 2500 mhz. I have yet to own a mobile that wouldnt do 2500 out of the box without crazy voltages.

[bimbla]

Pranav and Shreadder....

There is going to be Athlon XP and Athlon 64 available on the same platform very soon.

So shrink the house when you are alone and blow it when you have guests.

bimbla.

[Boba_Fett]

Pranav and Shreadder....

There is going to be Athlon XP and Athlon 64 available on the same platform very soon.

So shrink the house when you are alone and blow it when you have guests.

bimbla.

I don't know how that would be possible unless they made motherboards with both Socket A (I forgot the exact pin count for XPs) and Socket 939 sockets. You might be mis-informed...

[LoneWolf]

Pranav and Shreadder....

There is going to be Athlon XP and Athlon 64 available on the same platform very soon.

So shrink the house when you are alone and blow it when you have guests.

bimbla.

I don't know how that would be possible unless they made motherboards with both Socket A (I forgot the exact pin count for XPs) and Socket 939 sockets. You might be mis-informed...

Actually, it's true. AMD is making an "sort of" Athlon XP for Socket A/754/939 called the Sempron ("sort of" because it's meant to compete with the Celeron, not the P4). However, I'd avoid it. Not because it's 32-bit only, but because it is lacking in cache compared to the A64 and does not have the NoExecute instructions that can prevent buffer overflows. The Athlon 64 2800+ isn't that expensive of a chip, and it's worth the extra money, IMHO. Only reason to buy it is if they release it as Socket 939 and you're looking for a cheap way to go to a setup that you can eventually stick an S939 Athlon 64 into when they get cheaper.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... tml?i=2083

[Shredder]

Pranav and Shreadder....

There is going to be Athlon XP and Athlon 64 available on the same platform very soon.

So shrink the house when you are alone and blow it when you have guests.

You still need to get Athlon 64 motherboard in order to run either Sempron (32bit only with built-in single channel memory controller for Socket 754/939) or Athlon 64, which still favors my statement about buying Athlon 64.

[bimbla]

Shreadder.....I was only discussing some things and possibilities.

Will as long as we are in the same AMD boat, I will go with you.
Agreed, I will buy Athlon 64 as my next upgrade...NOT Sepmtron.

But for the time being, I am very happy with Athlon XP 2800+ on MSI K7N2G-ILSR. As long as there are no 64-bit drivers, OS and as long as MY core apps. don't chance, I will not upgrade.

But for someone buying new, Go for Athlon 64, But choose the correct platform. I will not recommend Soc.754. Go for Soc 939 or better.

bimbla.

[LoneWolf]

I have another article (one could call it a rumor, but it's from a good site at least), claiming that the Sempron will actually compete well with the current Athlon XP or beat it. I suppose as I said before that might be worth it if you wanted a Socket 939 board for longevity and the claimed better memory performance, but couldn't currently afford the insanely expensive S939 Athlon XP's.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/22 ... _semprons/

[MikeTR]

I'm still undecided. Leaning towards the Athlon64 (with the K8V considerably cheaper than the P4C).
A bit worried about the compatibility of the chipset though:

I have ASUS's K8V SE Deluxe and I love it. The thing has been rock solid so far. The only issue I've had so far is compatibility with some SATA devices. Some (especially optical drives) require Intel.

I'm also thinking of picking up a P4C800-E to replace that motherboard I was complaining about in another thread.

Any thoughts on this one?

[Kennyshin]

Why not wait for both Athlon 64 and Prescott processors to become much cheaper? I paid too much for my Athlon 64 2800+. I could have three Barton 2500+ processors months ago for the same amount.

[bimbla]

Talking of chipsets, it is Intel who is going through a very rough patch, withdrawing their products right after launches.

Athlon 64 both with VIA and NVidia chipset is very settled.

With NVidia, Soundstorm audio is going to be back with their new chipset.

bimbla.

[integspec]

Checkout this Anandtech review on AMD/Intel processros. Addresses most of the issues raised here in this thread:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=2065&p=1


Btw, anybody here who can comment on Chaintech Mobos? I have been tracking them quite some time and the price/performance seems to be very impressive.

Another review on Chaintech ZNF3-250 (Socket 754 / AMD 46 Mobo)
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/re ... Rvcnk9LTI=

Cheers.

[Boba_Fett]

Chaintech is more well known outside of the US IMO. They usually make PC products for the upper end (i.e. super-mega-deluxe versions). I like them.

[MediumRare]

One potential advantage of 64 bit CPU's is coming with XP service pack 2: the "No Execute" flag for memory. This avoids a lot of potential damage following a buffer overrun. Even if one is provoked, the malware won't be able to insert arbitrary code in the stack and execute it (not easily at least). This feature is available on the AMD 64 bit CPU's now and Intel will follow.

G