The Prescott Survival Kit

[Bhairav]

Ah, find me an Itanium 2 in retail, for <1000$. Call me when you do

[LoneWolf]

I don't think Intel's P4 is a bad chip; but on my budget for what I do, it's a waste. And if I was going to shell bucks on some new hardware, the Athlon 64 2800+ or 3000+ makes a lot more sense, with a matching MSI K8N Neo board. Together they cost less than the equivalent Prescott setup, and do more.

Since I didn't want to pay that kind of money (getting married puts you on a bit of a budget), I just bought an Athlon XP-M 2500+. Because it's mobile, it's unlocked from the factory. I'm running it rock stable at 2075MHz (12.5 x 166MHz bus) at stock voltage (1.45v, desktop XP's run at 1.65v) and it's running 10-15 degrees (Celsius) cooler than my desktop Athlon XP 2500+ was at stock speeds. My board lists it as an "Unknown CPU" if I run it at any speed other than stock, but it works perfectly with it. Perhaps at some point I'll go from PC2700 Corsair ram to PC3200 and play around with 200MHz bus speeds; for now, it does a doggone good job.

[pranav81]

Ah, find me an Itanium 2 in retail, for <1000$. Call me when you do

Well,what I meant to say was that compare a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit one.Why compare a 64 bit with a 32 bit one?


::Pranav::

[Kennyshin]

Comparing Athlon XP with Intel's P4 is pointless in my opinion.

Athlon XP is just Athlon XP, AMD's processors, but Intel has Xeon, Itanium, Celeron, Centrino, Pentium 4, and many more for all kinds of platform from PDA to supercomputers. Intel is a lot bigger than AMD. I'm not saying Intel's average processor is necessarily better than AMD's counterpart.

What I mean is, if you want to compare prices for those who want "budget" PCs, you'd better compare Athlon XP 2500+ Barton with Intel Celeron 2.6GHz based on Northwood core. If you want to compare the best desktop processors available in terms of maxium performance, Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 Prescott are fot it. They are both evolving though it is yet unsure whether Intel will change course giving up Prescott lines and choose something else in its place.

For those who just want "most bang for bucks", then go for used Cyrix or VIA with SiS chipset motherboards that have onboard graphics.

What's the point of $10 or $100 price difference for different hardware to those who spend thousands a month or buy $500 hardware more just for gaming?

[Shredder]

Ah, find me an Itanium 2 in retail, for <1000$. Call me when you do

Well,what I meant to say was that compare a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit one.Why compare a 64 bit with a 32 bit one?

Most people look for the fine line in between the price and the performance. Itanium is powerful, but it is expensive, starting around $1400 for a CPU alone, and has such poor x86 performance that Intel is discouraging its use in x86 compatiblilty mode and said to have disabled it in newer and future Itanium 2. Athlon 64/Opteron still maintains x86 compatibility and performance. Therefore, Itanium is completely different beast to even thinking about comparing Athlon64 to.

As for CPU heat problem, both, Intel and AMD, have it and they need good reliable CPU fans and heatsinks. If your notebook has heat problem then it's the notebook manufacturer's fault. Not the CPU itself. I have Athlon XP based notebook that doesn't get any hotter than P4 notebooks I use at work. People really should think about quality when it comes to notebooks as CPU fan and heatsink are not changeable like desktops.

[pranav81]

Well,I mean to say is,compare a 32 bit processor with a 32 bit one.And compare a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit one.Thats all.


::Pranav::

[Shredder]

Well,I mean to say is,compare a 32 bit processor with a 32 bit one.And compare a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit one.Thats all.

Well... IBM PowerPC G5, Sun UltraSPARC-III, HP PA-RISC, and several others are out there that are 64bit. They all share high price tag and the fact that they are not X86 processors make them invalid to consider for the most average consumers.