OT: New computer - P4 or Athlon64?

[Neville]

Hi people, I know there are specialized phorums out there, but I've seen that now and then this questions pop up and many of you know how to answer them.

The thing is that my computer is becoming too old for my personal requirements, and i've been checking prices this morning for a whole new tower, with its Main board, CPU, RAM, Hard Drive and Video board. For what I've see, I can get an Athlon 64 3400 or a 3'2 Ghz P4 for about $650, which is what I inteded to spend.

However, I'm not yet sure of the CPU I should order. Right now I have an Athlon 1800+, which is not exactly too powerful (maybe because I was dumb enough to use it with old RAM instead of new, high speed one), but has served me well for almost three years. It also is much, much cheaper than the over-priced Intel CPUs.

However, a friend of mine who recently updated his system has told me some bad stuff about AMDs overheating too easily and having much less horsepower, so to speak,

Any comments?

[ulthar]

Neville wrote:

> However, a friend of mine who recently updated his system has
> told me some bad stuff about AMDs overheating too easily and
> having much less horsepower, so to speak,
>
> Any comments?
>

About the overheating, AMD's do tend to run hot; but then, P4's are not exactly coolers, either.  The newer AMD's are not as bad in this respect as the older ones were.

About 'having less horsepower,' that's rubbish.  Intel is now licensing technology from AMD just to stay current with certain developments.  AMD is used in some serious iron at hard core engineering shops like Boeing.  In a cycle to cycle comparison, AMD chips often do more work more efficiently than their Intel counterparts.  Intel chips (and chipsets) are often better at moving data around, but AMD has the better reputation for crunching numbers and caching.

Bottom line is that AMD is BETTER at some things and Intel is better at others.  

What do you use your computer for? (1) Casual surfing, lightweight gaming, word processing?  In this case, go with what is cheaper and in the performance range you want.  (2) Hard core gaming, serious engineering computations, heavy video/image processing?  You'll have to do the research and find which does what you do better.  But, chances are the difference is small enough to not matter anyway, so again, you may be okay to save money were you can.

Point:  CPU clock speed is not the 'real' factor.  You cannot compare (say) a 2.0 GHz P4 to an Athlon 2000.  Too much else is difference so you are comparing apples to zuchini.  The marketing types want to distill it all down to clock, but that may be the least important performance parameter (within limits).

Point: Main board, RAM and disk quality will have far more reaching impact on the 'quality' of your computer than what CPU is present.  I've done side-by-side tests of different main boards using the SAME CPU, Ram, and disk to find HUGE performance differences (50%-100% in some cases).

It's a sad fact that one can buy an inexpensive computer with a state-of-the-art CPU that is junk due to other crappy components.  That said, here's an experience from this past week:  a client just purchased a computer that I am setting up for him to use as a VPN Server; it is an Athlon Sempron with an MSI KM4M-V Main Board, and this thing absolutely smokes.  Doing IPSEC "encryption" on a saturated 100 Mb/s ethernet line during testing, it showed no CPU load whatsoever.  It cost $300 (no monitor and no OS installed).

Good luck.  :)

[Mr_Vindictive]

Neville,

Just as ulthar said, it all depends on what you are looking to do.  If you want to do a lot of gaming or anything graphically intensive then go with the AMD64.  If you just want to do basic stuff on the machine like surfin the net, email, etc then go with whatever is cheapest - exactly as ulthar said.

I built a whole new system about a year and a half ago using a 2.6Ghz Intel Celeron proc.  This was perfectly fine when it came to basic stuff, but sucked hard when it came to gaming.  I eventually sold the mobo and proc and bought an Elite mobo with a 2.8Ghz P4 w/ Hyper Threading.

This rocks so much more than the celeron when it comes to gaming.  I ended up buying an extra stick of 512MB PC3200 RAM and a Radeon 9800Pro video card and everything runs smoothly.  

My P4 doesn't even remotely compare to an AMD64 though.  Those things are insane.  I've never seen such raw power in a proc.  Sure, the clock speed might be slower than a 3.2Ghz P4 but it can handle ANYTHING that you could throw at it.  If you are looking for a gaming machine, then without a doubt spend the extra cash (if any) and get the AMD64.  It runs just about as hot as a P4 but has quite a bit more power.

[raj]

My last 3-4 computers have used AMD chips, cheaper and just as good as Intel, IMO.  I usually use it for websurfing, photos, some word processing and gaming (Diablo II currently)
What Ulthar said.

[dean]

I'm also in the market for a new 'death machine' [as I like to try and get people to call it...]

When I was talking to some computer sales guy about it, he told me something I didn't really quite understand [as usual] which sounded interesting.

Something about the new AMD's being a 64bit processor whereas most of the Intels on the market at the moment are 32bit.  He highly reccomended a 64bit one, because in his wacky words: 'They are the way of the future' then proceeded to tell me something about Windows offering a version of XP or something which is more compatible to 64bit processors.

Don't quote me on that though, so if anyone knows more, please post!  Much obliged.

[ulthar]

64 bit chips have one key advantage: a larger address space. A 32 bit chip has native ability to access 4 GB of memory, which is not a lot for some contemporary engineering applications.

32 bit address space:  approx. 4,000,000,000 addresses.
64 bit address space:  approx. 1,900,000,000,000,000,000 addresses.

Coupled with this, a 64 bit chip may also support much larger instruction sets.

Some operations on 64 bit chips are actually slower than on 32 bit chips.

MS has claimed a 64 bit version of Windows is in the works; I *THINK* it is being beta tested by some users now.  I don't really follow Windows very closely anymore.

64 bit processors have been around for some time on the big iron supercomputers.  64 bit technology is not new.  So, 64 bit operating systems are not new; indeed, Linux has supported 64 bit quite some time.

Current 64 bit processors include the Athlon64 and Opteron by AMD, Itanium and 64 bit Xeon by Intel and the processor used in the Mac G5 (the 970 I think is what it is called, iirc).

Here's a comparison, done in 2004, of 64 Xeon to an Opteron 250 (note the large difference in absolute clock frequencies):

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=noconaopteron&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

For the final conclusion page:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=noconaopteron&page=14

Note also that these benchmarks don't really test the 64 bit functionality of either chip.

The Opteron smokes - it is THE current powerhouse chip for 'low cost' (ie, non true mainframe) systems; you can get mainboards that hold up to 8 Opterons.  Of course, the G5's aren't bad, either.

Athlon64 and Opteron are different with the Athlon64 being like the 'baby brother' to the Opteron.  Athlon64 would be more of a consumer class 64 bit offering.

As for 64 bit being the wave of the future...who really knows?  The consumer market may not support it in the long run.  It probably will increase in popularity quite a bit over the next few years, but for now, if you want to buy a 32 bit system, it won't be obsolete any time soon.  There's a ton of 32 bit software, so that platform is not going to go away overnight.

Enjoy.  :)

[AndyC]

Can't add anything that hasn't already been said on the technical side. Built two systems with AMD Athlon CPUs, and I'm definitely sold on them.  Good bang for the buck.

The Athlon 64s and comparable P4s seem to be fairly close in price, at least from what I've seen. In that situation, I'd probably give the AMD a try, just out of personal preference and curiosity. Really, it doesn't seem like you can go wrong either way.

Not quite ready to try a 64-bit AMD myself though. No need and no spare money. I figure the next time I need a new main machine, I'll give it a try.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Just as Dean mentioned, there is a new Windows XP 64 that was released about a month ago:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/default.mspx

I say, if you do get an AMD 64 then just get XP Pro, and wait for Longhorn to get released....

[Neville]

Thank you all for your feedback. I have made up my mind and probably I'll get the new computer before a month or tow, just after I decide how to deal with my old system (I'll be hitting second hand stores soon, since no friends of mine seem to be interested).

Before I wrote the post I had almost decided in favour of the Athlon64 setup (as I mentioned, I own an Athlon 1800+ right now, and I'm quite happy with it), and all your comments seem to confirm I'm doing the right thing. Thank you all.

BTW, I've heard before of the new Windows XP 64, but paid little attention (after all, I didn't have any reason to care about it then), and chances are that I'll try to obtain a working beta, just to see the full potential of my new system. Meanwhile, though, I'll stick to my copy of XP Pro.