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:
Well, it's the (at least) third time some mark of comcast asks
something wideranging like this vs this vs this. But ok, maybe you're
not a troll ;-) and really wants some opinions on this. Since I can
cut and paste most of it from other things I've written, and since
you've recieved no other respons, I'll give you the whole arm. But
remember these things are damn hard to advice people on, since none of
us do everything on every possible system, you won't find anyone with
the qualified experience. My intent is mostly to bounce some balls and
air my own thinking. My only real 'advice' is to surf around on the
various hardware sites.
You mean your mobo is *now* fried, but the rest is ok?
1.8GHz? Do you mean XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) or XP2200+ (1.8GHz) or Barton
XP 2500+ (1.83GHz)? If you have a XP2500+, just buy a new mobo.
That might be best option anyway. There's never any really good
'opportunity' when it comes to computer hardware. Like: don't buy
anything before you "need" it. Of course *need* is up to us to define.
;-D.
For the Athlon 64 if I go with that should I look at the regular
Athlon 64 or the Athlon FX?
I don't know. Your choice. Athlon 64 for me. My philosophy is, that
with the speed of advancing technology, there really isn't any reason
to burn a lot of money for highend performance. Soon enough, months
rather than years, I will be able to buy that performance for 'pocket
money'. So I try to buy cheap and good value. Then there is the
question of waiting or not. There's always something new just beyond
the horizon. Yet if you "need" something, you have to buy it
sometimes. Again, why not at least make it cheap? Yes, the 754-pin is
slower, but it's probably still what I'll buy as my first 64-bit PC.
Is there a difference in 32 bit
performance among them? I know there is a big price difference?
But it's not just the price of the 940-pin cpu. Current FX requires
registered ram. So it's not so easy to find fast or nonexpensive
memory, as of yet. A 940-pin FX system will cost.
Yes, the FX is a bit faster. I've collected a lot of benchmarks below,
and made some comments, to give you an idea. Other hardware is state
of the art for each cpu.
All benchmarks are 32-bit in 32-bit OS. (64-bit OS may yield lower or
better performance for 32-bit. Note - It's quite likely that early
Windows64 will run 32-bit apps slower!) All discussion concerns
current 32-bit performance. They are based on benchmark information
available on:
http://www.anandtech.com
http://www.tomshardware.com
http://www.aceshardware.com
The Athlon XP 3200+ is missing in some of them, sorry I couldn't be
bothered to hunt down the figures.
Memory benchmarks:
PCMark 2002 Memory.
higher is better.
A-FX 11599
3.2 P4C 9989
A-64 8733
Sciencemark 2.0
Memory Bandwidth, higher is better:
A-FX 5315
3.2 P4C 4025
A-64 2954
The ram bandwidth is the technical difference between A-FX (128-bit
bus) and A-64 (64-bit bus). Otherwise, they should be pretty
identical. Also check out the P4C's massive bandwidth.
Sciencemark 2.0
Memory latency, lower is better:
A-FX 57.35
A-64 61.54
3.2 P4C 72.48
Various synthetic and application benchmarks:
Lightwave 7.5 Raytrace, lower is better.
A-FX 87.9
3.2 P4C 93.1
A-64 96.4
AMD still does well in hiQ 3D rendering, despite SSE2 optimization.
3Dmax R5 SinglePipe2.max, lower is better
3.2 P4C 2.6
A-FX 3.17
A-64 3.48
A-XP3200 3.78
The most highly P4 optimized 3d render app. It's even P4-hyperthreaded
as well. In some ways it's a 'hollow' benchmark though. Since the
quality is doubtful, and 3d rendering is one of the apps that
absolutely screams for 64-bit. 3D apps like this are going 64-bit
asap, and a poor reason to invest future in P4/P5.
Content Creation Winstone 2003, higher is better.
3.2 P4C 51.5
A-FX 48.7
A-64 45.6
A-XP3200 40.7
This benchmark was optimized for the P4 but not for AMD. There is an
AMD mediaencoder patch that changes this, but the P4 is strong on this
anyway. While not quite as much as Futuremarks so called "CPU"
-benchmarks, this is still a SSE2 mediaencoding benchmark in disguise.
Content Creation Winstone 2004 might be more equal, but still, expect
the P4 to do very well. Anything that involves simple nonconditional
operations on large blocks of data, runs very well on the P4.
DivX 5.05, higher is better
3.2 P4C 43.9
A-FX 38.5
A-64 35.4
A-XP3200 32.5
Media encoding is clearly P4s forte. The P4 shows off this kind of
strength in all kinds of image/video codings. K8-Athlons are more
competitive in audio.
Business Winstone 2002:
Business application&general performance, higher is better.
A-FX 43.5
A-64 42.5
A-XP3200 37.7
3.2 P4C 34.7
'General performance' otoh, shows off AMDs strong sides.
Visual Studio 6.0 compile test, lower is better.
A-FX 14.1
A-64 14.9
A-XP3200 16.4
3.2 P4C 17.3
This is typical Integer logic/ AI, and despite that its bandwidth
should be of good use in this particular case, always expect the P4 to
finish last in these kinds of apps.
Mathematica 5, lower is better
A-FX 5.7
A-64 6.2
3.2 P4C 7.4
This too, is typical AMD domain.
Raw scalar FPU power, Sciencemark 2.0 BLAS double precision.
'387 FP, higher is better
A-XP3200 3178
A-FX 3112
A-64 2803
3.2 P4C 2015
No it's not a typo. The K7 AthlonXP rules on '387 fp. The general plan
however, is for future apps to migrate FP code to SSE2.
SSE2 scalar FP, higher is better
A-FX 3093
A-64 2776
3.2 P4C 1350
(on single precision and vectorized SSE2, the P4 is best though. Which
shows off in media encoding.)
Diep chess. This is not a typical representation of chess performance,
since it's highly handtuned for the P4. Typical chess app, AMD
advantage should be better, higher is better
A-FX 134
A-64 124
3.2 P4C (x2 HT) 123
A-XP3200 112
3.2 P4C 101
ScienceMark Molecular Dynamics, lower is better
A-FX 73.8
A-XP3200 77.9
3.2 P4C 78.9
A-64 82.8
Here is a curious case, A64 finishing last. I don't know what fp
library the benchmark chose for each AMD cpu here. Could be a chipset
issue as well.
CPU Plasma, lower is better
A-FX 406
A-64 508
3.2 P4C 588
A-XP3200 616
ScienceMark 2.0 Cypher AES, lower is better
A-FX 13.1
A-64 14.4
A-XP3200 14.7
3.2 P4C 23.9
No typo here either. AMD really is that much superiour on integer
logic.
MS Access, lower is better
A-FX best 5.1 worst 5.5
A-64 best 5.9 worst 6.4
3.2 P4C best 6 worst 6.5
A-XP3200 best 6.3 worst 6.7
3DMark 2003, higher is better
A-FX 876
A-64 760
3.2 P4C 743
Gunmetal game framerate, higher is better
A-FX 71.5
A-64 65.5
3.2 P4C 61.5
Unreal 2, higher is better
A-FX 76
A-64 68.8
3.2 P4C 61.2
Geoff Grammonds GP4, higher is better.
A-FX 46
A-64 45
3.2 P4C 36
Wolfenstein ET, Ace Hawski, higher is better.
A-FX 85.3
A-64 81.4
3.2 P4C 79
- Well, AMD 64 is obviously going to be great for gaming. Even 32-bit.
As for the others, should I look at one of the faster XP's, maybe one
with the Barton core?
Barton 2500+ is great value. It's not much slower than 2800+ or 3000+,
and it's quite cheap, sub $90. But if you do consider another A-XP,
you just have to buy a new mobo to start with. Get a little more
milage out of your old cpu...
As well, how does the Pentium 4 compare pricewise and performance
wise?
It's expensive compared to AMD 32-bit. Mind you the expense should be
seen in relation to total system cost. If you just buy mobo, cpu and
maybe RAM, you get off much cheaper for the same performance with AMD.
However on a complete system, an additional $100-$150 means less. The
thing to look for in a P4 is the 800 MHz FSB. Don't get a 400 or 533
for a new mobo and new ram. The P4C@800 with dual channel mobo, is
quite faster for a reasonable extra cost. And the 400s are dogs.
There's no way they ever makes sense compared to AMD, no matter the
app.
P4 compared to Athlon64, 32-bit high performance is maybe more
'mature', but still not really cheaper. You can buy a boxed retail
Athlon64 for $249 now (and two Opteron240 for $200 each, problem is
memory).
The things I'm waiting for are more mobos and better(?) chipsets.
There's been some idiosyncries showing up in tests. Currently nForce3
150 and VIA KT800 are available. SIS 755 and nForce3 250 are due.
AMD are also planning a lot of new chips. A 939-pin FX and faster
Athlon64s. Rumours based on sound spekulations also suggests AMD
intends to make AthlonXP a 64-bit capable (K8) family as well.
It would be 754-pin to use the same mobos as Athlon64 and have
integrated memory controller and SSE2 support. 32-bit performance will
be competitive, but 64-bit performance will be cut down compared to
A-64.
(and please remember, - this is just a wild rumour!)
P4 is terrific for 32-bit video media encoding (A-64 might be
competitive for audio). If media edit/create 32-bit apps is the big
thing, P4 is strongly recommended. Another strong case for the
hyperthreading P4C@800 is when you're running a task in the
background. Hyperthreading does make a difference (maybe 35%) then.
On general integer, scalar fp and conditional code, P4 is outdone by
AMD. As you can see in 'Sciencemark 2.0 BLAS' and 'ScienceMark 2.0
Cypher AES'. The P4 compensates with better bandwidth and SSE2 vector
ops, which may or may not average out, or get ahead, in various apps
and benchmarks.
It's difficult to advice. It depends on your apps. Media and bandwidth
are the P4's good sides. Logic is AMD's. My own position is that since
I'm not happy with any of my P4s (I have mostly old apps and AI-like
cathegory apps), and I'm very happy with my AthlonXP, I can't see
myself buying Intel again. At least not the P4/P5 architecture. Maybe
a future Intel "Yawmill/Yamhill" x86-64 cpu, but since I think AMD
pricing is going to continue to be better, that doesn't seem likely
either.
Finally, as of this 64-bit issue. I expect games, particularly 3D-LAN
shooters, mod toolsets, and 3D render apps like Maya and Lightwave, to
drive the 64-bit wave. If you're not interested in any, you're not in
a hurry, though 32-bit performance in A-64 is still interesting.
As well, I'd appreciate any motherboard suggestions. I have used Asus
mostly and have been very happy with it.
Me too. ... so I have no advice here either. ;-) ...
ancra
