RobB said:
I presently owned an Intel P4 2.53 GHz based system and plan on upgrading.
I use my PC primarily for gaming and Internet. I have read the pros and
cons regarding Intel/ADM processors and for my purposes, I'm leaning
towards
ADM. The only concern I have is when it comes to the Internet. ADM
Athlon64's are slower when it comes to office applications content
creation,
video and audio encoding and general multitasking than a 'matching'
Pentium
4 processor and I'm not sure if that includes general Internet usage such
as
having multiple web sites open, streaming video, music, etc.
Therefore, ADM is the way to go for gaming, just not sure about the
Internet
usage part.
Well RobB, we are just beginning to see post questioning the merits of the
jump to 64 bit processors. These people appear to be disappointed. The
disappointment came from their not being able to define and measure just
what was important to them.
In the main, the people who have posted had expectation levels that were
very high relative to what they got from the expensive CPU's and high speed
memory. They did get a very big increase memory band width up to around
6400MB/s. I believe that you now enjoy a memory band width of around
3500MB/s. I very nice number and it is not an over all performance bottle
neck. Since digital bandwidth is the memory speed tines the number of bytes
fetched it is easy to see that a 128bit (16 bytes ) fetch at DDR400 will be
a max of 6400 MB/s. Max for eight bytes is 3200MB/s.
Their complaint that the system doesn't 'feel' any faster generally stems
from the storage. They are using a Seagate or even a single Maxtor Diamond
MAX 9 instead of RAID 0. Some switched to a single SATA drive only to find
150 MB/s is a marketing ploy. They have all this system band width waiting
for things to load from C:. Instead of loading programs and data from RAID 0
at 90 to 100 MB/s they loading at 30 to 50 MB/s just as they were with the
old 32 bit system
If they want a better Internet speed performance they have to go to DSL or
cable. The streaming file speeds that are available to the user depend upon
his connection speed. There is no enhancement when a 64 bit processor is
used.
Multiple open web sites is a matter of how much RAM is installed and the OS.
If they want better gaming they should look at their AGP. More on-card
memory and faster D to A converters are the key. Again 64 bits is no help
since the AGP is a 32bit unit as is the gaming software.
..
The popularity of the AMD 64FX in 939 pins comes from its forward looking
architecture . When a true 64 bit operating system becomes available the FX
will run it. You may have to change boards, but that is cheaper than a new
CPU and memory.
JPS
