What would you go for and why

Athlon64 or P4 ?

I can say upto 12 months ago i would have said AMD or Athlon.

Then I purchased my first a P4 (775) 800 FSB.
I can say as well it was only by mistake that this happened, would not have touched a P4.
I have never looked back, and would not go back to AMD

A friend of mine has a Athlon 64 and its not a patch on the P4.
Even he was impressed when he saw the difference.
I have also been informed that P4 are bringing a new core out.
What that going to be like?


What do you think?

Depends, for gaming Athlon64 all the time, just go read reviews around the net to see what I mean.

Pentiums are better for stuff like video encoding and wotnot. But value for money it's also Athlon64 for me.

Just waiting for the dual cores :)

Just this week I've gone in the other direction. I've bought pentiums for years and just bought my first Athlon 64 (939).

The speed difference between that and my P4 is unbelievable (in favour of the Athlon). Although in all fairness it is an older P4.

Interesting you should mention FSB. I believe they are 2GHZ (2000 MHZ) on socket 939 athlons vs 800MHZ on Pentium?

I think your all a bit mis-informed...

for a start you can't compare the A64 to a P4 because they're totally different, the A64 is 64bit, to get its true power you need a 64bit operating system and 64bit versions of all your software...

also you'll find the P4 isn't really an 800mhz FSB it's like 200mhz quad timed (not sure how that works) compared with Athlon 32bitters that are 200mhz dual timed...

to my knowledge A64's work in a totally different way with their clock speeds with their FSB's and multipliers...

anyways I will always go for AMD because they actually bother to look forwards and re-invent and improve wheras Intel are more bothered about money money money and not their customers... where is Intel's new line-up? they've had to scrap two different chips to my knowledge so far because they wouldn't compete with AMD well enough...

Well i have 2x Celerons so there! :nono:

Not quite on the same subject but this was only a matter of time coming!

Life has been made easier for PC users torn between choosing an AMD and an Intel processor for their new PC. Motherboard manufacturer Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has produced a converter card that will allow processors from AMD to be used on the companys Intel-processor motherboards. The PF88 converter, which will fit some ECS motherboards, will be available in May, and will cost a third of the price of a new motherboard.

P4 for me all the way baby!
Would never touch an AMD.

Dunno why.. but my P4 runs as smooth as silk.

P4 Without a doubt :cool:

I have found AMD to be unreliable and very problematic at the best of times.

I suppose there is also the fact that Intel are the industry standard and that just about every game/piece of software will almost always be written on an intel machine.

Compatabillity problems have plagued AMD chips right back since the K6 chips. AMD are cheaper but you get what you pay for in my opinion.

Would agree with you J on the fact that the K6 chip was a mare (not quite as bad as the old Cyrix chips tho!) as it did run like a bag of spanners.

I personally build AMD based systems (servers, workstations etc) I have found the key to a reliable system is to use recommended components rather than shopping around for cheapest prices.

Maybe a lot of the software is written with Intel in mind...but if you check out Tomshardware you may see that lately the A64 has trounced the P4's in many of the benchmarks including gaming and encoding etc (including the new Extreme P4's that run at much higher clock speeds)

A well built AMD system will run as smooth as an Intel system, the considerations are firstly what you need the PC to do and secondly..what you can afford.

I just think it is down to personal choice at the end of the day

I would go with the Athlon 64 3400+, however when looking for a new pc i could harldy find any prebuilt ones with any AMD 64 chip at all, let alone an AMD 64 3400+. So I bought a Compaq at PC World with a P4 with HT 550 for £600, which is also just as good. But for overall performance AMD beat Intel nearly every time.

Originally posted by xafier
I think your all a bit mis-informed...

for a start you can't compare the A64 to a P4 because they're totally different, the A64 is 64bit, to get its true power you need a 64bit operating system and 64bit versions of all your software...

also you'll find the P4 isn't really an 800mhz FSB it's like 200mhz quad timed (not sure how that works) compared with Athlon 32bitters that are 200mhz dual timed...

to my knowledge A64's work in a totally different way with their clock speeds with their FSB's and multipliers...

anyways I will always go for AMD because they actually bother to look forwards and re-invent and improve wheras Intel are more bothered about money money money and not their customers... where is Intel's new line-up? they've had to scrap two different chips to my knowledge so far because they wouldn't compete with AMD well enough...

The Athlon is capable of running 32bit software so yes you can compare them in a 'which is fastest for a similar price' kinda way, comparing clock speeds is daft though as stated. Of course they are capable of running 64bit as well and that is where they will excel but you can ignore that for the basis of a comparison.

As for the FSB - P4's are Quad Pumped which basically means 4 instructions are sent instead of 1. So instead of 1 bit being sent on the bus then 4 are. Technically this is a 200mhz * 4 bus as you pointed out but they like calling them 800mhz and although there's more data being shifted the latency times aren't improved.

AMD for me. Better value for money. Never had a problem with them. 64 bit operating system out later this year.

Don't forget the rest of the computer. The processor is only a part.

Get a good Motherboard. ASUS are very reilaible. if you go for an athlon, get one with an NVIDIA nForce chipset. They're the best ones at the moment.

Which video? AGP or PCIe?. nVidia or ATI?
Memory? Cheap or Expensive?, you'll need matched memory.
Hard Disk? Single drive? SATA? RAID 0, 1 or 5?

I use P4 at work and Athon at home. In normal use, wordy processing etc, there's no difference. Its the games that warm the processor.

£780 should just about cover the bits for a nice Athon 64 machine with go-faster bits, PCIe, 1Gb RAM, RAID 0 hard disks, X800 Video in a fancy case.

If your not playing games, why not go for the mini-itx format?. Small compact computing. The boards are about the size of a cd-rom drive. http://www.mini-itx.com/

Fair enough but the thread was just about the CPU :hihi:

I would always go for an intel chip. I've had AMD before and they are noisy hot and unreliable (crashing). Just don't feel good about them anymore.

Its always gonna be a bit of a holy war but I've been running a duron for a number of years now with no problems and on the basis of this (and also wanting the 64 bit part!) I have just ordered an AMD64 :)

Just thought I'd add my 2p worth.

I've always used Intel since before they invented Pentium, I've never had the need to try anything else as the Intel has always performed for me. AMD, in my eyes, has always been seen as 'the Intel alternative'.

Unfortunately, the only experience I have ever had with AMD has been somewhat negative. One piece of software that one client runs will not work with AMD chips, end of. I also inherited a AMD machine so I put it to use at home as a spare machine, it's a nightmare to say the least. New motherboard and PIII and it worked fine.

I've also got one client with loads of AMD machines which are all, including the new ones, sluggish compared to P4 equivalents. Next machine on my list is a dual Xeon for home, again, I've never had a problem with those on a commercial level.

In short, Go Pentium!

I use to be a big AMD fan too, since K6, but when i descovered Pentium life became oh so much nicer :D

Lurch, how can a piece of software NOT work on an AMD and run on an Intel? the only thing I can see is someone hard coding the software to run only on Intel marked chips...

both the latest Intel and AMD's have full 686 instruction sets, P4's also have SSE2 and SSE3, and AMD's have 3DNow and 3DNow+...

so unless the software makes extensive use of SSE2 and SSE3 (in which case that should have been told to you) then it should work flawlessly on an AMD?

and I really can't understand people saying AMD's are sluggish, compare a 2.2ghz P4 to a 2.2Ghz Athlon and tell me the Athlon runs sluggish... mhz for mhz AMD's are faster than P4's because they have better optimisations

I knew I should have never got involved with this one!

I know it was a software issue, it just put another black mark against AMD for me. I realise this wasn't the fault of AMD.

As for the sluggishness, I'd be happy to try out an identically specced P4 and AMD machine, but I don't want to throw any money at buying a new AMD so I can't directly compare. The only experience I have personally had with AMD have been generally negative. I'm not slating AMD, please don't hate me!

Originally posted by Lurch
The only experience I have personally had with AMD have been generally negative. I'm not slating AMD, please don't hate me!

Personally I dont think CPU's are all that important when it comes to stability... where most people go wrong are crap motherboards, RAM or PSU, thats where all the problems usually lie...

Personally I think AMD are doing a smashing job, they're fighting a similar battle to Linux... in the fact they've had the odds stacked against them since day one but they're starting to prevail due to the fact their amazing competitor is over priced and isn't as good as they want to make out...

sure Intel's are good, they set the standard, but you have to admit, AMD have been kicking out a lot more new chips and ideas in the last two years than Intel have... where's intels 64bit chip?

I've worked with all sorts of computers on many different platforms, including ones that didnt have intel or amd chips in... SPARC's... eesh... but honestly, it all boils down to money really... AMD's are much better in the lower price ranges than Intel... once you start reaching the top-spec for them both is where the differences start getting marginal

[edit]

just like to make another bold statement... why has the 64bit Windows been in beta for SOOOOOOOO long?... is it because they're having trouble with it with their imense amount of programmers?... or is it because of their allience with Intel and not wanting AMD to suddenly have a huge part of the market wide open for them in the server side? ;)

Originally posted by xafier
just like to make another bold statement... why has the 64bit Windows been in beta for SOOOOOOOO long?... is it because they're having trouble with it with their imense amount of programmers?... or is it because of their allience with Intel and not wanting AMD to suddenly have a huge part of the market wide open for them in the server side? ;)

Not sceptical then? :wink:

Originally posted by Lurch
Not sceptical then? :wink:

not one bit :suspect: I'm sure its definitly because it's taking them so long to debug it because they don't want to give AMD any money by buying their 64bit chips... Linux had had 64bit support since before the A64's were publically released... so it does make you wonder why Microsoft is taking so long to release their 64bit windows if it's not because they're waiting for Intel to give them their nod of approval :suspect:

Originally posted by xafier
...so it does make you wonder why Microsoft is taking so long to release their 64bit windows if it's not because they're waiting for Intel to give them their nod of approval :suspect:

Dude, I think you're reading into it too much, it could just be because Microsoft are

Face it, Windows 98 didn't work 'til 1999.

I've never been able to get a beta version of XP64 working, but Fedora Core 2 64 runs nice...

[i]Originally posted by Lurch
...sluggish compared to P4 equivalents. Next machine on my list is a dual Xeon for home...

Oh, & on the Xeon or Opteron front check this (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/print_content.asp?id=opt248vsxeon32a), I've recently built a dual Opteron System for a customer, & the 1.8Ghz Opteron kicks the 2.8Ghz Xeon. Sluggish, yeh, kay...

**edit Hmm, AMD wins "best CPU manufacturer" award at a bash (http://theinquirer.net/?article=22504) sponsored by Intel. Love it...

ATI or Nvidia argument anyone? :P

If you run music software it was always said to be safer to get an Intel chip as the software (Cubase, Logic etc.) was written for them and their specific timings.
So I recently bought a P4 and found that the Hyper Threading was causing problems with some of the programs and had to be turned off for them. HT has also confused some other mathematical intensive programs like Fractal Forge too.
If I bought another Pc for games/Office/multimedia I'd go for the AMD.

Originally posted by steev
Face it, Windows 98 didn't work 'til 1999.
What, you go it to work? :clap: Hats off etc... :wink:

Originally posted by steev
ATI or Nvidia argument anyone? :P
Onboard! :P

Cheers for the lonk, I'll read through that in a bit.