Reet, I am upgrading someones computer. Nothing special requred but something reasonably up to date.
It's going to be used for Music Stuff mainly, Cubase, Soundforge and the like.

For similar money you can get an 2800+ Athlon 64 or a 3100+ Sempron. I don't think it will really matter but thought I would see what people think. Larger Cache is good but faster is also good! It's going to have 1Gb RAM in so thats not a problem.

Taaa
:D

if your goin to use it for music p4 is the way,alot of my friends make lots of techno tunes and most of the research done turns up Pentium4 is the best for music production also for the sound card i would recommend a terretec sound card they are the dogs danglers.

Where the AMD64 is the daddy for video editing and gaming i have the AMD 64 3200+ and its WOW.

Hope this sheds sum light

I do agree that a P4 system would be better, but for what he plans to do, the AMD route will be fine. If P4 systems were the same cost then I would consider it but they are considerably more expensive.

If you are going to go for an AMD system and plan to upgrade it again in the future (read 2 years or so) then I'd recommend plumping for an socket 939 board such as the AN8 from ABit...

Socket 724's are being phased out and all AMD development for newer cores and speedier CPU's are going onto the 939's..


I spent a long time comparing Intels to 939's and decided it was to go for AMD...

i'd recommend an AMD 64 (s939) at about 34/3500 MHz with either a San Diego or Venice core... neither will make much difference both offer similar overclockability and performance ;)

venice runs cooler doesn't it?

Why do people recommend completly different stuff!! The reason I was choosing between the 2 in the thead is becauce of cost. It was purley a question of preference between those 2 chips.
Oh well, cheers anyway!!

go for the A64, semperons are basically like celerons, hardly any cache... cache plays an important part of processing power so it should never be neglected from the equation

I have done. :)

Originally posted by neeeeeeeeeek
Why do people recommend completly different stuff!! The reason I was choosing between the 2 in the thead is becauce of cost. It was purley a question of preference between those 2 chips.
Oh well, cheers anyway!!
True.. but I was including opportunity cost...

If you go ahead an buy a 754 socket AMD you will essentially be losing the potential upgrade lifetime in the area of 18 months...

That means buying another motherboard, etc... and starting all over again...


If you want to save money in the immediate term though I'd go with the 754 but frankly I think you'd be wasting your money in the long term.

Yea but you can get a 2.8 / 3gz slot 939, getting a 3.5gz one is just a waste of cash IMO.

Originally posted by neeeeeeeeeek
Yea but you can get a 2.8 / 3gz slot 939, getting a 3.5gz one is just a waste of cash IMO.
Exactly...

I have a 3000 939 and it does more than enough for my needs at present... What I really appreciate is that my motherboard has the longevity to allow me to choose any of the new cores that AMD are coming out with at the moment but in 2 years time when they're 75% of their current price :D

Upgrades don't get much better/easier than that :thumbsup:

You should have put intel up there, with some big 0% next to them.