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A64 3000+ or Dual P4 2.8?

B

bluemax

Diamond Member
I have a pro music app that (if I upgrade to the new version) supports dual CPU's!

The nature of the program is that it has one program holding samples and playing them back (doing ~90% of the work) and a notation/sequencing program (doing about 10% of the work.) The sample player (90%) is the one that will now dupport dual CPU.

Now... I have a limited budget to work with, so I have two sensible options:

A64 3000+ and 939 mobo = $350CDN
P4x2 2800 and i945 mobo = $500CDN

Either way, my case will be the new Antec Sonata II desktop. 450W Antec power will work great in either situation. 😉

Will I see a big difference and is it worth the extra $150 for that dual core? Or should I just enjoy the great processing power and lower heat from the 3000+ Venice? That $150 could get me some extra RAM (2GB instead of 1GB) or a Radeon 9800Pro. 🙂

Hyperthreading tends to do bad things to a LARGE number of music apps, so I almost worry about dual-CPU....
 
> Hyperthreading tends to do bad things to a LARGE number of music apps, so I almost worry about dual-CPU

You should check forums for each software package you plan to use, to see if there are any problems with dual-processor, dual-core, or hyperthreading.

If even one of them has a problem you either need to wait until it's patched or just get the single-core A64.
 
Originally posted by: shoRunner
if your program is smp aware the dual core chip will be alot better, if not the go with the athlon.
Click to expand...

How much better though?

Say an Athlon64 3000+ is 20% faster than a single P4 2.8GHz in the app. (I know A64 performs very well for this task.)
Say P4x2 would perform 50% better than a single P4 2.8GHz.

There's not a huge amount of performance difference for that $150, and a faster A64 would close the gap further while still costing less, leaving more cash for other things.

The big question is, how much performance difference would I see in a program that supports dual processors?
 
i'd go with trusty AMD and put some cash into the rest of the PC for a gfx card or ram, like you said.
keep in mind A64 outperforms a P4 2.8, so two of them is not much better than one A64
 
I'll chime in here 🙂

If you go for the low end Pentium D chip it does NOT have HT and simply has a dual core with out the cores supporting the Hyperthreading technology.

If the software will truely utilize the dual core then you will see an almost 100% increase in performance for that application.

If the software does not utilize the dual core then your best bet would be the Athlon64 3000+ Venice. I've heard that the overclock is very respectable. Some people have theirs running at 2.7GHz from 1.8GHz.

There are very few programs that currently utilize the dual core processors so make sure that your app will before investing in it.
 
Originally posted by: SGtheArtist
I'll chime in here 🙂

If you go for the low end Pentium D chip it does NOT have HT and simply has a dual core with out the cores supporting the Hyperthreading technology.

If the software will truely utilize the dual core then you will see an almost 100% increase in performance for that application.

If the software does not utilize the dual core then your best bet would be the Athlon64 3000+ Venice. I've heard that the overclock is very respectable. Some people have theirs running at 2.7GHz from 1.8GHz.

There are very few programs that currently utilize the dual core processors so make sure that your app will before investing in it.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

What Audio editing app are you using?

Also, 3200 @ 2.5Ghz here. Nearly all 90mn A64's overclock well. I could go higher, but i'm trying to silence my PC.
 
From what I understand, the dual core P4's are still bottlenecked by a single entry/exit between the cores and the bus, so they're more or less useless. I'd go with the A64.

Edit: To illustrate my point:

P4:
Cores.......| |
Link2bus..|

A64
Cores.......| |
Link2bus.| |


Edit: I looked at the benchmarks posted above and it seems that bottleneck or no bottleneck, P4 D performs better than the A64. I'd still go with the A64 though.
 
I'm beginning to really lean with the simpler, cheaper Athlon64 3000+ as many of the music apps I'll be using right now are NOT YET dual-cpu ready.

And they thrive under the A64.

And they don't like Hyperthreading or dual-cpus.

And it's cheaper.

And it's cooler/quieter.

And by the time I can afford to upgrade to newer software revisions, the bugs will be worked out and 939 X2 processors will be cheaper too. 😉

Yep. 939 is looking the way to go.
 
Originally posted by: bluemax
I'm beginning to really lean with the simpler, cheaper Athlon64 3000+ as many of the music apps I'll be using right now are NOT YET dual-cpu ready.

And they thrive under the A64.

And they don't like Hyperthreading or dual-cpus.

And it's cheaper.

And it's cooler/quieter.

And by the time I can afford to upgrade to newer software revisions, the bugs will be worked out and 939 X2 processors will be cheaper too. 😉

Yep. 939 is looking the way to go.
Click to expand...


That's exactly what I was going to post. Go with the cheapest 3000+ or 3200+ you can get and upgrade to X2 when convenient.


Jim


 
I wouldn't recommend spending much more than $150-$160 for your CPU, so I'd say the Athlon 64 3000+ is your best bet--although if you can find a good deal on a 3200+ you might want to go with that, instead. However, if you're going to spend a lot of money, a Pentium D 820 (dual-core Netburst 2.8 GHz) would probably be better for audio editing than a similarly-priced Athlon 64 3800+.
 
It's not so much audio editing (very little, actually) but sample playback, MIDI controlled. 1.5GB of orchestral samples being played by Kontakt, I think. 🙂
 
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