A64 vs p4

[Kailurisu]

Ok, im majorly distrusting of AMD due to 2 past issues ive had with buying from them, 6 years ago and again 3 years ago i bought stuff from them, and both times the comps crapped out in a couple of months, bad chips and all, and I didnt buy the chips from the same place. so im distrusting of them. but im getting closer to upgrading and wether i like them or not, I hear so many better things about the a64. any good sites show comparisons of why one is better then the other. also how reliable are they. Im not that great with computers, I can keep mine running and do small fixes build my own comps and what not but im not hi-tech in any form so i want to know if its really worth it for me. any info would be great.

 

[Goi]

Anandtech, like all other major hardware sites, have articles on P4s and A64s, and probably articles comparing them. It really depends on what you're using your system for, but in many cases, the A64 wins performance wise.

 

[Mik3y]

you shouldnt distrust them because the cpu's you got before crapped out on you. there are people who've had the same unluck with intel. intel is no more stable then amd is with their cpu's. the athlon 64 is better because of its hypertransport and integrated memory controller. because amd's processors run off a series of short pipelines, the hypertransport and memory controller allows the cpu run compute and transfer data faster. this means that games and such are faster on amd then intel. wiht the latest generation cpu's, amd beats intel in every single category on benchmarks (socket 939 vs LGA 775). with the previous generation of high end cpu's (socket 754 vs socket 478 prescotts & northwoods), amd excelled in nearly everything except encoding/decoding. i havent met a single person who has an athlon 64 and doesnt like it. you should try walking the path towards amd again and i'm 99% you will find it very promising. i'm not against intel, but i prefer amd for their price and performance and because their performance is currently better hten intel.

 

[Budman]

It doesn't matter if you buy AMD or Intel,if you pair them up with crappy hardware then it will be crap.

Amd is just as good as Intel when you buy quality components to go with it.

 

[Kailurisu]

Hey, whats a good site for seeing comparisons, benchmarks for the different CPU's? im trying to find one so i can see the comparison to, i might very well change my mind, and go with the amd but it makes me nervous.

 

[Kailurisu]

Ok then if i go with the amd, id pick the 3000+ so that clocks at 3.0ghz right i dont have to do anything to make it do that, what motherboard should i put it with, what DDR memory? will it work good with the Nvidia 6800 gt? I already have a sb Audigy in my comp, and im getting a new case. I got a western digital HD and Liteon CD-RW (40x12x48x) and i plan on getting a DVD-rom when i purchase my computer. So would this be a good setup?
I would prefer an Asus Mobo.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Kailurisu
Hey, whats a good site for seeing comparisons, benchmarks for the different CPU's? im trying to find one so i can see the comparison to, i might very well change my mind, and go with the amd but it makes me nervous.

uhhh . .. www.AnandTech.com ?

Also:
* www.HardOCP.com
* www.TomsHardware.com (not well liked here)

Also:
Learn to use the search box at the top of the page. "a64" or "vs" will find you a many previous threads on this, and in them there are many links to benchmarks. The "advanced search" link will let you search for older threads too, so you can find dozens of A64 vs. P4 threads.

dont have to do anything to make it do that, what motherboard should i put it with, what DDR memory? will it work good with the Nvidia 6800 gt?

Look at thread #2 on page 1 of this forum.

 

[Sonic587]

Originally posted by: Kailurisu
Ok then if i go with the amd, id pick the 3000+ so that clocks at 3.0ghz right i dont have to do anything to make it do that, what motherboard should i put it with, what DDR memory? will it work good with the Nvidia 6800 gt? I already have a sb Audigy in my comp, and im getting a new case. I got a western digital HD and Liteon CD-RW (40x12x48x) and i plan on getting a DVD-rom when i purchase my computer. So would this be a good setup?
I would prefer an Asus Mobo.

A64 3000+ doesn't run @ 3.0Ghz. It's 2.0GHz I believe. A64 is a much more efficient processor architecture that does not need pure clockspeed to achieve similar performance to it's Intel rivals. In many cases, the A64 3000+ is quite faster than a 3.0GHz P4. For example, the 3000+ is near the speed(Within 2 FPS.) of a P4 3.4EE is Doom 3. That's not to say Intel CPUs are bad at everything, but the A64s are quite good at a lot more than an equally marketed P4 these days.

With that out of the way, what will you be doing with this comp? Also, what is your max budget? And what are your current specs?

 

[Psych]

You've made the step to register at Anandtech to use the forums, so take the step to look at all the mediocre to good articles that they have here.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: Budman
It doesn't matter if you buy AMD or Intel,if you pair them up with crappy hardware then it will be crap.

Amd is just as good as Intel when you buy quality components to go with it.

 

[txxxx]

Basing your opinions on an AMD system 6 years ago ... in that case stick to Intel

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: txxxx
Basing your opinions on an AMD system 6 years ago ... in that case stick to Intel

LOL!

 

[justly]

I have an AMD K6-2-350 on a Gigabyte board that I use to test old hardware and except for it being slow by today?s standards it has never given me one lick of problems.

I think Budman said it best.

Originally posted by: Budman
It doesn't matter if you buy AMD or Intel,if you pair them up with crappy hardware then it will be crap.

Amd is just as good as Intel when you buy quality components to go with it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: txxxx
Basing your opinions on an AMD system 6 years ago ... in that case stick to Intel

yep, pick up a Celeron! rember how awesome they were back in the day...

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: justly
I have an AMD K6-2-350 on a Gigabyte board that I use to test old hardware and except for it being slow by today?s standards it has never given me one lick of problems.

My AMD 386-40 was awesome! Wing Commander II was smooth as slik

But seriously, the OP needs to Read The Friendly Articles and catch up to the 21st century.

 

[wfbberzerker]

heres a place to start (if youre into gaming)

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: justly
I have an AMD K6-2-350 on a Gigabyte board that I use to test old hardware and except for it being slow by today?s standards it has never given me one lick of problems.

My AMD 386-40 was awesome! Wing Commander II was smooth as slik

But seriously, the OP needs to Read The Friendly Articles and catch up to the 21st century.

My first AMD was a K6-3 450. great CPU at the time, and the system was stable as hell with an Asus P5A mobo. my first experience with AMD was great :thumbsup:

 

[Kailurisu]

Basing your opinions on an AMD system 6 years ago ... in that case stick to Intel

havent you ever had a bad experience with something and decided not to use it years later because of that experience? I am just saying that because of my bad experiences with amd ive mistrusted them this long, mainly cuz ive never had a problem with intel, im not good with the whole research thing, i get frustrated when I cant find things im looking for so im taking the lazy way out and asking people who already know to point me in the right direction.

Also, the point of this computer is to be a gaming machine, and i really dont want to spend to much more then 1000 dollars unless I can see a good reason for it.

My current Specs are thus.

P4 2.0 ghz on Asus P4B533, with Xerox 512 pc2100 ddr sdram, a Nvidia GeForce ti 4400, SB audigy gamer edition, 40gb Western Digital HD and a Liteon CD-RW. in a crappy mid-tower with a 300w power supply.

The only thing Im keeping from this comp are the Hard Drive, CD-RW and Sound Card.

My Original Plan was to get a p4 3.0 on a Asus P4c800-e, with 2 512mb of Corsair DDR (3200) and the Nvidia 6800gt. a new case, with a 400w power supply. and probably a DVD-rom just because it seems like it will be very handy to start getting the DVD version of games now that there coming out a lot more with that version of it.

 

[Cawchy87]

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/index.html

like they say, years of benchmarking went into this.

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/index.html

like they say, years of benchmarking went into this.

no athlon 64's in this benchmark? phooey!

 

[Kailurisu]

So browsing newegg real quick this is what i would get going with AMD.

A64 3000+ on an Asus k8n-e deluxe, with 2 512mbs of Corsair 3200 DDR, and a Nvidia 6800 GT.

Would this be a good plan?

Plus any ATX case works right? or what?

I have this case picked out.

any recomendations, this plus the DVD-rom i want adds up to about 1016 before shipping?

Also whose a good brand to buy the nvidia card from? i got XFX picked out ATM.

 

[Mik3y]

yes. all the things you got are quality and would work. you have nice taste.

 

[justly]

Originally posted by: CraigRT

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: justly
I have an AMD K6-2-350 on a Gigabyte board that I use to test old hardware and except for it being slow by today?s standards it has never given me one lick of problems.

My AMD 386-40 was awesome! Wing Commander II was smooth as slik

But seriously, the OP needs to Read The Friendly Articles and catch up to the 21st century.

My first AMD was a K6-3 450. great CPU at the time, and the system was stable as hell with an Asus P5A mobo. my first experience with AMD was great :thumbsup:

I had a K6-3-450 also, great chip, but it was the only AMD system I personnaly had a problem with and that was due to a power surge from a lightning strike. Even then the chip ran fine (according to my wife) but the motherboard fried the primary IDE controller so she upgraded to a Duron and I have never been able to find out what happened to the processor . I also have an AMD 486 120MHz in the spare room that works fine, its just so slow that I have no use for it. Just to be fair I have seen 2 bad AMD processors, one that was fried due to bad caps on a motherboard and another that wasn't stable (but I think that one was damaged by overclocking).

 

[mechBgon]

About half of my work fleet is now AthlonXP's. Some of them are approaching 2 years of age, no problems. Welcome to 2004, Kailurisu

From WinXP SP2's Help & Support, here's more food for thought:

Understanding Data Execution PreventionData Execution Prevention (DEP) helps prevent damage from viruses and other security threats that attack by running (executing) malicious code from memory locations that only Windows and other programs should use. This type of threat causes damage by taking over one or more memory locations in use by a program. Then it spreads and harms other programs, files, and even your e-mail contacts.

Unlike a firewall or antivirus program, DEP does not help prevent harmful programs from being installed on your computer. Instead, it monitors your programs to determine if they use system memory safely. To do this, DEP software works alone or with compatible microprocessors to mark some memory locations as "non-executable". If a program tries to run code?malicious or not?from a protected location, DEP closes the program and notifies you.

DEP can take advantage of software and hardware support. To use DEP, your computer must be running Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later. DEP software alone helps protect against certain types of malicious code attacks but to take full advantage of the protection that DEP can offer, your processor must support "execution protection". This is a hardware-based technology designed to mark memory locations as non-executable. If your processor does not support hardware-based DEP, it's a good idea to upgrade to a processor that offers execution protection features.

Is it safe to run a program again if DEP has closed it?

Yes, but only if you leave DEP turned on for that program. Windows can continue to detect attempts to execute code from protected memory locations and help prevent attacks. In cases where a program does not run correctly with DEP turned on, you can reduce security risks by getting a DEP-compatible version of the program from the software publisher. For more information about what to do after DEP closes a program, click Related Topics.

How can I tell if DEP is available on my computer?

To open System Properties, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click System.
Click the Advanced tab and, under Performance, click Settings.
Click the Data Execution Prevention tab.
Note

By default, DEP is only turned on for essential Windows operating system programs and services. To help protect more programs with DEP, select Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select.

 

[BDSM]

Personally my experience is that Intel has more balanced and refined chipsets than do AMD.

My most recent experience with this was with a P4C 3.2 ghz, an abit IC7G mobo and a Creative Audigy 2 ZS soundcard. I upgraded from An Athlon XP, Abit NF7-S 2.0 Mobo and I used internal Soundstorm Audio on that.

I installed Xp on my new system and everything just worked great with no problems at all!
The AMD system I never got to work properly. It was years of different troubles with:

1. Crackling sound in games. (yes I tried all available drivers and yes I had cooling on the SB)

2. Choppy audio playback when I used the keyboard. This can be fixed by disabling APIC mode.

3. Choppy Divx playback. Yes I know many out there have great playback with this setup. Or at least you think you do.

4. The Nvidia sw ide driver.. Well.. I don't think I even need to comment on this.

5. The ethernet driver.. Well. for some reason recent revisions hog a few % cpu power and makes the system "unsmooth".


OK. I probably had even more problems but there are the main ones and they are important because this is the main platform for the athlon xp for enthusiasts and the problems haven't really been resolved over this all time so I'm guesing they are design flaws, not just bad drivers.

If you don't believe me just visit nforcershq's forums and take a peak. Also ask yourself why there are gazillions of different "remixes" of Nvidia drivers outhtere!

Ofcourse maybe the nforce 3 for Amd64 is much improved and these problems are no longer present but I couldn't take that chance when I upgraded so I went with Intel even though I knew Amd had a performance advantage now. My dad got a p4 a few months ago and it works problem free so I knew if I got a similar system it would work great for me too.

And it did.

Maybe VIA's AMd chipsets are better. They weren't in the Kt133 to kt333 days though in my experience.

For me performance is important yes but stability and compatibility are ten times more important.
What's the use of going somewhere fast if you're never gonna get there and the ride is bumpy as hell?

Surely lots of ppl are going to say that their AMD systems really do work without hassle and maybe they are right. But to you who are choosing a new system it would probably be a good idea to actively study different support forums to find out what problems may plague your new and shiny system.


ps.. To all the amd fans that are likely to attack me now: I have experience with the nforce 2 and via kt333 platforms ONLY. Before you say anything about them read what my problems were.