AMD 64 3200+ vs. Intel Pentium 4 540 3.2 GHz

[JasGamer]

Hi all.




I got a question... here it goes:





I need a new computer, and I need one soon for school/productivity. I can't really wait too long for the nForce4 to come out.

I game a lot, however I'm not an FPS maniac by any standard. I just want games such as HL2 and Doom3 to be able to smoothly play at a reasonable res with decent quality.


If I go for the P4 I will be able to get the PCi-Express 6600GT card, whereas if I go for an AMD, I will not have the PCi-Express.



By getting the 6600GT I'm able to save a hundred or so dollars off the 9800XT I'd get with the AMD...




..Which would be better off? I'm leaning towards the P4, but if the AMD will be much better to the point of offering better playability, then I might go that route.




Thanks.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

AMD would be my choice for it is definitely a better gaming platform until you reach 1600 x 1200 and/or AA/AF etc. where it all becomes graphic card bottleneck. The productivity would go either way depending on the application(s) used. Intel and AMD bounce back and forth here. The AMD will be cooler and have the advantage (eventually) of a 64bit Windows usage down the road. They should both give good overclocks.

The AMD PCI-ex will be here very soon, as in a few weeks, so I would not decide on PCI-ex for Intel without considering the AMD.

 

[Mik3y]

why not wait a couple weeks for amd's nforce 4 to come out? you can get pci-e then. the athlon 64 is superior to the P4 540, especially in gaming.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

With the 6600 or 9800XT (or pro) you'd hit a GPU bottleneck before 1600x1200 IMO.

Personally, if you don't mind the higher power consumption of the Intel chips and since you can't wait for the NF4, then I think the P4 3.2 is a good choice.

The 6600GT is currently the best video card for the money IMO, and therefore will make up any minor difference between the CPU speeds.

Furthermore, you will be all set for PCIe in the future, although your CPU upgrades seem to be more limited now that Intel has cancelled the 4 GHz chips (maybe they'll have some cache heavy chips to help boost the speed in the future).

If you go Intel, then you'll need to decide if you want to go DDR, DDR2, or some combination of the two. DFI has a LanParty board that supports both DDR and DDR2, so you can have your options open in the memory department as well. I don't think it can use both kinds of memory at the same time though, so the feature may only be good if you already have DDR RAM that you can re-use. Otherwise you may want to bite the bullet and go DDR2.

Really, it's a tough decision (almost like trying to choose between 745 and 939 AMD), but the nice thing is that you really can't go wrong since the prices on all this stuff is pretty good now and the performance is relatively close at equal price points.

I honestly don't think you could go wrong with either one.

I personally like the AMD 90nm 939 chips, like the 3200+ from Monarch (newegg prices are sucky on the 90nm stuff), but that's because I like the lower power consumption from the AMD chips and because I plan on waiting for NF4.

EDIT: Just wanted to say that IMO, both Intel and AMD have about the same speed most applications. Close enough that you won't really be able to notice a difference unless you look at benchmark results. For gaming especially, the video card is going to be the limiting factor, and all these CPU's can push the latest games to similar speeds (in the 60-100 FPS range). Also, the few tests I've seen that have minimum framerates seem to show the Intel and AMD chips pretty even in that department, so I don't think you'll see a huge benefit from AMD in the final product.

Therefore, I see the biggest differences not in the pure performance of the CPU's, but rather in the less tangible factors like Hyper Threading for Intel, and lower heat/power consumption for AMD. Depending on your usage patterns, you may favor one over the other (are you going for a SFF or quiet PC, in which case AMD may have an advantage, or are you trying to multitask heavily, in which case Intel may have an advantage).

-D'oh!

 

[whorush]

90 nm A64 3000 if you overclock, you can get a lot out of it. the 3500 version if you don't. both are socket 939. get the msi neo board. its a little screwed up, just needs a bios update, no big deal. that should save you some cash that could offset the video card. still, if pci-e is what you want, there are a ton of boards with a bunch of new chipsets comming out in a couple of weeks, hang tight if you can, then you'll have the best of both worlds.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I'd go the AMD route personally, and the 3200+ is a better gamer than the P4 3.2 .

Plus, IMO wasting your money on DDR2 (needed for newer P4 boards) is a waste at the moment, since it offers no benefit yet (it's like Rambus Ram on the P3 or original Williamette P4).

 

[imported_SLIM]

If you had to buy today, I'd go the AMD route with a standard 6800 that will give a little better performance than the 6600gt (and the $80 difference is easily made up by buying ddr with amd instead of ddr2 with intel). All the business winstone tests are won by amd as well as games. As for the cpu, the socket 754 3400+ is clocked at 2.4ghz (same as the 3800, 4000, and fx53) but only costs 235 bucks. There obviously are differences in cache and memory bandwidth, but for the majority of tests the s754 3400 with 512kb L2 and 2.4ghz clock is a great value. You'll find it consistently beating the 3.6ghz p4 and 3.4ee in games and doing very well in productivity stuff (how much power do you really need to surf the net or type in word?).

BUT, if you can wait a 2-4 weeks, an nforce4 board with pci-express with a highly overclockable 90nm chip might be your best option yet.

Links of insterest: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...oc.aspx?i=2249&p=3
http://www.anandtech.com/video...oc.aspx?i=2196&p=3
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2195&p=5

SLIM

 

[nick1985]

amd

 

[BW86]

a
m
d

 

[Markfw]

AMD. PCI Express currently is no faster and for a while it will be that way. SLI is great if you have a lot of money, but if you can;t wait the AMD and the future of 64 bit is here now. I would go the 3000+ 90nm as said if you oc, or the 3500+ if you don;t (socket 939)

 

[JasGamer]

I know that AMD is technically faster in benchmarks, but what I'm trying to figure is what actual _tangible_ differences I will see.

 

[dguy6789]

The 64 will tend to also be smoother in general usage.

 

[slag]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
The 64 will tend to also be smoother in general usage.

except multitasking.

My old p4 system could multitask much much better than my current amd64 box. I kind of miss that.

 

[JasGamer]

I do _lots_ of multitasking... I'm almost always encoding mp3s, installing programs, moving files, compiling, etc etc.



P4 would have the advantage there, no?

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: JasGamer
I do _lots_ of multitasking... I'm almost always encoding mp3s, installing programs, moving files, compiling, etc etc.



P4 would have the advantage there, no?

Well, thats a point in great contention. There was an anandtech article that said the Athlon64 are great at multitasking, and then there's all the P4 people who swear that HT is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

 

[Tarrant64]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: JasGamer
I do _lots_ of multitasking... I'm almost always encoding mp3s, installing programs, moving files, compiling, etc etc.



P4 would have the advantage there, no?

Well, thats a point in great contention. There was an anandtech article that said the Athlon64 are great at multitasking, and then there's all the P4 people who swear that HT is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

LMFAO

 

[shilala]

amd all the way.

 

[uOpt]

The AMD will be faster for the money in most applications, especially programming (compilation) and games (hasty code).

The reason to get Intel would be better chipsets or motherboards (and I did for my server/VCR).

However, it is bejond me why anybody would want PCIe right now. You see, there is only one x16 slot so you can only have one video card (motherboards which allow a 2x x8 split are not available and will be available for AMD first). Then you usually have 2x x1 PCIe and 2x 33MHz PCI.

The x1 PCIe are completely useless right now and even if you can get cards later you still have the problem that you cannot stick 4 PCIe or 4 PCI cards into such a board.

I think this is just a joke.

 

[whorush]

it is a contended point. HT is not the end all be all that intel makes it out to be. if it was so awesome, why dont they put it on the p-M or the itanium? intel needs HT because the P4's pipeline was so often empty. you have a branch misprediction and all of a sudden you have a 30 some odd clock bubble. so they tricked the OS into giving it 2 threads just so that the chip has something to do. so the point is that its a specific fix to a specific design flaw. meanwhile the A64 never had a problem with an empty pipeline, so it doesnt need HT. so it doesnt make sense to me that the P4 does it better? if mark is right, "There was an anandtech article that said the Athlon64 are great at multitasking" then i would be much more willing to believe that than conjecture.

 

[JasGamer]

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
The AMD will be faster for the money in most applications, especially programming (compilation) and games (hasty code).

The reason to get Intel would be better chipsets or motherboards (and I did for my server/VCR).

However, it is bejond me why anybody would want PCIe right now. You see, there is only one x16 slot so you can only have one video card (motherboards which allow a 2x x8 split are not available and will be available for AMD first). Then you usually have 2x x1 PCIe and 2x 33MHz PCI.

The x1 PCIe are completely useless right now and even if you can get cards later you still have the problem that you cannot stick 4 PCIe or 4 PCI cards into such a board.

I think this is just a joke.

The reason I want PCi express is so I can get the 6600GT, which is 100 dollars cheaper than an 8x AGP 9800XT, but preforms much better.

If the CPU would offset this difference, its a null point anyway.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: JasGamer

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
The AMD will be faster for the money in most applications, especially programming (compilation) and games (hasty code).

The reason to get Intel would be better chipsets or motherboards (and I did for my server/VCR).

However, it is bejond me why anybody would want PCIe right now. You see, there is only one x16 slot so you can only have one video card (motherboards which allow a 2x x8 split are not available and will be available for AMD first). Then you usually have 2x x1 PCIe and 2x 33MHz PCI.

The x1 PCIe are completely useless right now and even if you can get cards later you still have the problem that you cannot stick 4 PCIe or 4 PCI cards into such a board.

I think this is just a joke.

The reason I want PCi express is so I can get the 6600GT, which is 100 dollars cheaper than an 8x AGP 9800XT, but preforms much better.

If the CPU would offset this difference, its a null point anyway.

Get a 9800pro and OC it, or get a 6800GT. From what I saw the 6600GT wasn't that great. And here is a link to the multilasking evaluation

here

 

[caivoma]

Originally posted by: JasGamer

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
The AMD will be faster for the money in most applications, especially programming (compilation) and games (hasty code).

The reason to get Intel would be better chipsets or motherboards (and I did for my server/VCR).

However, it is bejond me why anybody would want PCIe right now. You see, there is only one x16 slot so you can only have one video card (motherboards which allow a 2x x8 split are not available and will be available for AMD first). Then you usually have 2x x1 PCIe and 2x 33MHz PCI.

The x1 PCIe are completely useless right now and even if you can get cards later you still have the problem that you cannot stick 4 PCIe or 4 PCI cards into such a board.

I think this is just a joke.

The reason I want PCi express is so I can get the 6600GT, which is 100 dollars cheaper than an 8x AGP 9800XT, but preforms much better.

If the CPU would offset this difference, its a null point anyway.

isnt a vanilla 6800 cost lest than 9800 xt ? get 6800 or 6800gt if they are cheaper

 

[wjgollatz]

I remember reading in the forums here, that the alleged superior multi-tasking of the P4 had more to do with the software than with the P4.

 

[whorush]

check out this article on the NF4

and this quote in the summary, "The major new features, PCI Express and SLI, are the real sizzle here. It is difficult to argue with what appears to be a very successful move by nVidia to PCI Express, even if there is really no current performance advantage that we could find to a PCIe video card compared to the same card in AGP clothes. Certainly, the potential for better performance is there, and nForce4 certainly protects the end-user for a while longer from video card obsolescence."

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...oc.aspx?i=2248&p=1