Athlon 3000+ or P4 2.8C??? HELP!

[Earwax]

I want to get a system that I can be happy with for at least the next two years. I've been running an Athlon XP 1800+ on a KT333 mobo for about the last 2 years, and the system can still play the newest games pretty darn well. I'd like to buy a new system which would last as long as this one did.

But, I'm a bit confused with these new athlon processors. The 3000+ only has single ddr channel support right? I don't understand how this chip competes with a pentium 3.0C with an 800MHz bus. But I've seen a lot of benchmarks showing that the 3000+, even the 512 KB L2 cache version, is comparable to the P4 on 3dmark2001SE. Why is this?

If anyone could redirect me to a site, or possibly other post which discusses this I would appreciate it. I'm on a lousy dialup connection and searching the forums is very tedious.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Earwax
I want to get a system that I can be happy with for at least the next two years. I've been running an Athlon XP 1800+ on a KT333 mobo for about the last 2 years, and the system can still play the newest games pretty darn well. I'd like to buy a new system which would last as long as this one did.

But, I'm a bit confused with these new athlon processors. The 3000+ only has single ddr channel support right? I don't understand how this chip competes with a pentium 3.0C with an 800MHz bus. But I've seen a lot of benchmarks showing that the 3000+, even the 512 KB L2 cache version, is comparable to the P4 on 3dmark2001SE. Why is this?

If anyone could redirect me to a site, or possibly other post which discusses this I would appreciate it. I'm on a lousy dialup connection and searching the forums is very tedious.

They are about even, so pick one and go with it.

The reason they are comparable despite the P4s use of 800mhz fsb and dual channel memory(you can also get this with the Socket A NForce chipset, but it offers a negligible benefit)has to do with how the 2 cpus work. The P4 needs more memory bandwidth than the Athlon, the Athlon doesn't.

All that said, why not consider the Athlon 64 3000+? It is about the same price and better than either.

Edit: the following appears to be not quite true-- That said, there appears to be an issue with running C&C Generals on the Athlon64s, so take that into consideration.

 

[Duvie]

First a little piece of advice....never base your decisions on a sythetic benchmark like 3dmark....

Secondly if you are gaming and not planning to oc at all then definitely go with the 3000+ over the 2.8ghz p4c.....However if you do OC you could get the p4 much higher whereas there has not been the greatest luck getting the early athlon64's very high though I think this has more to do with the maturity of the motherboard chipsets.

I have seen many 2.8's falling in the range of 3.3 to 3.5ghz and I truly believe at those speeds it is the faster computer. Take that into consideration as well as the P4 still leads in a lot of multimedia apps and many multimedia and rendering apps are starting to take advantage of HT and that is making a healthy boost. really depends on your use though and I don't think you can go wrong with either.....Who knows the 64bit application when they start arriving in mass may make this a great buy...That still remains to be seen...

I am different and upgrade cpus in 6 months or less so I don't play the waiting game or the promise game....

At 3.5ghz with my 2.4c I am pretty confident I have about as fast a machine in what I do then anything I can get with a current athlon64 fx model.....And ocourse I only paid 180shipped for this chip and 105 for my motherboard!!!

 

[PetNorth]

That said, there appears to be an issue with running C&C Generals on the Athlon64s, so take that into consideration.

I don´t think so, and even look at this:

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/06/IMG0006965.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/478/page12.html

In C&C Generals Athlon 64 outperforms P4 EE and P4C 3.2 by about 15% average.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: PetNorth

That said, there appears to be an issue with running C&C Generals on the Athlon64s, so take that into consideration.

I don´t think so, and even look at this:

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/06/IMG0006965.gif

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/478/page12.html

In C&C Generals Athlon 64 outperforms P4 EE and P4C 3.2 by about 15% average.

You are correct. I made that statement here and in other threads based upon some ifo in a thread(somewhere around AT). At any rate, the guy who had the issue fixed it by installing SP1. So far I've corrected the statement in 2 threads, hopefully that was all of them.

 

[Lyfer]

If you're talking about the Athlon 64 +3000, then I would DEFINITELY get the Athlon 64 over the P4. Read anand's article.

 

[amd4life]

I am going through this too--but I would say that one has to consider the overclockng potential of the p4's---my 2.8c does 3.4 solid with only pc3500 ram, ans based upon the benches teh 3000+ cant compete with the increased fsb. So I would say save some money and buy a 2.4-2.8 c , some good pc3500 ram ( mushkin or ocz) and overclock it

 

[Corporate Thug]

3000+, if you want a 2.8c buy me a A64 3000+ and i'll trade you mine for it

 

[suklee]

Athlon 3000+ hands down

 

[Intelman07]

Pentium 4 2.8C

 

[Wesley Fink]

Check out our front page review of the Athlon64 3000+ at about $220. Since it beats the 3.2 Pentium 4 in most gaming benchmarks, it will certainly outperform the 2.8 you are considering. For the money you plan to spend the A64 3000+ is the chip I would buy for myself. It also has more of a future.

 

[Earwax]

Yeah, they posted the new article about 2 hours after I ordered the Athlon 64. Luckily for me the performance looked pretty good. I'm not planning on OC'ing, even though I'd like to in the future. I have enough younger brothers and sisters that I'll be able to pawn this off to one of them in 2 years, like I'm doing with my kt333 now.

thanks for the advice all.

 

[tallman45]

With the new Athlon 64 3000+ costing $220 vs a P4 2.6C 800mhx fsb running $170 is the Athlon 3000+ a $50 better cpu than the P4 2.6C ?

 

[BlvdKing]

If you want better performance in games then maybe you should consider buying a better video card instead - maybe a ATI 9700 class or better or the GFFX 5900. What kind of video card are you using anyways?

If not then I would definately get the AMD 3000+.

 

[teeman]

Excuse my newbie question, but I am considering the same choice (P4 2.8 and Athlon64), but the question I have is about memory.. I have 1Ghz of old memory (DDR266) with my old 1700+ machine - do i have to get new memory for both processors? or can I just wing it with the old memory (without too much of a performance hit)?

 

[XeoBllaze]

In gaming, the A64 3000+ eats the 2.8C for breakfast. The A64 3000+ is only a few % slower in gaming over the 3200+, so there's your answer. The 3000+ is the best value vs. performance out ATM. And if you're going to keep the cpu for about 2 years or a bit more, and you want to get some 64bit goodies, get the A64 cuz a 64bit OS will be out, along w/ many 64bit software by then. =d

 

[XeoBllaze]

Originally posted by: teeman
Excuse my newbie question, but I am considering the same choice (P4 2.8 and Athlon64), but the question I have is about memory.. I have 1Ghz of old memory (DDR266) with my old 1700+ machine - do i have to get new memory for both processors? or can I just wing it with the old memory (without too much of a performance hit)?

No you dont need faster memory to run the A64. It will be bottnecked, but it should be fine until you can get some DDR400. I ran my A64 w/ PC2700 fine, just a tad slower in apps/games

 

[RussianSensation]

If you want to be happy for the next 2+ years wait for socket 939 or 775 and upgrade then...rumors say 754 stops at 3700+ and 940 + registerred + fx is very expensive

between athlon 3000+ or p4 2.8C

business/videogames = athlon 3000 (business = microsoft office suite + interent explorer + mathematical calculations + games etc.)

3d encoding/rendering/multitasking = p4 (multimedia applications + converting of media formats)

still for videogames videocard is the most important component so p4 with a faster videocard will obviously be better than athlon and vice versa so that point is dependent on other components

and for business applications of p4 system has raid or raptor hard drives it will be faster as well and vice versa so always take the whole system into account