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Athlon 64 now? Or later?

M

MrCodeDude

Lifer
I can pick up a Barton 2400-M for $78 and the Abit NF7-S 2.0 for ~$100, total being ~$175. OC the Mobile Barton to as far as it would like to go. Also would be running these in dual-channel. That memory supposedly has the last of the Winbond CH-5 chips.

Or I can go to the 64bit route, with the $95 AK86-L Mobo and $190 Refurb A64 3000+. Would still be running the same RAM. So for about $125 more, I'd be running a significantly faster machine. However, I don't want to have this system for a month, have the NF3 250's come out and have significant price drops on any of the items...
 
If I was in your shoe's. I probably couldn't keep myself from getting the Athlon64. That just me though.


Jason
 
The nf3 250 is nothing special, and IMHO you should go the mobile barton route. 🙂
 
If you are going to be gaming primarily then get the Barton CPU and spend $125 more towards a better videocard. If you are truly on a budget and gaming is a concern, A64 will not save you from slow framerates, but a faster GPU will and I am sure 2400mhz Athlon XP will be very happy to assist you.
 
My Radeon 9600 is fine for all of the gaming experiences I've encountered so far. Maybe when Quake 4 or HL2 rolls around, I'll have some incentive to go bigger in graphics.

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll go the Mobile 2400 route until A64's gain some ground.
 
Originally posted by: James3shin
nforce3 250 was not very impressive to me compared to the via sets...
Click to expand...
The only review out there is the XbitLabs one.
rolleye.gif
 
Once you try Far Cry, and its a slide show, you will get that Athlon64, 1 gig memory, and a 9800 pro.
 
Originally posted by: John
Originally posted by: MrCodeDude
Originally posted by: James3shin
nforce3 250 was not very impressive to me compared to the via sets...
Click to expand...
The only review out there is the XbitLabs one.
rolleye.gif
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that?

AnandTech nForce3 250 review

HEXUS.net nForce3 250 review

The Tech Report nForce3 250 review

etc......
rolleye.gif
Click to expand...
Those are all pre-release reference boards, I'll wait until the retail boards come out and make my decision then.
 
You guys that are not impressed with the NF3-250 need to keep something in mind: the review was about the NF3-250 Socket 754. That means that the A64 was still being "handicapped" by single channel DDR architecture. When the NF3-250Gb Ultra comes out, pair that with a Socket 939 A64 and you'll have dual channel DDR.

This release of the NF3-250 was all about features guys, getting it up to today's standards as far as integrated functionality is concerned. The big increases in performance will come in a few months and we are probably waiting on AMD for that to happen. I'm sure NV is ready to roll out the big guns. 🙂

ps - how much improvement in system performance can a chipset make when the memory controller is embedded in the CPU? Very little... Keep that in mind.
 
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