I can buy either:
ECS Elite board (K7S5A Pro)
Athlon XP 2000+
or
Asus board (P4S533-X)
Celeron 1.7 GHz.
both setups are the same price. The AMD route would limit me to a board that could not support future CPU upgrades really (end of its road). But it DOES support both SDRAM and DDR. However I am gunna recycle PC133 SDRAM and WONT buy DDR later on to replace it on the AMD setup. OR I could buy the Intel setup and have a board that supports P4 3.06 AND hyperthreading. So 2 years from now when those sell for $50 I can make a nice upgrade. It too, has both DDR and SDRAM support. Initially I will be just using PC133 SDRAM, but if, two years from now, I upgrade to a 3.06 HT enabled P4, I will pickup some DDR333 (PC2700) that works with it.
Any suggestions? Will I see a huge performance degredation going the Intel route for now? I do game, but mostly older games (counter-strike)... yet I don't want to rule out new games completely. Is the 1.7 GHz celeron a whole lot worse performance than the Athlon XP 2000+?
Thanks for any suggestions.
ECS Elite board (K7S5A Pro)
Athlon XP 2000+
or
Asus board (P4S533-X)
Celeron 1.7 GHz.
both setups are the same price. The AMD route would limit me to a board that could not support future CPU upgrades really (end of its road). But it DOES support both SDRAM and DDR. However I am gunna recycle PC133 SDRAM and WONT buy DDR later on to replace it on the AMD setup. OR I could buy the Intel setup and have a board that supports P4 3.06 AND hyperthreading. So 2 years from now when those sell for $50 I can make a nice upgrade. It too, has both DDR and SDRAM support. Initially I will be just using PC133 SDRAM, but if, two years from now, I upgrade to a 3.06 HT enabled P4, I will pickup some DDR333 (PC2700) that works with it.
Any suggestions? Will I see a huge performance degredation going the Intel route for now? I do game, but mostly older games (counter-strike)... yet I don't want to rule out new games completely. Is the 1.7 GHz celeron a whole lot worse performance than the Athlon XP 2000+?
Thanks for any suggestions.