Athlon XP or Intel P4 Northwood?

[thilanliyan]

Trying to put together a retro gaming comp and needs to have a AGP2x port so I'm limited to early P4s and below.

Which would you choose? Athlon XP 1.8GHz or P4 2.xx GHz Northwood? I can get the Athlon system for $30-$40 cheaper.

The video card will be a Voodoo 5 5500 64mb AGP.

 

[jaqie]

Athlon XP... I wouldn't touch a P4 if I had a choice.

 

[secretanchitman]

hmm...you DID say a northwood p4, so i would suggest going with that.

does it have hyperthreading?

 

[TankGuys]

For that generation, AMD all the way. Current generation is Intel hands down - but between those, Athlon wins

 

[fleshconsumed]

You can put a decent and quiet cooler on Northwood though because it has better heatsink mounting. With Athlon XP you're limited to Socket A mounting which can't take large heatsinks. Scythe Katana (if you can still find it) is about the best you can do with Socket A.



BTW OP, do you have any ideas about motherboards you want to use?

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: jaqie
Athlon XP... I wouldn't touch a P4 if I had a choice.

Wasn't the P4 faster though at the time? Remember this would be a Northwood, not a Prescott which I wouldn't go near.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/...=91&model2=33&chart=25

Is the price difference worth it?

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
hmm...you DID say a northwood p4, so i would suggest going with that.

does it have hyperthreading?

No HT...but then this is really just for casual retro gaming...nothing more so I don't need a super speedy comp.

 

[stevty2889]

The later northwoods with 800mhz FSB and HT did well against the Athlon XP's at the time, but the older model northwoods, the Athlon XP's were still generaly better, gaming being one of their strongest points. I'd stick with the Althon XP in this case.

EDIT: well going by toms hardware charts, apparently even the 533mhz FSB northwood spanks the pants off of the XP 2100+

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: fleshconsumed
You can put a decent and quiet cooler on Northwood though because it has better heatsink mounting. With Athlon XP you're limited to Socket A mounting which can't take large heatsinks. Scythe Katana (if you can still find it) is about the best you can do with Socket A.

BTW OP, do you have any ideas about motherboards you want to use?

I was just going to stick to the stock heatsink anyway.

About the m/b, for the XP it would be an Asus A7V266-E and for the P4 it would be a MSI 645 Ultra. I have to get a motherboard with a Universal AGP slot since I need it to be able to support AGP 3.3v (AGP 1x/2x).

Originally posted by: stevty2889
The later northwoods with 800mhz FSB and HT did well against the Athlon XP's at the time, but the older model northwoods, the Athlon XP's were still generaly better, gaming being one of their strongest points. I'd stick with the Althon XP in this case.

EDIT: well going by toms hardware charts, apparently even the 533mhz FSB northwood spanks the pants off of the XP 2100+

Lol you said yes and no to both ...seems there's no concrete conclusions.

EDIT: Looking at Toms CPU chart again, it looks like the difference is much less when using similar ram. In the comparison the P4 is using DDR266 while the XP2100+ is using SDR133.

 

[jaqie]

Originally posted by: fleshconsumed
With Athlon XP you're limited to Socket A mounting which can't take large heatsinks.

I am not trying to be rude, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You weren't around during the days of the AXIA, were you? Behold the PAL8045. And swiftech made the infamous MC462A which was similar, made with different manufacturing techniques.

 

[v8envy]

Oh man, the PAL8045 with a Delta 8 billion RPM finger amputating fan on it. That brings back memories.

OP: you should also be able to pick up an athlon-era water cooling setup for nearly nothing. Heck, if you were in the Denver area I'd hand you a Koolance WC case with a 600 watt pre-ATXv2 psu, athlon 1600+, a gig of ram, 9600XT and spare 4200ti for like $50. If you were nice I could be talked into throwing in an Adaptec fast wide thick long hairy SCSI card and a big box of Barracuda drives too. Pretty sure it has a 2x compatible AGP slot (nforce board) but not positive.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Originally posted by: jaqie

Originally posted by: fleshconsumed
With Athlon XP you're limited to Socket A mounting which can't take large heatsinks.

I am not trying to be rude, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You weren't around during the days of the AXIA, were you? Behold the PAL8045. And swiftech made the infamous MC462A which was similar, made with different manufacturing techniques.

Try fitting Scythe Ninja size heatsink on SocketA. Didn't think so. Unless the motherboard is of one of those rare types that have extra mounting holes around the socket.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: v8envy
OP: you should also be able to pick up an athlon-era water cooling setup for nearly nothing. Heck, if you were in the Denver area I'd hand you a Koolance WC case with a 600 watt pre-ATXv2 psu, athlon 1600+, a gig of ram, 9600XT and spare 4200ti for like $50. If you were nice I could be talked into throwing in an Adaptec fast wide thick long hairy SCSI card and a big box of Barracuda drives too. Pretty sure it has a 2x compatible AGP slot (nforce board) but not positive.

Lol too bad I live in Toronto...I'd definitely pick it up if I could.

I'm most likely just gonna end up using the stock heatsink and cooler.

I won an Athlon 1.8GHz CPU+HSF on ebay for $20 so I guess I'll stick with AMD. I hope the seller didn't assume an Athlon XP 1800+ (was there such a thing??) is the same thing as an Athlon 1.8GHz CPU (the listing said 1.8GHz).

 

[Jax Omen]

I have an Athlon XP 1900+ sitting around somewhere in my parents' house. It's possible he made that confusion.

If he did, talk to him about it. That's false advertising, and I'm sure he doesn't want the bad feedback

 

[HOOfan 1]

Retro gaming? That sounds like my main gaming rig

Pentium 4 Willamette 1.9Ghz, 256MB RDRAM, Geforce 3 Ti200

 

[jaqie]

as for retro gaming, I have been slowly gathering the pieces for a true retro gaming rig. So far I have:
jumpered SB16 ISA with DSP
SB AWE32
3Dfx voodoo2/banshee 12MB
s3 vision968 4MB pci card
4GB quantum fireball
48x cdrom
I had a P-200mmx and mobo but the mobo had a bad dma controller, means no wave playing and no floppy, both a nono for a dos gamer box.

 

[Markfw]

I have 2 retro gaming rigs, one is a Pentium 200 MMX with 32 meg of memory and the original sound blaster. The only hardware that plays the original C&C. It won;t even run with 128 meg of ram, I think 64 is the max, maybe even 32.

The other is an Athlon XP 2000 that has win98 to play Red Alert !

 

[Jax Omen]

Mark... is there something wrong with just picking up C&C the First Decade? Those all seem to run fine on a modern PC for me >_>


Hell, for that matter, why build a retro rig instead of running a retro VM? I don't see the appeal.

 

[Markfw]

Well, I haven't even tried "C&C the First Decade", and I didn't know it existed. And for sound to work, the install program only supports the original SB, And the hardware was free (leftovers) If that new version supports new hardware, I am all for that ! Where do I get it, and for how much ?

I found it for sale, but its $30 ! and I already paid for all the games in it. But if they now run on winXP (red alert won't) and support current sound cards, it would be worth it !

 

[Jax Omen]

I picked it up for $30 at a Fred Meyer, IIRC. It's been out for a while, it's a compilation of everything C&C before C&C3, as far as I know.

C&C3 was my first game in the series, so I picked up TFD to see what all the hubbub was about. So far RA2 is awesome, but the other games... maybe you just had to be there?

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
If he did, talk to him about it. That's false advertising, and I'm sure he doesn't want the bad feedback

I emailed him about it...hopefully it's GOOD news.

Originally posted by: HOOfan 1
Retro gaming? That sounds like my main gaming rig

Pentium 4 Willamette 1.9Ghz, 256MB RDRAM, Geforce 3 Ti200

Oh trust me I know retro (relatively speaking of course...ie. I never owned an Amiga or anything from the 80s)...I started gaming on a 486 DX2-66 with a 512k (1/2 mb) video card and just the crappy onboard speaker.

I'm just building this now because I got a Voodoo 5 5500 (dual 3DFX GPUs baby!!! ) and I'd like to see what it's like. Also one of my favourite games (Grand Prix Legends) has a glide path so I'd like to try that too.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
If he did, talk to him about it. That's false advertising, and I'm sure he doesn't want the bad feedback

I emailed him about it...hopefully it's GOOD news.

Originally posted by: HOOfan 1
Retro gaming? That sounds like my main gaming rig

Pentium 4 Willamette 1.9Ghz, 256MB RDRAM, Geforce 3 Ti200

Oh trust me I know retro (relatively speaking of course...ie. I never owned an Amiga or anything from the 80s)...I started gaming on a 486 DX2-66 with a 512k (1/2 mb) video card and just the crappy onboard speaker.

I'm just building this now because I got a Voodoo 5 5500 (dual 3DFX GPUs baby!!! ) and I'd like to see what it's like. Also one of my favourite games (Grand Prix Legends) has a glide path so I'd like to try that too.

Hmm why not just try to use Moka5 with a win95 install( if it's compatable? ) and emulate in your normal os? Should still be faster than an old retro rig heh.

 

[Bradtechonline]

The Northwoods were cool running fast chips that I prefered over the Prescotts back then.. The 2.4-3.0c chips were very good performers and actually beat the Athlon XP's back then.

 

[zach0624]

Originally posted by: jaqie

Originally posted by: fleshconsumed
With Athlon XP you're limited to Socket A mounting which can't take large heatsinks.

I am not trying to be rude, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You weren't around during the days of the AXIA, were you? Behold the PAL8045. And swiftech made the infamous MC462A which was similar, made with different manufacturing techniques.

man back in my socket A days I rolled with a Volcano 10.

 

[amenx]

Originally posted by: Bradtechonline
The Northwoods were cool running fast chips that I prefered over the Prescotts back then.. The 2.4-3.0c chips were very good performers and actually beat the Athlon XP's back then.

Yep, several years ago I was comparing the Athlon XP to the 2.8c Northwood and the latter kicked the XP's ass so I bought it. About a year later the A64s took over the scene and put the Intels to shame.

 

[superstition]

In the comparison the P4 is using DDR266 while the XP2100+ is using SDR133.

Ugh. Try a P4 with SDRAM. While an XP can run a bit better with slow RAM than a P4, it's certainly not a fair test.

As far as I recall, AMD had the lead in many games with the Athlon XP, provided the motherboard was a fast chipset design, DDR RAM was used, etc.