athlon xp or northwood

[esc]

which would you pick if you had like $1200 for the whole system?

i honestly don't know what to pick.

 

[LuDaCriS66]

If you're on a budget then go for the XP all the way. $1200 is enough for a pretty good XP system. You don't wanna use up half that just for the CPU.

 

[Ionizer86]

Go Athlon XP 1700+. This model # offers the best value at the moment.

An Athlon XP 1700+ on a KT266A board is about as fast as a P4 2.Aghz on a i845D board.

 

[esc]

what would be a nice video card to compliment an athlon xp? i'm thinking of getting a gf3 ti200 of the radeon 8500 OEM. this system will be used for watching dvds and games.

 

[Ionizer86]

GF3 and R8500 are both good choices. It depends on your brand preference, I guess. Some don't like ATi drivers, but the R8500 is indeed faster than the GF3 Ti200. In addition, this weekend, CPU prices drop. You may be able to pick up an 1800+ after this weekend for the cost of a 1700+ now.

GF4 cards are coming soon. Wait for them to come out b4 getting a video card. They'll probably send Ti200 and R8500 prices down.

 

[PieDerro]

If you can get your hands on a Northwood 1.8GHz, go for it.

I'm building an XP2000+ system AND a Northwood 1.8GHz (overclocked to the highest I can, hopefully around 2.6GHz) just because I couldn't decide between the two! 😀

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Nothing agains the Northwood, but the overall system specs could be a good deal sweeter with an XP. You could spend that extra $200 on a GF3 Ti 500 rather than the GF3 Ti200, Sound blaster Audigy over a Live 5.1, 512MB RAM instead of only 256MB, another HDD etc...

 

[konichiwa]

When's GF4 due out? Couple months still I assume because it's nVidia's spring launch right? Don't they usually do that around March-April?

 

[x86]

<< which would you pick if you had like $1200 for the whole system?

i honestly don't know what to pick. >>



Northwood 1.8 w/ 845-D

Best value when OCed, and kicks the crap out of XP.

 

[Gix]

<< When's GF4 due out? Couple months still I assume because it's nVidia's spring launch right? Don't they usually do that around March-April? >>


hopefully sometime in february
feb is when i heard anyway

 

[esc]

<< When's GF4 due out? >>



feb 5 or 6 i think. read it in nfs4's gf4 thread.

..anyways, thanks for all the input.

 

[Ionizer86]

Northwood 1.8 w/ 845-D

Hehe, looks like Docsmarts is the newest convert to Intel's darkside in Satan Clara 😀

Docsmarts, it's called human error. It's not AMD's fault!

About Athlon XP overclocking, if you do multiplier only, it seems that the newer chips should be able to take around 1.8ghz (XP2200+) if you get some huge heatsink and a good fan to cool with. AthlonOC has information on core stepping and overclocking capabilities.

 

[edge077]

DocSmarts: From the reviews I've read the Intel series of chips does not 'Kick the crap' outta the Athalon XP series. Raw clockspeed? Yeah, but performance is more imprtant than clock speed in most people's opinion. When you add that the Athalons are WAY cheaper than an equivalent performance Intel chip the value choice becomes self evident. But then, you seem to be an 'Intel bigot' as you accuse most of the people here of being 'AMD bigots' so I'll probably get flamed.

esc: My reccomendation would be AMD (in case you have't figured that out by now) 😉

 

[Ionizer86]

Oh, btw, to help with your decision, this should help quite a bit. This page provides AMD processor pricing, and the next page has intel pricing. As you can see, the XP1700+ is a good value, although prices should drop more by Monday.

 

[Pabster]

$1200 for a complete rig? AMD all the way.