CPU Price/Performance Issue -- What am I missing?

[Beaner]

OK,

I'm building a new system and comparing the XP to the Northwood.
The biggest argument I hear in favor of AMD on almost all forums is that the XP chips are better as far as price/performance goes.

I hear things like:

"I just can't justify spending the extra $$ on an Intel-based system when AMD is so much cheaper"

and

"AMD chips are much better price/performance wise than their Intel counterparts"

But when I price out a P4 1.6A ($139) and an XP 1900 ($160), it seems that the Woody is the better deal.(prices from NewEgg)
Now according to XP's naming conventions, the XP 1900 should perform on par with a 1.9 GHz P4, right? And the 1.6A should OC to that no problem. So again, the P4 seems to be the better deal.

It just doesn't seem that the price/performance argument holds true anymore. Before the Northwoods, I'd have said it did...but now?

What is your take on this?

Thanks!

 

[dejansen]

I think you're right. Part of the problem in the past wasn't only the difference in cost of the CPUs but the memory as well. Now that the P4/DDR platform is out, I definitely see a lot of people migrating from AMD to Intel. The P4 overclocking potential currently available has a lot of overclockers swapping platforms too. And then there is the heat issue. You don't have to think twice about running a P4 with the retail heatsink fan, and if it fails, you can be sure the P4 will survive.

There's a lot going for the P4 right now...

 

[dexvx]

You're comparing a non-overclocked processor to an overclocked processor....

a P4-1.8a northwood would be around $185 retail at newegg (there are no Northwood 1900s), much closer to an XP1900 than a 1.6a. A 2.0A would go over the top ($300 ish?).

But that is just 1 component in the system. Motherboard prices are roughly the same (good motherboards not the cheapest crap you can dig out of pricewatch) and everything else is compatible, unless you go RDram, which the motherboard is $20-30 bit more expensive.

The ram issue is kinda dead... high quality PC800 RDram is the same price if not cheaper than high quality PC2400 DDR Sdram

 

[HardWareXpert]

Nope thats not right, a AthlonXP 1600+ is on par with a P4 1.6A and a 1700+ would beat it in most benchmarks.

AthlonXp 1600+=£108
AthlonXP 1700+=£110
AthlonXP 1800+=£124
P4 1.6A=£141
P4 1.8A=£161

 

[gaidin123]

<<
But when I price out a P4 1.6A ($139) and an XP 1900 ($160), it seems that the Woody is the better deal.(prices from NewEgg)
Now according to XP's naming conventions, the XP 1900 should perform on par with a 1.9 GHz P4, right? And the 1.6A should OC to that no problem. So again, the P4 seems to be the better deal. >>



One thing to note is that AMD's XP rating scheme is actually based on the older Thunderbirds, NOT on equivalent P4 performance. So an Athlon XP 1900 is in fact roughly equivalent to an Athlon 1.9Ghz CPU. I believe Anandtech or some other review site showed that the PR ratings the XP CPUs have are rather conservative too.

The Northwood P4s have been really tempting me as of late but I can't afford and really don't need another box right now after having just got my XP1900 system up a few months back. One of the things to remember is that a P4 paired with DDR RAM at stock speed cripples the processor's performance much more than pairing an Athlon box with DDR. That doesn't really hold as true if you overclock to 133Mhz or higher FSB but if you were buying a bunch of prebuilt systems like from Dell you might want to go the Rambus route instead of DDR (all other specs being equal).

AMD is not much cheaper than Intel right now but who knows what'll happen in 6 months?

Gaidin

 

[Rand]

There is that slight fact that your comparing an overclocked, out of-spec processor to one operating at it's rated clockspeed. And even with the best of processors overclocking is never a guarantee.
Hell, even the most famous overclocker of all- the old Celeron 300A @ 450MHz, wasnt a 100% guarantee.

Technically speaking the XP Model Rating scheme is based on the older Thunderbird processors. That saiud, when compared to the Northwood is still tends to be somewhat conservative. The AthlonXP 2000+ w/ PC2100 DDR SDRAM usually tends to perform extremely close to the P4 2.2GHz w/ PC800 RDRAM.
(Of course this will vary depending upon whose results you believe but I tend to put the most worth in Lost Circuits, AnandTech, AcesHardware, Tom's Hardware reviews as the most reputable and thorough results)
So I'd probably put the XP1900+ you quoted as being on-par with a theoretical P4 Northwood 2.1GHz w/RDRAM, or slightly better then that if compared to a Northwood with DDR.
Of course the overclocked Northwood would be running on a higher FSB which should boost it's performance beyond that of an in-spec Northwood at the same clockspeed.
I'd say a Northwood 1.6GHz @ 2.13GHz on a 133MHz FSB (533 QDR) should be reasonably close to a theoretical 2.3-2.4GHz Northwood on 100MHz (400MHz QDR FSB).
Of course we can always overclock that AthlonXP 1900+ as well, from what I've seen it seems reasonably likely that it should be capable of slightly above 2000+ speed.

All in all, I'd say neither have a clear cut price/performance advantage when comparing overclocked systems... though if I had to pick one I might say the Northwood offers a slightly better price/performance ratio.
The AthlonXP on the other hand offers the clearly superior price/performance ratio when considering non-overclocked performance... and even when overclock this fact should hold a slight bit of sway as overclocking is never a guarantee.

When it really comes down to it, I don't believe either to be clearly superior to the other.
I personally would tend to favor the Northwood due to lower heat dissipation, but another might prefer the AthlonXP for many varied reasons.