Dual Channel i865pe vs Athlon 754

[olternat]

hi.

Ok here is the situation.....
My brother....out of the kindness of his heart.... has decided to buy me the primary parts to upgrade my pc.
I guess he is taking pity on me for my old pathetic system.

Anyway, hes giving me a $400.00 plus budget for me to get a new cpu,mobo,memory. According to some very frustrating research I have narrowed down my choices to either a dual channel i865pe Asus AI7 mobo using 512mb of ddr400 ram (later i will up it to 1 gig) and a P4 3.0c ghz cpu

OR

An athlon 64 system using the 754 socket (cause I can't afford the 3500+ cpu needed for a minium spec 939 socket board). With the athlon 754 system I was thinking of going with the 3200+ cpu. The mobo will be either an MSI board or an asus...whichever has good overclocking potential.
Both intel and amd systems will use standard ddr400 from kingston.

The same components for each system cost around the same. $100.00 for mobo's, $80 for memory, $200 plus for cpu's. Those are rough estimates but each system would be plus minus $400 bucks for those parts.
Now the question is which system is better?

Correct me if I am wrong but the amd socket 754 boards don't support dual channel memory? So does that mean the i865pe system would be better than amd IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE? Now I know that amd 64 is better at gaming and intel is better at 3d rendering, video/audio encoding. But in this case would the dual channel i865 system be better overall than the amd 64 socket 754 system?

HELP!!! Its driving me nuts making a decision here. How about some advice?
One final note: I will be buying a top notch video card later in year no matter which choice i make for main system.

 

[MDE]

What are you going to use the system for?
Gaming- Athlon 64
Video Editing- Pentium 4
Everything else is basically a wash.

 

[olternat]

Alot of gaming maybe but. I like to fool around with 3dmax and photoshop. And I like to have several windows opened up at the same time.

About the dual channel memory thing...would the i865pe 3.0 ghz p4 system have an advantage over then amd 64 3200+ on the socket 754 mobo because of the dual channel memory?

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: olternat
Alot of gaming maybe but. I like to fool around with 3dmax and photoshop. And I like to have several windows opened up at the same time.

About the dual channel memory thing...would the i865pe 3.0 ghz p4 system have an advantage over then amd 64 3200+ on the socket 754 mobo because of the dual channel memory?

No, the Athlon 64s are hardly starved for memory bandwidth.

 

[olternat]

So whats the deal with the dual channel thing? Are you guys telling me dual channel isn't necessary for the athlon 64? If thats the case then why are the 939 socket motherboards supporting dual channel memory? Keeping track of all these factors is getting me frustrated.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: olternat
So whats the deal with the dual channel thing? Are you guys telling me dual channel isn't necessary for the athlon 64? If thats the case then why are the 939 socket motherboards supporting dual channel memory? Keeping track of all these factors is getting me frustrated. <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif" border="0">

Dual channel is basically a checkmark feature that AMD needed to have to match Intel's needed dual channel. It's not really needed, but it doesn't hurt.

 

[legatech]

I did this myself bout a month ago



System 1
Asus p4p8x deluxe
1GB kingston ram Dual Channel
hatichi deskstar 80gb sata
P4 3.2ee 1mb l2 (3200)
Chaintech sa5900xt
3dmark01 @ 15435

System2
Asus k8vse deluxe
512mb kingston ram
hatichi deskstar 80gb sata
Amd 64 3400 (2200)
Chaintech sa5900xt
3dmark01 @ 17199


No overclocking of memory, processor,video, no tweaking
dont have memory bm to go with it but i'm doing one with the above systems, but only with a 6800 card
the amd64 is better for gaming.
the p4 for video editing as suggested by mde

 

[carlosd]

Go for a A64 3200+ CPU, and MSI KT8 NEO. will be better than any P4C. Athlon are better for gamming and all the general apps, the P4 are a little better only in a few optimized video and rendering applications. Anyway for that price you will get a better overall performance with Athlon 64 S754 combo. Dual channel is not a mayor concern since the Integrated memory controller has very low latencies.

 

[olternat]

Thanks guys. I think I will do that....buy an athlon 64 socket 754 mobo and 3200+cpu.

However, lol this is gonna make you laugh.

I was considering using my brothers extra mobo he has on the shelf. Its a intel mobo with a 533mhz fsb with a stick of 256mb RDRAM (although the ram is pc800 which would force the board to run at 400mhz fsb).
I could use the mobo and memory temporarily til christmas till I could upgrade to a board that runs ddr400.

That way I could buy a cool video card now instead of later....although that would mean I would have to buy an intel p4 cpu. And that would mean I would have to buy a i865 or i875 mobo and memory so I won't have to waste the intel cpu I would buy.
LOL is somebody keeping track of all this? If I were to do this then the $400.00 budget would go to an intel p4 3.0c and a 128mb gforce 6800 vid card.

Ya the 533 board and 256mb pc800 rdram won't be that great but.....I would have a cool card now and be playing now. Then later when I get more money I would pay to upgrade the mobo and memory.
What do you think?

 

[MDE]

I'd do it the right way and get the Athlon 64 now so you aren't wasting money upgrading something that you'll just be getting rid of later.