I cannot decide. Please help me with the hard decisions.

[BrokenArrow64FX]

I would go with the 64 bit proc. You should also wait untill socket 939 becomes affordable.

 

[Bad Dude]

I thought about keeping the Athlon64 and get the ChainTech board. But after seeing that no one could get 3X512MB Sticks to work in all 3 slot b/c of the double sided RAM. That would means I can only have 1Gig of RAM. While the Intel P4 setup requires dual channel, I can get 2Gig on it. I would think that the RAM will help speed things up also. What do you guys think?
Thanks.

 

[Degrador]

2GB of RAM is rather a lot... 1GB should be more than enough for the next year or two... As for P4 vs A64, I'd be going the athlon - better game performance and once windows 64 comes around it'll be much more worth while. But if you're only interested for current usage, then it's a bit iffy. I'd say you'll find the athlon 64 will sell for more when the time comes though - many people will be looking for cheap 64 bit processors when windows 64 does come around.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Bad_Dude
I thought about keeping the Athlon64 and get the ChainTech board. But after seeing that no one could get 3X512MB Sticks to work in all 3 slot b/c of the double sided RAM. That would means I can only have 1Gig of RAM. While the Intel P4 setup requires dual channel, I can get 2Gig on it. I would think that the RAM will help speed things up also. What do you guys think?
Thanks.

I havent seen any games that can benefit from more than 1GB of memory.

I will NOT be going AMD64 until the OS AND SOFTWARE has matured at least 1 year. If MS can mess up 32 bit this bad, 64 is gonna be sorry for a while...

There is always the issue of multitasking, if you do more than 2 things at once on your pc, you are going to see tangible performance advantages for the P4 with HT.

 

[ALIEN3001]

2 CPU intensive things at once, not just "2 things at once".

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: ALIEN3001
2 CPU intensive things at once, not just "2 things at once".

Yes, like encoding mp3s while playing a game, thats a HUGE one.

 

[FlameDeer]

I vote for Athlon64! Ready to support near future 64-bit software.

RAID-0 is NOT Advisable for non-server usage, need to sacrifice half of the reliability, as post by Anand at
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101&p=11

If you not have your HDD yet. Then consider WD RaptorII 74GB for performance boost if storage space is not your main concern. Or save $$ of one HDD for better CPU (Socket 939), RAM (PC3200 or above), Radeon 9800 XT or ....

 

[JBT]

A64 IMO.

 

[Bad Dude]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Bad_Dude
I thought about keeping the Athlon64 and get the ChainTech board. But after seeing that no one could get 3X512MB Sticks to work in all 3 slot b/c of the double sided RAM. That would means I can only have 1Gig of RAM. While the Intel P4 setup requires dual channel, I can get 2Gig on it. I would think that the RAM will help speed things up also. What do you guys think?
Thanks.

I havent seen any games that can benefit from more than 1GB of memory.

I will NOT be going AMD64 until the OS AND SOFTWARE has matured at least 1 year. If MS can mess up 32 bit this bad, 64 is gonna be sorry for a while...

There is always the issue of multitasking, if you do more than 2 things at once on your pc, you are going to see tangible performance advantages for the P4 with HT.

Dude, Far Cry even lags with just 1Gb of RAM.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Bad_Dude
I thought about keeping the Athlon64 and get the ChainTech board. But after seeing that no one could get 3X512MB Sticks to work in all 3 slot b/c of the double sided RAM. That would means I can only have 1Gig of RAM. While the Intel P4 setup requires dual channel, I can get 2Gig on it. I would think that the RAM will help speed things up also. What do you guys think?
Thanks.

I havent seen any games that can benefit from more than 1GB of memory.

I will NOT be going AMD64 until the OS AND SOFTWARE has matured at least 1 year. If MS can mess up 32 bit this bad, 64 is gonna be sorry for a while...

There is always the issue of multitasking, if you do more than 2 things at once on your pc, you are going to see tangible performance advantages for the P4 with HT.

I simply just run 2 physical CPU's

but that's not always true, I've heard before that HT doesn't always help. and I have no idea why, but I heard sometimes it actually performs worse than without HT.

 

[nick1985]

only the diehard intel zealots are voting for the 3.0.

 

[justly]

Sell the Athlon 64... BTW how much do you want for it

 

[Bad Dude]

Originally posted by: justly
Sell the Athlon 64... BTW how much do you want for it

I would think the chip and cooler would be $260 shipped.

 

[zanejohnson]

I'd go with the P4c

i had never owned an intel machine until i built this one a year ago, and now it would take some major advantages for me to to back to AMD. Mostly because damn, this system has been SO RELIABLE. Im pretty sure the only time i can ever remember it throwing a BSOD was during the overclocking process.

Its over a year old, and it still doesnt feel "slow" to me, like every other computer i've ever built.

my rigs a P4b 2.4 @ 3.15/700, 2 20gb 7200/2mb's in RAID:0, and my CPU overclock is limited by an old stick of PC2700 memory... which i'll be able to replace and hopefully yield ~3.4GHz later...

 

[orion7144]

Originally posted by: nick1985
only the diehard intel zealots are voting for the 3.0.

I voted for the Intel and I am not a "zealot" as you said. I build systems all the time and keep what works best for what I do. I bought a A64 chip and I did not keep it for more than a month till I sold it since it was just sitting in the corner folding. I could care less about a couple of FPS if my decoding/encoding suffers.

 

[Bumrush99]

I had the exact same system, P4 3.0 with HT. I must admit that my Amd 64 3200+ SCREAMS in comparison. Granted the clean install of XP Pro may have something to do with it, but generally speaking, I feel that the AMD system is way faster. As for gaming, I've notice a 5-15 FPS jump, which is very significant if your playing cutting edge games such as UT 2004 or Far Cry.

Overall, I'm very impressed with my AMD 64. When XP Pro 64 bit comes out, I will be even more happy. The P4 system does have several advantages over the AMD system. Firstly, the P4 was the most stable system I have had. No crashes, runs very cool, and is an excellent chip. Secondly, the p4 boards are not as picky when it comes to memory. My Asus K8V board does not recognize some memory I have tried to install and my OCZ memory does not run at its rated cas latecy.

I had a similiar dilema when I received my 64 bundle. I decided to do a swap and am very pleased with the results. Sell you p4 system for around 250-300 on ebay to mitigate the costs and keep the AMD 64 system. It is future proof, works great and is screaming fast.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: zanejohnson
I'd go with the P4c

i had never owned an intel machine until i built this one a year ago, and now it would take some major advantages for me to to back to AMD. Mostly because damn, this system has been SO RELIABLE. Im pretty sure the only time i can ever remember it throwing a BSOD was during the overclocking process.

Its over a year old, and it still doesnt feel "slow" to me, like every other computer i've ever built.

my rigs a P4b 2.4 @ 3.15/700, 2 20gb 7200/2mb's in RAID:0, and my CPU overclock is limited by an old stick of PC2700 memory... which i'll be able to replace and hopefully yield ~3.4GHz later...

I had a 2.4b@3ghz and my Barton@2.43ghz was faster across the board. The higher fsb and HT make the P4 what it is now, I'd take a mobile Barton over a P4b any day. Also, stability with either platform isn't a factor for the experienced builder who does their research

To the OP: If I needed a rig now, and it would be my only machine then it'd be a P4 w/HT. I have machines I can dedicate to different tasks though so I went A64 for Gaming+64bit beta testing.