Intel P4 > Athlon XP?

[suklee]

I made a comment in another forum that my Athlon XP2800+ Barton will have comparable performance to a P4 2.8, especially in games (note I only used the word comparable). Here's the response:

well known that the pentium 2.8 - 3.2 outperforms even in games the athlon xp 2800 - 3200. and thats not even the prescott core either. Northwood beats it too.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/
as for athlon 64s in games they are dethroned by pentium m dothan in any game!
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/pentium4-12.html

Any truths to these statements?

 

[Rip the Jacker]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

Not again......

who cares. no noticeable performance when you use either.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: ItmPls
Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

Not again......

who cares. no noticeable performance when you use either.

OK, thanks. That's what I thought... thus COMPARABLE..

and this dude has to come out and say XP gets outperformed...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

It loses significantly. Trust me.

Bartons tried to come back and fight Northwoods. Northwoods (533 ones) still won marginally. Moreover the 2.8Cs closed the door on Athlon 64. If you bought Bartons back then over P4s, you should've been slapped.

Likewise, if you buy Prescottts now you should be slapped too.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Dothans can run comparable to Athlon 64s, but they are great for benching. In overall use, you might find better response from using an Athlon 64. They are expensive too....

 

[shoRunner]

the athlon XPs were easily beaten in everything by p4 if you compare PR rating to clockspeed (3200+ vs 3.2ghz). the dothans win some games clock for clock, but as far as price is conserned they are generally outclassed

 

[Twsmit]

AXP Barton and P4c where comparable but the P4's were usually faster. The AXP won game benchmarks and thats about all. Bartons were popular because of the price to performance ratio. Really cheap, OCed like mad and were "good enough" compared to the P4.

Now adays AMD wins in pretty much all benchmarks and is still very price competitive but also the most powerful chips, but back then these chips were only popular for the price to performance.... AXP never held the speed crown for long until a new P4 would come out.

 

[Hacp]

Check Anandtech's articles on the pentium ms to see which ones are better for gaming.Also, at that time, a 3.2 pentim cost WAY WAY more than a 3200+ xp. Also, the demo at tom's was a time demo, which doesn't take real life action into account. If you look at ANANDTECH benchmarks, you will see that a 3200 performed at the level of a 3.0 GHZ northwood in terms of games, which isn't that bad because at the time a 3.0 GHZ p4 was like 400 dollars, while the 3200 was like 200. Also, you can always argue that the fx-57 is the fastest desktop chip in the world and put the people in the other forums in their place .

This article from xbitlabs shows how the xps compare to the 3.0 GHZ northwoods.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlonxp-3200_6.html

Look at 3200+, not the 2.4 ghz one.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

The Dothan is great at games but is smoked in almost every other area by the Pentium IV's and AMD64's/FX's. Its floating point performance is dismal. I don't understand why everyone says the Dothan outperforms the FX-57 or Pentium IV 3.8. It does great in one specific aspect but looks at all the other situations in which it is obliterated in performance. Its wattage is awesome but so is the AMD Turion's. I can't wait for the low watt dualcores from both companies. No 64bit, no SSE3, no integrated or 800"FSB" poor floating point performance, I don't get it.

 

[Fox5]

The problem with the Athlon XP versus P4 comparisions is that the P4s kept getting better.

The athlon XP performance comparision is valid up to the P4B. For instance, a 3200+ Athlon XP outperforms the 3.06ghz P4, yet most times will not outperform a 2.8ghz P4C.

The other thing that happened was that P4 chipsets significantly increased in quality, and the introduction of dual channel DDR gave good performance boosts that made the P4 go from far behind the Athlons, to on par, to eventually ahead. Athlon XP's probably could have continued to compete with just actual dual channel support, more cache, and higher mhz, but the Athlon 64's integrated memory controller gives better performance per the buck than tripling the die size with cache would have.

Anyhow, the P4 and Athlon XP went back and forth for the performance crown, with the P4 Northwood C eventually winning both overall performance and performance per watt, while the Athlon XP delivered on performance per buck.

For Athlon 64 versus Prescott, Athlon 64 delivers on price per buck, overall, and performance per watt.

For Athlon 64 versus Dothan, Athlon 64 currently has the performance crown and performance per buck, while Dothan has performance per watt in the areas most people care about(there are still some areas dothan just sucks).(and performance per mhz also usually goes to dothan, but not always......on the mobile platforms, once you throw in dual channel for an athlon 64 I think it tends to pull ahead there)

 

[DanDaMan315]

The true question comes down to: How does a $120 XP compare to a $120 P4, and the answer is the XP will beat the P4 in the a$s with a stick.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33
The Dothan is great at games but is smoked in almost every other area by the Pentium IV's and AMD64's/FX's. Its floating point performance is dismal. I don't understand why everyone says the Dothan outperforms the FX-57 or Pentium IV 3.8. It does great in one specific aspect but looks at all the other situations in which it is obliterated in performance. Its wattage is awesome but so is the AMD Turion's. I can't wait for the low watt dualcores from both companies. No 64bit, no SSE3, no integrated or 800"FSB" poor floating point performance, I don't get it.

I hate to be devils advocate, but is 64-bit support in a laptop really a selling point? 64-bit on the desktop is very much in infancy, and it will be a LONG TIME before you need to worry about it on your laptop.

SSE3 is coming with Yonah (early production samples already have it) and I wouldn't be surprised to see EM64T as well as a faster FSB. And who the heck said Dothan outperformed FX-57? That is the most laughable claim I've seen yet. You'd need to clock it over 3GHz on some dry ice before you could even begin that one.

Frankly, I'm tired of all the fanboys running around on both sides. Dothan doesn't "demolish" anything, and similarly Turion isn't a Dothan killer. They are both very fast mobile processors. Very competitive. So we can debate price and chipsets and power consumption figures (although Dothan still has an advantage in the last category) but quit talking about either one being a "killer" of the competitor.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: DanDaMan315
The true question comes down to: How does a $120 XP compare to a $120 P4, and the answer is the XP will beat the P4 in the a$s with a stick.

That is generally true, although one could easily purchase a cheap Northwood C core (like the infamous 2.4C) for next to nothing and it would have a sizeable advantage over the XP (considering the 2.4C often hit 3-3.2 on stock volts with stock cooling.)

If you wish to compare directly new processors dollar-for-dollar AMD will always have the upper hand. But there are (often) other considerations.

 

[shoRunner]

Originally posted by: Pabster
If you wish to compare directly new processors dollar-for-dollar AMD will always have the upper hand. But there are (often) other considerations.

like what??

 

[suklee]

Thanks gents for the responses. "AMD > INTEL at gaming" had been hammered into me and I am humbled to have learned it's not always true!

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

The Pentium M is a great laptop CPU, and the Turion should be as well. You can't really compare them to heavy power consumption desktop CPU's though, as they're intended to be use differently...

 

[Bar81]

Pentium M Dothan is essentially the same performance wise at the same clockspeed as the A64 in gaming and desktop usage. But if you plan to do a large amount of other stuff the A64 is generally the superior choice. Of course, if you care about thermal characteristics and/or fan noise from your system then the Dothan is superior in that regard. It all relates to what you are doing. If all you want to do is game and do office work and don't care about noise/heat then the A64 is the easier and better choice.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: DanDaMan315
The true question comes down to: How does a $120 XP compare to a $120 P4, and the answer is the XP will beat the P4 in the a$s with a stick.

If you wish to compare directly new processors dollar-for-dollar AMD will always have the upper hand. But there are (often) other considerations.

True, unless you're throwing the Dothan and overclocking into the mix.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33
The Dothan is great at games but is smoked in almost every other area by the Pentium IV's and AMD64's/FX's. Its floating point performance is dismal. I don't understand why everyone says the Dothan outperforms the FX-57 or Pentium IV 3.8. It does great in one specific aspect but looks at all the other situations in which it is obliterated in performance. Its wattage is awesome but so is the AMD Turion's. I can't wait for the low watt dualcores from both companies. No 64bit, no SSE3, no integrated or 800"FSB" poor floating point performance, I don't get it.

I hate to be devils advocate, but is 64-bit support in a laptop really a selling point? 64-bit on the desktop is very much in infancy, and it will be a LONG TIME before you need to worry about it on your laptop.

SSE3 is coming with Yonah (early production samples already have it) and I wouldn't be surprised to see EM64T as well as a faster FSB. And who the heck said Dothan outperformed FX-57? That is the most laughable claim I've seen yet. You'd need to clock it over 3GHz on some dry ice before you could even begin that one.

Frankly, I'm tired of all the fanboys running around on both sides. Dothan doesn't "demolish" anything, and similarly Turion isn't a Dothan killer. They are both very fast mobile processors. Very competitive. So we can debate price and chipsets and power consumption figures (although Dothan still has an advantage in the last category) but quit talking about either one being a "killer" of the competitor.

Frankly, the 64-bit glow has faded. There are pretty much no reasons to go 64-bit atm or even in the near future. Most peripherals STILL do not and may never have 64-bit drivers and even those that due often have a loss of functionality over their 32-bit counterparts. There are almost no killer apps, certianly not in the gaming or office arenas and there are plenty of compatibility issues with existing programs. 64-bit is simply not any kind of selling point for 99% of users and won't be probably until Vista hits.

Similarly, SSE3 hasn't done anything of significance. I've looked at the numbers of the new A64s with SSE3 and the "improved" memory controller and they're statistically insignificant in relation to the older non-SSE3 models.

The Dothan on a Dual Channel 875P setup is clock for clock as good as any AMD chip in gaming and desktop use. In other things, the A64 starts to show its superior next gen architecture.

Dothan is the superior mobile chip as a major concern of laptops is heat/power consumption and the Dothan has it in spades over the Turion. In application perfromance the two chips are virtually indistinguishable.

 

[Sunbird]

I had a A-XP 3000+ (2.16GHz) on a nForce 2, and it felt snappier than any p4 machine I have worked on, for example, started up and felt faster than a 3,0GHz prescott in a 865 chipset motherboard with dual channel. The owner of that PC himself said mine felt faster.

Guess it all is subjective.....

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33
The Dothan is great at games but is smoked in almost every other area by the Pentium IV's and AMD64's/FX's. Its floating point performance is dismal. I don't understand why everyone says the Dothan outperforms the FX-57 or Pentium IV 3.8. It does great in one specific aspect but looks at all the other situations in which it is obliterated in performance. Its wattage is awesome but so is the AMD Turion's. I can't wait for the low watt dualcores from both companies. No 64bit, no SSE3, no integrated or 800"FSB" poor floating point performance, I don't get it.

Well, it's pretty simple actually, the VAST (I'm talking all but maybe low single digits of home users) out there do two things and not much else with their computers - game and office/productivity work. It just so happens that those are exactly the areas the Dothan is a monster. 64bit and SSE 3 are pointless as I've said above. An integrated memory controller is not itself some sort of amazing checkpoint, it's rather what performance advantages the integrated memory controller provides and in the case of games and office usage it doesn't provide any over a Dothan without such a feature. You need to get out more, the Dothan already works at "800FSB" full dual channel RAM on 875P chipsets such as the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with the Asus CT-479 adapter.

Who wants a Dothan? Those people who game and/or do office work almost exclusively as well as are concerned with the ridiculous heat generation of the PIV particularly and of the A64. When you care about noise and heat as much as performance (in those specific areas) the Dothan is the only choice.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Sunbird
I had a A-XP 3000+ (2.16GHz) on a nForce 2, and it felt snappier than any p4 machine I have worked on, for example, started up and felt faster than a 3,0GHz prescott in a 865 chipset motherboard with dual channel. The owner of that PC himself said mine felt faster.

Guess it all is subjective.....

It's not at all subjective. Pretty much everyone that has gone from anything to a PIV has noticed the loss of desktop snappiness. The PIV is just a poorly designed chip.

 

[Hacp]

Just to point out, you can overclock the Athlon 64 3000+ too, so AMD def wins the price war. One thing I don't like about the Dothan is its "slowness". It just feels pretty slow on my laptop, but thats a laptop environment and NOT a desktop one so its bad to compare them. But still I will. When I open files, it takes longer. When I open something like bitlord or wmp10, I notice a split second lag. Even when I open Itunes, there is a waiting period. I'm sure that the guys at Intel are working hard to fix these things in time for yonah/whatever the next mobile pentium is, but right now, I don't like the "wait". I can def live with it on my laptop, since its a laptop, but I hope this doesn't happen when it is availible for desktops. As for comparison, I have an x2, and I downclocked it to 1.6 GHZ to compare the speeds, and opening Itunes and wmp and bitlord was pretty fast. One thing that was slow on my x2 system was opening cd drive programs. I have no Idea why, it must be my NEC 3540A... Also prim 95 takes forever to load on both systems heh.

Currently we should not compare the dothan to the AMD 64, because on the desktop platform, the AMD 64 is the superior product. It would not be fair to the Pentium-M architecture to do this.

 

[Bar81]

Is your laptop configured with similar components? By that I mean, same amount of RAM, same OS, Dual Channel memory, same speed memory, same hard drive, etc? If not, your comparison is useless. And sorry, if you think the A64 is the superior desktop chip then you don't get out much. The Dothan is a monster in its own right and on the desktop it hands the A64 losses in gaming and office apps at the very least.

 

[Hacp]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2382&p=13

Seems that Anandtech agrees with me. Also, the fact that it takes much more effort to get the high quality components to make dothan a good desktop machine just speaks for itself.

Besides, everyone knows that the Pentium 4 with HT/D/or x2s are better for buisiness because of the multitasking nature of the people who may use the applications.