Intel P4 or AMD Athlon

ahsia

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Oct 3, 2000
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I am thinking about getting a new system. Since the price drop of P4s and the new availibility to use SDRAM with the 478pin P4s, prices between AMD and Intel systems are much closer now.

So what do you think? P4 1.5GHz or Athlon 1.4GHz? Which board would you use for the P4, and which board would you use for the Athlon. RAID is not a necessity. Thanks for your advice.
 

xtreme2k

Diamond Member
Jun 3, 2000
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Take the Athlon 1.4 for damn sure.

Basically the P4 with SDRAM... this combination takes ALL the advantage of the P4 out. The advantage of P4 has is that it has massive memory bandwidth, therefore showing strenght in recent video games and programs that demands massive memory performance. You take that away from the P4, there is no more reason to buy it.
 

nicowju

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Jan 30, 2001
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Athlon 1.4GHz, and for DDR wait for the KT266A boards


The P4 without RDRAM is CASTRATED :)
 

mchammer187

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Nov 26, 2000
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Tbird definitely and either get an ECS SIS 735 or wait for kt266a/nforce whatever floats your boat
 

formulav8

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Sep 18, 2000
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If you get the P4 definitely use RDRam. Don't even consider the SDRam versions.
 

ahsia

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Oct 3, 2000
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My question then is if the performance of P4 with SDRAM is so bad, then why are all these mobo vendors such as ASUS, ABIT, Iwill and many others coming out with P4 boards that support SDRAM?

And although I agree with the idea that not using RAMBUS with P4 is kind of pointless, because not using RAMBUS would not be taking full advantage of the memory bandwidth the P4 can offer, but it still should be a very fast system. Are the claims you are making based on theory, or have you actually tested a P4 system with SDRAM vs. an Athlon system with DDR or SDRAM?
 

majewski9

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Jun 26, 2001
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AMD 1.4ghz will take the p4 2ghz in many benches. I still havent seen where the p4 has ever blown away the Athlon either. Go with the Athlon 1.4ghz because it is clearly better than the 2ghz p4 + SDRAM and is comparable to P4 2ghz + RDRAM! Did u also know that the 2ghz p4 is a whoping 550$ Pricewatch! Get the Athlon 1.4ghz for just over 100$.
 

majewski9

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Jun 26, 2001
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There is no comparison with the Athlon 1.4ghz and the Pentium 4 1.5ghz! The Athlon is clearly superior!
 

fkloster

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Dec 16, 1999
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To get the best bang, get an Epox 8K7A w/an Athlon 1.4 and about 512mb of PC-2100 corsair DDR. Prolly around $300...
 

ahsia

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Oct 3, 2000
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Are there no Intel fans anymore?

I agree with most of you, as I haven't purchased an Intel based CPU since my Celeron 566. Since, I've bought Duron 600, Athlon 1Ghz, Athlon 1.2GHz. Is there that much of a performance difference that Intel 2GHz can barely compete with a 1.4GHz Athlon?
 

Shudder

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May 5, 2000
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<< My question then is if the performance of P4 with SDRAM is so bad, then why are all these mobo vendors such as ASUS, ABIT, Iwill and many others coming out with P4 boards that support SDRAM? >>



Because people are stupid.

If people looked at benchmarks they'd realize a p4 can't even come close to an Athlon's performance when the mhz is close.. but people say "Ooh that pee four is 1.5 gigga hurts" and think it's better than an Athlon 1.4 and they couldn't be more wrong.

SDRam is a bit cheaper and it'll reflect the price. The general idiot public won't know what the heck memory types are. They see a 128 followed by MB and they know it's more than 64 that their brother in law keeps complaining is too little and who keeps deleting programs on his hard drive because he's "out of memory"
 

TDSLB

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Jun 19, 2001
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AMD 1.4 without a dought. AMD 1.4 if you look at the specs you can see the proof. BTW I would go with a Abit KT7-a motherboard with it. Just cause thats what I use and I like it. course. If you are going DDR then I dont have a clue. never really took the time to learn that much about it.
 

nortexoid

Diamond Member
May 1, 2000
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Intel is huge - OEMs know they sell to computer-illterates, so they sell whatever the consumers knows...which is Intel P4...they couple it w/ a low cost SDR platform and tho it performs like poop, people buy it.

if u go P4, go i850 and RDRAM....

i'd still say the best performing combo for the money is an ECS K7S5A (sis 735) mobo and Athlon 1.4GHz (or 1.2GHz palamino, depending on what apps u run)...

ECS mobo = $63
1.4GHz Athlon = $106
Volcano 5 = $12

total: $181

sick.
 

damocles

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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P4s motherboards based on the P4x266 chipset are out now. This allows you to run a P4 with DDR ram, making it slightly slower than RDram and much faster than SDram. Coupled with a P4 @ 1.7GHz or higher this would be a fast setup. However it is very hard to go passed a 1.4Ghz Athlon with its excellent price and performance.
 

ST4RCUTTER

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2001
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ahsia,

Take a look at this review from Tom's hardware of the i845 mobo against other competing platforms. At first the SDR platform does ok, but it gets it's head handed to it in games like Quake 3.
 

Transistor

Senior member
Dec 18, 2000
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If I was buying today, I would go with the 1.4 Athlon. It's going to cost less and perform much better than the 1.5 P4. No competition there. I would choose the EPoX EP-8K7A+ as my motherboard because of it's overclocking features, other features, stability, and low price.

If you do go the P4 route, I saw on ard|OCP a link to a review where the Shuttle motherboard with the VIA P4X266 was outperforming the i850 chipset on a couple of bencharks and really close on others. The production boards are also turning out to be faster than VIA's reference design. Kyle also said that Fry's Electronics was selling this motherboard and it does support overclocking. This motherboard or one simular to it is what I would go with if for some reason you choose P4.
 

grant2

Golden Member
May 23, 2001
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don't even consider the p4 right now unless you plan to go high mhz (1.7 or faster) with DDR or RDRAM.

Even then it'll cost you, and for arguable performance gains over an athlon 1.4.

 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
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Well I'm a P4 owner and to be honest if price is your major concern than go AMD with DDR. I wouldn't even think of telling someone to buy a P4/Sdram setup. Although I'm the type myself that when building a new system a few hundred bucks means nothing at all. I would still opted for a 1.7 or 1.8 P4 with a socket 478 I850 motherboard because the few extra bucks you spend now on Rdram and P4 will allow you to use the Norwoods P4 next year for a cheap upgrade at really high MHZ 3 GHZ ANYONE !!!!!
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
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I have a lot of spare SDRAM.

I don?t play games.

The computer is used for office work, and Internet.

Abit?s new 845 board is $140 (It has Raid for backup, and probably will O/C the. P4-1.5GHz to 1.7GHz). P4 1.5GHz (428 pins) is also $140.

Since I have the RAM, does it make sense to get the P4, Abit Combo?
 

NOS440

Golden Member
Dec 27, 1999
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If that's what your going to use it for sure why not. You'll have the Intel Chipset Stability and Compatibilty edge :) and for those types of apps the Sdram shouldn't hurt you at all.


Oh one more thought aren't all the I845 boards S478 ??? go 478 if you can just for CPU upgrades later.
 

grant2

Golden Member
May 23, 2001
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I don?t play games.
The computer is used for office work, and Internet.


In that case get the slowest, cheapest duron setup you can get. (i'm assuming you like saving $$)

Unless you're playing demanding games... or some kind of multimedia editing.. you'll have tonnes of power to spare!
 

nortexoid

Diamond Member
May 1, 2000
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what grant said...

u could even go SIS 730S integrated...hey, the integrated video has wicked DVD hardware acceleration too...