Intel P4 vs AMD XP+ CPUs

[TheSage]

I've always been an Intel Pentium user. I'm a design draftsman, and so over 90% of my work involves AutoCAD with heavy usage of CPU and it's a very floating-point calculation intensive program.

I've always avoided Celeron due to it being absolutely crap at floating-point work (from experience it takes many times longer to compute AutoCAD commands than a Pentium chipset) and it's just pathetic to work with.

i'm interested in AMD's chipsets. i've never used one with regards to AutoCAD before, but yes on gaming. the price difference is so significant that i'm considering building an AMD XP+ system.

so, does anyone have any idea how well the AMD XP+ chipsets work with floating-point intensive calculations, and in particular AutoCAD?

 

[Jeff7181]

AMD's strong point has ALWAYS been floating point calculations... P4's have gotten better with their SSE2 optimizations and crap like that... but in terms of raw floating point calculations, P4's are still behind Athlon XP's I believe.

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums TheSage If Duvie drops by, which is highly likely, he should have some relevant advice. Seems to me that he went through this crossroads and ended up picking the AthlonXP platform for his CAD needs, while he runs a P4 platform for his video encoding.

 

[TheSage]

thanks guys.

what does that XP+ chip have in the way of cache? i noticed a big difference with Intel going from 256k to 512k L2 cache.

 

[Jeff7181]

Regular XP's have 256k L2... but the new Barton core XP's have 512k L2 and 128 L1, for a total of 640k on die cache
(currently the only Barton cores available are the XP2500, XP2800, and XP3000 - not all XP2800's are Barton cores though)

 

[mechBgon]

edit: what he said ^

There are variants of AthlonXP with 256kb of L2 cache, and there are the Barton variants with 512kb of L2 cache. The AthlonXP was not suffering as much from lack of L2 cache as the P4, as you can see by the charts showing the relative boost provided in each case here.

If you're picking an AMD platform then the nForce2 seems like the logical chipset to choose, unless you need stupendous amounts of RAM (meaning, beyond 1.5Gb). I would go with an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe; maybe some 512Mb Samsung Original PC3200 modules (two or three) or Corsair XMS3200C2 modules; the AthlonXP of your choice, but preferably one of the ones that have a 333MHz FSB; and a good strong power supply such as an Antec TruePower 330 or higher (I favor overkill instead of "adequate," so I use a 430).

If you end up going that route, and use WindowsXP, I recommend answering "No" if the driver installation program asks you if you want the "SW IDE Driver" installed. This driver has been known to cause problems with PCI disk controllers and also with optical burners. If you say "No" then it will use the WHQL-certified IDE drivers instead. If you do click "Yes" you can always re-run the installer and say "No" to undo the choice.

 

[Jeff7181]

I "feel" the difference of having more cache in multi-tasking (I recently upgraded from an XP1700 to an XP2500)... switching between windows is instant... even while I'm ripping a CD and converting to MP3 on the fly.

 

[TheSage]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

If you're picking an AMD platform then the nForce2 seems like the logical chipset to choose, unless you need stupendous amounts of RAM (meaning, beyond 1.5Gb). I would go with an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe; maybe some 512Mb Samsung Original PC3200 modules (two or three) or Corsair XMS3200C2 modules; the AthlonXP of your choice, but preferably one of the ones that have a 333MHz FSB; and a good strong power supply such as an Antec TruePower 330 or higher (I favor overkill instead of "adequate," so I use a 430).

well, for starters i'm planning on having 512mb DDR RAM PC2700 or PC3200 and a 128mb nVidia GeForce4 video card, but i want to get the mainboard and chipset right first. i can always add more RAM etc, but i want a good stable mainboard that's got room to upgrade in the future.

i have seen those Asus Deluxe boards, and they are impressive - what do you think of Gigabyte GA-7VA boards? are they a waste of time?

finally (since i'm an intel weenie), what do the XP+ clock speeds relate to? i know they are slower than the figure, but what's a fair idea? (e.g. XP2600+ = 2ghz or whatever it is).

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: TheSage

Originally posted by: mechBgon

If you're picking an AMD platform then the nForce2 seems like the logical chipset to choose, unless you need stupendous amounts of RAM (meaning, beyond 1.5Gb). I would go with an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe; maybe some 512Mb Samsung Original PC3200 modules (two or three) or Corsair XMS3200C2 modules; the AthlonXP of your choice, but preferably one of the ones that have a 333MHz FSB; and a good strong power supply such as an Antec TruePower 330 or higher (I favor overkill instead of "adequate," so I use a 430).

well, for starters i'm planning on having 512mb DDR RAM PC2700 or PC3200 and a 128mb nVidia GeForce4 video card, but i want to get the mainboard and chipset right first. i can always add more RAM etc, but i want a good stable mainboard that's got room to upgrade in the future.

i have seen those Asus Deluxe boards, and they are impressive - what do you think of Gigabyte GA-7VA boards? are they a waste of time?

finally (since i'm an intel weenie), what do the XP+ clock speeds relate to? i know they are slower than the figure, but what's a fair idea? (e.g. XP2600+ = 2ghz or whatever it is).

I have a confession to make... I can't remember all the XP+ rating-versus-MHz layouts all the time :Q If you need a quick reference, here's a great one: tada! Newegg's AthlonXP listing page

The Gigabyte 7VA boards are based on the VIA KT400 chipset and its performance falls in the shadow of the nForce2 boards, so they haven't been as popular. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think nForce2 is holding the performance lead, and particularly the nForce2 has some very high SPECviewperf marks that might be pertinent to your CAD work... see Anand's benchmark results. The northbridge gets its mojo working in SPECviewperf somehow, using the mega-bandwidth of the dual-DDR setup to prefetch the data that it thinks the CPU will want next.

I had an EPoX 8RDA+, another popular nForce2 board, which unfortunately kicked the bucket on me a while back but I'm going to get me an A7N8X-Deluxe and try again.

 

[TheSage]

why the hell call the CPU's (for example) 2200+ when it's actually 1.0mhz? is there a reason?

 

[mechBgon]

Huh? The 2200+ is a 1.8GHz CPU, not 1.0GHz. The lowest AthlonXP of all was a 1.33GHz AthlonXP 1500+, which is no longer produced.

 

[touchmyichi]

Wow! I'm amazed this hasn't turned into a flamefest yet. Well anyways, I think they are pretty close in competition right now. AMD has some incredible deals going down, the 50 dollar 1700+ thoroughbred is turning a lot of heads. A chip for bargain prices able to overclock to beat even the AMD flagship processor is amazing. The dual channel 200 fsb for intel is pretty awesome. People are reaching rediculously high fsb's. So basically- if you have under 150 dollars I would go for amd, if you have over 150 to spend go intel. Intel is way more expensive and I do not think it is worth it. I really like the feature loaded nforce 2 platform for amd. So bottom line is AMD for excellent deals and preformance and intel for the best preformance. So unless if u are uber rich....its AMD.

 

[TheSage]

sorry, i must be dyslexic!! i meant 1.8ghz - it was sitting right in front of me and i still typed it wrong!!

thanks for that touchmyichi, i'm not planning on overclocking anything (not enough knowledge or experience to attempt that!) so i guess a high end AMD might be the way to go.

 

[mechBgon]

AMD's official line is that their + ratings use the performance of their preceding series of Athlons as a basis (these were the Thunderbird Athlons). Unofficially, it's often used to compare an AthlonXP to a Pentium4. There are pitfalls to that, just like there are pitfalls to gauging a CPU's performance by MHz alone (the Celeron being an example you're quite familiar with).

Anyway, when AutoCAD's the question, I think the AthlonXP is supposed to be the better performer, period.

 

[TheSage]

i just find it perculiar that they would label them like that, it's kinda misleading, esp for an intel weenie.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: TheSage
i just find it perculiar that they would label them like that, it's kinda misleading, esp for an intel weenie.

Not really. What would be misleading is to take the old underperforming 1.8GHz Pentium4 Williamette core, disable half of its L2 cache so it performs even worse, and then continue to market it as a 1.8Ghz processor, knowing that the average customer won't have a clue as to its hobbled nature. IMHO.

When AMD began using the performance ratings, there was much debate over it, but the benchmarks showed that the rating system was conservative, if anything, compared to the Pentium4's of the day. If you were to confuse the performance-rating with Intel's MHz rating, you did not come out on the short end of the deal. Today there are more applications optomized to use the Pentium4's SSE2 instructions, and the P4 has been improved, so perhaps the situation has altered. If you want to go by the actual MHz ratings of the AMD CPUs instead of their performance ratings, it's not as if AMD's actual MHz is some closely-guarded secret Use whichever suits you best.

 

[faamecanic]

Just my 2 cents here,

While I have been an AMD fanboy for ages.... especially around the T-bird days until present... the problem Athlon chips have isnt so much with the CPU ....but it is with the VIA chipsets. INtel is just cleaning house with better chipsets, ESPECIALLY in the memory bandwidth/memeory management arena.

NOt sure if the Nforce suffers the same problems though..... I would look at some of the reviews here and pay close attention to the memory benchmarks.

 

[TheSage]

so, what you're saying is if i go AMD, make sure i run a mobo with nForce and not VIA chipsets?

what's the big difference?

 

[Jeff7181]

It's important to remember that Athlon XP processors aren't nearly as dependant on the speed of the FSB and RAM to achieve good performance like P4's are. As many people have said, the more memory bandwidth you throw at the P4, the better it performs. The same is only true to Athlon XP's to a point. When you reach that point, it's not hurting anything, the chip simply just doesn't need any more memory bandwidth.
That being said... even a Via chipset will give good performance, but the nForce2 chipset gives slightly better performance... in my experience, about 200 3DMarks and 200 CPU marks in PCMark, with everything else kept the same.
The nForce2 also has a dual channel memory controller, which will give slightly better performance... but again, the Athlon XP is not starved for bandwidth like the P4 seems to be, so it doesn't make a HUGE difference... in my experiece, about 400 Memory marks in PCMark.
If you're not limited by money, go with an nForce2 chipset... if money is a big factor in your decision, a Via chipset will do fine... you'd only notice a difference if you're already having complaints about the speed of your computer.

 

[pspada]

With all this being said, the dual channel nature of the memory bus runs best when it has 2 matched sticks of memory installed, or you may lose some of the performance edge provided by the NF2 boards.