P4 vs. Athlon, which feels faster?

[rogue1979]

Ok guys, I am still considering a P4 set up, but I am not totally convinced. My wife just switched from her Tualeron/815EP 1420MHz system to a Thunderbird/761 1466MHz one. The main reason is the T-bird system is much faster in Windows and most applications. I know what the so called benchmarks say about the Tualatin being comparable to an Athlon. But in the real world the AMD feels much faster than the Intel setup, it isn't even close.

Now my question is if a switch over to a Northwood 1.6 or 1.8 will I lose the "no waiting right now!" feeling I get with my AMD system.
My theory is the 128k L1 cache as well as the three seperate X86 instruction decoders give the Athlon XP/Thunderbird instant raw horsepower feeling right off the bat. Like comparing a modern V8 to a multi-valve turbo charged engine, once the high tech engine gets going it performs the same as the V8, but off the line it is sluggish. I don't want to switch over and be disappointed, it's not like I have too, I can always upgrade to the fastest XP processor or wait for the Thoroughbred. So can anyone give me some definate answers based on hands on experience? I have already read benchmarks upon benchmarks, but I am looking for the "real world, seat of the pants" opinion.

 

[o1die]

The new 1.6 and 1.8 northwoods are acheiving some impressive overclocking, some as high as 2.5 gigs. But there are no guarantees when you overclock. If you go with Intel, I would try the asus P4b266 for overclocking. For stability, go with the Intel 850 or 845 ddram chipsets. I use the shuttle ak31a, but may try the northwood for overclocking when my tax refund comes in.

 

[Duvie]

I agree...getting a 1.8a northwood is no better then just getting a 1900+xp but take that northwood and at least hit 2.2ghz (which is only a 125fsb) and you have a sytem the athlon 2000+ xp can't beat. Now take that and get it to a 133fsb like many seem to be and you have a 2.4ghz chip at 533fsb (total) and I think you will need athlon 2300+ to get near it....and all for around 210 shipped....even the 1.6 in many cases have been hitting 2.2+ ghz for around a 150 shipped...


I think the asus looks like a great board but it lacks some nice features of the MSI Ultra and Ga-8IRXP boards which in reviews oc as much if not more then the asus board...

 

[MilkPowderR]

rogue1979, what speed rated Tualeron is it? Is it a 1.2Ghz, 1.1Ghz, or 1Ghz T-Celery? If you take a C1.2A and OC that to 1420, that would be poor performance because of crippled 118fsb. Try a C1.0A OC to 1450ish and you'll see the big difference. Furthermore, like mine.. P3 1Ghz copper@ 145fsb on a BX board!!! seriously kicks butt. Some of the Athlon XP@ around 1450mhz with DDR system get whipped by mine if comparing clock for clock, fsb for fsb. And if you are not planning to OC the Woodie P4 1.6a or 1.8a, you know the performance will be crippled again.. and can't compare to XP systems. If you are planning to OC to a very descent level say.. on a 1.6A OC to 2.3- 2.5Ghz, that could beat OC'ed Athlon XP systems. I have seen quite of users getting that level of OC with air, stock HSF.

 

[rogue1979]

It was a Celeron 1.0a, and I have two t-bird systems at roughly the same speed. 9 x 162 for 1458MHz, and 11 x 133 for 1466MHz, both are definately faster than the Tualeron at 10 x 142. The memory benchmarks are barely half of the AMD systems, both on 761 chipsets while the Celeron is on an 815 EP. Yes, I was definately planning to overclock the Northwood, it is about 600MHz behind in speed compared to the XP. So a stock 1.8a will get smoked by a stock 1633MHz XP. But like you said, overclocking to 2.5GHz or so is what interests me. But I still have yet to figure out if it is worth the switch to Northwood or not.

 

[Degenerate]

the thread in this forum has most 1.6A @ 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 on retial heat sink and fan

 

[MrThompson]

If you want box that's responsive and feels fast, build a dually. My dual PIIIs at 1333 MHz feel a lot peppier than my 1718 MHz Athlon system. If you want a little more of that snappy feeling, use one of the 15000 RPM SCSI drives instead of an IDE drive.

 

[oldfart]

Are the Athlon systems DDR? That would explain the big memory performance difference and maybe the "seat of the pants" feel?

 

[Raphamin]

After all the hype I couldn't resist building a system with an i845D chipset and an 1.8a Northwood. I've done all kinds of testing and even at 2.39Ghz it is NO faster than an XP 1800+. If you didn't know what was running you could not tell any difference. I think that there may be a slight advantage to the XP in games, frame rates seem smoother.

The Northwood looks good on paper, but believe me you're wasting your money if you think it will be any faster in the real world.

 

[KenAF]

Obviously, in order to tell a difference, your processor has to be the limiting factor in your system. If you don't have a high performance hard drive, and the best possible graphics card, a 2GHz processor isn't going to seem all that different than a 1GHz system for most tasks.

At 2.40GHz, most of the benefits will obviously take the form of audio/mp3/video encoding and gaming. Tom's Hardware clearly shows there is a benefit to the faster clocked P4s, but then, what does it really matter if a game runs at 70fps instead of 58fps? Or 280fps instead of 230fps? For most, the difference is probably negligible. There are some games where the difference can actually make a difference in playability (i.e. the games that tend to run 30-40fps max on the latest processors), but these are few and far between.

Of course, any sort of PC is an investment, you are buying it as much for the future as you are for the present. That's why spending $$$ on a processor is stupid, IMO, because by the time you can really make use of it, something faster will be available for less. The most economical way to maintain a fast system is to buy the cheapest processors from a line, and overclock them...like the $140 1.6A @ 2400-2600MHz, or the Athlon XP 1700+ to 2000 speeds...with upgrades whenever the need is felt.

 

[Duvie]

I think you may have used the wrong tests....I have seen numbers that show in programs like mpeg4 and divx encoding their is quite a spread between the xp1800+ and p4 2.2ghz...Since the i845 is only about 5-10 percent slower then comparable i850 platform in most of the same programs a p4 at 2.4ghz will still have a sizeable lead in those areas...

When you even talk about 4-5 fps in encoding you are taking about tens of minutes in faster completion...

games could likely be limited by your video card and thus not give the true feel....

Since the latest comparison showed the p4 2.0a being even with the 2000+xp and 2000+xp being in its reviews about 8-10 percent faster then xp1800+...now throw in the fact in many test the 2.2was about 5-10 percent faster then the 2000+xp you start getting to 20 percent advantage and that you should feel if you are using cpu dependent programs...no internet, no just gaming, no microsoft execl!!! Also throw in the fact many are hitting the 2.4 with 533fsb's and I imagine a 2.2ghz cpu with say a 533fsb will be faster then a 2.0ghz with 400fsb...so the percent should be a bit more....


I know that my 1.8a@2.4(533fsb) will liekly be just a bit better then my tbird 1400 was at my cadd operations...maybe noticeable maybe not...

However I got it for its multimedia applications that the p4 does better at.


Don't get me wrong I love amd and athlons...Have had them since 1998...most likely will migrate back during the hammers reign...

 

[Strawberrymom]

neither


you can not tell the difference between the two.

can only tell with synthetic benchmarks

 

[rogue1979]

Thanks for the responses. Seems like a P4 with a good overclock on the fsb is indeed as snappy as an Athlon. I will put one together soon and see what I think. Most likely a 1.6a with a SiS 645 Ultra, don't want to invest too much in case I don't like it.

 

[Duvie]

strawberrymom???

Have you encoded a divx movie before??? Do you know how much faster it can run at 4-5 fps faster??? I think your lack of experience in any other software either then gaming puts you at a mental disadvantage...don't comment on such topics please...

What about seti??? I have heard the northwoods at this speed are putting work units out the fastest....

Like I said, INternet, Gaming, and excel ppl need not comment....

 

[oldfart]

rogue1979, I'd go with the ASUS P4B266 or -C. It seems to be the combo people are having the best luck with. The -C version is pretty reasonable.

 

[geek167]

<< neither


you can not tell the difference between the two.

can only tell with synthetic benchmarks >>



Thank you strawberrymom for your insiteful comment, what are you basing this conclusion on?

What is your definition of "synthetic". Do you mean Quake 3, Content Creation 2002, Winstone 2002 or Sisoft Sandra [i could go on and on] etc..

I have studied the architectural differences between the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 and have come to the conclusion that the Athlon [XP] is a much more efficient design in terms of performance. Like people have said, the P4 may look good on paper, but the real design of it is what I refer to as Intel's "Marchitecture". It was designed to look good on paper. Period.

The Athlon XP IS faster in normal day-to-day applications. This has been proven in real world tests such as Business Winstone 2002.

Some of this difference in performance on a clock vs clock basis is based on the fact that the Athlon architecture is still a very RISC based processor. As you can see with the IBM G3 processors, a 500 MHz G3 will woop a P3's tail.

Another thing, the Pentium 4 was the first ever processor to drop in IPC [Instructions per clock cycle]. The Athlon architecture is designed with an IPC of 9, the Pentium 4 with an IPC of 6. This effectively decreases the amount of work that is actually done every cycle. And can really make the performance of the Pentium 4, Mhz * .77 = Actual Performance. This is what AMD's PR system is based on.

Don't believe in the Mhz Myth. I doubt I will post on this thread anymore just for the fact that it will turn into a flame war. AMD vs. Intel, Speed vs. Die-Hard Fans, Performance vs. Supposed Superior Reliability.

 

[mschell]

Back to the origional topic - the "seat of the pants" speed feel has little to do with the processor as long as it's above 1.2 GHz or so. Common Windows tasks are bound far more by HD speed and access times, speed of the IDE interface and the amount of physicial RAM then waiting for the processor. Secondary is the paticular motherboards chipset makup and connections to periferials. Benches like Sysmark and Winstone run applications far faster than any human could so any difference in performance between two platforms tested does not translate to the perceived performance for a person doing Windows stuff. This changes when you start rendering or encoding or doing both while watching a DVD and running a Seti client at the same time, then the processor becomes very important.

I've used a well tuned 900Mhz Intel Coppermine system with Win98 and 512MB Ram that felt every bit as "snappy" as my +1900 DDR Athlon Win XP system doing regular Windows stuff. 90% of all computer users really need nothing faster then the Tualeron setup described as long as the system has a decent amount of RAM and the HD is defragged once in a while.

 

[Strawberrymom]

ive ran a 1.4 tbird at 1.4 and up to 1.6 I have also ran a 1.8 P4 up to 2.45

doing any type of work or games you cant tell the difference at all.

most people say you do this and it gives you this but if you swap it out and then go back its never the same anyways so benchmarks and tests cant prove nothing.