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P4 vs Athlon - Which one would YOU take if it were free?

S

shaady1

Member
I know the P4's performance is not up to par, and the Athlon is the better value, but what if you got a system for FREE. Which one of the following would you pick?

Pentium 4 1.5GHz
128 MB PC800 RDRAM Dual Channel
80GB HD
16x DVD
8x CD-RW
19" monitor
64 MB DDR Creative 3D Blaster GeForce 2
UltraSoundBlaster Live Value

-- OR --
Athlon 1.1 GHz
256MB 133 MHz SyncDRAM
40GB HD
16x DVD
8x CD-RW
19" monitor
64MB DDR Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 GTS
Sound Blaster Live! Value

Keep in mind that this system will probably NOT be tweaked, overclocked, or modified much at all (except for second HD and more RAM).

edit: I left out some details of the P4
 
I would go for the Athlon setup because you get mroe out of it. I mean you got the CD-Writer. The AMD is more the home user computer, the P4 is more the office type and is not really good fro you! And I wouldn't mind having one of those computers thanks! 🙂🙂🙂

Albert.
 
Personally I would take the Athlon becuase you can upgrade to a faster CPU later (the 2nd gen P4s are going to be incompatible with current ones.

Also it has more RAM (256MB is a must if you run Win2k which I do), and adding more is rather expensive on the P4, plus the Athlon has a CDRW.

If you don't care about CDRW, and you can upgrade the P4 to 256MB without dipping into your wallet that just leaves the CPU upgrade.

If you have no intent on ever upgrading the CPU either then the systems are pretty close. And it would be a toss up...what kind of monitor does the P4 have? The Ultra and bigger hard drive I guess. I'd take it.

If you get a 19" monitor with the P4 as well, don't ever want to upgrade the CPU, don't care about the CDRW and can get 256MB RAM without costing you anything take the P4.

Otherwsie I'd go Athlon.
 
I would personally take the Pentium 4 system because it costs a LOT more, and you can build an Athlon system fairly cheap. I would get the P4 just to say I would have one, then build an Athlon system for twice less that what a P4 system would cost.
 
Dulanic has the right idea...but who's gonna buy a P4 system? You'd have a hard time unloading it in the FS/FT forum.

Unless you're going to sell the P4, go for the Tbird. Even if you think RDRAM is faster, the amount of RAM you have in your system will play a bigger role in it's responsiveness...in Win2k, 256MB is very good to have (heck, I'm upgrading to 512MB)
 
I'd take the P4. But I would get a smaller HD and put 256MB of memory in it instead. If I had to pay I wouldn't get either, can't afford it 🙁
 
Hehe...I think the HD on the Athlon system would have a bigger HD because it's much less. 🙂 But, i'd prolly pull a Dulanic but i wouldn't have any extra money to pocket...Well after the *cough* *cough* U160 card, and couple of X15's i'd pick up! 🙂
 
Athlon without question

P4 = Smoke and Mirrors :|

But, getting it and selling it to build the same Athlon system and still have some cash isn't a bed idea either... but if you were going to keep either system, I would definetely get the Athlon!!!
 
"I hearya" to all those that said, "get the P4 and sell it for an Athlon". However, for the sake of argument, lets assume you will not sell the system.

I am trying to see if cost was not a factor, would people would still take the Athlon, even though the P4 is more powerful (supposedly).

The only other significant difference between the two systems are HD size, and video card model.

BTW, can you use standard SDRAM in a P4?
 


<< I am trying to see if cost was not a factor, would people would still take the Athlon, even though the P4 is more powerful (supposedly).

...

BTW, can you use standard SDRAM in a P4? >>

No we wouldn't, no it's not (Intel lies!) and No you can't 😉
 
I was scrolling and scrolling and was about to be the 15th one to say &quot;take the P4, sell it and build a killer-diller AMD system&quot; when you cut my fun short 🙁 and said &quot;assuming you couldn't sell it&quot;.

I'd still take the AMD system. The P4 is not all that. As a matter of fact, I'd take a PIII 1 GHZ over a P4 at 1.2 or whatever anyday. In my opinion, Intel dropped the ball completely with the P4. They rushed it to market. The ram the P4 uses is hideously expensive and like someone (Nori?) mentioned already, the future P4's wont' be compatible with today's P4 chipsets.

Even back when I was asking questions on this forum on &quot;how to build my first system&quot; I didn't know whether I was going Intel or AMD, but I knew that if I went Intel, it would be a PIII not a PIIII. AMD all the way.
 
I remember seeing MTH cards being sold. You supposely put those into a RIMM slot and then you can run the motherboard with PC100 instead of PC800. Like a Slocket convertor card. I know that most 820 motherboards had the MTH chip soldered on the motherboard and had actual DIMM slots.
But it would be fun to see a 850 motherboard with 2 of those MTH cards and running PC100 🙂 I know the benchmarks wouldn't mean anything, still... 🙂
If it would actually work at all...
 
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