Pentium 4 vs Athlon

[1965MustangFastback]

Ok Guys,
Whats going to be faster:
An Athlon with an Nforce 3 motherboard or a 3.4ghz prescott using 865 chipset ? Is it
close? The reason I'm saying Nforce 3 is because I want to keep my Geforce 6800 Ultra for a little longer or upgrage my current 2.8 northwood to a 3.4ghz prescott. If it's not that much of a differance I'm just going to upgrade my Pentium 2.8 to a 3.4 and overclock it. Thanks all

 

[Zebo]

I'd overclock your northwood. Prescotts are pretty aweful.

A64 owns all.. but that means new board new chip new tech complicated and NF3 kinda weak.

 

[biostud]

you could buy this http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA2.htm, keep your 6800 and be ready for PCIe cards.

 

[RichUK]

Yeah since the only thing that you are looking to upgrade is the processor i would say just OC your current chip, and then when you look to upgrade your GFX card, just look to upgrade the rest of your setup if you can afford it, aka motherboard CPU and RAM oh on a NF4 (NF4 has PCI-e). Or you can just leave your upgrade till next year when M2 comes along and revamp the whole system.

Basically for the amount in performance that you are going to gain it might not be worth it, however a MSI K8N neo2 plat and either a Opty 144 or Venice 3000+/3200+ could be an option if you are looking to get rid of the P4 right now.

I find it is more satisfying to upgrade the whole system i.e. Processor, Motherboard, RAM, PSU (if need be), HDD etc. As you really feel the performance increase when doing that then just upgrading little bits, and you appreciate it a lot more aswell.

I say this but I still cant stop my impulse buying when it comes to Hardware, im trying to stop myself from buying a 512GTX, and x16 SLI mobo before xmas.

 

[RichUK]

 

[Zebo]

Rich two GT's annihilate a 512 gtx and it's cheaper!

Edit spelling..

 

[RichUK]

Would two GT's be better than a normal GTX, or are they better than a 512MB version of the GTX?

The card that i was looking at was

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7800__Series.html 3rd one down

Its a bit pricey, ive just got to tell myself no silly waste of money, but on the other hand i want to max out settings at 1280x1024 (AA, AF), like when playing AOE3 etc, and the ASUS fanless x16 sli board (No chipset sound, OMG what a difference that would make over what i have now)

Also I have to really hold back, because I know I want to buy the FX60, why I don?t know, I just love getting new CPU?s and OCing them (but thats just a dream for now). Oh not to mention 2 gigs of OCZ 4000EB Ram, Jesus the list gets endless where do you stop. I think I need to leave it but I just cant help my self.

 

[Sunrise089]

Originally posted by: biostud
you could buy this http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA2.htm, keep your 6800 and be ready for PCIe cards.

 

[phaxmohdem]

You't not going to notice much of a difference moving from the 2.8 Northwood to a 3.4 Prescott. What version of the 2.8 is it? 400/533/800 FSB ? My 3.0/800 Northwood OC's to 3.6 stable, though I currently have it at 3.45. My old 2.8 400FSB Northwood ran at 3.1GHZ its entire life, never a problem, stock cooling etc.

 

[stevty2889]

As long as it's the 800mhz FSB version, I would definaly keep the northwood and OC. My 3.06ghz northwood @3.45ghz was faster than my prescott @3.82ghz in a lot of things(gaming, audio enocoding, non-SSE3 rendering). The prescott was only faster at video encoding, synthetics, and SSE3 optimized programs. I had to water cool my prescott to keep it from throttling while overclocked, while my overclocked northwood ran just fine on air.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Sunrise089

Originally posted by: biostud
you could buy this http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA2.htm, keep your 6800 and be ready for PCIe cards.

You have to void your warranty (beta bios) to even run memory at 1T. Not very good product there.

 

[1965MustangFastback]

Ok, I should have stated in my post that my current Northwood is a 800bus processor and is OC'd to 3.36 and runs all day and all night without any kind of problems! I was just looking to max my board out and figured that I could OC a 3.4ghz prescott to around 3.8ghz I also see some used 3.4ghz northwoods for sale, should I be looking at them because of heat issues with the prescotts! Or leave my 2.8ghz that's OC'd to 3.6ghz and just wait out a little longer for the next Gen of Athlon processors?

 

[Fox5]

I'd say keep your northwood and wait for the next gen of athlon processors. An overclocked prescott wouldn't be a huge (or much at all of an) improvement, an overclocked athlon 64 could be a good improvement but still not huge. Socket M2 or F (F could bring a lot to performance, but who knows when it will show up), DDR2, dual core FTW.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I'd overclock your northwood. Prescotts are pretty aweful.

A64 owns all.. but that means new board new chip new tech complicated and NF3 kinda weak.

Bah, what is with all you people & nF3 being weak :roll:

The Neo2 is still one of the best OCing mobos out there, better than most nF4 ones.
Nothing weak about that.


Now that i'm done defending my Neo2 , i woulda agree with OCing the NW FTW :thumbsup:

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Sunrise089

Originally posted by: biostud
you could buy this http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA2.htm, keep your 6800 and be ready for PCIe cards.

You have to void your warranty (beta bios) to even run memory at 1T. Not very good product there.

Meh, I love that board. I put one in my brothers rig and got a very good OC on it. I say this board is :thumbsup:


BTW, I do not think my NF3 is weak at all...see sig.