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POLL: INTEL P4 1.5ghz or AMD 1.2ghz? or not yet?

Dee67

Dee67

Golden Member
Looking for faster boot/shutdown, graphics generation, mp3 creation.. stuff like that...

--CURRENT system--
P3-700|256ram|18 gig Quantum atlas 10k scsi|32mb Diamond Viper V770D ultra nvidia|win98se

--NEW system--
AMD K7 Athlon 1200MHz upg. 266MHz FSB T-Bird
512MB DDR PC2100 266MHz
2 Seagate Cheetahs 18GB 15,000rpm U3SCSI-160+MB29160 Adptec
nVidia GeForce II ULTRA Prophet 64MB DDR AGP-4
DVD 16x40x MPEG-2 HW CARD
Windows 2000 Workstation PRO on CD-ROM
CD-RW PLEXTOR 32x12x10x ATAPI w/SW
-----------------
So the question is:

How much of a difference in speed would there be between these two machines? Lots? Virtually none?

All input is greatly appreciated!
 
I believe a HUGE increase! I just upgraded from this:
Intel Pentium® III Processor at 650MHz (SECC2 W/Fan)@ 806MHz!!!
256KB Integrated Advance Transfer L2 Cache
Abit BX6R2 PIII ATX 100MHz Motherboard (4 DIMM SLOTS, 2 ISA, 5 PCI, 1 AGP)
Mid Tower Case (3 Fans: Front Panel Fan, Bay Fan, and Slot Fan)
128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM
8.4 Ultra ATA33 Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
17" (16.0" viewable, .26dp) 107s Magnavox Monitor
32MB Diamond Viper V770 NVIDIA TNT2 Ultra AGP Graphics Card
24MB Quantum Obsidian X-24 Graphics Card (Voodoo2 SLI)
8.4GB Maxtor UltraDMA/33 HHD
36X Max Variable CD-ROM Drive
Mx300 Diamond Monster Sound Card
Altec Lansing ACS-340 Speakers with Subwoofer
V.90/56K5 ISA Viking Telephony Modem for Windows
3.5" Floppy Drive
Microsoft® Internet Keyboard Pro
MS IntelliMouse®
Iomega Parallel Port Zip Drive (100MB disks)
Hewlett Packard DeskJet 812C Color Printer
Microsoft® Office 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows® 98

to this:
AMD 1100MHz (1.1GHz) Thunderbird K7 Athlon Processor
Asus A7V KT133 Motherboard with Ultra100, AGP 4x
256MB PC133 SDRAM 7.5ns
IBM Deskstar 45GB 75GXP 7200rpm Ultra100 8.5ms HHD
Hercules GeForce2 ULTRA DDR 64MB with TB Out
Pioneer 16X DVD ROM/40X CD-ROM Drive
Plextor PlexWriter CD-R/RW Write 12X, RW 10X, Read 32X
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer Value
3COM US Robotics PCI 56K V.90 Fax/Data Hardware Modem
Altec Lansing ACS-340 Speakers with Subwoofer
Iomega 100MB Zip Drive (External)
Hewlett Packard DeskJet 812C Printer
MS Internet Keyboard
MS USB Intellimouse
Mid Tower Case with 300W Power
Dual Video Cooling System
17" 107s Magnavox Color Monitor

My performance has DOUBLED.

Check out my benchmarks (some of which compare the new and old):

New System and benchmarks galore........

I hope this helps.
 
Yeah, kinda depends on what you need. For any professional applications with heavy FPU usage though, your performance should more than double.

Seeing as the 1200MHz bird is found for $275 online, it wouldn't hurt to make the upgrade. But I'd think it wiser to wait for the 760 chipset first. A different situation here, my P3/450 is hurting.
 
The AMD 1.2 Ghz will kill everything else right now when it comes to stuff like graphics creation because the awsome FPU performance.
 
Can you overclock your P3 700? I've been running my P3 700(cB0) at 1ghz(143fsb) for months now and I'm perfectly happy with it's performance.
 
I would say there is a signifigant difference. It will be quite noticable.

The TBird would be the path to go. As pointed out, with your system, you are not really on the "low end of the totem pole" right now with your existing system. I would wait out the release of the DDR 760 systems. If you do video graphics that takes hours and hours to render and can't wait for the upgrade, I would recommend the 1.2Ghz system today.

The SocketA is going to be around for at least the next 2 years. The next revision of the Athlon will be compatible with the socket and will provide a ready upgrade path for your system while the current P4 socket will be dead as last years flowers by June of next year.

Since you are obveously an upgrade kind of person, AMD is the only good choice at this time. The only question for you is when to upgrade, now or when DDR comes out.
 
I'm confused about something. (Pardon me, I'm not up to snuff on amd related knowledge (yet))

I notice "waiting for ddr"

the system I have listed is ddr no? or is there a different kind or something?

Thanks for the input.. It's appreciated!
 
You're going to need AMD 760 or ALi Magik for DDR, and they're both not out, nobody knows when either.
 
DDR reviews have been performed on AMD reference systems or on boards that are not being shipped yet. Although the performance of these systems have been quite stable and have boasted about a 25% boost in performance over a similiarly clocked PC133 system, there has been issues with the AMD 760 chipset making too much noise and requiring board makers to use some patches suggested by AMD to make the PC266 (133 ddr) systems completly stable under all conditions. Being an electrical engineer, I suspect that small in-line resistors would do the trick.

This has had the unfortunate effect of delaying the initial introduction of both AMD 133 FSB parts and DDR main boards. Since ALI has its version of DDR ready now and mb's are being readied with this chipset as well as the AMD 760, I suspect that by mid January the DDR revolution should be under way again.

Right now DDR RAM is a bit over priced (no more than RAMBUS mind you), but that should come to a rapid halt when systems ship with the memory in them and the volumes increase.

Around June or July of next year, I expect to see Intel enter the DDR fray. This will complete the demise of RAMBUS memory and usher in DDR as the next standard memory platform for ALL PC's reguardless of the CPU manufacturer.

I suspect that QDR (Quad Data Rate) will be introduced some time in 2002 and will again replace DDR as the standard. Before then, expect DDR speeds to increase steadily through next year. I suspect that PC266 will be replaced with PC350. Main boards will be backwards compatible like they were with PC133 vs PC100.

Boards that support faster memory, will run with slower memory, but will be capable of using faster memory.

The Athlon FSB (Front Side Bus) is currently at 100Mhz double pumped (200Mhz). The Athlon "EV6" bus is rated up to 400Mhz (200Mhz Double Pumped). This is not to be confused with Intels 100Mhz Quad Pumped bus (400Mhz).

The more multiples of pumping you have, the worse (higher) the latency of transfers (bad). The payoff for multi-pumping is higher bandwidth. All the bandwidth in the world is useless in most applications. The average application gains more from lower latency than higher bandwidth.

All of this has nothing to do with the introduction of AMD's new processor core (Palimino)! There will be TBird cores with 133Mhz FSB. These chips will run at either 100Mhz FSB (for compatibility with older main boards) or with the full 133MHz FSB (new chipsets like the KT133A support this as well as all DDR mb's that support PC133 memory (AMD 760 does not support PC133 at all, only PC200 and PC266 DDR).

So, as you can see, there are quite a few options availible in the AMD world in the near future.

Right now, either an ASUS or ABIT, or MSI Pro would be my suggestion if you don't want to wait for a DDR board (my personal favorite right now would be the MSI Pro board using a 133MHz FSB capability).

I have no opinion on the DDR boards yet since there is no information from the bizillions of members in the forums to get info about how well they work yet!

Ordinarily I would not say to wait, but seeing how we are on the verge of a new memory standard (it only happens about every 2 years), I would hold out for a good DDR board and plan on a system purchase around the end of January if I were you. Really, your PIII 700 is a pretty good system. By the end of January, you should be able to get into a Palimino (Athlon) at 1.33Ghz with a good DDR board that will pretty much crush a P4 and be much cheeper. Later you can replace just the CPU with a 1.5-1.7Ghz chip. The way the market and competition is going, that upgrade will be below $200.00 USD. by the end of next year.

Hope you have fun making your decision!
 
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