I was doing some research a while back and it showed that the Prescotts weren't worth it over Northwoods, but now, they don't have Northwoods faster than 3.2GHz and I want a 3.4 system... Has the performance gap gotten small enough to justify buying a Prescott?
Prescotts?
- Thread starter coolego1
- Start date
I may be wrong, but I thought they made 3.4 Northies. If not, have you considered overclocking a 3.0C? Most do 3.4+ pretty easily even on stock cooling. If OC'ing isn't your thing, I do know they make a 3.2C and even though it's 200 mhz slower than a 3.4E, it would still beat it in many benchmarks.
The new D0 steppings run alot cooler then the prior Prescotts and clock higher. If you are planning to run at stock speed then stick with the Northwood. If you plan to overclock then get a Prescott. My 3.2E will do 3.8 with no vcore adjustment. You can really see the difference on the Prescott above 3.6Ghz.
they do make 3.4C (ie northwood) processors. the prescott is a bit slower per clock and runs a bit hotter, though, so if you can find one go with the northwood.
Gamingphreek
Lifer
- Mar 31, 2003
- 11,679
- 0
- 81
Go Athlon.... why are you waiting around for intel?? I wont buy another Intel until they release a P-M for the desktop. They are too stuck up to say we were wrong and mhz isn't everything. Go A64!!
-Kevin
-Kevin
ya there is if you wanna do alotta encoding prescott better than a64. can oc prescott too you know.
the primary application for this system is gaming a little(Half-Life 2) but the power is needed primarily for editing video. I'm getting a gig of RAM(probably PC3200) too, so if that says anything... I'm not interested in OC'ing at all, so that's out of the question. I'd like to stick with Intel, because they've been good to me, but if there are significant reasons to get an A64, I'll listen. For editing, I've heard it's better with a P4 anyway, so that's why I'm leaning towards Intel on this one.
^
Sorry but check out the latest reviews of the Athlon64 systems in editing, they have come a LONG!!!! way.
And as fasr as gaming, its not even close, Athlon64 all the way also. Then the A64 runs cooler and has great support now.
I am writing this from my Dual Xeon system, so I am not a AMD fanboy, just someone that has read all the reviews and built Intel and AMD systems.
Sorry but check out the latest reviews of the Athlon64 systems in editing, they have come a LONG!!!! way.
And as fasr as gaming, its not even close, Athlon64 all the way also. Then the A64 runs cooler and has great support now.
I am writing this from my Dual Xeon system, so I am not a AMD fanboy, just someone that has read all the reviews and built Intel and AMD systems.
well ive been buying amd but there is stuff intel does better the prescott does some stuff smoother and when they give pm 64 bit a nicer fpu, some more clock (they can add so much watts to that thing and itll still use less than an amd 0.09µ) and a decent desktop chipset it totally gonna own my a64. and yours too. wait and see its inevitable. then amd will strike back with something new. the beauty of competition.
my socket 478 prescott runs alot faster than my northwood... when its overclocked of course... im like 5-7fps less than my buddies EE... dont beleive everything people say unless they own a prescott.. the 775's are overclocking muthas...
my next setup is going to be a 939 though...
my next setup is going to be a 939 though...
I'm not overclocking, as I've said, so stock, what's the deal on prescott vs. northwood vs. A64?
uOpt
Golden Member
- Oct 19, 2004
- 1,628
- 0
- 0
Pentium-4s in general are sensitive to code optimized for them. The Prescott is more so because of its longer pipeline and hence bigger damage from doing anything unexpected.
If you want to run an random program not optimized for CPUs the AMD will usually run faster. This applies to games in particular, but not really to operating systems and office apps, for which Pentium-4 are more competitive. If you do a lot of highly specialized things like video encoding where the programmer has very little code taking up most of the CPU time and can hence optimize the hell out of it you are better off with the Prescott, otherwise with the Northwood.
Personally I am disappointed by the performance of my AMD 3400+ (2.4 GHz, 512 KB cache). It is about 20-40% faster than my 2.8C Northwood in 32 bit mode. I didn't benchmark too much in 64 bit mode yet but video encoding in 64 bit under mplayer/Linux is actually slower than using the 32 bit binary. So there' ssome way to go there before things rock.
Considering that the P4 2.8C is $181 and the AMD is $222 they have precisely the same price/performance for 32 bit code single-threaded, pretty much to the dollar.
Obviously they have different strengths: I like the Intel-chipset mainboards better, the Intel has hyperthreading, the AMD has 64 mode if you want that (I know I do).
Another note from my new 3400+: I am very positively surprised that AMD cleaned up some of the nonsense that nagged me about the Athlon XP I had: the fan is about as quiet as the Intel-provided fan, the XP one was horrible. Both have about the same power consumption idle (the AMD bursts more when busy, though). AMD did finally mount a lever to get the fan off the processor cleanly and without risk of putting plyers into your mainboard. The NVidia chipset for the AMD is much more to my liking than the Via junk I had for the XP, but nothing beats a P4C800-E Deluxe for my needs. The AMD64 combo supports ECC RAM, much to my positive surprise.
So overall my purchase of the AMD64 has been the opposite experience of what I expected: it is much more well-behaved and safe, but not as fast as I thought.
This should drive the lesson home that nothing beats hands-on experience and don't listen too much to hearsay and past experience
i've had both a p4 and a64 system....
for gaming though, hands down my a64 system beats the crap out of the p4 system...
but i really did enjoy hyperthreading on the p4's...
in terms of the prescott these days.... they seem to be doing a lot better than the earlier ones...
the newer revision or stepping seem to overclock like beasts even on air....
it's uncommon these days to hear of people getting to 4.0 ghz even on air cooling (stock air cooling that is) with the d0 or e0 stepping prescotts...
heck, fugger has one at 6 ghz (but that's triple cascade cooling)...
either way... the p4 has its benefits...
for gaming though, hands down my a64 system beats the crap out of the p4 system...
but i really did enjoy hyperthreading on the p4's...
in terms of the prescott these days.... they seem to be doing a lot better than the earlier ones...
the newer revision or stepping seem to overclock like beasts even on air....
it's uncommon these days to hear of people getting to 4.0 ghz even on air cooling (stock air cooling that is) with the d0 or e0 stepping prescotts...
heck, fugger has one at 6 ghz (but that's triple cascade cooling)...
either way... the p4 has its benefits...
i'm running stock with my 2.4 prescott, temps stay below 50 idle typically 45~48... intensive apps, gaming and media encoding for several hours, just below 60(never hitted more than 60 yet)... i think that's not hot enough IMO...
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