SOB CPU speed

[Overkiller]

Hello all,

First off i would like to once again say that TA for any DC project are great!

now to my question:

I am in the market towards a new system. I play games heavily and with all the controversy over the upcoming DX9.0 titles i will need a very powerful system to run these games (i like my eye candy )...

What i wanted to know however is whether getting a 2.8 ghz P4 o/c to around 3.2 would be a good choice now...or waiting for a AthlonFX/Prescott sometime next Spring.

With current games the GPU is more important that the CPU so my choice for that is already made (the latest radeon )
What i wanted to know is what sort of #'s an overclocked 2.8 gets(or any P4 around 3.2ghz) in SOB.

Also does anyone have any info or WILL (i.e. have pre-ordered)have on an Athlon FX system and its performance in SOB or the like? Even if there are no DC bencharks, anything such as Prime, or heavy encoding of media that could give a preview into what should be arriving?

I do need an upgrade (1.2 ghz tbred is in this box right now) but i am willing to wait if one processor will definitely be well worth the wait.

 

[MereMortal]

The SOB client is memory bandwidth starved. So the key to running fast in SOB is to get fast memory and overclock the FSB. High CPU is of course good, but not at the expense of lowering the memory ratio.

Now, you just have to balance these ideas with whatever else you're planning to run on the machine...

 

[Overkiller]

yup. i was just looking at one of those *buy very good stuff now at a relatively good price* or wait for new tech later

 

[Baldy18]

I'd go with the P4. I think later processors will be overpriced and underperforming. Of course they will still be faster than what is out now but at what cost?

 

[Overkiller]

I just looked at the suggested A64 prices....$450-500...ouch!

besides i've been thinking a matured processor (it is the 3rd revision of the northwood core) vs. something brand-spanking new...i mean look at the P4 it went from 400 mhz/no HT/.18? micron size to what it is now...

thx guys

 

[Allio]

I can't tell you much, other than the fact that the new opterons do about 450k cem/s in sob, and an overclocked 2.4c will do over 700k cem/s with the right settings. I guess it comes down to money and what else you want to do with the machine

If a 64 bit client is ever released, though, it'd be a different story.

Good luck!

 

[Overkiller]

well this will be a 2-3 year upgrade. so it better be a good one

the video card (9700 pro) will change over time as will the 48X cd-burner (dvd?) and a few of the minor components but the major ones will stay put (mobo, ram, proc.) for that length of time.

 

[SlangNRox]

I am currently at around 650,000 on my p4 3.2ghz with pc3200 ecc ram in dual channel. From what I've heard p4 is the best at sob.

 

[Overkiller]

hmm i'm thinking a 2.8 oc'd to around 3.2 w/ a close to 1000 bus will crank out about 700+K

must avoid...credit card...coming..out...

 

[SinfulWeeper]

:Q
<--- Needs to upgrade. I thought 500+/- was the fastest the client went.

 

[Overkiller]

lol sinful!

i've been puttering about @ 165Kcems/s on my 1.2 ghz tbred for a while now..for some reason a defrag. has increased my speed to 219Kcems/sec :Q

add another 45Kcems/s on a p3-450

and about 110 on a athlon 600 and that is not that impressive :*(

ah well...the upgrade shall well...add about 700K/s i hope ! lol. more than all those machines combined...like 2x...

 

[Mardeth]

The new Athlon64 seems to be a REALLY good gaming processor. If I were you I would wait a few months so that the availebility gets better and the prices go down 20% or something. The A64 (20k points on default clocks with Radeon 9800 Pro) beats the 4.1Ghz P4 in 3Dmark and it can be easily OCed since it only uses 40W and with a decent air cooling goes at 35C.

Also DONT buy the new Geforce 5. It sucks in DX9.0

It was tested on HL2 and the Gf 5900 Ultra lost against Radeon 9600 (Pro or non? cant remember). The 9800 Pro had 60fps and 5900 Ultra 30. 5600 15 and 5200 about 10.

Hope that wasnt too confusing.

EDIT: I have no clue how it performs in SOB but I would expect at least the same performance as with 3.2 P4 and lets not even talk about if they start supporting 64bit processors .

Btw, the HL2 and Doom III are going to support the 64bit which probably increase the performance by at least 20-50%? (Just a guess, dont quote).

 

[Overkiller]

Mardeth:

Trust me, i have read a TON about the nvidia / ati dispute and all i can say...shame on nvidia..but that is why i run a 9700 pro and before that had a radeon 64 MB DDR Vivo :Q

i always wondered how nvidia would release a bunch of drivers after a game came out and magically get extra fps. now that ppl are scrutanizing nvidia a lot more they are finding a lot of little ;*tweaks* that harm image quality but no one ecver bothered to look closely. While surely the difference in graphical quallity is most likely miniscule when one is running around the level a mile a minute dodging, bullets, etc..the fact is that nvidia has cheated...repeatedly...

heck they strong-armed EA to drop its Tomb raider demo b/c it showed nvidia being handed its plate by ATI...but hey...its the *way its meant to be played*...

well i just bought a slk-947U and a smart fan 2..anyone know whether this will fit on a A64?

My problem is that i just do not want to wait any longer! i am running a 1.2ghz Tbred and well..its aging badly (only thing saving me is the 9700 pro). the way i see it is that the P4C is a very developed processor while the early A64s are not..and heck amd is changing sockets like 2 more times until they finalize?

 

[SlangNRox]

And to think that I spent $23 on a geforce 2 mx for my p4 3.2ghz. It is just used for distributed computing, video encoding, burning dvds, and as a file server.