the age old question amd v. intel - help me plz

[admav]

Ok here is my situation. I have a celeron 533 not o/c'd at all. It's running with 64meg of 133mhz ram fsb at 66mhz I have a tnt 2 m64 and 17 gig hard disk and a bran spankin new monitor. I'm looking to upgrade like this, 256 meg of ram added to the 64 there, another 20 gig disk, sb live 5.1, cambridge soundworks speakers and g4ce and of course a new cpu and motherboard. The question i put forward to you guys is what chip suits me best. I'm looking to spend no more than 400 dollars...that's Australian so anything less than a 1 ghz thunderbird is within my price range. From what i can tell getting a p3 is the best option (the 866) because it comes with the stock standard 133mhz fsb. Athlons can go higher than that but my knowledge about athlons is somewhat lacking (hence my post) so i would appreciate any help you guys and gals could give me regarding this. I'm not newbies when it comps to upgrading my comp but it's been a while since i upgraded my comp...lol so u can spare me all the details, just a quick run down on why you think your solution is best for me. thanx in advance for all your help

 

[mechBgon]

I did a conversion to see what $400 is in US dollars. It comes out to $219US. That is about enough money to buy a new AMD-compatible motherboard such as an MSI K7TPro2-A, and a Duron. I'm afraid the AMDs need decent-quality RAM and power supplies, and your budget is not going to allow that 256Mb of PC133, decent or not.

General info: the AMD CPUs use a double-data-rate bus, and up until now they have been 100MHz DDR (effectively 200MHz). The latest generation use a 133MHz DDR bus, see the reviews on anandtech.com for the MSI K7TPro2-A and the Asus A7V133 that just went up. Both generations run your PC133 RAM at 133MHz if you wish. The AMD CPUs generate a lot of heat compared to the latest Intels, so a good heatsink should be factored in. The GlobalWin FOP32-1 is a good one at a reasonable price level.

The Intel P3 866MHz is priced higher than your whole budget, and would probably need a new motherboard too, unless your Cel533 is in a board that happens to be compatible with the EB-series P3 chips.

If you are a gamer who needs good 3D performance, that M64 video card is going to end up being a bottleneck in your system once it's upgraded. Well, good luck, hope this info is some help.

 

[Jalapeno]

In a nutshell - what mechBgone said.

If you want 256Mb of PC133 RAM and the FOP32 factor in about US$140.00 more (with shipping included). If you want to upgrade your video as well, add at least another US$100.00.

In any case, going the AMD route is clearly less expensive.

 

[Jalapeno]

On second thought, why don't you just overclock your Celeron and spend your $$ on a better HS/Fan, RAM, and video??? Celerons overclock pretty well

 

[Mikaelb]

Is your celeron the FCPGA or the PPGA? probably the ppga . Sorry to say that those does not overcklock well. Maybe 590 or far out 670. however I would not recommned 670 since this is evercklocking everything beyond reason. Often gives problems. Things you put in may not work and DMA for the disks will not etc.

If you have a decent BX slot1 motherboard or a socketboard with voltage tweak you have a good 90% shot at taking a CeleronII 600 too 900 Mhz. I did.
Put your money on a good graphicsboard instead. A geforce 2MX or better

 

[dougjnn]

I generally agree with the last couple of posters. The smart bang for the buck move for you is to keep your mobo and upgrade your processor within the Intel Coppermine family.

Yes, T-Birds and Durons give you more bang for the buck than PIII's and Celerons, but not when you have to buy a new mobo you otherwise wouldn't, to run them.

If you mobo will run 133 fsb (look at the manual), then you have the option of getting a pentium III. The smart, easy overclock route there is to get a pentium 650 (which is labeled to run on a fsb 100 memory bus), and instead set your mobo jumpers to run it at 133fsb. That will give you a 6.5 x 133.33 mhz processor, or an 866mhz one. 90% chance of it running that fast. Maybe an 80% chance you could turn a PIII 700 into a 933mhz job by the same process. In the US the 650 that would cost you about $110 before shipping last I looked. Faster than a 700 PIII and your chances of success go down dramatically.

for about half that price you could buy a Celeron2 566 or 600 designed to run at a 66mhz fsb, and instead run it with the mobo jumpered for 100mhz fsb. You'd get an 850mhz or a 900mhz Celeron as a result, for about $55 US before shipping. Probably about a 95% and 90% probablily of success with the overclocking, respectively. Celeron's are about 10-12% slower than the same speed PIII's, although the actual amount varies with the application.

Spend the $Aus you saved on a Geforce2 MX card. And do up your memory to 256megs.

 

[admav]

right thanx for your help. btw i meant i would spend 400 dollars on the chip itself...the rest of the components are covered. I would simply upgrade but my mobo is only a gigabyte and i think it's seen it's day. It's unreliable and doesn't really suit my requirements...that and the fact that it only supports chips up too 600 mhz or something. I think intel is probably the way to go. I have to get a new mobo which every way things go amd or intel but from what you've said about heat concerns i might be better off going for the intel. To the guy who posted about the m64 being a bottleneck....i'm getting a g4ce, i stated that in my original post. Yes the machine is used largely for games but also modelling and map making, 3d work in flash and some other graphics work so i need a capable machine. I'm looking at

p3 866 mhz
compatible mobo (can u reccomend one)
256 meg of ram + the 64 already there
37 gig over to hard drives
g4ce 2 mx (the prophet 2 card)
sb live 5.1
the speakers and stuff

should be capable of doing what i want yeah?

 

[dougjnn]

If you are going to replace the mobo anyway, I would definitely suggest going AMD. Much better price/performance. Also has higher top performance in games and 95% of applications than any currently shipping Intel systems.

Get:

AMD 1200mhz chip (about $275 US) (or save $100 and get a 1000 mhz chip)
Taisol 742xxx HSF w/ a YTech 27cfm fan (good compromise between cooling and not too much noise)
Abit KT7a mobo, raid or not depending on your needs. (I'd get the raid for the extra ide channels, if nothing else). (This will provide a good upgrade path in 9-15 months, when you can slip in a 1.5 or 1.7ghz AMD Palomino chip without changing mobo or memory.)

If you are going to buy a new hard drive, get an IBM 75gxp, 30gb. There is now a pretty large consensus that these are the best IDE hard drives out there from speed, reliability, and low noise points of view all. Not much (or any) more than other good 7200rpm drives either.

 

[Agrippa]

If you're not cost-sensitive, I really don't think it matters much which chip you go for - both AMD and Intel will suit you equally well. However, if you're doing 3D modelling and any other serious gfx work, I'd strongly suggest you go Intel and get the Abit VP6 m/b and add a second chip at a later time. The performance difference in Photoshop and other SMP-aware programs can be huge! If there was a good (or indeed any...) SMP AMD-based board around I'd say get that (just waiting for one myself), but no such luck at the moment...Agrippa