to wait for the athlon 64 or not, that is the ?

[techiecool]

at this point i am tempted, greatly tempted, to wait for the athlon 64 over getting the p4 2.4 now(or nearer to Xmas time, hoping prices drop so more). any opinions?

incidently i spoke to a guy (chip architect/family friend) at motorola/siemans about amd vs. intel. he asked some of his fellow engineers and they said "the amd is better functionality for the price". and after hearing that i started weaking on my pro-P4 stance and have warmed up to amd. the question is how long is the wait going to be.

thanks

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

i think it was estimated around early next year for athlon 64
(kinda reminds me of commodore 64, and nintendo 64 lol)

 

[Mardeth]

Probably worth waiting but not that long because even when released it will take some time before programs start using the special abilities of the Athlon 64. Of course if you already have 1Ghz+ then I would wait because that is enough for sometime.

 

[PliotronX]

Mass quantities won't be available until Summer or possibly late-ish 3Q. That is one long time to wait in computing time Frankly it depends on what you're running now. If it's a >1GHz P3, Duron, Athlon, etc. you could do well waiting for A64. Otherwise a P4 2.4B (with the 133MHz bus) is a good idea. AMD is having problems right now and their upper end prices aren't lower than their P4 counterparts so the 2.4B is nice. That should last until Hammer 2 that might have the DDR-II controller integrated which may offer more than the original Hammer. Hope this helps.

(basically reiterating Mardeth's views )

 

[jreg]

I think there's 2 important considerations. The first is if your current system is incapable of handling your current needs. The second is how much you're willing to pay for a processor.

The Athlon 64 release estimates might not seem that far away, but remember that they're not going to be cheap. The Athlon 64s are going to be filling the very high end market, and prices will reflect that. If you're only looking to spend $200-250 for a processor, it's going to be a very long time before you're getting an Athlon 64. AMD is keeping their Bartons around for a pretty long time to fill that market segment. So you can wait a very long time and buy an Athlon 64 at a decent price, wait for the Athlon 64 release and buy an Athlon 64 immediately at a pretty hefty price, or don't wait at all and buy a current P4/2400+ level system for a pretty good price.

Personally, I'm going to go ahead and buy a system soon. I'll probably be getting a Granite Bay board and a P4 2.4 (or a 2.26 C1 if I can find one) and overclocking it as high as possible. I still haven't ruled out an nForce2 and 2400+, but I'm definitely leaning to the GB/P4. Anyway, that should last until I want to buy a Hammer or Prescott or something else down the road.

 

[techiecool]

that sounds reasonable. jreg brings up an interesting point. and that is whether GB is worth the money vs nForce2. although i think i like the p4 over the current amd offerings.

i currently am running a p2 300 which has been loooong overdue for a replacement, but just have been dragging my feet doing it. it served it's purpose fine, but i want to run .Net and SQL 2K and need a more poweful machine. i am a dba/.net programmer at work and going from the machines i use all day to that one is like getting out of a ferrari and getting into a yugo (not that there's anything wrong with that).

any time frame as to when the GB mobos come out? besides memory bandwidth, how much advantage does a GB have over let's say the p4pe or similar?

thanks for the help

 

[VeggieMan]

Bah.. You wont need a 64bit CPU unless you are constatly using programs that need access to HUGE amounts of memory.. and there are several situations where running a 64bit cpu on 64bit apps wont necessarily be faster than a 32.